Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Agnoiology

Chapter 1: Gearing Up

Shiro leaned back in his seat in Black's cockpit, trying to relax. It wasn't easy; on the control board, a screen counted down the last few minutes before they would exit the wormhole into Kerogan space, where they would come out fighting. That alone would be enough to make him tense, but the Oracle's Lens in the back of his mind was turning again. He could feel it, floating in the spitting, sparkling ring of white fire that held it, turning first one way and then the other, as if having trouble focusing on the future. It flickered, and he smelled sun-baked stone and desert sand, and caught a glimmer of rainbow light and feline shadow. He shifted uncomfortably as the Lens tried again. Something was interfering, he could feel it. Something he had felt once before, he realized. A great void weight, like what had nearly given him brain damage when Lotor had jumped them near the Szaracan cluster. Just the edges of it this time; it wasn't sure of where he was right now, and couldn't get a fix on him, but it could spread a field of disruption far and wide enough for that not to matter.

The Lens, as if sensing that it was being deliberately blocked, spun like a top in its fiery setting, spraying sparks in a pyrotechnic display that would have won it several holiday contracts in Las Vegas. The sound of it was a dynamo roar that echoed through the Mindscape in a furious howl of mystic frustration.

“Feels like something big's trying to come through, Shiro,” Keith's voice murmured in his ear.

Shiro grunted at this unexpected commentary in his helmet-comm. “Yeah,” he said hoarsely, “and something's trying to stop it. Same thing from before, when we met Doodlebug.”

There was a muttered curse from Lance. “Yeah, I can feel it, too. Oh, crud, not now! Can Black help with that? We really don't need you flaking out in the middle of a fight.”

Shiro queried his Lion, who admitted that this was something that he couldn't help with. He was the Lion of Time, but that meant very little to the threat that loomed that uncertain distance away. Voltron... Voltron, the Lion told him, just was not big enough as he was now to deal with something like that.

“Uh-oh,” Hunk said, summing up their feelings in one short phrase.

“Great,” Pidge said sourly. “So, what are we supposed to do about it?”

Shiro shrugged, shifting again under the pressure of two competing forces. The Lens had slammed into reverse now, and was screaming on its bearings in a way that was very nearly audible to his mundane ears. “I don't—ngh!”

Something like a trio of stars flashed across his inner vision, and something great and dark moved in the night. Bright dark, dark that shone, and a sound as of some sort of heavy fabric billowing in the wind. Gray-white gleam, black flash, pale gold and deep, fiery red, a shred of song as of the god of all things whale-like. The void weight jerked back, pulling in its field—it had attracted something diametrically opposed to it, and its aperture was in danger...

Shiro let out an explosive breath and groped for one of the beverage packets he kept in his lunchbox. The weight had vanished, popping like a soap bubble and so had the Vision, and the Lens had gone still for the time being. Nobody had asked what that was, because none of them knew, and nobody particularly wanted an answer.

“My goodness,” Allura said faintly from the Castle's command deck.

Keith heaved a shaking sigh. “My Dad told me once that no matter how big and bad you think you are, there's always something bigger and badder out there. Always. That was... that was pretty big, guys.”

“But it isn't interested in us,” Hunk added, “and you know what? I'm cool with that.”

Shiro shuddered and dropped the empty beverage packet back into his lunchbox. “Better yet, it scared off the thing that was. We'll worry about it later. Focus, team. We're almost there.”

“Good,” Keith growled. “Jump-scares like that always make me want to punch something, anyway.”

There was a snort from Pidge. “Me, too. Let's go and punch an armada.”

Shiro vented a breathless laugh. “Sounds like a plan, Pidge.”

There was no time for further discussion, for the Castle burst out of the wormhole, and seconds later the Lions burst from their hangars; there before them was the strangely-shaped planet Keroga, and there was the even stranger Thresonol Nebula, and there between them were the dark ships of the Empire, come to threaten an entire people with annihilation. Paladin hearts and Lion hearts rejoiced at this chance to avert such a doom, and all consideration for the future narrowed down to the job at hand. “Form Voltron!” Shiro commanded, and they went to do the work that was in front of them.

