Voltron Legendary Defender (Spy AU) - martinis, girls & guns [11] [Sheith + Allurance]

[scriveyner]

Title: martinis, girls & guns [11]
Fandom: Voltron Legendary Defender
AU: Spyfic
Characters/Pairing: Shiro/Keith, Lance/Allura, Pidge, Hunk
Rating: M
Length: 2287
Summary:

Hunk twisted two wires together and the glow emanating from Shiro's right arm abruptly cut out. Shiro let out a low, exhausted noise but Hunk was still focused on the wiring, tucking it back into the open panel at Shiro's wrist. "I couldn't get at the power source," he said. "Not without tools. You're gonna have some loss in function I guess, but that's better than worrying about it blowing up on you." Shiro did not move his arm or twitched his fingers at all until Hunk had reseated the panel. "I need a full workbench, but give me three days and I bet I can tweak it not to do this shit at all." Hunk sat back, breathing hard, on the floor of the freight car. "Pidge can probably do it faster, though," he added with a snort.

Shiro was looking down at his hand, his right wrist cradled in his left hand. "Aren't you going to ask what it is?" he asked quietly, and Hunk snorted again, then wiped his hand over his nose, leaving a streak of half-dry blood on the back of his hand.

"Damn fucking straight I am," Hunk said. "Because this is a whole lot more nonsense than I signed on for." The freight car's door clattered a bit, still open to the night, and Hunk looked in its direction, on edge immediately in case that purple thing was clinging to the outside of the train car, just waiting for the proper moment to spring out all horror-movie-ending at them both. He hauled to his feet and approached the door, one hand on a safety pull with the intention of closing the open door.

There were trucks, running alongside the train. Off-road, all-black covert military trucks; Hunk was familiar with the type, he'd been on many in the past. There was an entire caravan of matched vehicles, at least a half-dozen, their headlights on but dim. "What the hell-" Hunk said, putting his back to the frame, holding on to the doors tight. He didn't know how fast they were going, but they were going fast, and the truck caravan was keeping pace. Shiro had looked up, and hauled himself to his feet. "Half-dozen gun trucks," Hunk said. "Keeping pace."

"What?" Shiro used his left hand to hang on to the frame and looked out as well – at the same time that they both witnessed something moving from the train to one of the trucks in the middle of the caravan, an exchange happening at deadly high speeds. Two bodies, gone limp. Shiro's voice cut high and loud, the realization setting in. "Allura!"

Hunk caught Shiro by the back of the suit jacket he still wore and hauled him backwards before he could try to do anything as stupid as was surely going through his mind. Shiro was large, and heavier than he looked and that meant that pulling his entire weight back caused Hunk to pitch back as well. This action saved them both as a black-clad sentry on the rear gun truck had turned at the noise – how he had heard Shiro over the clatter and noise of the rail car Hunk didn't understand, but he sure did hear him because the next thing that happened was the even louder sound of a short spray of automatic gunfire. "Those are Sendak's men," Shiro said, on his hands and knees and casting about for the gun that had been dropped earlier. "They have the princess!"

"And Pidge," Hunk said, jaw clenched. He pushed himself back to his feet and scrambled for the frame, but even as he did so they both saw several of the gun trucks skid past, slowed considerably now that their cargo was removed from the train. Hunk stood in the open door of the freight car and watched as the convoy turned and began to cut away from the train track, growing smaller by the split second. Shiro had joined him, and they both watched in silence until the train track curved away, headed toward the mountain.

#

"What the hell happened?" Keith said, standing in the compartment. Hunk was seated on the bench beside the window, Pidge's laptop on his knees as he frowned at it. Shiro was seated opposite him; looking bedraggled. Lance had slid into the compartment before Keith had and was sitting to Hunk's right, his arms folded. "You both look like shit."

"Sendak happened," Shiro said. "He's been here. He took the Princess. And," Shiro added, casting a glance at Lance and not Hunk, who had his nose buried in the laptop. "Katie."

Lance was ready to kill someone; and Keith was the closest option. "How did he even get on the train?" Lance's voice was tight and clipped, and Keith shook his head bewildered, looking at Shiro with the most confusion Lance had seen on his face in the short span he'd known him. "We had a copy of the passenger list. I thought this was all dealt with already."

"He couldn't have been on the train," Keith said, still staring at Shiro. "I'd've known. The Princess would have known..."

"Oh yeah, Allura would have known," Lance said. "She would have magically sensed Sendak's evil, evil presence and would have been able to warn us all." He scoffed loudly at this, and looked to Hunk, finally. "Have you got anything?"

"Nothing yet," Hunk said. "I don't think they'd find her tracker, but there's always the chance some kind of freaky alien tech could disable it." He was silent a moment while typing. "If she's even still alive to activate it."

"If Sendak wanted them dead he wouldn't have bothered pulling them off the train," Shiro said firmly, his voice tired. "They are most certainly still alive."

"For now," Keith said in a low tone, under his breath. Shiro shot him a glare, which Keith ignored.

"Can we not do this?" Hunk snapped, looking up sharply. Keith looked over to Hunk with surprise, and Shiro looked away. "I want a full explanation of what the fuck I witnessed in there. Shiro's arm included."

Lance cocked his head and looked at Lance, then over to Shiro. "What is he talking about?"

Shiro started unbuttoning the cuff of his right sleeve. "Shiro," Keith said suddenly, apprehensive, and Shiro shook his head firmly.

"No, Keith," Shiro said. "They need to know what we're really up against."

"Yeah, I really don't like the sound of that," Lance said as Shiro held up an arm that was plainly obviously not flesh. "What isthat?"

"Some sort of high tech prosthetic," Hunk said. "Not like anything I've ever seen before."

"I doubt you have," Shiro said. "It's not exactly from around here."

