Voltron Legendary Defender - Shining Like the Stars [99] [Shklance]

[scriveyner]

Title: shining like the stars [99]
Fandom: Voltron: Legendary Defender
AU: slts
Characters/Pairing: Shiro/Keith/Lance, Team Voltron
Rating: M
Length: 14054
Summary: “So,” Hunk said, his face coming up on the screen to Lance’s left. “Who wants to say it? I don’t want to be the one who says it, I always say it and then you all make fun of me.”




“So,” Hunk said, his face coming up on the screen to Lance’s left. “Who wants to say it? I don’t want to be the one who says it, I always say it and then you all make fun of me.”

“Hunk,” Shiro said firmly through the comm. Lance smirked a little, because it was the slightly-exasperated tone of voice that he knew all too well and for once it wasn’t directed at him. “No one needs to say anything.”

“Really? Because I’m really feeling it.”

“Hunk, buddy,” Lance said. “It’s fine. Things are cool.” He leaned forward in his chair, hands resting on the controls of the Blue Lion, and things felt … normal. So normal … well, as normal as things could be when you were flying a giant, frighteningly sentient ancient alien weapon through relatively uncharted waters in the hopes of luring out the Galra cruiser that had jumped into system six hours ago and had yet to engage. It was refreshing to be back in action, just him and Blue - okay, and everyone else, too.

“Still no transmissions from the cruiser?” Shiro asked, and Allura’s voice came through the comm.

“Nothing. They’re sitting just beyond the planetisimal cloud.” Allura sounded just barely worried. They had lain in wait for two days, not moving from the system of their initial wormhole jump based on Shiro’s gut feeling that they were being followed. It did seem strange that the Galra hadn’t pursued them immediately, but they had wormholed out of the system, and apparently caused a great deal of damage to the cruisers, and the frigate’s core engine block. “I can barely get a reading on the ship at all.”

“And this isn’t worrying anyone else?” Hunk said. “Because I’ve got a bad feeling, man…”

Pidge, Lance and Matt managed to make a chorus of groans that liberally drowned out the rest of whatever Hunk was saying. “Don’t say that,” Matt’s voice was slightly broken up, coming from the Castleship, while Pidge said at the same time; “Hunk, if you fucking jinxed us…”

Shiro let the banter go on for a few moments longer, clearly working something out or just speaking on a private comm channel to Keith, who had been uncharacteristically silent. Not that he dug into Hunk as much as Lance and Pidge did, but he usually offered some input, even if it was just a grunt of disgust. Lance flipped over his system to Blue’s private comm channel and drew up alongside the Red Lion, who he was flying in loose formation with anyway. “You okay, bud? You’re awfully quiet.”

“Yeah, I’m good,” Keith said. His reply was curt and to the point, which wasn’t entirely out of line for him when they were flying into a potential threat. After a moment though, there was a sigh through the open line and Keith’s voice sounded more open. “Thanks for checking on me, Lance.”

“No problemo, my man,” Lance flipped back to the main comm line in time to hear Shiro say, with intense exasperation, “Matt.”

“What?” Matt sounded like he was playing intentionally innocent.

Dammit, sounded like he missed something potentially hilarious. Lance made a mental note to ask Matt later what he had said, as Coran spoke up. “It appears that the Galra cruiser has warped out of system.”

There was a brief moment of stunned, surprised silence, and then Hunk said with total and legitimate enthusiasm, “yay!”

“Okay…” Keith said. “That’s really weird. Why would they hang out at the edge of the system, not engage, and then bolt?”

“They probably got a read on their sensors for all five Lions,” Pidge said. “Maybe they left some snooping satellites or something, we should totally make a pass through the planetisimals just to be on the safe side.” Pidge sounded far too enthused about flying through what amounted to a larger, slower asteroid field so she definitely had some form of ulterior motive. Lance wasn’t going to lose sleep over what that could be, though, because there was honestly no telling.

“I’ll go with Pidge,” Keith said. “Our Lions are the fastest, we can do a quick pass and scan for anomalies and see if the Galra cruiser left us any presents behind.”

Shiro radioed his assent, and Lance watched as the Red and Green Lions, the arms of Voltron, shot across space and were nothing but mere dots on his screen in a heartbeat. The Lions could move stunningly fast, and they would be to the edge of the star system in minutes. Lance glanced at his sensors and realized that Hunk was already flying back toward the Castleship. “And where are you going?”

“Uh…” Hunk didn’t bother popping on visual this time. “Well, if the cruiser’s gone there’s no need to form Voltron, right? No need for all of us to just, um, hang around and burn fuel.”

“Yeah, uh-huh,” Lance said, leaning forward in his seat and grinning. The Yellow Lion hung in space unmoving, waiting for pronouncement at being caught shirking. “And I bet this has absolutely nothing to do with your hot Altean girlfriend waiting for you, right?”

“Lance!” Hunk’s voice gained an octave. “She is not my girlfriend!”

“Oh, I’m not?” Illianya’s voice came through the comm, sounding amused, and Lance saw the Yellow Lion roll completely over, as if dead. They were still on the public comm channel, Lance hadn’t bothered to switch over to private. Oh well, if his buddy wanted to air his private laundry all over the open channels, who was he to stop him, after all?

“Can we not use the public channel for this?” Keith asked, and Pidge snickered. Shiro just sighed.

“It’s okay,” Lance said. “I think Hunk has died of embarrassment anyway.” He flew Blue around Yellow once, in a loop. Yellow was still belly-up, although that was relative, in space.

“Enough,” Shiro said, and Lance obediently resumed formation with the Black Lion. After a minute or so to recover, Hunk joined them. “Pidge, Keith,” Shiro said. “See anything?”

“Just … planetisimals,” Pidge said, sounding disappointed for some reason. “No calling cards. Do you really think that they popped into system, saw all of the Lions, and noped out? I can’t tell if that’s awesome or disappointing.”

“I think it’s awesome,” Hunk said. “Let’s let our reputation do more of the heavy lifting. Save our backs. Voltron’s back. Whatever.”

“I don’t trust it,” Allura mused.

“Think it’s a trap?” Shiro said. “We could always follow the exit vector.”

“That is definitely a trap,” Keith said, and Lance agreed although he was quite sure that they could handle anything the Galra decided to throw at them … together, at least. Keith sounded profoundly disappointed in Shiro, though. “They’re probably waiting one system over with particle canons and tractor beams to disable us and capture Voltron.”

“That seems a bit on the nose, don’t you think?” Lance said.

“The Galra don’t have to do clever, they just flatten down any resistance with the full force of their army’s resources,” Matt said. “They’ve been ruling for literally thousands of years with minimal resistance, if brute force doesn’t solve the issue some of those cruiser commanders are out of their depths.”

“Hm,” Shiro said, clearly considering it. “Princess?”

“No,” Allura said. “I don’t feel the need to risk Voltron for just one measly Galra cruiser. Everyone, return to the ship. We’ll wormhole from here - if they tracked us this far, we’ll see if they track us any farther.”

“Copy that,” Lance said, twitching Blue back around toward the Castleship. He heard the others acknowledge as well; and, not surprisingly, the Yellow Lion beat them all back to the ship despite having the slowest overall speed. Lance made another mental note, this time to definitely give Hunk a hard time about that, as he brought Blue home.

#
They wormholed four times before Coran put a stop to it, citing both wear and tear on the teludav and, more importantly, on Allura. “We’re halfway across the galaxy from Eaphus,” Coran said busily, his hands on Allura’s shoulders to steer her off the bridge. “There is no need for you to wear yourself to the point of exhaustion!”

“So, now what?” Lance asked, slumped back in his flight couch and arms crossed. “We’ve done four jumps, there’s no way that they’re still tracking us through that, especially since that second one was so…” he gestured his hand in the air for illustrative purposes.