Zarkon did not dream, as such. He could remember, vaguely, a time when he did, and could even remember bits and snatches of the more interesting ones if he cared to. Haggar had put a stop to that foolishness long ago, and he had never been sorry for it. He did not sleep much in any case, and did not care to have his slumber disturbed by unnecessary distractions. He still got impressions upon waking, though, as if some part of him went wandering through the cosmos while his body slept. Whatever it was, it did not feel things as a living person did, but registered its changes and moods as an ocean might: vast, deep, mostly gradual, sometimes sudden and all at once, although such abrupt changes were rare. Mostly he had impressions of fields of stars. The smell of interstellar space, if such a thing could have an odor. The occasional sense of discovery. A feeling of great emptiness and stillness that was not quite the same as peace. This time... this time had been different. This time, there had been a sense of searching for something, followed by a flicker of surprise, and perhaps even of alarm. Now he just felt annoyed, as if some useful tool had fallen down behind a workbench and had unaccountably vanished.

That isn't you, Zarkon, Gyrgan said from some distance away as he headed toward Haggar's lab; Zarkon was in a mood to destroy something, and wanted to know how close to completion the new Robeast was.

It's using you to feel grumpy with, Gyrgan's deep, soft voice said warily.

Zarkon grunted and tried to ignore his former teammate. The others had been quiescent lately, but Gyrgan had always been the most persistent of them, particularly when one of the others had been in a bad mood. Blaytz had left off calling him a walking corpse, but Gyrgan was insisting that he was only a shell, a mask for something terrible. That was nonsense, of course. Gyrgan had always worried about strange, unseen entities that had either brought luck or misfortune, and this current delusion was no different from the rest. Putting such things firmly out of his mind, he strode past the holding cells and through the bio-lab, and entered the new Transformation Chamber.

The thing that loomed in its framework there was everything that he could have wished for in such a weapon. He admired its sleek lines and efficient weapons ports, and viewed the smaller units that hung in the secondary and tertiary stations with a deep and visceral pleasure. Voltron, and indeed, much of what might lurk within the Thresonol Nebula, would provide much amusement for these things.

“All is in readiness, my Lord,” Haggar said; she had appeared at his side as if by magic, making him smile. “All that remains is to activate them.”

“I am eager to see it,” Zarkon rumbled. “And the rest of the preparations?”

“Already seen to.” Haggar waved a hand dismissively. “It was simplicity itself to prepare our agents, and to plant them where they would do the most good. We've had plenty of time.”

Zarkon frowned up at one fearsome metallic shape. “The Paladins vanish and reappear without warning or reason, it seems. Where did they go this time, and what have they done while they were gone, I wonder?”

Haggar's stooped shoulders hunched briefly in a shrug, a sign of irritation; the strange shadow that concealed Voltron's movements from her had not grown any more penetrable in the recent past, and tracking their associates had grown no easier, either. “I do not know,” she growled. “But it does not matter. Even now, they rush to the Keroga System, delivering themselves neatly into our trap.”

“Ah. Good,” Zarkon mused; the fleet he'd sent to threaten that world was sacrificial at best, meant to be bait and nothing more. Voltron would do him a service in destroying them, actually, for he'd hand-picked his least satisfactory underlings for the job. “Let the Paladins celebrate their false victory a little; the Kerogans will insist. Let these take them unaware. Well do I remember the confusion their predecessors faced, when that same tactic had been used on them.”

Haggar vented a faint, amused snort. “As do I. If we are fortunate, the current blue Paladin will fly no better than Blaytz did, when drunk.”

Zarkon reflected upon ancient memories, finding them more irritating than anything else. His long-dead team had possessed numerous character flaws, and Blaytz's lack of self-control at parties had been particularly annoying. The man had taken a positive delight in irritating him, especially when he'd had a bit too much to drink.

He was trying to loosen you up, Gyrgan said sadly from somewhere behind him. He wasn't very good at it, but you were really uptight at first, Zarkon. We actually had to teach you how to have fun for fun's sake, and it was hard going at times. You were in training to be King, we knew that, but you didn't have to be the perfect Prince all the time. You did have brothers, after all, and any one of them would have made a good king. You're lucky—Alfor had to be a King and a Paladin because none of his relatives could have led a pirsop to a mud wallow. You could have just told your grandfather to choose one of them.

