Voltron Legendary Defender - Shining Like the Stars [84] [Shklance]

[scriveyner]

Title: shining like the stars [84]
Fandom: Voltron: Legendary Defender
AU: slts
Characters/Pairing: Shiro/Keith/Lance, Team Voltron
Rating: M
Length: 1874
Summary: Lance let out a grunt when the Altean guard yanked down the hood of his cloak. There were a half-dozen of them, wearing full sets of light armor and carrying weapons; they had happened upon Lance and Keith skulking about in an alley near to the gates that walled the castle ship off from the rest of the city and closed in on them quickly. "Hey," Lance said, although a second guard had his wrists in a tight grip behind his back. "Watch the hair!"



Lance let out a grunt when the Altean guard yanked down the hood of his cloak. There were a half-dozen of them, wearing full sets of light armor and carrying weapons; they had happened upon Lance and Keith skulking about in an alley near to the gates that walled the castle ship off from the rest of the city and closed in on them quickly. "Hey," Lance said, although a second guard had his wrists in a tight grip behind his back. "Watch the hair!"

The guard's face twisted in disgust at Lance. "What in the quiznack is wrong with your ears?"

"It's the latest fashion craze," Lance said. His next snarky comment was cut off as the guard holding his wrists activated magcuffs that were not dissimilar to the ones Coran had used in their training. The guard did not release his arm, though; and Lance didn't bother to try to struggle, instead twisting his head to look back at Keith.

Keith had his back to a wall, and seemed to have recessed even deeper into the improvised cloak. Lance could make out the glow of his eyes and little else. The guard who grabbed him was about to be in for a nasty surprise. However, Lance's attention was dragged away from Keith by the guard in front of him, more because the guard grabbed the cloak and pulled him forward a step. "You know that aliens are forbidden to set foot on castle grounds," the guard said sharply. "This is holy ground to us."

"Actually, I didn't know," Lance said. "But thank you. Now that I am aware, I'll make sure to steer clear." Lance tilted his head. "We just got lost, you see, we're looking for our friend-"

"Galra!" One of the guards behind Lance said in a shocked tone, and Lance sighed deeply, glancing back over his shoulder. Keith's hood had been pulled partially off — he had yanked away, although there was a guard on either side of him, one holding each arm and keeping him in place, the guard who had been pulling his hood back had a horrified expression on his face and had stepped away.

The other guards, including the one who held the front of Lance's cloak in a gloved hand, drew their weapons.

"All Galra found on New Altea are to be terminated," one of the guards behind Lance said, his weapon on Keith.

Keith tried yanking his arms free from the two burly guards who held him, but they had a good grip on him and he was not going anywhere. "Hey, hey," Lance said. "Look, buddy, I know you've had your differences but my friend there isn't Galra."

Everyone present looked at Lance in disbelief, including Keith himself. Lance shrugged his shoulders as well he could with his hands bound clearly behind his back. "I mean, he looks Galra, so I totally see where you're coming from, but he's not."

One of the guards looked to the one still standing in front of Lance, who Keith had figured out was their captain. "Boss?" he asked imploringly.

"Holster your weapons," the captain said reluctantly. "We'll take them before the Elders; if that one is truly not Galra then they can have the traditional punishment for trespassing on sacred ground."

"Oh boy," Lance said, full of artificial cheer. "Is that traditional punishment some grub? Because I am starving."

"And if it turns out he is Galra," the Altean guard said, yanking on Lance's cloak and pulling him forward, out of the alleyway. "Then the executioner will be collecting two sets of boots."

"Ah," Lance said, as he staggered after the guard like a dog on a lead. "Well, that sounds decidedly less fun."


#

The Galra prisoner transport ship was docked stationary alongside the waystation. There were a host of smaller ships docked there as well, some clearly Galra in design but most not; some traders, some mercenaries, plenty of tourist ships going through the waystation as a processing point between the moon of Eaphus and the exit point of a warp hole out of the system.

Shiro was watching the forward screens with half an eye on the active HUD in the corner. The shuttle that launched from the Castle of Lions was very clearly Altean in design, soft and curved and cleanly white. Hunk had installed false IF/F beacons on all the shuttles to beam out a false protocol; the only pilots who looked out a screen into space itself that might get a visual on the vehicle were those piloting single-pilot craft like starfighters. In all other circumstances a fake IF/F beacon broadcasting traditional Galra vehicle signatures was all the disguise they needed.

All the same, he kept most of his attention on the small shuttle. The princess was stubborn and hardheaded, but she knew what she was doing more than the rest of them; losing her would be an insurmountable tragedy in comparison. Pilots could be trained up and replaced, even Voltron pilots. Princess Allura was the last of Altea's royal house, and the last blood that bound Voltron together.

