HAWK

CHAPTER SEVEN: DRIFTERS (4/5)

Kas walked slowly through the streets.

She'd not had any time to herself since leaving Artis and she'd been through quite a lot since then. Being stuck with two illegal companions had done nothing to calm her nerves. Dante had only half-heartedly offered to keep an eye on Worm for a while if Kas wanted to go out and stretch her legs, and Kas hadn't given her the chance to change her mind.

She wasn't heading in any particular direction, she just meandered, ducking down random side alleys and weaving between buildings like a stray cat with nothing better to do. She kept her head down mostly, her mind lost in thoughts of Selva and the mysterious databeam. Part of her wanted to just forget about it and become as ignorant as the vagrants that littered the city. Instead, it was consuming her.

The streets seemed unusually quiet. Kas wondered if word of the X1 had shuttered people in their houses, but her instincts told her there was something larger going on. A police siren bellowed out from the other side of a deserted theatre and shrank into the distance. That was nothing new though; a siren in Yun-Ko was practically white noise.

A little further on, Kas found her path littered with paper posters. She stopped and looked down at one by her feet.

The portrait of Serez Rhaspa took up most of the page. It was no doubt the most famous image of the man, brandished by his followers as a figure of rebellion. He was looking up and to the right in a grave expression that suggested there was something wrong with the world and that he alone had the answer. There was a single line of text printed underneath:

PRIMI IS LIBERTY

It was classic rebellion propaganda, one which the protesters outside the Artisseum had adopted, albeit in a simpler design.

Rhaspa was the symbol for all things anti-Federation in Primi and he had followers on every single world there. He had been an actor, of all things, one of the more famous ones, but mid-way through his career he had had a change of ambition and used his fame to bring his politics to the masses. He was strongly opposed to the Federation and it was his ultimate goal to have Primi leave the club. He just didn't see the need for humanity to cross paths with species from other solar systems and proclaimed it was only a matter of time before an interstellar war broke out.

While the majority of humanity didn't feel the same way, his fear spread to enough people that he gained a large following. Knowing the battle to have Primi taken out of the Federation was a little too ambitious, they instead did what they could to put a stop to alien migration. Primi was their home and they didn't like the idea of alien beings coming over and setting up camp in their territory, regardless of how friendly they might be or the knowledge they had to offer.

The thing is, solar migration was never actually all that common. It seemed to be the case right across the galaxy that most life forms didn't like to stray too far from their home stars. Tourism was one thing, but even in a galaxy of travellers, few liked to be the ones to stand out. That's what made citizens like Jedd so unusual - despite the openness of the galaxy, you just didn't meet that many aliens.

But Jedd lived on Chantos. Moons and terraformed worlds were more accepting of travellers, perhaps because their inhabitants were more accustomed to visitors. Origin planets like Lysan, on the other hand, were not quite so welcoming. Most of Lysan's residents had never even left the planet, let alone the solar system, and the feelings harboured there planted seeds of pride which became branches of fear which invariably bore the fruit of hatred.

The Rhaspian movement was the fermented essence of such fruit, and though they were vastly in the minority, they still made some parts of Primi an unpleasant place for aliens to travel. Every time visitors from another system came to visit, packs of Rhaspian's would be waiting for them with banners and foul language to try and make them turn right back around. Jedd had put up with it on a daily basis for most of his life, but he had thick skin in more ways than one and often gave back as good as he got.

As for Rhaspa himself, he became a high profile target in the eyes of the Federation and so it came as little surprise when one day he simply vanished from existence. While his followers clung to the hope he was in hiding, the common assumption was he'd been captured or, more likely, assassinated. As the decades passed and his hundredth birthday came and went, the chances of his survival diminished and his status was relegated to presumed dead, though most skipped the presumed bit.

Kas looked at the half-century old picture of Rhaspa on the floor and thought again of the freighter ship waiting outside Chantos. She thought the pilot was just being overly cautious about his encounter with Rhaspa's followers, but maybe he had good reason to be. The whole Selva situation had been a major blow to the Federation and the Rhaspian movement would no doubt be rejoicing. That would encourage some of the quieter followers to speak up which might have a snowball effect across the entire solar system.

The Federation's gonna have to get a handle on this quickly...

Kas stepped on the poster as she continued on.

As she neared an abandoned factory, she passed a group of four men leaning over a burned out car on the far side of the road. Their faces were pale and glistening with sweat, their minds somewhere else entirely. Kas wondered if they even knew what was happening out there in the Black.

Hey guys, Selva's been destroyed, didn't you hear? Life's about to get real difficult. Thought you should know...

But as she passed them, none of them even seemed to notice her - they just kept on staring down into the wrecked shell of a vehicle like they'd lost parts of their souls in it. Kas saw their t-shirts changing colour beneath their jackets and understood.

Suddenly, a man stepped in front of Kas and blocked her path. He was tall, broad-shouldered and covered in tattoos.

'Ride in the car's fifty bucks,' he said.

'Not interested.' Kas tried to walk around, but the man stepped sideways to block her path.

'It's better than Ranger and Main. Those guys'll rip you off. This ride's the best in the district.'

'I don't wear fibre, pal. Get outta my way.' She said it with such force that the dealer actually put his hands up like she'd drawn a weapon and stepped aside. He grinned as she walked away.

'Should be more careful where you walk, jojo.'

Kas pretended not to hear and kept walking.

Stim-heads...

The drug scene had been transformed by artifibre. People no longer paid for expensive and illegal narcotics but access to 'stim-zones'. All they needed was some cheap artifibre, like the kind the trader was selling at the Artisseum, and they had the ability to access all kinds of illegal stimulus.

Stim-zone's were places where dealers dropped illegal emitters. Stand close enough to one while wearing cheap artifibre, and you'd be assaulted by whatever chemical the dealer had programmed it to dissolve into your bloodstream. The four men huddled around the car were currently in the throws of such bliss. The thing is, hacked clothes drew power from the fibres at such a rate that the colours became unstable. If someone was wearing a particularly garish piece of clothing which was constantly colour shifting, chances are good they were being 'stimmed'.

Once Kas had passed the factory, she turned right and walked on a little way before finding herself confronted by a tall wire fence that blocked the only exit. Figuring it was time to head back anyway, she turned around and started back the way she'd come, but as she neared the road, two figures stepped out from a breach in the factory wall.

'Hey there, bay-bay,' one of them said in a thick Yunkish accent. Kas came to a stop and stuffed her hands into her coat pockets.

Great...