Zarkon shifted his weight irritably, steeling himself to ignore the words of the dead.

But you wanted to be King, Gyrgan pressed on relentlessly. You wanted it all. You always did, even when that wasn't a good idea. Leadership felt good, didn't it? You did the telling, and everyone else did what they were told. That's one of the reasons why you didn't want to marry Khiradi, wasn't it? You knew that if you let her tickle you behind the ears, that would be it; you wouldn't be in command anymore, and she could tell you what to do. Haggar couldn't do that. No Altean could.

Zarkon turned slightly, casting a long, thoughtful look at the secondary units; there were twenty of them, much smaller than the parent craft, and designed to fit into special settings along the primary Robeast's dorsal surface for ease of transport. He could tell that they would be just as deadly as their “mother”, having been built for speed and agility.

“You've studied the Ghamparva's fighting ships,” he murmured.

Haggar nodded. “One of my agents brought back a damaged one from the Nanthral Dwarf Cluster. A very clever design, and Meksant has custody of it now. There were numerous areas in that wreck that had room for improvement, but the engineers and design staff had been prevented from implementing such changes, the better to overcharge your best field agents. They will pay the ultimate price for their malfeasance very soon.”

Zarkon growled faintly. “Their Matriarch enjoyed her hold over the Ghamparva rather too much. It is a fitting punishment.”

There was a ghostly snort from behind him. It's always about power with you, isn't it? Gyrgan asked.

Always, a woman's voice replied, and Zarkon clenched his teeth at the voice of the woman that he might have been forced to marry, ages ago. He feared my touch, you know. Nothing frightened him more than loss of control. He had seen his mighty Grandfather on his knees before his wife while she caressed him, asking her advice in a tone of voice he could only think of as being servile. The fool could not understand that a proper marriage is a partnership, two powers combining forces to protect and guide those who depend upon them. His own mother was wise, but not strong, and so his father had to be strong for her. He could not see that it was still a partnership of equals! Wisdom triumphs where strength fails, and strength may carry one through the darkness when all others are at their wit's end! He would not see that surrendering himself to me would enhance his own power tenfold. Had he wed me, Golraz would have had ships enough to beat back the attacking armada, and both his world and his many descendants would have honored his heroism for all time.

Zarkon swallowed a snarl of fury, willing the ghosts away; Gyrgan went wherever they went when they weren't pestering him, but Khiradi was too angry to vanish at his whim.

You power-mad idiot, she spat at him. Was preserving your pride worth all of this? Who knows how many of your sons and grandsons would have piloted the Lions after you, carrying your fame into the future, had you only answered the call of familial duty? What have you now but an empire of shards and shadows that will collapse when you do? A crowd of ineffectual descendants whose only use is to keep the High Houses loyal? When you are remembered, you will be so as a nemesis, a monster, a world-destroying maniac, a common archetype of evil. You will be nothing more than the shadow of the woman you threw everything away to keep, for she is the greater monster still. Fool and damned fool! All you have to hope for now is the compassion of those who will kill you, for no one else will ever mourn you for who you were. Not your children, who barely know you; not your witch, for whom you are little more than a tool; not your people, nor your subjects, for whom you are only a figure of fear.

“No.”

The denial, barely vocalized though it was, came to Haggar's sharp ears, and she turned to gaze at him. Zarkon was standing statue-still, so tense that he was vibrating, and his pale eyes glowed with some emotion that she could not read through the faceplate of his helmet. “My Lord?” she asked.

He let out an explosive noise and made a sharp gesture of denial. “Release these Robeasts at once, when the time is right,” he snarled harshly. “When they have crushed the Paladins, turn them loose on the Ghost fleet, and on Halidex, and on all other worlds who have dared to challenge the Empire. I will not tolerate defiance.”

“It will be done, my Lord,” Haggar said, but she watched him curiously as he turned and strode away.