“Haphazard?” Pidge suggested.

“Aren’t there like, navigation charts that are supposed to be consulted before she does that? What if she dumps us out into the center of a star or something?”

Keith sat forward in his seat, leaned slightly to the left. Shiro hadn’t gotten up from his seat yet either, and still had several of the holographic displays open in front of him. “So what is the plan?” he asked, primarily directing the question at Shiro.

“I vote nachos,” Lance said, ticking off the options on his fingers. “Then, popcorn… and finally, movie night. In that order, or course.”

“I don’t know if I can make goo popcorn,” Hunk mused, doing a mental inventory of the Castleship’s larders.

“Please don’t use goo as a modifier for real food,” Matt said.

“Popgoo?” Hunk suggested.

“Okay, no, that’s worse,” Matt said, as Pidge cackled from her seat. “That’s much, much worse.” He had moved to Coran’s station when the elder Altean had escorted Allura off the bridge; and while he hadn’t actually touched any of the controls he was snooping all over them very thoroughly.

Keith got up and actually walked to Shiro’s seat, since his voice had been absent the entire conversation. He was staring intently at his screen, which was scrolling Altean characters very quickly; and it had opened a condensed star map of the local systems in a separate window. “What’s wrong?” Keith asked.

Shiro glanced to him. “Nothing’s wrong,” he said, tapping his fingers against his arm in a certain pattern that Keith remembered all too well. Shiro’s most notable tell. One of these days he’d have to let Lance in on that particular tick, but … not today. Keith put his hand on Shiro’s shoulder and leaned forward, smiling thinly.

“You can’t fool me,” he said, his voice low, and Shiro sighed in a slightly melodramatic fashion, and then squinted at Keith suspiciously.

“The half-breed thing doesn’t lend itself to telepathy or anything, right? You’d tell me if you could read minds.”

Keith cocked an eyebrow at him instead of answering, and Shiro shifted in his seat, unfolding his arms and pointing to the star chart. “This system,” he said, and when his finger brushed the system in question it lit bright on Shiro’s screen, showing the size of it. Keith frowned at the display, the system was labeled “Darpen” and nothing else.

“What about it?” he said, as Shiro folded his arms again, a look of concentration on his face.

“It’s familiar,” he said, and the irritation was clear in his voice that he couldn’t, for the life of him, figure out why.

“Hey,” Pidge said, from Shiro’s other side. They both glanced to her. “Lance has convinced Hunk to make space nachos. Unless you need us?”

Shiro shook his head. “We’re clear for now, and Matt-” Matt froze, halfway up the bridge, “has so generously offered to take bridge duty while Coran is assisting Allura.” Matt’s shoulders slumped comically, although he shuffled back toward Coran’s workstation without a word of complaint.

“I’ll bring you some nachos later,” Pidge said, with a wave to her brother before bouncing off. Shiro sighed and sat forward, dismissing the holographic displays but not rising from his seat immediately. He looked to Keith, and Keith returned his gaze, level and unaffected.

“I think I’m going to stay here for a little while longer,” Shiro said, and stood. He headed for the control station where Allura usually stood; which would allow him to use the larger star maps. “Figure out our next course of action.” He placed his right hand absently on the console, remembered what he was doing, and switched to his left hand.

“I’ll help,” Keith said, moving to stand at the edge of the holographic field as Shiro brought it up. Matt turned around, leaning back against Coran’s station, and watched them. Keith’s attention was on Shiro though, whose face had settled into a perplexed expression. “Unless you want to do this alone, although I really don’t know why you’d want to.”

Shiro gave a dismissive little shake of the head. “No, that’s fine,” he said. Another moment’s frustration and then he turned, looking down at Matt. “Does the Darpen system mean anything to you?” he asked, and Matt shook his head negatively.

“Never heard of it,” he said. He inclined his head toward the star-map, which highlighted both their present location and the system in question. “It’s only two systems over, right? Want to check it out?”

Shiro glanced over to Keith and Keith didn’t know what he was looking for, so he nodded his head. They weren’t being pursued - as far as they could tell, at least - and they were just going to drift until the new course of action had been plotted. Shiro nodded his head in response to Keith, then looked to Matt. “Yes,” he said. “Set a course for Darpen. Let’s see what we can see.”

Turned out, the Darpen system seemed like a whole lot of nothing. A dying star that hadn’t yet collapsed sat in the center of a system with few orbital bodies. “All scans report nothing of import,” Matt said. Keith had returned to his flight couch, looking at his own diagnostic displays. Shiro still had that unsettled look on his face, like he was waiting for a jump scare that would never arrive. “No habitable planets here.”

“No signs of life at all?” Keith said.

“No atmosphere detected on any of the rocks,” Matt said. He’d angled the Castleship to do a wide pass of the star, not wanting to get close enough to fight with the expanding gravity well. Something beeped, and Matt made an interesting noise. “I stand corrected.”

Keith sat up straighter, as Matt tossed some information up on the viewscreen. It was a planet … once. More than half the sphere was missing, and there was a planet-sized debris field spanning out from the remaining chunk. “What is that?” Keith said, as Matt threw more images up on the screen, one after another. At the farthest edges of the debris field there were ships. Not easily identifiable as Galra, though; they lacked the sleek lines and particular coloration that the flagships of the Galra Empire wore. No, these were junk ships, trader vessels, the remains of military ships whose rebellions were long since quashed. All scuttled in the graveyard of a planet. “What is this place?” Keith said, his voice a little strangled.

“Incoming transmission,” Matt reported.

“Incoming-?” Shiro said, and then looked to the main screen, where Matt had already thrown the relevant information. “The ship scan didn’t pick up any live vessels, right?”

“Incoming vessel,” the voice was rough, and set the little hairs on the back of Keith’s neck aloft. “Identify yourself or be destroyed.”

Shiro’s voice was firm and commanding, the voice of a leader. “This is Takashi Shirogane, a Paladin of Voltron. We mean you and your people no harm. Are you in need of assistance?”

There was a long pause and Keith kept his attention on the ship’s sensors, listening for the whistle of a target lock. He’d raised the particle barrier the moment they had been hailed as a precaution, but he could deploy his drone to help deflect incoming fire away from the shielding system if it came to that. Then, the audio window displayed on the viewscreen slid apart, opening to a video screen displaying a squat gray alien with three eyes and a shaggy brown beard shot through with silver. The alien was leaned in too close to the camera, distorting it slightly, but clearly trying to peer down its length to the other side. “Shiro?” the alien said, and Shiro’s expression was baffled.

“Yes?” he responded, his commanding voice slipping more back into his regular tone with confusion. “I mean, that’s me. I’m Shiro.”

Two heads popped behind the first alien; different aliens, Keith hoped, but sometimes it was hard to tell. There was a general background noise now, and one of the two additional heads said, slightly awed, “he came back!”

Shiro’s attention was wholly on the viewscreen, so Matt and Keith exchanged puzzled expressions. “I’m sorry, do you … know me?” Shiro said, his arms folded and brow furrowed.

“We weren’t expecting you to come back, we must celebrate this momentous occasion,” the alien said, and there was joy in its voice. “And with Voltron, nonetheless! Fantastic!” It leaned in even closer to the camera, obscuring the aliens behind it. “We have cleared an approach vector, avoid the Graveyard if you can.” With that, the transmission abruptly ended.

“We’re getting approach coordinates,” Matt said, staring down at the workstation. “It’s, uh…” he looked up at the viewscreen again. This time the image flickered, to beyond the debris field where one of the two oblong satellite moons sat in crooked orbit with the dead planet. Between the moon and the planet there were the familiar magenta-violet running lights of a Galra cruiser. “That.”

