The Lost Star Episode One (28 page)

Suddenly she
stopped.

She felt
something.

A
vibration.

Slight, and
coming from behind her.

Her scanner
started to beep dramatically.

She frowned,
glancing down at it.

It was
registering some kind of energy source.

Which was
impossible; there were no energy sources on this planet. It had
already been scanned multiple times, and no one had ever come
across anything more powerful than a particularly mighty piece of
dust.

Yet as the
scanner beeped, she couldn't deny her eyes.

“Okay,” she
said slowly. “Time to go tell Sharpe what you've found.”

She took
another step up the stairs.

Hesitating,
she stopped.

She turned
over her shoulder to look back down the darkened stairwell and into
the tunnel below.

She'd been
instructed to do a mineralogical survey, but she knew Sharpe just
wanted to keep her occupied, or at least the appearance of
occupied, so the Force didn't question why he'd brought along such
a soppy and hopeless cadet.

Sharpe thought
she was more than useless, and he expected her to come back with
nothing worthwhile.

....

So what would
he do if she returned with some incredibly valuable
information?

What if she
found something really important in this tunnel?

That would
shut the belligerent Commander up.

So what was
the harm in going and investigating this tunnel herself?

If she found
anything, she could really use the brownie points.

As soon as
that thought crossed her mind, she shook her head resolutely.

No.

It wasn't
safe.

With that, she
ascended the stairs.

Dusk had
settled even darker around her by the time she emerged.

With a sigh,
and one final glance over her shoulder at the stairwell, she made
her way quickly back to Sharpe.

When she
reached him, he was locked in what looked like a seriously
important conversation with none other than Blake.

“There's
something more on this planet, I'm sure of it. I don't think we
should leave yet,” Blake said quietly.

Sharpe was
about to say something, then he looked up to see Nida loitering
around behind them. “Yes, Cadet? Is there any reason you're
eavesdropping?”

Nida knew her
face blushed a bright red at the allegation, and she even sucked in
a startled breath. “Um, what? No,” she answered ineloquently.

“Then what is
it?” Sharpe snapped.

“Um, I found
something,” she managed, wondering how to explain her story in a
way that didn't sound dumb.

Sharpe sighed
heavily. “Leave it to the report.” He turned back to Blake, shooing
her away with a sweep of his hand as he did.

She didn't
move off. Instead, she gritted her teeth. “Ah, sir, I found
something you should probably see,” she managed again.

“I don't care
about the mineralogical survey; it can wait,” Sharpe snapped again.
“Now go away, Cadet.”

She knew she
should leave before he gave her a reprimand for ignoring an order,
but she stood her ground nevertheless. “I found a set of stairs
that lead to a kind of tunnel under the ground. They aren't on the
blueprint we got from the ship,” she forced her words out in a
string of nervous mumbles.

Sharpe turned
his attention back to her, and this time Blake glanced her way as
well. He narrowed his startling violet eyes. “Sorry, what?” he
questioned quickly, straightening up as he did.

“Ah, over
there,” she pointed randomly over her shoulder. “Or was it over
there?” she put more thought into it, turned around, and surveyed
the rapidly darkening compound to figure out where the stairs
lay.

“Where?”
Sharpe asked angrily.

“Oh, ah,” Nida
surveyed the compound, looking for a landmark or anything that
could help her get her bearings.

“Just use your
scanner, Cadet,” Sharpe hissed.

“Oh yes,” she
mumbled quickly.

She was
flustered.

Really
flustered.

And for some
damn reason, she couldn't use the scanner. After several mortified
seconds of trying, she looked up at Sharpe and shrugged.
“Um....”

“Give it
here,” Sharpe snatched it off her. Then he poked at the thing.
Slowly he turned it over and realized there was a long crack up one
side. “What have you done to this?”

Oh damn, she
really had broken it. God, she was the unluckiest girl in the
universe.

