HAWK

CHAPTER TWELVE: CRASH (2/5)

Over the course of a few hours, Kas managed to keep down a meal and replenish much of her body's lost water and felt all the better for it. Her limbs still spasmed occasionally and her headache was refusing to give up on her, but compared to the agony she'd recently experienced, this was fine by her.

When enough time had passed that she felt she was back in control of herself, Kas went down to the engine room and put her Domino skinsuit back on. The effect was near euphoric. The artifibre melted her headache in minutes and tamed her twitching nerves with ease. Within half an hour, Kas was feeling more like her old self and ready to see the last part of the journey through.

She had never bothered to correct the Calista's itinerary and instead let it continue on towards the asteroid belt at a slow and steady speed. After all she'd been through, she needed to know more than ever what was out there.

Since she seemed to have developed a habit of decelerating into danger zones lately, she adjusted the Calista's itinerary so that they'd come to a stop a little further out, at which point she would pilot the ship the rest of the distance herself and scout the area discreetly.

With arrival imminent, she buckled herself into her seat and prepared for deceleration. Her right hand went to the dethruster and teased it back. The Calista thrummed noisily as the decelerators gained traction and bit down. They didn't sound healthy.

'Come on baby... you survived an X1 attack and a plasma explosion; you can survive this...'

One by one, the distant constellations of stars began to reappear in the viewport.

'There we--'

The Calista bucked and rolled as if it had tumbled off a cliff, flipping back over front over back while spinning just about every which way it could manage. Kas let out a string of expletives as she fought with the control column to get it back to normal, but the ship was having none of it. The Calista was still travelling at a very high speed towards the asteroid belt and now had no way of slowing. Unless Kas could think of something quickly, the Calista would fly into it like a stray comet.

So much for being discreet...

But even with both hands wrestling with the control column, Kas was finding it impossible to tame the wild movement of the ship. She was a good pilot - a brilliant pilot - but with the Calista as damaged as it was, she felt like she was piloting a paper aeroplane through a hurricane. There was no wind or gravity to slow her down, no external energy she could harness and turn to her advantage. She may as well have been trapped in a box that had been thrown into a bottomless pit. Unable to lock eyes on anything in the viewport, she looked to the Holo-HUD and saw the Calista's model spinning like crazy inside its gyroglobe.

'Calista, divert all power to stabilisers!'

No reply.

Kas remembered and swore. She had no option but to release the control column and let the Calista spin freely while she went to the control deck and punched in the command manually. It took a few seconds, but Kas soon felt the stabilisers kick in. She saw the model in the gyroglobe slow its rotation a little, but it was no way near enough. She grabbed the control column again and felt it respond like a dead limb. With several deft twists, she attempted to goad it back to life and ever-so-gradually curb the ship's turbulent momentum. It shuddered and whined its refusal, but Kas could feel a shadow of control lurking beneath the resistance and knew she had at least a little hope.

'That's it, baby... I've got you...'

She fixed her eyes on the model in the gyroglobe until it was all she could see. Her hands became a blur on the control column as she abandoned all conscious thought.

I've got you...

The spinning model shivered, perhaps sensing Kas's influence and trying to shake it off. Gradually, the model swayed and slowed to a fast waltz, its rotation no longer wild but smooth and graceful.

'That's it, baby, I've got--'

Thunk!

The Calista jolted and lurched violently and threw Kas hard against her seatbelt. Her mind fogged up with confusion and her eyes instinctively went to the Holo-HUD to check what had been damaged this time... but what she saw only amplified her wonder.

The model of her ship had stabilised at last and was now resting peacefully at the centre of the gyroglobe - which would have been very good news if not for the fact that there were now two other ships directly behind her.

The identical twin crafts were half the size of the Calista - about the same size of a cap cruiser. The two harpoon cables even looked similar to the ones used by the astral police, but that was where the similarities ended. These beauties were sleek and streamlined, designed for fast flight and hard fights. Kas didn't need to look twice to recognise what they were.

Wraiths...