Keith was on his feet in an instant. “That is a Galra cruiser,” he said, as if that little fact had escaped the everyone else on the bridge.

“And it’s where the message definitely originated from.” Matt glanced to Shiro. “You got something you want to tell us, Shiro?”

Shiro shook his head, truly perplexed. “I have no idea what’s going on.”

#
“That,” Rian said, leaning against the wall behind the long, curved couch in the ready room, “is a fucking stupid plan.”

“Okay,” Lance called. “Who taught him how to use fuck?” Pidge raised her hand and Matt smacked it, so she grudgingly lowered her hand.

“I agree with Rian,” Allura said, and Rian looked smug. “But I also do not see any alternative.” She was seated on the couch, at the far end and holding a tablet, frowning at the readout. “It’s not transmitting any Galra code?”

“None,” Matt said. “It’s not transmitting anything at all. No active energy signatures, no IF/F beacons, nothing. The only active comm blasts were our direct communication with it and the coordinates to safely navigate the Graveyard to the moon’s location.” He rubbed his arm with one hand, thinking out loud. “The engines don’t appear to be active at all, and if you look at the live shots only half the running lights are on. I think the ship’s dead in the water… so to speak.”

“Only running life support systems, then?” Illianya asked.

“Despite the threats to fire on us. That would be my guess.”

“And none of them seemed to be Galra,” Keith pointed out. “Outwardly, at least.”

“Remember that talk we had about traps?” Hunk said. “This feels, I don’t know, like a trap.”

“If we worry about every little thing being a trap we’ll just get paranoid,” Lance said. He leaned his elbow on the back of the couch and propped his head against his hand, raising his other arm. “I’m in, by the way. Not that anything good ever happens on a Galra ship.”

“You’re not in,” Keith said. “I’m going with Shiro, you can stay here with the ship.”

Storm clouds gathered on Lance’s face, and he sat forward. “Shiro,” he protested, and Shiro, standing at the open end of the long couch put his hands on his hips and sighed.

“I don’t like this plan any more than the rest of you,” he said. “But I don’t think Keith is enough on his own - that’s not a reflection on you, Keith, but I don’t know what it is we’re walking into.” Lance pumped his arm in victory and hissed a small yes through his teeth. “We’ll all go in one Lion, though. I don’t want to leave multiple Lions unattended.”

“Where do you want us then, Shiro?” Hunk asked.

“Ready to scramble,” Shiro said. He glanced at Lance and Keith. “Suit up. We’re going to see what this is all about.”

#
There might have been a small disagreement about whose Lion to take in the locker room that Shiro pointedly ignored because it was resolved with a game of rock-paper-scissors and he liked to pretend that his teammates had more mature ways to come to a decision. Keith won (“how are you so good at that game? I had to teach it to you!”) and the Red Lion left the Castle of Lions in the usual fashion

It was unnerving flying up on a Galra cruiser that was half-operational, even more so than the one they had found previously scuttled. Shiro kept expecting all the lights to flare up as it powered on and grabbed them in a tractor beam with no way to get free; but instead the Red Lion flew alongside the ship until they located the open loading bay door and landed with little fanfare.

There was no atmosphere in the loading bay. When they stepped off the ramp from the Red Lion, Shiro glanced around the nearly empty hangar. “Lance,” he said, “stay with Red.”

“…what?” Lance’s mouth fell open. “You brought me along to babysit the Lion?”

Keith held his fist to his face as if he were using a cough to smother a smile, which was real effective in a full helmet.

“If we need to make a quick escape, I would want my best set of eyes waiting to pick off any pursuit,” Shiro said.

Lance’s mouth closed and he straightened, chin tucked down and arms folded. He was clearly still upset, but that had slightly mollified him. “I’m running my playlist through Red’s speakers,” he announced, turning on the ball of his foot and marching right back up the loading ramp.

“Good luck with that,” Keith called after him, knowing full well that Red would spit Lance out as soon as they’d left the hangar.

There had been no one waiting in the hangar bay to greet them. There were still some Galra starfighters scattered about, but they looked different than the ones Shiro had grown familiar with. There weren’t nearly as many of the craft loaded up to launch, and several were lying on the hangar floor, cracked open and cannibalized for parts. Keith said nothing as they passed the wreckage, and it was a long walk to the end of the bay where they found the airlock and cycled through it.

Keith left his helmet on, although the bottom portion opened up once the suit diagnostics confirmed a breathable atmosphere in the ship. Shiro took his helmet off altogether, holding it in his left hand. “You okay?” Keith asked, and Shiro knew that was going to be a common theme on this mission.

Was he okay? That was a loaded question with a loaded answer, so instead Shiro simply nodded and they set off down the corridor. They had barely gotten to the T-junction when they both heard the clatter of many sets of feet and Shiro clenched his right hand, feeling the servos begin to heat. Keith had his bayard out, but untransformed.

Abruptly, eight or nine different aliens in a mixture of ragged clothing and Galran armor ran straight across their path, down the other hallway. Shiro and Keith held their positions for a moment, confused, before they moved quickly to the end of the hallway and looked down the path that the aliens had gone. The cluster had turned about and was heading right back for them so Shiro took a step back as the aliens slowed and finally stopped before them.

Not one of these aliens were taller than Shiro, or Keith for that matter. He recognized the species of two of them, one of the many-armed centipedal aliens and a shark-like alien who had fins that framed its ace. The rest were completely foreign to him, but that was all right because they clearly recognized him.

“The Champion,” a spindly alien that looked like its skin was made from tree bark said, in a distinctly feminine voice.

Ah. Things were starting to make a little bit more sense.

Keith hadn’t put down his bayard yet, but that didn’t surprise Shiro. He held his hand out still holding the helmet, in a stand-down gesture, and after a moment Keith relaxed his posture and dropped his weapon to his side. “You know me?” Shiro said, and the aliens chorused an affirmative. “What is this place?”

“It is the Graveyard,” the first one who had spoken said, raising its hand. It wore the helm and helmet of the Galra armor, but underneath that were the achingly familiar rags that all prisoners of the Empire wore. They gestured. “Come, Jan is impatient to see you, so that the ceremony can begin!”

#
The moment that Lance sat down in the pilot’s chair all of Red’s screens went dark. “Oh, come on,” Lance complained. “I’m not trying to fly you, honest. Don’t go blind out of spite.” He held up the orange rectangle that was his phone, he’d discovered that it fit well in one of his Paladin armor’s compartments. “I just want to listen to some tunes, you’re a good kitty, you like music, right?”

The viewscreens didn’t even so much as flicker. Lance sighed and slumped in the chair. “You’re so dramatic,” he complained. “Keith isn’t this dramatic.” He stood up and shuffled behind the pilot’s seat. The viewscreens turned back on and Lance stuck his tongue out at them. As much as he wanted to just sit there and observe, it did him no good if Red was going to be a horse’s ass about it and shut off all the surveillance without notice or cause. Instead of exiting the Lion down the ramp, Lance popped the exit on the head and climbed out that way, seating himself comfortably on the head of the Red Lion and giving himself a nice view of the entire abandoned hangar bay.

There was very little to look at, and Lance got bored of this very quickly. He put his hands on his ankles and leaned forward, squinting at the far end of the hangar bay. The comm traffic from Shiro and Keith was minimal at best; Shiro had clearly taken his helmet off and Keith had switched his off, the fucker. So Lance couldn’t eavesdrop on what was going on, he would just have to wait here until someone opened an active line to alert him that trouble was headed his way.

It was nice that Keith seemed to be very much himself again, he had been surprised how much he missed it. Lance tilted his head and without thinking about it laid his hand on the side of his neck, over the now-faded bruise where Keith had bit him. He’d bit hard, too, but the wound was all but healed, the flesh mended while he was in the cryo replenisher. Shiro’s claim mark had almost immediately scarred over, but Keith’s, the open wound, was nearly gone. Omegas can’t claim a partner.

