Voltron Legendary Defender - Shining Like the Stars [90] [Shklance]

[scriveyner]

Title: shining like the stars [90]
Fandom: Voltron: Legendary Defender
AU: slts
Characters/Pairing: Shiro/Keith/Lance, Team Voltron
Rating: M
Length: 2937
Summary: Three large, spectacular explosions detonated one after the other along the aft of the Galra frigate. The cloud of ejected vapor burned brightly, until it consumed all the vented atmosphere from the ship and extinguished. Shiro blew out a breath as he spun the Black Lion away from the much bigger ship, avoiding large bursts of lined turbolaser fire. Black had outrun an entire wing of the Galra drone starfighters that were just now beginning to catch up, but there did seem to be less of them now. Marginally so. His HUD was still lit up like it was Christmas. “Yellow, report,” he said, without taking his eyes off the forward viewscreen.




Three large, spectacular explosions detonated one after the other along the aft of the Galra frigate. The cloud of ejected vapor burned brightly, until it consumed all the vented atmosphere from the ship and extinguished. Shiro blew out a breath as he spun the Black Lion away from the much bigger ship, avoiding large bursts of lined turbolaser fire. Black had outrun an entire wing of the Galra drone starfighters that were just now beginning to catch up, but there did seem to be less of them now. Marginally so. His HUD was still lit up like it was Christmas. “Yellow, report,” he said, without taking his eyes off the forward viewscreen.

“I don't know how much longer I can keep doing this,” Hunk's voice was exhausted. Shiro let his gaze flicker to the linked cockpit cameras, and he could see that Hunk was slumped slightly forward, both hands on the flight controls of the Yellow Lion. He looked as worn down as Shiro himself felt, but there was no time for commiseration. Instead of responding to Hunk, Shiro tapped a command on the console and brought Green's cockpit camera online.

“Pidge,” Shiro said. “You clear of the prisoner ship yet?”

“Well,” Pidge's voice came through before the camera connected. “About that….”

#

“There is absolutely no way that this is going to work,” Allura said, one hand on the back of the pilot's chair. Pidge ignored her, sitting as far forward in the seat as she could and typing out commands one-handed on the floating, holographic command console.

“I can't rewrite the lion's OS to accommodate only using one flight stick,” Pidge said.

“Did you even try?” Matt asked, leaned over her side and staring at the scroll that was the liner code for the flight system. Pidge ignored that, swiping the console clean and restoring it to systems ready.

“Of course I did, and while it may be theoretically possible, it's not something I'm going to be able to code on the fly. Unless you think you can-?” she turned and gave her older brother a look.

“Nuh-uh,” Matt said, and held up his hands. “I still can't tell the squiggles from the scraggles in Altean, don't try to pin this on me.”

“Scraggles go left to right, rising,” Allura said. “If you can't pilot the lion, Pidge, I'll do it.”

Pidge stood. “Please, Princess,” she said, and indicated the seat with her good arm. “Be my guest.”

Matt opened his mouth and closed it, watching Pidge move slightly out of the way so that Allura could seat herself in the pilot's chair. “I thought-” Matt started to say, then closed his mouth and studied his sister thoughtfully. Allura cracked her neck, stretched both of her arms out with her fingers interlinked, and then settled her hands on the flight controls for the Green Lion.

Abruptly, all the view screens in the cockpit went dim.

“Well, that can't be a good sign,” Matt said, as the engines began powering down.

Allura scowled and squeezed the flight controls. “I am Princess Allura, and you will listen to me,” she said, her voice ringing with authority. The Lion rumbled a little around them, like it was about to come back online, and then let out a noise that was reminiscent of a raspberry and went completely offline. Pidge began to snicker, then coughed to cover it up.

“Mystical bond that can never be forced, right, Princess?” Pidge said, and didn't bother to cover up her snicker this time.

Allura's face was stormy, her back held rigid – then she sighed and slumped back, releasing the flight controls. “You've made your point,” she said, and immediately all the view screens pulled up as active, including the portrait window for the other four lions. Only Yellow and Black's were currently active, but there was an exclamation point over Red. Blue was still offline.

“So what are we going to do?” Matt said. “Pidge can't pilot this thing one-handed; it doesn't like you for some reason, and-” Allura tilted her head to Matt and arched an eyebrow. He went pink under his helmet and coughed, looking away. “So what's left?”

“Hey Matt,” Pidge said in a sickly sweet tone of voice, and Matt groaned very loudly.

“No,” he said. “I know that tone of voice and what comes after it, no, absolutely not.” He gestured at Allura. “If it didn't work for the Breath of the Lions, why would it work for me?”

“Because,” Pidge said, her elbow on the back of the chair and her chin in her hand. “You were the candidate for the Green Paladin, right? That means you should have some affinity for her.”