Not until the doors hissed closed behind him did Zarkon half-collapse against one wall, gasping for breath against the agony in his shoulder and his thigh. Not even to Haggar would he admit this weakness. It was his fight, he told himself, and he would win it; the dead had no power over him. I have had worse, he thought, remembering his furious rise to power, just after his destruction of the Council of Princes of Galran Prime. Many had challenged him, and he carried the scars of those challenges still; a few of those injuries had been life-threatening, and had given him pain for weeks afterward. Still, he had survived where all of his foes had not. He would defeat this, even as he had defeated the others.

He refused to hear the bark of disbelieving laughter from the woman who was not there.

The pain eased after a little time, but did not fade entirely, and Zarkon was still sore when he settled back into his throne. Not that any of his Generals noticed. A holoscreen hovered in the air before them, showing a far-away battlefield where a multicolored titan was crushing a war fleet, and their attention was riveted to the action. Zarkon also studied the battle with interest. The Paladins' fighting skills had improved, he noticed, but their tactics did not please him. When he had commanded the black Lion, he had sought to end a fight as quickly and thoroughly as possible, leaving the enemy ships too badly damaged to salvage as anything better than raw scrap. The muscles in his arms and hands twitched slightly in sympathy as Voltron executed a graceful whirl, lashing out with the Sword in a thrust that seemed almost delicate. Where Zarkon would have directed Alfor to slice the whole belly of the ship open, the current red Paladin seemed merely to touch the aft end of his target. Very precisely, too; he'd struck the drive section just so, disabling the ship entirely while causing the absolute minimum of damage.

“Another warship lost,” one of his Generals muttered grimly as the ship went dark. “They've been stealing them and giving them over to their allies, you know. What I want to know is who has been teaching them how to operate our ships!”

“Some traitor or other,” another General growled back, “or they tortured one of our pilots until he broke. Either would do, and I've heard rumors about the green Paladin. They say that she successfully got information out of a Ghamparva Captain, just by touching him. I heard that they found the man later, down in the slums of Lenotar Six, working as a folder and presser in a garment-cleansing shop, of all things. He had no memory of how he had gotten there, or of who or what he had been, and was utterly besotted with the shop's owner. His past had been erased so effectively that his former colleagues left him there, alive and unharmed, since the man that he had once been was permanently gone. If you ever come face-to-face with the green Paladin, do not let her touch you.”

“Or the Blade of Marmora,” a third man said. “They'd know how to get information out of a man, and they're allied with Voltron. They can't get a victim to talk with a touch, perhaps, but I've heard tales of their techniques that would curl your fur.”

A fourth General made an explosive sound of derision. “I don't believe that they exist. They're a handy excuse for the Ghamparva to continue their excessive behavior, but that's all.”

“They're real,” another man said, running a pair of fingers down a long scar on his face, souvenir of a slash that had taken one eye and nearly his nose as well. “Oh, they're real. They're very real. I fought one once, and should know.”

“Did you win?” the skeptic asked.

“I'm alive,” the scarred fellow replied, his lip curling back to reveal a pair of missing fangs, the gaps lining up neatly with the scar. “When you've faced a Blade, that's all that matters.”

Zarkon settled deeper into his throne. He already knew these things, and did not need to listen further. Instead, he focused upon the battle, studying Voltron's methods and moves; he would face them again one day, and that time he would prevail.

General Pendrash, on the other hand, did listen to the speech of his colleagues, if only for the sake of expediency. It wasn't just what was said, but why and when, and by whom. The phantomlike Blades had been of exceptional use to him for some time, passing him the occasional tidbit of crucial information for the past several years, even before Voltron's reappearance. The tenor of those brief, often cryptic communications had changed somewhat since that momentous day when the Champion had broken free of his captors, interestingly enough; Pendrash suspected that their Commander had felt the touch of the Paladins as well, and the messages had become more frequent as a result, and considerably more helpful. The Paladins were an amazing little group, he thought. Every time they made a move, everything around them changed. Even now, as Voltron danced the warrior's dance among the doomed ships above Keroga, he could see the shift in the paradigm happening. Always before this, the Empire's foes had sought to destroy the great dark ships that had, for thousands of years, brought inevitable conquest, enslavement, and death. Now, they aimed for the same targets that the ancient battle machine was striking at, targets that were not only effective, but easily repaired, and it would spare the lives of most of the live crew. Live crew that would be held for a time and then released later, well out of the way on planets that were willing to foster them, often with travel purses that were sufficient to take them home if they wished. Minus, of course, the commanding officers and any soldier that had committed more atrocities than their captors were willing to overlook, but that was only to be expected. At least this time the Hoshinthra weren't participating.