He rubbed his neck again and then put his hand down. Sitting up here perched on the head of a Lion reminded him a little of an ocean of stars, and why he was making that connection he didn’t have any idea. “Wonder if I can connect with Blue,” Lance mused aloud, in part so that Red could hear him because without Keith to needle he could at least annoy his Lion by proxy. “I mean, she came running when I was in distress in the memory core, and we are like super in tune.”

“Lance, are you talking to yourself?” Keith’s voice came through the communicator, and Lance jumped despite himself.

“No,” he said. “I’m talking to Red. It’s a very private conversation, I’ll have you know.” He stuck both his legs out straight and folded his arms. “We’re going to be best buddies by the time you get back here.”

“Yeah, right,” Keith sounded slightly stressed, but more amused than Lance expected. “We’re gonna need backup, do you have a lock on my position in the ship?”

Lance touched his forearm plate, and it brought up a display that, after a brief moment of questionable interference, scanned the ship and determined the location of the nearest sets of Paladin armor. It painted a pair of dots on a level not terribly far from Lance, although the display jumped a few times. “Trouble?” Lance asked, standing up and realizing that Red had closed the top hatch of the Lion behind him.

“Not exactly. You’ll understand when you get here, though.” There was a pause, and a clunk, and some chattering voices distant in the background of the feed. “Please hurry.”

#
The hallways of the Galra ship started out very normal, but the farther that Lance got from the hangar, the more that changed. At first it was small patches of green and pale blue on the dark obsidian walls; Lance assumed it was paint until deeper into the ship where the green and blue had organically spread and … blossomed, in places; producing tiny violet and emerald-colored buds. Vines began appearing underfoot, which Lance only took notice of when he nearly wiped out. Keith had said it wasn’t trouble, but Lance had his bayard out and in blaster form just to be on the safe side.

Finally, when the corridor started to look less like a military hallway and more like Alice’s most radical entrance to Wonderland, two small aliens clad in rather creative clothing ran up to him. One was carrying a staff nearly as tall as Lance, it had to be three times the alien’s height; and the other was simply waving its short, stubby arms. “Uh,” Lance said, drawing up short and pointing the muzzle of his blaster at the ceiling.

“Paladin!” the one waving its arms said; it kinda reminded Lance a little of the Arusians but it lacked horns on its head. “I require your aid!”

“Um,” Lance looked up and down the hallway, and then down at the map hovering just slightly over his arm. He wasn’t far from the others. “What sort of aid?”

It waves its arms again in what on Earth would be described as a ‘pick me up’ gesture. Lance held his bayard down by his thigh, the armor automatically stored the weapon digitally when he did that. Then, with no regard to cultural differences or diplomacy, he picked the tiny alien up.

Its eyes went wide and Lance had the momentary worry of, oh shit what have I done when it wiggled out of his hands and somehow flipped itself, managing to climb onto Lance’s shoulders and set its hands atop the helmet on Lance’s head. “Grizalt!” the alien announced, and slapped Lance’s helmet twice.

“Hey, what-” Lance yelped, and the other alien pounded the butt of its weapon against the floor. “Grizalt!”

The alien who had hitched a ride on Lance promptly vaulted to the floor and took off down the hallway, chanting the same word rapidly. The second alien clumsily bowed to Lance and almost whacked him with their oversized stick, and then followed their companion down the hall.

“What the hell?” Lance said, completely baffled, as he turned a corner and found what used to be blast doors that were propped permanently open by a lavender-hued trunk. Lance sighed and proceeded to climb over the thick alien wood, and to his surprise that put him on a platform in a very large, open space.

It might have once been a training deck or a cafeteria, or even some kind of great hall where a lot of people were meant to gather together. However the high ceiling was completely obliterated. As Lance craned his head back, he could see that several floors above had been removed, all to make way for the growth of a large tree. It was a lighter color lavender than the trunk he’d just clambered over, and its branches had grown into the broken chunks of the old ceiling.

There was a carpet of planet life thick enough that the original floor was no longer visible; and aliens of all shapes and sizes flitted about. It looked like a gathering spot and as Lance scanned the levels he could see what must be living quarters constructed around the rims of the broken floors, the farther up it went there were ramshackle bridges and wires run across and between the levels.

“Lance!” Keith yelled, and Lance turned to see Keith one level higher than him, waving a hand over his head to catch Lance’s attention. Several o what must be thick vines or even possibly roots ran up to the second level and Lance picked his way higher, finding Keith standing at the edge with his hands on his hips and looking faintly amused.

“What the fuck is this?” Lance said, awed.

“A bunch of prisoners took over a ship,” Keith said. “And prospered, apparently.” He glanced down, looking at the bottom level where there were quite a few aliens at work, clustered around near the base of the tree.

“Where’s Shiro?” Lance asked, and Keith tilted his head, clearly trying not to look as amused as he was. Lance looked back over in the direction that Keith was indicating with his head to see Shiro practically swarmed with tiny aliens identical to the ones he’d had an encounter with in the hall and looking utterly harassed.

Lance turned his head back quickly and smothered his laugh with his hand. “He’s popular,” Lance managed after a moment. Keith nodded his head sagely, and Shiro apparently spotted Lance, because he extracted one arm to wave it above his head like a drowning man.

“Lance, help,” Shiro called plaintively. Lance looked at Keith, who shrugged.

“Seems kinda cruel to leave him like that,” Lance said. “Keith, I’m surprised at you.”

Keith cocked an eyebrow at Lance, missing the ironic sarcasm by a mile. Lance rolled his eyes and marched over to Shiro, which caused several of the small aliens to scatter and at least one to leap from a slightly higher elevation and land on Lance’s shoulders. “Yeah yeah,” Lance said. “Grizalt, I know.”

Abruptly, all the tiny aliens ceased swarming on Shiro, freezing in place. Lance stopped too. “Uh-oh,” he said just before the aliens all yelled “grizalt!” and swarmed him.

Shiro still looked harassed, but now he wasn’t covered in small aliens. Keith started laughing now, as Lance tried to claw his way upright. He pointed at Keith and tried grizalt on him but it didn’t seem to work that way. “That’s what you get for repeating things kids say to you,” Keith said, and Lance wasn’t entirely sure if that was aimed at him or Shiro. Probably both.

Suddenly, there was a loud cracking noise and the small aliens scattered. Lance finally flailed himself into an upright, if seated, position. “Can someone tell me what just happened?” he asked, but then realized what looked like the boss or an elder or something was coming down a staircase made from plant matter stretched along the wall behind Shiro. Shiro stood up, and Keith offered his arm to Lance, helping pull him to his feet.

The squat alien shuffled slowly until he stopped in front of Shiro with a frown, holding a long piece of metal that must have come from one of the support struts. It had been worn smooth and there were berries and flowers tied in a cluster at one end. When they blinked, all three eyes blinked out of sync. “It is you,” the alien said, and shook their staff. “Our Champion has returned to us, at last!”

They hadn’t noticed the hush that had fallen over the present aliens until their leader spoke, and when he shook his staff everyone cheered. Lance and Keith both looked out behind them, to see aliens of every size and shape clambering up to be on the same level that they were. There had to be at least two hundred of them.

“I’m sorry,” Shiro said stiffly. “I really don’t remember …. I’ve been here, before?”

The alien paused, and then pointed to themself. “You do not remember me, Jan?” Shiro shook his head in the negative, and the alien’s expression seemed to grow darker. “You do not remember leading us?”