“Oh, that, I
fell over, and the scanner tumbled down the stairs. That's how I
found them – the stairs,” she added meekly.

Sharpe
sighed.

“Sir,” Blake
said, proffering a hand to Sharpe for the scanner.

Sharpe handed
it to him whilst shooting Nida a withering look.

“Let's have a
look here,” Blake muttered as he typed something quickly. Then he
pulled the operating chip out of the back, stared at it with a
frown, and shot her a quick glance. “It just fell down the stairs?
Are you sure? It looks like it's been landed on by a cruiser.”

Nida pressed
her lips together to stop herself from saying something stupid.

“I think I can
still...” Blake trailed off, clear concentration crumpling his
brow. Seconds later, he grinned. “Alright, got it. Thanks, Cadet,”
he nodded her way affably, then headed off through the dark
compound, Sharpe at his side.

Sharpe shot
her another disdainful look, but didn't say anything as he marched
off.

Which just
left Nida alone. So much for the stairs winning her brownie points.
Now she would have to explain broken equipment to Sharpe...
again.

Damn,
everything she touched turned to dust.

With a truly
rattling sigh, Nida wandered back into the compound.

She intended
to find a nice flat rock to sit on. Sharpe would no doubt shout at
her for being lazy when he returned from the mystery stairwell, but
she was already in trouble, so Nida didn't really care if she added
another nail to her coffin, as old humans would say.

Just as she
sat down, she saw the unwelcome sight of Sharpe marching up to
her.

She jumped to
her feet, stumbling awkwardly as she did.

“Cadet,” he
spat, “you really screwed up that scanner. It's given us messed up
coordinates.”

Damn it.
“Sir,” she winced, “um, I'm sorry.”

“Don't be
sorry, yet,” he added ominously, “just come and help us find those
stairs.”

Nida scurried
forward, Sharpe striding along at her side.

Soon they both
reached Blake. He was standing there, frowning down at the scanner.
“I thought these things were meant to be tougher than this,” he
muttered as he hit the bottom of the scanner with the base of his
palm.

“Alright, find
the stairs, and you better not be mistaken about this,” Sharpe
added under his breath.

Dread coiled
up her spine, and Nida grimaced into the darkness. It would just be
her luck if the stairwell had disappeared as quickly as it had
formed. Sharpe would kill her for wasting his and precious
Lieutenant Blake's time.

She ran
forward, twisting her head this way and that as she looked for any
sign of a familiar landform.

Just as
genuine worry sliced through her belly, she saw it.

A familiar lip
of shadow.

“There it is,”
she breathed through her monumental relief. “Just over here,” she
added in a far stronger tone.

She led the
two men forward to the dark opening of the stairwell.

“What the
hell?” Blake peered down into it, checking his own scanner as he
did. “This was most definitely not on the blueprints.”

“There's an
energy reading too,” Nida remembered, bringing a finger up as she
pointed it out, almost as if she was an excited child reciting some
recently learned fact.

“What?” Blake
snapped his head around. “I'm not picking up an energy source.”

“Cadet Nida is
likely mistaken,” Sharpe insisted at once.

She hadn't
been mistaken about the stairwell, though, had she? She wanted to
point out. Instead, she bit her tongue and peered past Blake at the
dark shadow in the ground.

Her stomach
twisted as a kick of fear passed through her.

There was
something... not right about that tunnel.

“Alright,
let's go,” Blake waved them forward.

“Shouldn't we
wait for the rest of your team?” Sharpe asked.

Sharpe was a
commander, and Blake was a lieutenant, Sharpe very much outranked
the guy. And yet, like almost everyone else at the Academy, Sharpe
held this sense of awe for Blake that meant the lieutenant was
treated like a freaking admiral.

“We'll just do
an initial check.” Blake shrugged his shoulders. “The scans suggest
everything is fine.”

“Alright,”
Sharpe agreed. “Cadet, go back to the compound,” he added as he
turned from her and headed down the first few steps.