“No black ships,” Kerraz murmured in his ear, echoing his thoughts. “They've been spotted just about everywhere else, but not there.”

Pendrash grunted softly and glanced at the throne, where Zarkon was watching the battle with eyes like pale lanterns. “They don't like anomalous space,” he muttered back. “The Night Terror might lead a pursuing enemy through an active supernova, but even she stays away from places like the Thresonol Nebula. There are some very dangerous things in there.”

Kerraz shifted nervously, but didn't say anything further. Pendrash approved. The young man had an able mind, and could extrapolate the near future as well as he could in this case. A trap had been laid, and Voltron had stepped right into it; now it was just a matter of time before they saw whether or not the Paladins could break free. Privately, shamefully, Pendrash hoped so.

Keith leaned back in his seat and glared at the field of debris and disabled ships that they'd left behind them. “Is it just me, or was that too easy?” he asked. “They didn't even bring a planet-buster along, and the guys in charge of this fleet didn't know what they were doing.”

There was a snort from Lance. “Keith, relax. If Zarkon wants to throw his biggest goofballs at us, I'm not going to complain. Besides, look at that planet! You wouldn't need a planet-buster to break this one up. Hunk could do it just by parking Yellow wrong.”

“Hey,” Hunk protested, but his heart wasn't in it.

Even the most charitable observer would have to admit that Keroga had been treated very badly somewhere in the distant past. The Paladins were used to seeing planets that were a different shape than their own, but this one was by far the most malformed of the lot. It might have been a sphere, once, but it was a sphere that had been hit very hard by a lot of large and unfriendly things in the early stages of its formation. It more or less resembled a ring of bread dough that had been thrown against a sheet of moldy drywall, left there for three days in hot, humid conditions, then had come under attack by rabid ants, then had been scraped off of the flaking, crumbly surface with a rusty sawblade, and finally had been hard-baked unevenly in a faulty oven. Most of the planet was taken up by deserts, but there were vast cracks in the surface that looked unimaginably deep, and those depths showed the galaxy-like glitter of cities. Huge, crater-like depressions pocked the surface; lumpy, peculiarly-shaped mountain ranges straggled in long strings around them, and lots of little lakes were strung like knobbly tubers along big river systems. Forests crept surreptitiously along the bottoms of gigantic river valleys that made Earth's Grand Canyon look like a crack in a sidewalk, and something that might on more conventional worlds have been an ocean ringed the gigantic hole in the middle of the world. From here, they could see the bizarre waterfalls along the edges of that quite literally bottomless abyss, and the equally impossible streamers of water that ballooned up and around from those falls to reenter the atmosphere on both sides of the flattened planet as eternal downpours over the headwaters of the greatest river systems. In sharp contrast, two large, green, and perfectly spherical moons were orbiting Keroga in entirely predictable ways.

The very sight of it offended Pidge's scientific sensibilities, to nobody's surprise, and even Keith couldn't help but smile at the faint, irritable growl from the green Lion. “Ran the math, huh?” he said.

“Yeah,” Pidge replied, sounding grumpy. “And I don't like it. Why couldn't it have been one of those super-puff planets instead? Those at least sort of make sense. And what is with that nebula?”

They observed the Nebula. Many ages ago, at least two very large stars had blown up violently nearby, flooding the Kerogan System with a smorgasbord of radiation, gas, dust, and stranger things; indeed, quite a lot of stranger things had happened within the blast zone. There were places where the Nebula didn't look right, or was twisted out of shape, and there were voids and bright spots where there shouldn't have been. Some of them... moved, but only when nobody was looking. Their more unusual senses twitched uneasily whenever they watched it for too long.

“Another old battleground, probably,” she said grimly.

“That's what Yozori said,” Hunk replied. “She said that the Elder Races had a big battle here, and they took it right down to the planet, too, and that's why it looks so weird. She told me that the Kerogans probably got their start in the fallout, and it's amazing that they turned out so normal, which is actually pretty weird, too, come to think of it.”