Keith’s eyebrow raised as Shiro shook his head again, sharper this time. “I’m sorry, no I don’t. I…” he gestured helplessly, and then looked back at Keith and Lance. Then he touched the side of his head. “My memories are all mixed up,” he said. “I’m missing a lot of them. The Galra…”

When he spoke the word Galra, a hissing sound rose among the crowd, and Jan waved his staff again. “Say no more,” he said magnanimously. “You and your friends are quite welcome here. Come, come, we have much to discuss.”

#
Pidge wandered onto the bridge, eating a plate of crispy, semi-translucent chips that Hunk had fried up. She wasn’t entirely sure how he was making food translucent and her desire to know the exact chemicals that the alien ingredients contained was at war with her ability to sleep peacefully at night, so the best distraction for that was other projects. She’d been looking for Matt and finally found him sitting at the Green Lion’s workstation on the bridge.

“What are you doing,” Pidge asked, holding a translucent chip between her brother’s gaze and the holographic display.

Matt blinked a few times, refocused on the item and took the chip, popping it into his mouth without even verifying that it was actually food going down his gullet. “Decrypting the information Keith sent back from the Red Lion,” he said. “The Galra ship’s not broadcasting credentials, of course, but it uploaded details when the Red Lion landed in its hangar bay. So I’m taking a look to see what we’re dealing with.”

“And?” Pidge asked, leaning over his shoulder and squinting at the display.

“I just got the IF/F and I’ve pinged it through the database of known Galra craft. It’s a prison ship that was decommissioned and scuttled.” He gestured at the display. “About five years ago, relatively speaking.”

“Weird that they scuttled it, instead of strip-mining the useful bits,” Pidge ate a handful of chips and crunched intentionally loud by Matt’s ear.

“They’re not desperate for resources,” Matt said, and pushed Pidge’s head away. “There really isn’t anything else useful in it, and when Keith radioed things seemed … all right. They’re not in danger, at least.”

“But,” Pidge prompted.

“But,” Matt said with a sigh. “Their leader knew Shiro.”

“Yeah, we heard,” Pidge said, as if the entire crew hadn’t been present for the briefing. She crunched for a moment more. “Wait. If the ship’s been there for five years, how does a presumably-shipwrecked crew of prisoners even know who Shiro is?”

Matt nodded his head. “The time’s relative, though … worm-holing around could be messing with my calculations.”

“It’s still fishy,” Pidge said. She leaned forward and touched the call button on the console. “Hey, Allura? You might want to get up here, Matt’s found something you should see…”

#
Jan had an entire level to himself; the opening in the floor here was much smaller and only the very top bits of the canopy poked through. Along the edges of the hole in the floor, a fair bit of patchwork electronics were slaved into the main circuitry of the ship, and several of the consoles in the wall had been cleared of growth and were lit active, providing a dull magenta illumination or the room. “How are you keeping a tree alive in a spaceship?” Lance wondered, but his question was ignored by the alien.

“I admit, I am a bit disappointed that you don’t remember me,” the alien said, his voice gruff and distant. He stamped his staff against the floor in displeasure. “Damn those Galra beasts.”

“You said I helped you,” Shiro said slowly, looking around the room. It had clearly once been a high-ranking Galra soldier’s quarters, but aside from the inset consoles the remainder of the room’s fixtures had been completely cannibalized. “Helped you, how?”

“We escaped the prison ship together,” Jan said as he sat himself against a low table, holding his staff in both hands. “You helped a great deal of the prisoners get free, and instead of fleeing the ship into deep space and what was certain death, we took the ship for ourselves.” Jan looked quite pleased at this, but Shiro’s expression was mostly unreadable. Lance had slipped around the tree and was poking around the other side of the room, being nosy, but Keith stayed by Shiro’s side. “Sadly, the last act of some desperate engineers scuttled the ship’s system after our warp jump and destroyed the long-range communications array, leaving us to drift aimlessly until we were caught by the planet’s gravity well and pulled into orbit.”

“So you’ve been here, in orbit with this dead planet?” Keith said. “For how long, that tree is massive!”

“That it is,” Jan said, sounding slightly proud. “It is a kapili tree, and it provides us all the sustenance we require for such a small price.”

“And you say I helped with all this?” Shiro asked, quietly.

“Yes indeed,” Jan nodded firmly. “You took the last working shuttle on board, in the hopes of getting out of the system and finding us aid; and that you would return as quickly as you could!” He looked Shiro up and down, and there was something about the way he was looking at Shiro that left Keith feeling vaguely unsettled. Like he was a piece of meat. Jan smiled, but it was a thin, pained smile. “At last you have returned, but now … now I think it is better that we stay.”

“You’d rather stay on a dead ship?” Keith was incredulous to this idea. “Why? We can figure out how to get the warp drive running again, and get you out of the system in no time. Don’t you have families you wish to get back to?”

Keith’s thought was interrupted by the clatter of Lance stumbling over something in the background. Keith half-turned his head, irritated, while Lance hustled back over to them, looking as unsettled as Keith felt. “Lance.”

“It suits us here,” Jan said, unmoved by Keith’s words. “But,” he turned his attention back to Shiro, “it is good to see that you survived, Shiro. It warms my heart so. Perhaps you and your friends shall stay with us for the final grizalt?”

Shiro’s stoic expression twitched, just slightly; he’d clearly had all of grizalt that he could stomach. “It would be our honor,” he said. “But, Keith is right. I doubt our ship is large enough to accommodate everyone here, but we might be able to get this ship running again, at least enough to get you out of system. Are you certain you want to stay?”

Lance touched Keith’s arm and he looked over to Lance, still slightly irritated. However, Lance’s face was unusually serious. He shook his head negatively, and Keith lifted an eyebrow. “Hey, Shiro,” Keith said idly. “If we’re going to stay for this thing, I’m going to head back to Red to shoot off a message to the ship, let the others know we might be a little longer than originally planned.”

“Oh, that’s not necessary at all,” Jan said, in a tone that was beginning to make Keith twitch. “Grizalt does not … take very long.”

The strange pause was not lost on Keith, but Lance waved his hand in the air. “Nah, it’s fine,” Lance said. “We just gotta update them, last thing you want is some very angry Lions coming to check on their missing Paladins, blowing holes through walls and whatnot.”

That put the elder alien at an impasse, and with a frown he nodded his head. “Agreed,” he said, shortly. “We will wait for your return to begin the ceremony.”

Keith started down the stairs made of plant matter, but Lance lingered in place, staring at Shiro with a strange expression until Keith grabbed Lance by his shoulder and yanked him after.

#
“All right,” Keith said, once they were in the halls headed back toward the hangar bay and away from the aliens that inhabited the converted Galra cruiser. “What has gotten into you?”

“We have to get Shiro off this ship,” Lance said, and stopped walking. It took Keith two strides to realize Lance wasn’t keeping up with him, and he whirled on his heel and backtracked. “Right now.” Lance had half-turned like he was contemplating going back right now but he stopped himself and folded his arms instead.

“What? Why?” Keith asked, and put his hand on Lance’s arm to draw his attention back to Keith. “Lance, what are you talking about?”

“Everything about this place is wrong,” Lance said. “Wrong with a capital W Wrong.” He shivered. “We should ask that creepy alien what happened to the rest of the original crew, Keith. I bet he won’t have a good answer.”

“What is that supposed to mean?” Keith said.

“A ship this size? Yeah, there are the drone soldiers for combat but,” Lance was thinking out loud and only half-paying attention to Keith. “What about the rest of the crew? The engineers, the personnel. Where did they go?”

“Lance,” Keith folded his own arms, aping Lance’s posture without thinking about it. “You’re reading too much into it. It’s weird, yeah, but these guys have been scraping out survival against the odds in a half-dead starship.”

