The Lost Star Episode One (27 page)

This planet
had once been thriving with people – with real, live things – and
now it was nothing more than a testament to destruction and
death.

Okay, so it
had sat desolate for over 2000 years according to archaeological
reports, but that didn't matter. It felt wrong to come here and dig
up the place looking for its secrets without mustering just a
little respect for its previous inhabitants, no matter how long ago
they'd existed.

“What's the
matter?” J’Etem asked again, pressing her perfectly plush, purple
lips together as she gave Nida a knowing look.

“Just...
thinking about the people that once lived here,” Nida answered
truthfully as she gestured to the planet with a sweep of her
arm.

“What's there
to think about? Nothing but the occasional blob of bacteria has
inhabited this world for the past 2000 years. All that remains now
is dust and a couple of old buildings. I'll grant you, some of the
archaeology is interesting, and Blake clearly thinks this planet is
important for some reason. But apart from that, this place is
nothing more than dust and stone.”

Nida offered
her friend a smile and remained silent.

Then they both
made it back to the main group, and Nida carefully walked over to a
deserted corner, trying to pretend she'd always been there when a
few people glanced her way.

“Don't make me
go find you again,” J’Etem whispered under her breath as she strode
past.

Nida nodded,
then leaned down on her haunches.

She didn't
have much to do, to be honest. Both her and J’Etem were only here
as observers. Neither of them were out of the Academy, and they
certainly couldn't be trusted with any real work. Okay, J’Etem
could – she had fantastic scores when it came to xenobiology and
the study of alien civilizations. Nida, on the other hand, didn't.
In fact, she was only here because J’Etem had somehow managed to
convince the commander to bring her along.

Just sit tight
and don't get in trouble, Nida thought to herself as she brushed
her fingers through the dust.

She wasn't
wearing armor or an environmental suit; she was merely dressed in
the usual garb of a Galactic Coalition Academy recruit. A standard
black and blue uniform with absolutely zero pips on her collar,
because she had no rank, and considering her lackluster abilities,
would likely never get one.

Dragging her
fingers through the dust, Nida enjoyed the distinct feeling of it
tracking over her skin. It scratched and played at the edges of her
fingernails.

Looking up,
she glanced at the rest of the team. Everyone seemed locked in some
important task, their collective expression one of concentrated
work. And yet here she was, actually playing in the dirt like a
three-year-old.

Scrunching her
lips together and feeling perfectly silly, she stood up, turned her
head to the sky, and stared at the clouds pressing in from the
horizon. Dusk was beautiful. The colors were so vibrant and
exquisite. It was such a contrast to the dull gunmetal grey and
black of the planet. It was almost as if all the life of this place
had drifted up into the sky.

With that
philosophical thought ringing in her mind, she turned to stare
behind her.

There was a
large broken-down building there, and it stretched for almost 200
meters on one side. It had a low, flat roof, and several large,
sweeping sets of stairs leading up to it.

A small, flat
path ran around the outside of the building, and even in the
dwindling light of dusk, she could make out five people standing on
it.

She recognized
all of them. Every cadet at the Academy would. Hell, most citizens
of the United Galactic Coalition would too.

Lieutenant
Blake and his incredible team.

They were
called the Force, and they were always sent on the most important
and dangerous missions.

And, for some
reason, they’d been sent down to this planet. Though Nida wasn't
ranked high enough to know the details, she could imagine it was
fabulously important, otherwise, it wouldn't demand the attention
of Blake and his Force.

She stared at
them as they stood there, their bodies stiff with concentration as
they listened to Blake.

He was resting
with his back against a broken statue, his arms crossed in front of
his chest. He was too far away for her to see his expression, but
she could bet it was one of disciplined concentration.

The other four
members of the group were Piya, Travis, Sa’oq, and Bor. All the
best in their respective professions.

They were the
top of the top. The absolute cream of the Academy. When they
weren't running off saving the galaxy, they occasionally popped in
for guest lectures, or to assess the up and coming recruits to see
if any were worthy enough for entry into the Force.

Nida, needless
to say, would never get a tap on her shoulder and an invite into
that selective group. She was way more likely to get a smack on the
back and a swift kick in the butt instead.

Pursing her
lips together and breathing through them, she turned on the spot
again, surveying the whole scene before her.

The other ten
or so members of the mission to this planet were all dotted around,
doing their respective tasks, all against the backdrop of these
incredible ruins.

With dusk
coming down, the shadows that had built up along the building and
under the stairs of this ruined compound deepened.

Though it
wasn't cold, Nida found herself shivering.

She wanted to
be back on the ship. Though ostensibly it was exciting to be on a
real mission, she felt a little like she was walking across
someone's grave. Who cared if no one had inhabited this planet for
2000 years? It still felt wrong to walk all over these ruins
without a hint of compassion or respect.

Just as Nida
looked around for a place to sit, a man cleared his throat gruffly
behind her.

She turned to
see none other than Commander Sharpe.

An enormous
man of half human and half Yara build, he was like a brick wall on
legs. He also had a particularly stony expression to match.
“Cadet,” he said, the word sounding exactly like a shot from a gun,
“what are you doing?”

“Ah,” she
swallowed hard, “I haven't been assigned a task yet,” she
managed.

Sharpe's eyes
narrowed, and he regarded her with a look that could melt steel.
“This is an important mission, and you need to treat it like one,”
he began.

She nodded,
for some reason bothering to throw in a salute, even though it was
completely unnecessary.

Sharpe rolled
his eyes. “Don't just sit there,” he said, breathing through his
teeth.

“Yes sir,” she
snapped. Then she shuffled her feet slightly. “Um, should I go back
to the shuttle?”

Sharpe
grumbled under his breath.