She was irreplaceable.

"Seems quiet," Hunk said from the communications console. Shiro nodded his head absently, confident that Hunk could see him but not lifting his head to check that visual communications were open between the two lions. Illianya's starfighter was still on his HUD but long out of visual range; she was looping the long way around the moon before doing whatever it was she planned to do so that they had enough distraction to rescue Pidge and Matt as well as any of the prisoners that survived the gladiator ring. "Too quiet."

"I doubt there would be a lot of flight traffic during gladiator matches," Allura's voice came through the line calm and in control. "It seems that they're a large draw both on and off planet." Her voice changed a bit and he could envision her changing her form slightly enough to bypass any visual checks if the flight control asked for a visual confirmation of the pilot. "Going dark now," she said. "I'll reconnect once on board the prison ship."

"Copy that," Shiro said, as Allura's communications went out.

"Huh," Hunk said, his voice distant. "Uh, Shiro?"

Shiro lifted his head, attention torn away from the small white dot on his screen that denoted the princess and the transport shuttle. "What is it?"

"So that Galra frigate that's been sitting in Eaphus' orbit for the last few days?" Hunk's voice sounded calm but Shiro could already read the anxiety brewing under the surface. "It's breaking orbit."

"Breaking orbit and leaving, I hope," Shiro said although he knew that was too good to be true.

"Breaking orbit and headed for the waystation," Hunk said. "I think it's heading for us."

Of course it was. Shiro didn't have any doubt that the frigate had been scanning for signs of Voltron since it entered the system. Blue's brief flight out of atmosphere wasn't enough to ping and Green's invisibility shield kept her off radar, but Black and Yellow had been in flight for long enough for sensor readings to not only be picked up but be confirmed. "How long?" Shiro asked, as he could not see the frigate on his screen yet. The gas planet's magnetic atmosphere kept his sensors from peak ability.

Coran's face appeared on his screen, the visual communicator popping up above Hunk's on his right side. "It is breaking orbit, but it will take a bit to break the planet's gravitational pull, and that might take it at least two more full orbits before it can break away in the right direction," Coran said.

"Estimating twenty-six minutes," Hunk said before Coran replied. "That's not a lot of time..." Hunk's voice trailed off, what were the odds of Keith and Lance making it out of the memory core and to this fight? Not good at all. "How did they even read us, our IF/F is set to Galra shuttles!?"

"It doesn't matter," Shiro said. "We'll just have to make it work." Shiro's eye caught the flashing light of the communications beacon. He tapped it and an audio-only transmit opened — Allura. "Docked and preparing to board," she said, her voice still that strange husky version.

"Roger that," Shiro said, hands tight on the flight controls, the chrono that Black had started on his screen already at twenty-four minutes.


#

Pidge sat with her back to the console, the arm that was wired in held in front of her. The progress bar was to seventy-three percent now, more full than not but it did nothing to quell her nerves. Matt was gone again, just like that — ran out the door with a plasma rifle in hand to rescue the prisoners without her. This was still a Galra ship, there were guards and drones and other things that could go wrong and she couldn't do anything, left behind like she was a liability.

She was going to give him a black eye when he got back.

With a frustrated noise Pidge hauled herself to her feet. She couldn't do anything else while that much information was transmitting, she had opened the throttle on the data transfer to speed it up but that meant she couldn't use her system to get into the Galra mainframe in the meantime. The screen behind her showed a constant stream of information, lists in Galra, blueprints, maps and more flickered past almost faster than she could comprehend.

Once the data transfer was complete she would upload her tracker into the system. Even if the prison ship didn't go back to its home base immediately, having her malware in its system would provide invaluable information about the Galra and hopefully be something integral to their eventual downfall.

Without conscious thought Pidge slammed the stop on the data transfer, pausing the information on the screen at the same time. There were all sorts of files in Galra, and the detail was something she was going to have to run through the translator on board the Castle of Lions, but that wasn't what caught her attention and triggered her to stop the transfer. It was a picture: there were several acolytes — druids, Pidge knew, that were tending to a group of Galra children.

Except, they weren't completely Galra. They all had some Galra characteristics and some looked more Galra than others, some more alien, with strange features she would never have imagined; tentacles or wings or horns, different coloring other than violet and purple ... and most importantly, to one side, some with Altean face markings.

When Pidge moved her hand over the console the picture moved, and she realized it was a clip — or at least a brief succession of photos, because the group of half-Galra children shifted and moved around and one of the children on the far end, one of the ones that looked more Galra than not, with dark hair and indistinct features, latched on to the extended arm of a druid with its teeth.

"As Lance would say," Pidge said to herself, her voice shaking just a little, "I'd recognize that mullet anywhere."