“That's-” Matt said, and shook his head. “That's not quite true, Katie, I-” Whatever Matt had been about to say was cut off by Illianya's voice through the open comm.

“Green Lion, you need to go, now.”

Matt pressed the console control for the comm as Allura got out of the pilot's chair. “Kestrel Lead this is Kestrel Two,” he said. “We copy that. How's the flight path looking today?”

“Like the burrs in a metosyln's tail, Two,” Illianya said. “Gonna be a bumpy ride.”

Matt made a face, and Pidge said, “well, that doesn't sound like a good time.” She looked at Allura. “What's a metosyln?”

Allura looked troubled. “I have no idea. It's not Altean, that's for sure,” she said, as Matt settled into the pilot's chair.

“It's native to New Altea,” he said. “Big ass cat looking thing with a whip-tail covered in poison burrs.” He touched the console and the green holographic display reflected in his helmet before it went fully transparent. He looked over at Pidge, and then took a breath, setting both hands on the flight controls, wincing every so slightly as if he expected them to shock him.

After a long moment, nothing happened – the view screens stayed on and did not dim; and the engines did not power down. Pidge laughed and held tight to the pack of the pilot's seat. “You got this, Matt,” she said.

“Yeah,” Matt said, and pulled back on the flight controls. “I do.”

#

Keith stood in the launch bay of the Red Lion, his helmet tucked under his arm. He had moved to the ready room on instinct, changing into his Paladin armor numbly, his mind stuck and unable to process much of anything. It was easier this way; focus on the mission. The Lions didn't need a preflight check but he performed one anyway – if he skipped a line item on his mental checklist he would be forced to stop and think and that would derail him entirely.

As he was putting on his helmet Keith heard the fast fall of footsteps behind him. He paused on the ramp into the Red Lion and turned, some subconscious part of him wanting it to be Lance, no matter how impossible that was. It wasn't Lance, of course; Lance was loaded into a healing pod, sleeping off the trauma done by the memory core. It was Rian running after him.

“You can't have Red,” Keith said automatically, as the smaller Altean stopped just shy of the bottom of the loading ramp. He was breathing hard, he had to have run the corridors to get here from the engine room and whatever it was Coran had him doing had left streaks of black and green grime on his arms and shirt.

“There's no way that the Lions alone can defeat a superior-class Galra frigate,” Rian said, doubled over and panting. “You need Voltron.”

They did need Voltron, but that, like the figment of Lance running after him, was an impossibility. “We can't form Voltron without the Blue Lion,” Keith said. “We're just going to have to bring the frigate down without Voltron's help.” Why did Rian even bother coming here to tell him that, he should know that much already.

The realization of where that particular thought led left a pit in Keith's stomach. “Stay away from Blue,” he said, scowling. “Don't you dare touch her, she's Lance's lion.”

“I'm not going to bother the Blue Lion, I couldn't pass any of the Blue Paladin trials,” Rian said heatedly. “I don't have any affinity for water.”

“Then what was the point of this?” Keith said angrily, coming back down a few steps. “Why do you keep bothering me, I know you hate me but that's not going to change anything!”

“Because,” Rian said, having gotten his breathing under control. “You're right, I'm not going to stop hating you, because you're Galra and the last time that a Galra led Voltron it began a war that nearly wiped out my people. But,” he raised his head and stared Keith down. “If we don't work together we won't be able to stop it from happening to other people.”

“What do you mean?” Keith asked.

“I can't touch the Blue Lion,” Rian said. “I have no compatibility with it, but you can. You love the Blue Paladin, the Blue Lion must know that, it will let you past its particle shields-”

Keith laughed in sheer disbelief of Rian's audacity. “And, what, you'll fly Red and we'll go meet up with the others and form Voltron?” He put his hands on the support that held the ramp down and leaned a little more forward, but did not get off the ramp. “Blue wouldn't let me in, not after what I've done to Lance; so even if it was that easy, I'm not letting you fly Red. I'm sure Red wouldn't let you fly her.” He shook his head and pushed off the support, turning to go up the ramp. “I don't have time for this.”

“If you don't form Voltron in this fight, you and your friends will die,” Rian shouted after him.

“Then maybe you'll get your chance to be a Paladin,” Keith said, and slammed the button at the top of the ramp that drew the Red Lion's mouth closed behind him.

#

The Yellow Lion was sluggish and unresponsive, or maybe that was just his own reactions. Hunk pulled on the flight controls as two full wings of the drone starfighters did a pass on him, their plasma beams lighting up the particle barrier on Yellow. This was the longest sortie he'd ever been a part of, and unlike Lance, Hunk had no interest in being a fighter pilot. Yeah, he could fly, but this … this was more than he'd been trained to deal with.

Suddenly, there was a flash by the distant prison ship. “Is that Pidge?” Hunk asked, excited by the thought that they might be able to get out of here and flee the unwinnable battle before the cavalry arrived.