"No shit," Hunk muttered, and flipped the laptop's screen over to its tablet form. On it was the writing he had copied by memory and Pidge had scanned into the database, it had long since come back as no matches. "I bet it goes with this fancy chicken scratch, right?"

"Where did you get that?" Keith said, almost angry, taking a step forward that was abbreviated by Lance sticking his leg out, stopping Keith physically. "How did you get that?"

Lance smirked without mirth. "Hunk's got a photographic memory," he informed Keith smugly.

"Semi-photographic," Hunk said, but he was still looking at Shiro. "Is this Galran writing?" he asked, and Shiro shook his head negatively. "Altean, then."

"It is Altean," Shiro said. He sighed deeply and sat forward, propping his elbows on his knees. "This is difficult to explain without sounding ridiculous," he said slowly, then looked to Keith. "Maybe it would be easier to show them."

"No," Keith said. "Absolutely not."

"If somebody doesn't start making sense soon, I'm out of here," Lance said. "We're sitting around with our thumbs up our asses while Pidge and Allura are be carted off to who-knows-where."

"GALRA isn't just a military organization trying to seize control behind the scenes," Keith said. "They're actually aliens."

Lance barked a short laugh of disbelief.

"Keith," Shiro said firmly.

"He's not lying," Hunk said, and Lance turned a look of sheer disbelief on him. "I saw one of them. Or rather, what one of them turned into." He touched the swelling around his eye tenderly. "Do you really think I'd let one guy do this to me?"

"I figured they ganged up on you," Lance said. "An alien, Hunk? You sure you aren't just concussed?" He reached over one hand as if to catch the back of Hunk's head to inspect it, but Hunk batted his hand away. "That's crazy talk." He leaned back in his seat, arms folded, unconvinced. "Besides, if they were aliens, why haven't they come in with their giant spaceships, guns all blasting? What the hell good does it do aliens to sneak around but be obvious enough that they get picked up on by multiple organizations? That story has more holes in it than a bathroom stall at a truck stop."

"They're not here to take over the government or start a fight," Shiro said. "If they had, Sendak's ship would have obliterated a small country or two. They want something, and--" Shiro cast a glance at Keith, who shrugged a little. "We're not entirely sure what."

"Pretty sure Allura knows," Keith said. "But she hasn't really shared that with us yet. Just that we have to get to whatever it is first."

"So, what, is Allura an alien princess then?" Lance said, and rolled his eyes expressively.

"Yes," Shiro and Keith said at the same time.

Lance looked over to Hunk. "Are you hearing what I'm hearing? They're completely fruit loops. Absolutely bonkers."

"You wouldn't think that so much if you saw what I did," Hunk said. He looked up form the laptop again, at Lance. "You're the one who slept with her, Lance, shouldn't there be something said for your level of obliviousness?"

"Man, she had all the right bits," he said. "What more do you want from me? Don't answer that." Lance waved his hand in the air. "Okay, let's pretend I buy this alien crap for thirty seconds. What exactly is the endgame, here? We find this whatever-the-hell thing first ... then what? if they're really aliens, can't they just nuke the fuck out of us, retrieve whatever it is they're looking for and take a giant steaming load on the rest of the planet? What, exactly, is gonna stop that from happening?"

Shiro and Keith glanced at each other, and Lance let out a loud, exaggerated sigh. "I knew it," he huffed.

"Hey," Hunk said. "Pidge's tracker went live."

That was a suitable enough distraction for the three of them, they all turned their attention to Hunk. "Where is she?" Lance asked, leaning to the left to try to look at what Hunk was holding.

"I'm waiting for GPS to start pulling coordinates," Hunk said, "but she's at least stationary for the moment. That's something."

"Sendak's base," Keith breathed, and Shiro shook his head.

"There's no way Sendak would be so careless," he said. "They'll find the tracker or otherwise disable it before they get there."

"Either way," Hunk said. "It's a starting point. It's not like we're going to be able to get off this train before morning."

"Everyone should get some rest," Shiro said. "I have a feeling we're not going to be getting a lot of it going forward."

#

Pidge first became aware of the swaying, violent motion of a vehicle. She was being bounced around a bit, but her head was cushioned on something soft. That didn't stop her head from aching; if she didn't know better she would think she'd been hit by a bus. Opening her eyes would be a mistake at the moment so she focused in on not being sick and fighting back the throbbing pain.

The rocking and jolting read as a military vehicle with shitty shocks. She'd been in her fair share of those on the Garrison and deployed in the field; this one was exceptionally shitty. There wasn't much by way of conversations but she knew she wasn't alone, she could sense as much. Cracking open one eye hurt more than she expected but she did it anyway; the interior of the vehicle was dark, illuminated only by the faint light that filtered in through the small windows. However, that faint light did catch the glint of metal opposite her; weapons out and held tight.

She felt the softness shift and realized with an embarrassed flush lost to the darkness that her face was resting on someone's lap. Someone soft and feminine, who smelled almost intoxicatingly good.

Shit, her face was buried in Allura's lap.

A small shift with the intention of pushing herself up made Pidge realize a few other things – one of which was that her hands were bound behind her back; heavy metal cuffs digging into the flesh of her wrists. The other was that there was a soft, firm hand that rested between her shoulder blades, and when Pidge shifted with clear intentions of trying to rise to her knees, that hand pressed down insistently. Then, tap. Tap. Tap tap.

One finger, tapping between her shoulder blades.

In Morse code.

Pidge closed her eyes and left her head on Allura's lap as she counted out the taps. Not alone. Still danger. Stay still.

Sendak.

Pidge had never seen the man nor heard the name a week ago, but the way that Allura tapped the letters made her stomach churn. She took a deep, steadying breath and curled her hands. The military vehicle continued off-road and into the night.