“There were pelts, and bones stacked in piles on the other side of his room,” Lance said quietly. “With armor.”

Keith stared at Lance, and Lance shuddered again. “Am I seriously the only one getting like a, Wicker man vibe from all this? You don’t know Earth movies,” Lance continued that thought without stopping. “Have you ever watched a scary movie in your life?”

Very drolly, Keith said, “my life is a scary movie.”

“…that’s fair,” Lance didn’t unfold his arms; if anything it seemed like he kept trying to curl in on himself tighter. “Let’s just get Shiro out of here before this grizalt-whatever is going to happen because and I hate to be so cliche but my Bad Feeling About This has reached critical mass.”

Keith studied Lance’s face for a long moment, and then he nodded his head once. “All right,” he said. “I’ll trust your gut on this, Lance.” He started to open the comm channel but hesitated, and they both knew that Shiro was carrying his helmet and not wearing it. Keith and Lance exchanged a look and Keith said, “I’ll head back and think of some excuse to get Shiro out of there.”

“Yeah, and what am I supposed to do, stand around and look pretty?” Lance looked somewhat peeved. “It seemed weird that Jan didn’t want us to go back to Red, maybe you should check and make sure no one’s tried to fuck with her and I’ll grab Shiro and we can book it.”

Keith scowled and opened his mouth to fight Lance on this, then paused. “Red wouldn’t let you near her without me,” he said, and Lance grumbled a “no shit,” to his complete lack of surprise. “All right. Keep your comm open, it’s bad enough we can’t communicate with Shiro, if I lose track of you I’m sending Red through the side of the ship looking for you two.”

“My hero,” Lance said, dripping in sarcasm but Keith put his hand on Lance’s shoulder and they looked at each other, then tilted their helmets together so they clunked together softly. “Yeah, okay,” Lance said softly, and then they parted; Lance’s bayard appearing in his hand as he set off down the corridor at a brisk pace without looking back.

Keith watched him go, and when he hit the T-junction Keith turned and headed for the hangar.

#
When Lance got back to the main part of the ship he found Shiro now on the lower level and patiently entertaining the same herd of small aliens who seemed to think yelling ‘grizalt’ and tackling people was a game. Lance wasn’t quite certain that they were actually children, now, despite their diminutive size; but Shiro was playing with them nonetheless. He looked up when Lance approached and his expression seemed a little strange to Lance. “Where’s Keith?”

“With Red,” Lance said. He looked around for Jan, but while there were a plethora of milling aliens busily at work their leader was not obviously present. Lance kept his tone low anyway. “We need to leave, Shiro. Now.”

Shiro stared at him for a long moment, lips pursed. Then he shook his head. “That would be rude,” he said, flatly. “We’re not in any danger here, Lance. These are … my friends, I guess.”

“And I’m your mate,” Lance said. “Something’s not right, here.”

Shiro put his hand up, palm out, toward Lance. “That’s an order,” he said firmly. Lance’s shoulders stiffened and his bro furrowed, because Shiro’s voice carried with it a casual authority that prickled at his skin and he recognized the way the command sat with him; Shiro was the head and leader of Voltron, yes, but there was something dismissive of Lance there in the mix as well. Instead of being compelled by the order, though, it just made Lance angry.

He didn’t have a moment to express that anger, though, as the small aliens clustered around Shiro scattered quickly when the ambient lighting in the air changed. “Grizalt!” one of them yelled as they abandoned Shiro and hurried toward the base of the large tree that framed the entire space. Shiro stood and gave Lance a Look which, hoo boy they were going to have a Talk about later, and then followed the aliens.

Shiro stopped dead in his tracks, not far from where the floor dipped down, caved in under the weight of it all. There were thick lavender roots here, crawling up from the floor below, and many of the aliens used these roots to climb down beyond the lip of the collapsed floor. When Lance caught up to him, he saw exactly why Shiro had stopped in place, and without conscious thought Lance’s bayard manifested in his hands, already in rifle form. Shiro said quietly, “god dammit.”

There was a makeshift altar between two of the largest roots, with all sorts of indentations cast into the metal surface that lead right back to the kapili tree. Lance lifted his left arm slightly, the butt of his rifle cradled against his elbow. “Well, that looks a little too Temple of Doom for my tastes,” he said. “I suppose now’s not the best time to tell you that Jan had an extensive pelt-and-bone collection just, chilling in his room.”

The smaller aliens had all trickled through the crowd toward the front, already chanting the only word that they seemed to know. Two guards had entered at the far end of the room, dressed ridiculously in remnants of Galra armor that was far too big for them - however the weapons they had trained on the two prisoners between them were very real. The two prisoners were chained together, clad only in the traditional prisoner attire of the Galra Empire and wearing bags over their head. Lance’s attention went to them immediately, he flipped his blaster rifle up to his shoulder and used the scope to magnify his sight, but Shiro put his hand on Lance’s shoulder, causing him to drop position.

“To honor our friends,” Jan’s voice cut over the low chant of grizalt, and Lance and Shiro both looked to the altar. Jan had appeared there in a change of clothes, now wearing a dark hooded cloak paired with his staff. He gestured the staff toward Shiro. “And to honor our Champion!”

The aliens cheered. Shiro took a step forward, to the very edge of the lip before the indented floor sank toward the roots of the tree. “Whatever this is,” Shiro called, “you don’t need to perform it, on our behalf.”

“The tree needs its nutrients!” one of the aliens shouted from the crowd, and several more took up the chant. “The tree, the tree-!”

“We honor you with the last of our sacrifices,” Jan said. “We have waited long for your return.” One of the two prisoners was jabbed forward, the chain between them longer than Lance had realized.

“Shiro?” Lance said, rifle on his shoulder.

“What’s going on?” Keith’s voice buzzed in his ear. Shiro still hadn’t put his helmet on, but it was in both hands, now.

“I’ll explain later, you might want to prep Red for a quick exit,” Lance said, as Jan gestured at the crowd, hyping them up with the hypnotic waving of his staff.

“Yeah, no shit,” Keith said. “We’re ready to go. What’s happening there?”

“Jan,” Shiro’s voice cut through the noise. “Stop this. This isn’t necessary. Let these people go, and we’ll talk-” as he was speaking Jan reached up and grabbed the hood on the first prisoner’s head, yanking it off. A mottled purple and black head was revealed, with familiar glowing golden eyes. A Galra prisoner. Shiro’s voice didn’t even hesitate. “Jan.”

“These are the last of our oppressors!” Jan called back, the Galra’s hood held bunched in one fist. Their head was mostly titled forward, they didn’t lift it - and Lance realized how gaunt the frames of the two prisoners were and how tired this one looked. Lance shifted slightly, his finger on the trigger and waiting on Shiro’s orders when the alien moved forward quickly, grabbing the Galra by the back of its head and in one motion, slit its neck.

Lance didn’t hesitate, he immediately sprayed a blast of plasma energy down toward Jan and the guards holding the second prisoner. He wasn’t shooting to kill, not yet, but it was enough to cause the crowd to lose its mind. Shiro didn’t say anything but leaped down into the pit, slamming his helmet on his head with his left hand, his right already glowing violet with kinetic energy.

The mass of aliens didn’t think to actually charge either Lance or Shiro - these were civilians, albeit greatly warped ones - and their first and only priority was to save their own skins. Lance didn’t even have to move, being naturally taller than most of the stampeding aliens - and he only shifted his position slightly as he laid down a pattern of cover fire for Shiro. He didn’t want to kill any of the aliens, not yet … he was more concerned with getting out of here, but Shiro had other ideas, apparently.