This was not
the first time Nida had come to the unwanted attention of Sharpe.
In fact, he was the bane of her existence. He threatened her every
other day with expulsion from the Academy for being the worst
recruit in 1000 years. So he was fully aware that not only was this
her first mission, she really didn't have the skills to be here;
hence, she was standing around and staring at the sky.

“Look, take
this,” he handed her one of the spare scanners from his belt, “and
do a mineralogical survey of the ground,” he suggested.

She took the
scanner silently and didn't point out that there was no point in
doing a mineralogical survey, as it had already been done.

“Just stick to
where I can see you,” he added harshly. “And even if you aren’t
doing anything useful, for god’s sake, look busy. The Force is
here, and you could at least try to pretend you’ve earned the honor
of being here with them.”

She didn’t
react to that cutting remark. Instead, she nodded, adding another
needless salute.

Rolling his
eyes, Sharpe walked away, muttering something under his breath that
sounded exactly like “worst damn recruit in a thousand years.”

Nida
desperately wanted to point out that the Galactic Coalition Academy
had only been running for the past 450 years, but she didn't.
Instead, she bit her tongue, turned on her foot, and picked a
random direction. Then she turned the scanner on and wandered
off.

She had no
idea how long this mission was meant to last. Presumably until the
Force had done whatever they were meant to do. But Nida really
didn't like the idea of spending the next several hours walking
over the same section of dust, scanning it for no other reason than
to appear busy.

As dusk
settled darker around her, she found herself walking further away
from the compound.

She reasoned
that if she'd been tasked with a mineralogical survey, she might as
well do a thorough job, and the geology seemed to be different the
further away she walked from that ring of ruined buildings.

Once she was
safely out of earshot of everyone else, she began humming to
herself.

She liked it
when she was alone. There was no one to point out she was a
failure. Plus, she could explore space the way she felt it ought to
be explored. By taking the time to stare up at the stars above and
to revel in their mystery and beauty. In fact, it was when she was
doing just that, that she tripped over something.

Her head was
turned up to the heavens as she walked along, the scanner held
steadily in her hand, but when her boot snagged on some rough piece
of stone, the scanner went flying and so did she.

Her body
slammed against the uneven and dusty ground, her chest smacking
into a rock that pushed the wind from her lungs.

“Ow,” she
managed after a short pause.

Then she
scrambled to her feet to seek out the scanner. Usually they were
hardy, but Nida was a particularly unlucky soul, and seemed to have
a talent for breaking everything.

And Sharpe
would be seriously unhappy if she came back with a shattered
scanner. As he kept on telling her, a good cadet looked after their
equipment.

She pushed
herself up, then she stopped.

She could see
the scanner. It was several meters in front of her, down a set of
dark stairs that led into a room sunk low underneath the earth.

“What the
hell?” she breathed wildly. “Where did that come from?” she pushed
back on her knees, getting to her feet.

Her heart
pounded in her chest, the powerful thump of it reverberating
through her clenched teeth.

She had
already wandered around this compound, and she hadn’t come across
this set of stairs before.

How had she
missed it? Had she been so busy staring at the sky that an
enormous, gaping hole in the ground had failed to grab her
attention?

Scrunching her
bottom lip in and biting it earnestly, she turned over her shoulder
to see if anyone was in earshot.

They weren't.
In fact, she couldn't even see the rest of the group.

They were
hidden by a slight rise in the ground.

Damn, she
thought bitterly. Sharpe had told her specifically not to walk out
of sight, and here she was, completely hidden from the compound and
the rest of her team.

“Right, just
go get the scanner, then get back to the group,” she told herself
firmly.

Then she could
return triumphant to Sharpe, and let him know she'd found... a
random set of stairs that hadn't appeared on the scans the ship had
done from space.

Her gut
twisted with fear.

Before the
team had come down to the planet, they'd all been forced to attend
a briefing. In it, Lieutenant Blake and Commander Sharpe had
explained what they were all to do. They'd also shown everyone an
in depth interactive hologram based on a blueprint of the
ruins.

This set of
stairs hadn’t appeared in that hologram, she was sure of it.

“Right,” she
managed, taking a deep breath.

So this was
good, yeah? She'd just found something no one else had. Something
that had somehow failed to appear on the numerous scans that had
been done of this planet.

Sharpe would
be proud of her discovery. Perhaps it would even raise his
estimation of her.

....

Yeah right. As
if that would ever happen.

“Get the
scanner, stop stalling,” she told herself firmly.

With a deep
breath, she stepped forward, her black, standard-issue boots
reaching the first step.

It was firm,
like all steps, and felt like stone under her tread. And that was
it. It didn’t turn into a monster and consume her whole, and
neither did it disappear as it was replaced by a seething spatial
anomaly.

Because it was
just a normal frigging step, and there was nothing to be worried
about.

“Come on, get
over it,” she commanded herself.

Sighing, she
walked down the stairs.

The scanner
had fallen a fair way down, and she had to travel quite far into
the shadow of the stairwell until she leaned down to pick it
up.

Her breath was
shallow, and she couldn't seem to force enough air through her dry
throat.

Her heart kept
pounding dramatically too.

She held onto
the scanner with a firm, almost terrified grip, then she turned
sharply on her foot to race back up the stairs.

A part of her
was objective enough to realize she was being seriously pathetic
here. For Christ’s sake, she was on an alien planet, granted, but
one that had no life, no secret weapons, and no malevolent
mercenaries – in fact, it had nothing more dangerous than a few
treacherous holes that could trip you up. And yet the prospect of
descending a set of darkened stairs had her adrenaline pumping as
if she were about to dive into the sun.

She tried to
roll her eyes at her own pathetic lameness.