HAWK

CHAPTER FIVE: TRANSMISSION (1/5)

The Calista's debris deflector was holding up well but Kas knew they couldn't stay there much longer. The event was too monumental to ignore, however, and as far as Kas could tell, she, Worm and Hik might be the only witnesses to the mayhem that had befallen the former space station.

What happened? A collision? No, impossible. My god, all those people...

But there was no time to waste in mourning; they were all in very real danger. The vast amount of debris would soon overpower the Calista and tear it to pieces.

'Worm, is there anything you can do to--'

A noise burst through the tannoy, a loud static hiss combined with a high-pitched squeal that burrowed inside Kas's brain like a drill. Worm clamped her hands over her ears to try and shut it out while Kas reached desperately for the controls. She fumbled for a moment before finding the mute switch. The noise stopped but Kas's ears were still ringing from the intrusion.

The hell was that...?

The Calista jolted suddenly and Kas was reminded of the situation. She spun around and locked her eyes onto Worm.

'Do what you can to help the deflectors out. We're in a war zone out here!' Worm nodded once and ran off to the engine room. Kas, meanwhile, jumped into her pilot's seat and took the controls. The Calista had started shaking - not violently, but enough to sharpen Kas's grip on the control column.

'Deactivate autopilot,' she shouted, and the Calista handed itself over to her. The autopilot probably would've been the smart choice, but Kas preferred to be in control in situations like this. The idea of leaving her fate in the hands of a computer, no matter how sophisticated, did not sit well with her.

I can do this...

She pulled the column towards her and the Calista responded in kind, rolling backwards in a testing arch until it was upside down and facing away from the mayhem. There was still plenty of rubble ahead of her, but now far less which was a start.

Kas grabbed the throttle and urged it forwards, calling on the tokamak engine to do its thing. The ship surged forwards, gaining momentum while simultaneously battling to defend itself from the minefield of dead metal that was attacking from all directions. Every time another piece of Selva came towards her, the Calista's debris-deflector sent out a shockwave that encouraged the wreckage to try another direction. It worked great for space travel, as it was intended, but it wasn't designed to handle quite so much debris as Selva had created, nor debris of that size (some pieces were bigger than most asteroids). Normally the Calista would alter its course to avoid such obstacles, but it was too late for that now. Kas just hoped the deflector could hold up until they could pull themselves clear. It drew a lot of power, and if it drew too much...

Kas looked at the power bank and saw it was holding steady at thirty-eight percent. Whatever Worm was doing in the engine room, it was working. They could afford to go down to about thirty but much less than that and things would start to get tricky. She could help the situation by resisting the urge to go full throttle, which would deplete the power very quickly, and instead kept the Calista cruising at a quick but controlled rate.

Nearly there... just a bit further...

Out of nowhere, a huge satellite dish twice the size of the Calista spun up in front of the viewport as if to block their escape. Kas slammed the column to the side and the ship leaned left with a gut-wrenching twist - but the dish was spinning too fast. The debris deflector sent out a shockwave that did more to move the Calista than the satellite, but it wasn't enough. The satellite clipped the ship's belly with a scream of tearing metal that sent both bodies spinning wildly out of control. Kas had no time to think and instead entered a mode in her mind that was almost primal. Her hands pulled on the column as she tried desperately to counter the deathly spin before she hit something else. Any concept of time dissolved as the Calista swung in painful circles like a dancer thrown onto a frozen lake. To anyone else, the viewport would have been a dizzying blur of black and white shapes, but Kas somehow managed to make sense of it because the spinning began to slow. With sweat pooling in her eyes, Kas managed to regain control of the ship just as another large chunk of Selva dived in from her right. This time, Kas saw it coming and pushed forwards on the control column, sending the ship into a sudden dive that plunged them out of danger with only a few metres to spare.

It wasn't until Kas sensed Worm's presence beside her that she realised the viewport was almost entirely black, with the only point of reference being the distant mesh of stars. Free from danger, Kas peeled her trembling fingers from the control column and allowed herself to breathe.