Shiro wasn’t charging the altar, which surprised Lance. He instead went straight for the guards with the other prisoner, although there was only one guard left standing by now. Shiro ripped the chain off the prisoner and pulled the hood from his head and this Galra recoiled, clearly anticipating being killed as well. Shiro didn’t pay him any mind once he was freed and then finally turned toward the altar. Jan stood atop it, one clawed, grayish foot on the back of the dead Galra. He held out his knife, pointing it at Shiro. “I should have known,” he said. “You are not our Champion.”

Shiro stood his ground, staring up at the alien who had called him a friend. “You said these two were the last of your sacrifices?”

“No Champion would free the enemy!” Jan’s voice had gone high-pitched as he screamed. “Kill them, kill them! The kapili tree demands blood!”

“I’ve got a clean shot,” Lance said calmly.

“What are you waiting for?” Keith asked, but Lance stayed silent, his cross hairs on the alien and waiting for Shiro’s go-ahead.

“No,” Shiro said, and Lance wasn’t certain if he was the one being addressed, or Jan. “Not like this, Jan.”

The Galra, taller than Lance but not by much, scrambled weakly up over the lip of the floor near where Lance stood. It was easy to see him as the aliens all parted around him like water around oil. Some were beginning to accumulate crude weapons and, well, Lance was in no mood to get beaten to death by tiny cannibals. The Galra looked back at the altar and let out a choked noise; and then fell to his hands and knees, pressing his forehead to the floor. The aliens immediately advanced on him and Lance fired a few shots into the air, well above their heads. It was enough to scatter them and allow Lance to get close.

He wasn’t mistaking it from the distance, the Galra was skin and bone; his fur mottled dark blue and violet with a crest of hair? Fur? Whatever it was, it started above his brow and continued down his back, vanishing under the collar of the rags he wore like a mane. He didn’t lift his head when Lance stopped beside him, and his tail brushed the floor, unmoving.

Shiro followed the Galra up over the lip, and there was a splash of discolored dark matter washed over the front of his armor. Lance didn’t even bat an eye. “He’s too weak to walk, we can’t leave him here,” Lance said, and without a word Shiro crouched down and hoisted the Galra over his shoulders like he weighed nothing at all.

Lance would be more impressed by that display of strength if they weren’t surrounded on all sides by a growing hostile crowd. An alien from behind them screamed, higher-pitched than any human voice, and Shiro said matter of factly, “time to go.”

“Yup,” Lance said, and started firing into the crowd.

#
“This is a problem,” Lance said, as Shiro unslung the Galra from his shoulder. They’d made it to the airlock, but there was no atmosphere between the airlock and the Red Lion … and their new friend wasn’t exactly in a vacuum-friendly outfit.

“Go,” the Galra croaked, his voice nothing but air and gravel. “I will only hold you back. You have at least allowed me to meet my end honorably.”

“None of that now,” Lance chided, while Shiro frowned at the airlock, and then looked up and down the hall. Lance had blown one of the blast doors at the T-junction, which kept the pursuing aliens at bay for the time being, but who knew how long that would hold.

“What’s the hold up?” Keith said, and Shiro looked back to the airlock.

“We have a prisoner who doesn’t have a jump suit,” Lance said. “No way to get him to you.”

“He’ll be hitting up the cryo replenisher when we get back to the Castleship, right? Just slap a helmet on him, I’ll get Red right next to the airlock.” They both felt the ship shake as the Red Lion moved about the hangar bay, and Lance and Shiro exchanged glances.

“Why do I feel like this is a terrible idea?” Shiro said.

“Do you have any better ones?” Lance asked, tucking his fingers under his helmet to pull it off. Shiro held out his hand and slid his own helmet off. “Shiro,” Lance said, concerned, as Shiro placed the helmet on the Galra’s head as carefully as he could, minding the large ears. “You sure?”

“You’ll be quick,” Shiro said, tapping the helmet and watching it seal around the Galra’s face. He smiled at Lance. “I’m sorry I didn’t trust you before.”

Lance’s own helmet hadn’t sealed yet, which allowed him to give Shiro a brief kiss. They smiled at each other, then Keith was in Lance’s ear. “Okay, if you follow the path of air that gets expelled from the airlock’s cycle, you should make it straight to Red’s mouth.”

“C’mon,” Lance said, getting the Galra’s arm over his shoulder. “You got a name? We’re getting you out of here.”

“Verus,” the Galra said, voice muffled by the helmet. He wasn’t on comm, since the helmet wasn’t connected to Shiro’s Paladin armor currently.

“Okay, Verus,” Lance said as the airlock closed behind them. “This is gonna suck, a lot, but we’re gonna make it work. I need you to stay with me as long as you can.”

The airlock’s cycle was quick, and sure enough when the doors opened all the remaining atmosphere in the airlock whooshed into the vacuum. Lance was as ready as he could be and as soon as the doors opened he was half-sprinting, half-dragging the Galra prisoner with him. Red was right there, just as Keith had said and Verus stiffened and tried to pull away but Lance had a good grip on him.

There was still gravity to contend with, and while Lance’s jet pack was enough to get him going easily both him and Verus changed his calculations a bit and they collided inside the Red Lion’s mouth, slamming into one side as Keith had the Lion close its jaws, sealing them in and restoring atmosphere.

Lance half-carried, half-dragged Verus into the cockpit proper. “Don’t freak,” he told Keith, who hadn’t turned around. Lance touched along the jaw of the now-unconscious Verus, found the seal of Shiro’s helmet, and removed it. That was the point where Keith glanced back at the, and did what would have been a hilarious double-take in other circumstances.

“That’s a…” he started to say.

“Yup.”

“Do I even-?”

“Nope.”

Keith shook his head. “Go get Shiro,” he said, “and we can get out of here.”

“Already on it,” Lance said, and the doors to Red’s cockpit closed behind him.

It was much easier getting down than it was getting up; but the entire hangar bay shook again. Lance stumbled as his boots hit the floor and then bounced right off; the artificial gravity had been disabled. Shit. “Lance, go,” Keith yelled in his ear and Lance was moving, the thrusters on his jet pack taking him right to the airlock and jumping inside it so it could cycle immediately. It was a quick cycle, the Galra were nothing if efficient, and Shiro was waiting right there for him, floating just outside the airlock and none the worse for wear. Lance tossed him his helmet, and the entire area shook again, just as the power went out.

“Fuck,” Lance said, as the interior lights on their helmets lit up and made a dark corridor slightly lighter.

“Stand back,” Keith said. “I’ll use Red to get through the walls.” As he spoke, they both heard the chatter of the small aliens, but when Lance scanned down the hallway he didn’t see them, floating in the darkness. Okay, that was unnerving as hell.

“Negative that, Keith,” Shiro said. “There are people on this side without jump suits. We’ll head toward the next airlock.”

“You do realize that you’re protecting the same people who are actively trying to kill us, right?” Lance said, his bayard in hand. Shiro gave him a Look, and Lance shrugged. “Just saying.”

The problem was, there was no next airlock. They were able to divert down another corridor, Shiro using his Galra hand to override what operating systems the ship had and close blast doors behind them, but that was taking them away from the hangar. “There’s got to be another way off this ship,” Lance said in frustration, one hand on the wall to keep from floating into it as Shiro shut another door behind him. “Why can’t we use your hand to cycle the airlock?”

“No point of contact within the airlock to keep it running,” Shiro said. “Although I could cycle you through, somehow I don’t think you’d be too keen on that plan.”

“Damn straight,” Lance huffed. “I’m not leaving you alone here. We’re not, right Keith?”

“Shiro, you okay?” Keith asked, and Lance looked at Shiro as they flew down the corridor. Maneuvering the thrusters on the jet packs wasn’t very difficult, but even then Lance could sense he was lagging a bit. “Your suit’s biometrics are reading low.”

“Just tired,” Shiro said, his voice clipped.