Shiro smiled, remembering Lantich, Pidge's large, stolid Kerogan friend aboard the Quandary. “Every planet is strange. At least we've been informed of how best to greet the people. They'll want to see us, and remember what Lantich said about them. We're religious figures to the Kerogans, and our word will probably be law down there, so I'll expect all of you to be on your best behavior.”

“With a bunch of showing off,” Pidge reminded them. “They'll want to see fireworks, so we'll do that flashy aura-light thing, for starters.”

“I could do some fireworks,” Keith said thoughtfully, “and Lance could snow on somebody. That would get their attention. You and Hunk have already demonstrated your talents. Shiro, you're probably going to have to read some tea leaves. Um. Allura, how are you going to show off your talents? It's all channeling power with you, right?”

“Mostly,” Allura admitted from the Castle's command deck. “But there is nothing stopping us from... oh, doing a modified circle-session, perhaps, with all of the bright colors visible to the mundane eye. Lizenne, do you have any thoughts upon the subject?”

“A few,” Lizenne said, sounding tired; the Chimera had fought well during the battle, and that on top of an already eventful day. “Casual displays of power may well be as effective as large-scale efforts, and perhaps more so. I'll show you how to make witchlights when we're done helping with the cleanup. They're very simple, and enormously useful.”

“Oh, crud, I forgot about the cleanup,” Lance moaned, surveying the disabled ships. “Oh, well. At least we don't have any doom moose helping this time. We don't, do we? I can't see any, but that doesn't really mean anything.”

“No, they're not here,” Allura reassured him. “That's a little odd, actually. This world is well within their range, and they have been active within the region.”

Shiro sighed and glanced up at the Nebula again. “They probably don't like the weird space just next door. I know that I don't. Disengage Voltron, everybody. Let's go and see how many survivors there are, and whether or not they'll come along quietly.”

Some time later aboard a damaged heavy cruiser, grunting with the effort of wrestling a screaming, swearing Galra officer to the floor so that Keith could get him restrained, Shiro secretly wished that they did have Antler Guy along for the ride. Even the most violent-tempered Galra had a tendency to behave himself in the presence of those monsters, and so far, these were a pretty rough bunch.

Spoiled, he thought to himself, twisting the angry prisoner's arm a little, just enough to get his attention. They'd been dealing with soldiers who had come from the Fringe Colonies, or from worlds no further Inward than the next galaxy over. Those were more pragmatic, less likely to treat Zarkon's word as holy writ, and could see sense without having to be shouted at for more than a minute or two. These ships all had been captained and crewed by Core World men, and they had continued to fight, no matter how hopeless the situation was. As it was, they'd had to bring in the dragons to help, and even Tilla and Soluk were facing stiff opposition. There went Tilla now, as a matter of fact, carrying another loudly-protesting soldier in her mouth. A sergeant, he thought, which was only to be expected. Sergeants were tough.

There was a click as the restraints engaged, and Shiro leaned back a little to catch his breath. “How are we doing?” he asked Keith over their captive's furious howling.

“We're getting there,” Keith replied, and then bonked the officer on the back of the head lightly with one fist, causing the roaring to end in an offended squawk. “Cool it, dude, you sound like a cub. We're getting some local help, and that's speeding things up a lot. Kerogans are really strong and they don't get excited easily. Hey, Allura, how do things look on your end?”

“We'll be able to finish up sooner than we had thought,” Allura said through his helmet-comm. “Zorjesca and Dablinnit have just arrived, and will be taking the captured Galra back to Halidex; they're currently dealing with the Imperial establishments on the planet itself with the help of the local Kerogans. With any luck, we'll be able to sign them into the Coalition and move on within a few days.”

“Huh. We're not going to stay longer than that?” Keith asked. “I mean, that's got to be the weirdest-looking planet we've ever seen, and Pidge will want to find out how those big waterfalls around the hole in the world work.”