“Yes, sir,”
she managed easily.

Though she'd
found the stairs, she really didn't mind being told to head back to
the compound.

While she was
technically meant to be an explorer, she didn't want to explore
that dark shadow in the ground.

“Hold on,”
Blake put a hand out in a stopping motion.

A spike of
fear rushed through her as she worried whether he was about to
suggest she come along with the two of them anyway.

He didn't.
Instead, he handed her his scanner. “It's getting pretty dark out
there, and considering yours is broken, you're going to need
something to see by,” he held it there until she took it from
him.

She offered a
stuttered thank you, then he nodded, gestured towards the tunnel,
and walked off with Sharpe at his side.

She stood
there for several seconds, watching the both of them descend into
the shadows. Though Sharpe turned on the light source in his
scanner, and the little device threw out powerful illumination, it
didn't feel as if it could do much to the darkness. It was so damn
cold and black down there.

Nida gave a
sudden shudder as they both walked out of sight.

Then she
realized how dark it was out here, and fumbled with Blake's own
scanner until she managed to get the light source working.

Turning your
scanner's light on was a basic lesson at the Academy, and happened
somewhere around the first day, and yet she had to try hard to
remember how to make the little device work properly.

She really was
the worst cadet in 1000 years, she realized as she slowly turned
and made her way back to the compound.

She didn't
make it.

As she walked
along, once again she stared at the beautiful night sky above.
There was absolutely no light pollution on this planet, so the
starscape had nothing to compete with, and shone with astounding
brilliance.

She could even
pick up the colorful swathes of constellations and gas clouds. She
took several steps as she stared above, and once again tripped over
something.

This time she
went flying, and she didn't hit the ground.

She tumbled
down an incline instead.

Her body beat
against something that felt suspiciously like steps, and she rolled
down and down until her back thumped hard against a cold and
unyielding floor.

She lay there
and gasped for several seconds, feeling pain ripping through her
body.

Yet after she
sucked in several calming breaths, she realized she was still
alive. With an enormous groan, she tried to sit up, and promptly
checked herself for broken bones as she did.

Everything
seemed to be okay. Yes, she was in a great deal of agony, but she
couldn't find any puncture wounds, and seemed to be able to move
all of her muscles satisfactorily.

She groaned
again as she realized she'd let go of the scanner.

In fact, she
couldn't see it anymore.

Because she
couldn't see anything. Wherever she was, it was completely dark
down here. There was barely enough light to make out the shape of
the stairs directly to her left.

Stairs.

Hold on,
seriously? Had she just found another set of random steps?

Before she
could realize what a stupid coincidence that was, she began
crawling around on the floor, searching for the scanner.

Clearly, it
had tumbled from her grip as she’d fallen, and somehow it had
turned off its light in the process.

That or it was
broken.

....

Knowing her
luck, it was most definitely broken.

Great. She had
just stuffed up Carson Blake's own personal scanner.

Crawling
around, she searched and searched, but she couldn't find it.

She sat back
on her haunches, swearing as she did.

Then she
turned her head, angling to what she thought were the stairs.

After her
fall, she’d lost her sense of orientation, and she realized with a
pang of fear, she didn't know which direction up was.

So she crawled
until her fingers finally brushed against the reassuring incline of
a step.

She began to
pull herself up. Though she could stumble to her feet to stand,
knowing her luck, she would trip and fall back down on her ass
again.

With every
step she clambered up on her hands and knees, she realized just how
much her side hurt. It was hard to breathe, and with a groan, she
realized she'd probably bruised her ribs.

Fantastic.

She was never
going to be allowed to go on a mission ever again. She'd broken two
scanners and herself.

Sharpe was
going to go mental.

Or maybe he
wouldn't. Maybe she could pretend she accidentally lost Blake’s
scanner, and she could lie about the fact she'd fallen down another
set of stairs, pretending she'd bruised her ribs by just...
breathing too hard.