This part of the ship was completely dark, no emergency running lights at all and no additional power sources, so it was literally taking Shiro’s arm to power the blast doors open and closed again. No wonder he sounded so tired, draining his prosthetic arm’s energy had to be sapping his own reserves, and Lance had a disquieting flashback to a different escape. “Where are we headed?” Lance said.

“The escape pods,” Shiro said. “We’re headed to the escape pods, Keith, do you copy that?”

“I copy,” Keith’s voice was thick with static. “What do you want me to do?”

“Stand by,” Shiro said. “When we eject, you’ll need to be on it right away.”

“That is, presuming there are any escape pods left,” Lance muttered.

“There won’t be,” Shiro said. “We’ll just use the airlock to eject ourselves into space. Keith will pick us up.”

“Great plan,” Lance said. “Excellent plan. We’re going to die.”

Though Shiro’s voice was still tired, there was a smile in it. “How many times has Keith done something similar, and he’s still with us.”

“That is not a metric I want to be measured against,” Lance said. “Keith is like, a space-cat ninja.”

He heard Keith make a funny, static-filled sound through the comm. “Yeah yeah, yak it up, Captain Fuzzypants.” Keith’s reply was too cut through with static to be distinguishable. Lance tapped the side of his helmet a few times. “Uh,” he said, as if Shiro wasn’t on the same comm channel. “What’s causing the interference?”

“If I had to guess,” Shiro said, “it would be the tree.”

“So how is Keith going to know where to find us?”

“We just have to trust him,” Shiro said, and continued on.

“Great,” Lance muttered quietly. “This just keeps getting better and better.”

#
There was nothing at all on the comm from Lance or Shiro.

Keith flew Red the breadth of the hangar, trying to pick up some scraps of audio, but nothing came through the system, not even static. Frustrated, he flew out the bay door and looped the Galra vessel - there were far less running lights on it now, primarily located in the main body of the ship where the tree was. He wasn’t exactly sure where the escape pods were on this particular ship, and when he pulled a ship schematic from the Red Lion’s memory banks it showed twelve different escape pod locations. Keith rubbed his face with one hand, and tried the sensors instead.

There was a weak cough from behind him, and Keith glanced over his shoulder to see that his newest passenger had rolled onto his back. This was a full-blooded Galra, though on the smaller end of the scale. He looked like he hadn’t eaten in weeks, emaciated as he was, and the dark blue fur that trailed from between his ears and down his back was lank and limp.

Lance had dragged a Galra onto his Lion, and Keith really didn’t know what the fuck he was supposed to do with that. But, that was for later, once he’d retrieved Lance and Shiro and they figured out what the heck to do next. This whole thing had gone belly-up on them, and Keith hovered his hand over the open comm switch to the Castleship. If he switched bands, he might miss Lance or Shiro’s transmission.

“… should have died,” the Galra behind him croaked, and based on that voice alone it sounded like he had.

“Well, you didn’t,” Keith said, all business. After a brief query he pulled up Red’s sensors and started scanning the ship. Maybe if they couldn’t talk, he could at least find his friends that way. After a few frustrating minutes finally a pair of colored dots appeared on the map; black and blue. Keith let out a relieved noise and angled Red away from the ship, looping around to one of the dark sides and hanging out there, watching the dots as they slowly progressed toward what must be an escape pod bay. He glanced back over his shoulder at the Galra when he realized no other noise had come his way, and the Galra was lying motionless on his back. “You’re not dead yet, right?”

There was no response from his passenger, and Keith frowned, glancing back and forth from the display to his unconscious cargo. “Look, Lance and Shiro will both be pissed if they stuck their necks out for you and you expired in my cockpit so can you at least hang on until we’ve gotten you into a replenisher?”

The Galra opened its eyes and breathed out a rattling breath. “You stink of half-breed,” he said, and Keith rolled his eyes.

“I am sure glad we didn’t meet you a month ago,” he muttered, and turned his attention back to piloting.

#
They made it to an escape pod bay fortunately without any further complication. It was eerily dark as they floated along the corridor, one hand on the corridor wall to keep their bearings, the only light reflected from their Paladin armor. Shiro was flagging fast, having to use his arm as a sole power source for so long seemed to have drained nearly all of his energy, and Lance kept one hand on his shoulder, letting him lead but also there to keep him on the right path.

Once they had crossed over into the part of the ship that had been mostly destroyed by the initial uprising, they had found no more closed doors. They’d also found a couple of bodies - Lance was not ashamed of how quickly he had shot two before he realized that they weren’t under attack.

The escape pods were, as guessed, all jettisoned. Lance put one hand on the airlock that once led to an escape pod; now it just led into a dark, empty tunnel. “We’re really doing this, huh?” Lance asked, hoping that he’d get some response from Keith now that they’d traversed the ship and were hopefully out of range of the fucking kapili tree, but no luck there.

“Unless you’ve made your peace with being eaten by aliens,” Shiro said, and Lance shuddered.

“Well,” he said after a moment, tapping the chin of his helmet thoughtfully as Shiro tried to figure out how to force the sealed airlock open. “Keith counts, right?”

“I walked right into that one,” Shiro muttered as his hand lit violet again, although the light was very dim compared to what Lance was used to. “We’re not talking about Keith eating your ass, okay? We’re just not.” He placed his hand on the control and then tilted back a little - without the gravity, he wasn’t going to hit the floor but Lance pushed off and caught him anyway, before he floated back too far.

“Man, Shiro, don’t do this,” Lance said, and took his hand, placing it on the controls and holding it there. “I know this is taking a lot out of you, but we’re almost there. You get us out of here and I’ll eat your ass, promise.”

Shiro pushed forward as his arm lit brighter for a moment, and the airlock slid open. There was no burst of pressurized atmosphere venting, and Lance had a bad feeling that there was a closed bay door at the end of the long, dark tunnel - but he had a blaster rifle and they would burn that bridge when they got to it. “Gonna hold you to that,” Shiro muttered, but managed somehow not to pass out. Shiro hooked his arm over Lance’s shoulders and Lance navigated them into the long, dark tunnel that led to the launch point of the escape pod.

As he’d suspected, the tunnel ended in a heavy, shielded door. Lance propped one foot against the wall and Shiro the other wall, bracing him so that when he fired his weapon the rebound wouldn’t send them both halfway back the way they’d come. The plasma beams were dazzlingly bright, and it took three sprays of blaster fire before the door popped, and thank goodness when it breached it got sucked out into space first because Lance wagered that going through a hole the size of a few blaster shots wouldn’t be particularly fun.

The venting atmosphere sent Lance and Shiro tumbling out, spinning in different directions with no regard for where they were headed. Lance flailed, spinning head over heels as he tried to engage the thrusters on his jetpack to level off and get a lock on which direction Shiro went, all the while yelling into his comm at the same time. “KEITH!”

There was a split-second of silence; just Lance and the uncaring vastness of space. He saw out of the corner of his eye the shape of a Lion and he turned quickly, tracking its movement. His first thought was Blue; connecting to her and he remembered how she came to rescue him on Eaphus without him even realizing it; but the flash of a figure flying toward him, toward them wasn’t Blue, and it wasn’t Red….

It was the Black Lion.

“Shiro!” Lance yelled through his comm and this time saw the distant teal of a jet pack engaged; he knew that had to be Shiro moving toward the Black Lion. Keith still hadn’t responded so Lance followed Shiro and a few seconds later the Red Lion looped the Galra cruiser and Keith’s voice exploded over Lance’s ears.

“What the fuck,” Keith bellowed, and Lance laughed, giddy with relief as he caught up to Shiro. Shiro reached out to him, gripped him tight by his forearm, and maneuvered them both into the open mouth of the imposing Black Lion.