HAWK

CHAPTER FOUR: SELVA (7/7)

Once they were finally underway to Selva, Kas sat Worm back down and quizzed her over how exactly she'd managed to hack Hik and enable his voice function. With Hik's help in translating, Worm revealed that the little black cube which Kas had earlier stepped on was, in fact, a voice inhibitor that had been magnetically attached to his neck. She had become fascinated by the X1 when she was carrying out her repairs and had only pulled it off by accident. Hik was otherwise unchanged.

With that little mystery solved, Kas felt a little more relaxed and the three unlikely companions became a strange little family over the next week. Hik kept himself to himself, not moving unless instructed to by Kas. He would occasionally try to engage Kas in conversation but she was having none of it and eventually ordered him to be silent. Worm tried frequently to get close to Hik to study him further, prompting Kas to send Hik to the engine room where she could lock him safely away. That plunged Worm into a sulk for a few hours, but Kas didn't care.

Better that than the X1 hurts her...

Over the next few days, Kas found herself taking on a role she would never have thought she'd be any good at - that of a mother. She fed the girl and gave her clean clothes, entertained her and marvelled at her technical skills as Worm showed her how to milk the most power out of the Calista's engine. She did such a good job, in fact, that as the journey neared its end, they found they were set to arrive at Selva almost a full day early.

In the last day of travel, Kas consulted the Calista's temporal conformer and saw that they should be there in precisely four hours and twenty-eight minutes. When she relayed this to Worm it was as if the lights had dimmed. They had bonded over the past few days, but now Kas was about to hand her over to the Federation in the hope that they would take just a little pity on her and not return her to her slave owners back on Chantos. If they did, Kas would consider offering to pay for her freedom using some of her reward money, but that would be assuming the Feds didn't lock her up first for kidnapping.

In their last hour, Kas and Worm were cosied up in the sleeping quarters, playing a variation of an old card game that Worm had taken a shine to. Kas had introduced her to it early on the trip and she had become quite exceptional at it, occasionally beating Kas by a narrow margin, the rest of the time whipping her senseless.

Kas was not doing too badly this time, and as the game progressed, she wondered if Worm was letting her off easy since it would likely be their last game together. Sure enough, every time Kas took her turn, lady luck smiled on her and she took the lead for the first time in days. She was just getting ready to lay down the winning hand when the Calista alerted them that they were about to arrive. Foregoing her victory, Kas folded her cards and made her way to the cockpit.

The Calista was still travelling incredibly fast but it was rapidly decelerating as they closed on their destination. Kas happened to glance at Worm beside her and saw her staring out of the viewport, pale-faced and glum. She realised then that though the girl had likely spent countless hours working on ships like this, she had probably very rarely been a passenger on one.

'You'll like it on Selva,' Kas said. 'They'll take good care of you there. They've got everything, I hear it's practically heaven for a mech--'

The Calista came to a sudden halt, sending Kas and Worm tumbling to the ground like bowling pins. Kas found herself folded in half on the floor, her head ringing from the impact of what felt like a mech-suit punch. She turned over and saw Worm lying under the command chair, heels-over-head and looking similarly confused. They both scrambled to their feet and looked out of the viewport.

Kas's eyes widened in disbelief.

They appeared to be inside some kind of dense asteroid belt. Massive shapes were spinning idly, dancing the slow dance of the cosmos where everything happened in slow-motion. Except, the more Kas looked, the harder it became to view the shapes as asteroids... they looked more like huge chunks of--

No... it can't be...

But whatever doubt Kas had was extinguished when the bloated, lifeless body of a man rolled past the viewport like an action replay, the blue-and-black Federal apparel unmistakeable. The realisation took Kas and shook her by the shoulders until her breath caught in her throat.

Selva had been destroyed.