“Kinda,” Pidge's voice said, and when Hunk glanced to the visual comm it was not what he expected to see. The head and shoulders of the pilot of the Green Lion was dressed in a black flightsuit, with a semi-transparent full helmet. Hunk blinked a few times, then made to rub one hand across his eyes and instead smacked the visor of his helmet.

“Kestrel Two to Kestrel Lead,” Matt's voice came through the comm, and suddenly it all clicked for Hunk. Pidge was hurt but she's okay, Matt is piloting the Green Lio-WAIT WHAT!? “We're operating at full capacity and don't need an escort, breaking for the castle.”

“I copy,” Illianya's voice said. The small green arrow on the HUD that represented Illianya's starfighter broke away from the prison ship. “Rejoining the sortie.” Hunk felt a smile tug despite his exhaustion, and glanced back to his own screen and sensors.

There was a sizable dent in throngs of drone craft now; there were actually clear spots on his head's up display that showed the damage even just two lions and a single piloted starfighter were able to inflict. The frigate itself had taken a decent amount of damage but its main shields were still up. If they could form Voltron, that wouldn't be as much an issue. “Where's Lance and Keith when you need them?” Hunk grunted, mostly to himself.

“Doesn't matter,” Shiro said. “We'll be falling back as soon as the Green Lion is in range of the castle.” The Black Lion hove into his field of vision, distant but visible to the naked eye. “In the meantime let's work over the communications array on the frigate, at least one of those comm dishes is going to be the transmission point for the drones.”

Hunk yawed the Yellow Lion so that he as facing the frigate. He had been targeting the engines specifically earlier, trying to disable the massive ship if nothing else; on a frigate that size there were literally hundreds of arrays of all sizes. Granted, something to command a drone force would be on the larger end of the scale, but commands for something of that nature could be just as easily split among smaller arrays, especially to circumvent the main dish being destroyed. “Roger,” Hunk said, just as a large beam of light shot out from the frigate, targeting again the Black Lion. “Shiro! Look out-!”

His warning was not in time. The blue beam of light was different than the plasma beam from before; it caught the Black Lion broadside and as Hunk yelled out the Black Lion tumbled from the impact. “Shiro!”

The visual comm for the Black Lion had gone to static, and even from this distance Hunk could tell that the Black Lion was offline. However, it didn't appear to be damaged by the hit, tumbling slowly. “Ion canon,” Hunk said, and then realized with the Black Lion disabled so close to the frigate, that meant only one thing. They meant to capture him.

Hunk yanked back on the flight controls. The Yellow Lion wasn't as fast or as maneuverable as the others, it had far more mass but that also meant it had the thickest, strongest hull out of all the Voltron Lions. He could at least slow the Black Lion's aimless tumble, and braced for the impact.

The Black Lion was drifting and he didn't have any towing capabilities, but if they could get Black back online….

“What happened?” Pidge yelled through the comm. “Where's Shiro!?”

There was a flash out of the periphery of Hunk's vision, and then a streak of motion blasted across Hunk's forward viewscreen, coming in fast from port. It was the Red Lion. “Shiro, hang on!” Keith yelled, juking Red through a labyrinth of drone fighters and leaving explosions in his wake.

“Why hasn't the ship picked up the Black Lion in a tractor beam?” Matt's voice now, and as Hunk swung his attention around the Green Lion flew past.

“We got those early on,” Hunk said, as the Green Lion came around on the other side of the Black Lion. “Keith, where's Lance?”

Keith didn't respond, the Red Lion making a beeline for frigate and already so small against its hull that Hunk couldn't pick him out except for the trail of increasingly large explosions. “We have to get the Black Lion restarted,” Hunk said. “Any ideas on how?”

“That depends,” Pidge said. “You wanna get out and push?”

“Restarting the Lion's systems has to be done from inside the Lion,” Allura said. “Shiro will have to do it on his own.”

Hunk didn't want to think about the fact that with the systems down that killed the life support inside the cockpit. “What if he doesn't get it restarted?”

“Then we'll have to tow Black to the castle,” Matt said.

“Hunk, can you keep the drones busy?” Allura said. “We'll keep trying to hail Shiro, with any luck he'll wake the Lion quickly.”

“Yeah, I copy,” Hunk said as he started to turn the Yellow Lion back toward the oncoming wave of drone fighters.

“Kestrel Lead to all channels,” Illianya's voice suddenly came through the comm, cut up with static. “Requesting backup, I'm hit, three engines out-”

“Illya, punch out-!” Matt yelled, whipping the Green Lion around.

Hunk's attention flew to the map, to locate Illianya's small starfighter. “On my way,” he started to say as Illianya's next transmission cut to static and the small green arrow on his HUD blinked out.