HAWK

CHAPTER TWELVE: CRASH (1/5)

Kas could do nothing but sit in wait while the relentless storm of alien alloy surged past her in a fiery blue haze. She felt like she was flying backwards through a cobalt ash cloud and part of her mind wondered if she was going to crash. The assault lasted only a few seconds before the majority of the debris passed her by, but that didn't stop the flashing red warning light from bursting into life all around her. She reached out blindly with one hand and flipped a small black switch, and the flashing ceased immediately. She turned her attention back to the Holo-HUD to see just how bad the damage was.

It was safe to say the Calista had seen better days. The small hologram of her modest vessel was almost entirely red. The spiders' attack followed by the monumental explosion had mutilated her beautiful ship into a beast of scarred and charred metal. By all rights, the Calista should have been torn apart in the wake of the blast, or at least severely breached. Fortunately, Celestian runner ships like hers were known for their hardiness, which was exactly the reason she'd bought it. She seriously doubted many other ships would have survived such an assault and was reminded of one of Jedd's favourite sayings:

Buy cheap, die once...

Still, Kas wasn't out of trouble yet. Far from it. If the actual damage was even half as bad as it looked on the HUD, she was in for a rough ride. She wiped the grimace off her face with the back of her hand and turned away, not wanting to look at it anymore.

'Calista,' she said quietly. 'Activate gravity.'

Silence.

'Calista?'

More silence.

'If you can hear me, Calista... give me some kind of signal. Flash a light, make a sound... anything.'

Nothing.

Kas could feel the onset of a bad headache lurking behind tired eyes. She closed them tight and tried massaging her sinuses but the pain was already on its way.

After a few seconds, she forced her eyes open again and drew a slow, calming breath through her nose. She leaned forward in her seat and began entering commands into the manual control deck. Moments later, an unhealthy grinding noise bubbled up under the cargo hold and rattled the ship as if something was outside kicking it. Kas was relieved when a tingling sensation spread through her body signalling the onset of artificial gravity. Her organs hustled and bustled for prime position inside her and began weighing her down in her seat. She was grateful when full gravity was finally restored and the jerking movement stopped.

She sat there for several minutes, feeling pinned down by her own mass, too tired to lift even a finger. The numbness spread to her mind where she tried to bat away any thoughts of responsibility.

Just let me recover for a minute...

But she knew she had work to do if she wanted to survive. Her fingers twitched and bent, followed reluctantly by her elbows, and together they fumbled for the seatbelt lock and released the twin straps over her shoulders. Her Domino skinsuit was doing its best to keep her energised but even it had its limits. Kas pushed herself to her feet and heard her knees, back and neck crackle like bubble wrap. She felt fifty-stone heavier and briefly considered disabling the gravity again, but she knew the sensation would soon pass and instead carried herself towards the door and into the cargo hold.

Hik was lying in the middle of the hold like a freshly mined lump of coal. He was such a mess, Kas couldn't even tell if he was face up or down. She walked slowly towards him and stopped by the end where his computer was.

Thanks to the BN resin, his half encased sphere looked remarkably untouched. From where she was standing, Kas thought he looked like a giant black glass eye that had been ripped from its socket, taking the surrounding mass of mangled tissue with it.

'Sorry, Hik,' she said. 'I really got us into a mess, huh?'

The lump of coal said nothing, which only made Kas feel worse. Her skinsuit's artifibre could work all sorts of wonders on her body, but it couldn't do a thing for her mind. She was a mess of emotions, far too many to keep track of.

I should never have come out here...

She didn't want to look at Hik anymore, yet she couldn't take her eyes away from him. She scanned the jagged contours of his body and absorbed the full extent of his damage, marvelling at just how much power the spiders must have had in order to reduce an X1 to such a state. Not as much as the Ghoster, evidently, but still. He looked just the way Kas felt.

Utterly destroyed.

A deeply unpleasant sensation flooded her gut and dropped her to her knees. She knew exactly what it was, but she'd hoped she still had a few hours to prepare. Apparently not.

The powerful stimulants she'd used during her battle with the X1's hadn't come for free. Like many performance-enhancing stims, the positive effects would be duly balanced by a comedown of ferocious intensity. It would be the mother of all hangovers, she knew, though nothing could have prepared her for the true extent of her body's response.

Within an hour, she was bed-bound by a monster of a migraine and a cold fever that left her in perpetual convulsions. She'd already thrown up everything her body had inside her, leaving her dry-heaving in trembling agony. The thought of eating or drinking only made her heave more. To further her anguish, she'd also had the foresight to stash her Domino skinsuit away in the engine room, the furthest place she could physically take it without leaving the ship.

This hadn't been easy. The suit would have speeded up her recovery considerably, but she also knew her body would soon be crying out for more stimulants and she didn't want to also be fighting the temptation to provide them - that was the fastest road to addiction. Wearing combat grade artifibre when you're on a stim comedown is like putting on a lead-lined life jacket when you're trying not to drown. Sometimes you just want to put an end to your misery.

Needless to say, she didn't get much rest.

Kas rode out the storm for a full fifteen hours before finally feeling well enough to leave her sleeping chamber. With tired and shivering limbs, she eased herself slowly down the ladder and arrived gently in the cargo hold. She felt a pang of guilt to rediscover Hik lying motionless on the floor like an abandoned toy. She walked gingerly towards him, her goose-pimpled arms wrapped tightly around her slender frame, and stopped beside his head.

'Hik...?' Her voice was hoarse and painful. She had convinced herself during her time in bed that Hik would be alright if he just had some time to recover, that he just needed to cool down.

He never answered.