The Shadow of Kaon

Star-crossed

Maybe it was because of her minute-by-minute growing anxiousness, but time seemed to move at an incredibly slow pace for Darkwing as she waited for her shift to end.

She still wasn't well enough to join in on harder physical labor on the ship, but luckily, there were at least some smaller jobs that she could do. The day went by with checking the inventory on a few of the storage units, packing smaller boxes of bolts, screws, and tools together based on the needs of different maintenance teams, and finally, she ended up in one of the mines underground, where she quietly tapped on a datapad in her hands, sometimes stopping to reach out and pull up one of the little containers from the minecart in front of her, memorizing the code on it and putting it back quickly.

"It seems like everything is in order here." She muttered as she flipped through the pages on her device, reading over every log one by one. "Do you have the results of the on-site tests too?"

"It's all here." Answered the miner class bot who stood next to her, dropping a sturdier-looking metal box into the cart on top of the containers. "The energy levels are good, but the density seems a little bit high in these regions. We may need to put out a request for higher quality drill heads before one of the machines overheats again."

"And what about the harvest? Any luck finding better grade crystals?" The femme continued, finally looking up from the files on the small screen with an uneasy expression. "Knockout said that the medbay runs low on medical-grade cubes... We need to make sure that there is enough, if another fight happens with the Autobots."

"Nah..." The miner shrugged his shoulders, looking around at his companions in the wide cave, who were still busy piling the mined chunks of raw Energon crystals into other carts, or were slicing up the remaining bigger pieces into transportable sizes. "No medical grade anywhere, but in the deeper parts, we found one or two that can get turned into high grade." As another miner passed by with a full cart, he reached out and grabbed a clear, light blue crystal, holding it out toward the seeker. "Here, see for yourself."

Darkwing set down her datapad on top of the cart and took the piece from the mech, observing it closely by lifting it up toward the opening on the ceiling and watching as the light passed through its inner structure with ease.

"Hmm..." She turned the crystal around, cleaning off some smudged dirt from its surface with her thumb before looking through it once again. "It looks good... Better than some of the other mines, as I saw they only found low-grade in most parts."

"The mineral composition of these layers is not the best." The miner turned his helm lightly, following her movements with a slight curiosity. "Do you want to take some back with you?"

"No need; the elevator will already be full with this week's batch anyway." Handing back the crystal, the femme lifted the datapad back up, wiping down the thin layer of dust that had already settled on its screen. "Please don't forget to put them into different carts, or they will end up with the normal cubes."

"Sure thing, sweetspark." The mech nodded lightly, tossing the chunk back into its original cart with a small throw before he turned back toward the femme, taking a small step closer to her and tilting his helm slightly so he could still look at the taller bot from there. "I already wanted to ask..." He whispered quietly, glancing around to see if anyone was listening in on their conversation, but seemingly, the echoing sound of mining drills and saws tuned out every word. "Why did you come for the samples this time? Another punishment from Starscream?"

This unusual question broke Darkwing's usual calm mood for a second, and as she glanced up from the datapad, her wings did a small twitch too.

"The usual bot has a break day, and I had some free time after finishing up the previous tasks I had." She responded with a shrug of her shoulders, brows lifting questioningly. "Why?"