“Not here,” Coran said darkly. “It's not a good idea to poke about where things get truly strange on this world, or in the Nebula next door for that matter. Alfor and his team and I visited this place once, remember? That was to get rid of an alien invader, ironically enough, a space-bandit-turned-evil-dictator and his crowd of backsystem cutthroats. Ploshurans, you know; they're just not happy if they aren't oppressing somebody. Well, the team busted up their little operation, and wound up chasing their leader right off of the planet and into the Nebula. Alfor was all for following him in there, terribly fond of exploring hazard zones, so he was, and Zarkon had to sit on him to keep him from hopping into the red Lion and flitting away into the dust clouds. Just as well, really. The Ploshuran bandit's ship did drift back out of that mess a few hours later, defunct as a month-old fish sandwich, and what we found inside... well, that doesn't bear mentioning. Gyrgan wouldn't touch noodles for a month after that, and even then, only blindfolded.”

There was a queasy gulp from Hunk, who loved pasta dearly and enjoyed making his own. “Guys, let's not go into that nebula. Ever.”

“Good man,” Coran agreed. “Even Trigel wasn't interested in hanging about longer than we had to. She said that everything about the Nebula wasn't just twisted, but bent, and it was making the Lions uneasy. Some of it was so bad that even the Kerogans wouldn't go near it, and they're just about immune to this sort of thing. Kind of odd, really. Every team to fly Voltron has visited Keroga at least once, and every time they've kept clear of the worst of it. Always struck me as being like a boy on his first time up on the high-dive, actually. There are a lot of false starts before you leap off of that precipice.”

“Coran, you have just jinxed us,” Lance said sourly. “What have I told you about doing that?”

“You silly Humans and your superstitions,” Coran scoffed. “Why, if it were really possible for people to influence the paths of fate just by talking about the odd possibility of this action or that, then that would have made my job a lot easier. There was one time, as a matter of fact, when Zarkon—eek!”

“Thank you, Erantha,” Allura said.

Shiro puffed a laugh and pushed himself to his feet, hauling his sullen prisoner up as well. The Blade woman had drawn the short straw when it had come to choosing who would keep Allura company on the Castle's command deck, and from the sound of it, had taken out some of her disappointment on Coran's ear. Unlike Coran, the Blade of Marmora was very well aware of how eagerly bad luck watched for careless speech, and its members often dealt sternly with those who courted it. Kevaah and Zaianne were helping with the search-and-rescue, and that was just as well; Zaianne had been starting to get very bored with being stuck up on the bridge all the time, and Kevaah needed regular exercise. Lizenne and Modhri had come along with the dragons as well; Shiro was about to ask how they were doing when Modhri walked up, leading a string of captured enemies, and he couldn't help but notice that the one in front was limping badly and looked as though he'd been bounced off of a number of hard and unfriendly surfaces.

“A little excitement in your end of the ship, Modhri?” Shiro asked.

Modhri paused with a wry smile. “This little group's commander challenged my wife. Lizenne accepted the challenge.”

Shiro winced in sympathy. So did Keith. So did their captive, who had been staring at his injured colleague.

“Still kind of upset about the Captain's visit, huh?” Keith asked.

Modhri sighed and tugged his prisoners into motion again, the two Paladins following along with theirs held between them. “I'm afraid so. She was on her best behavior for that event, but no proud woman likes to be so very thoroughly outclassed, particularly not in the heart of her own Domain. We didn't have time to let her ease her bruised pride with a hunt in the envirodeck, and the Blades are breathing easier now that she was able to find some other poor fool to vent her temper on.”

“Me, too,” Shiro agreed fervently; Lizenne was a hazard on the training deck when she was in a bad mood. “Where are Zaianne and Kevaah?”

“Helping on the next ship over, and they took Lizenne with them. The dragons will follow shortly.” Modhri shook his head. “The Kerogans are a little surprised to see Galra among their liberators, but they're willing to accept that we're your doing.”

“Wait, what?” Keith asked, startled. “You're our fault?”

Modhri flashed him a grin. “Well, aren't we? It was your teammates who stumbled into us on a planet that was guaranteed to have no interlopers. You enticed my wife into following you around, and me along with her. It was you yourselves who brought in the Blade of Marmora. The Paladins speak, and act upon their words, and those who listen and those who see cannot help but follow. Pidge brought in a whole pirate fleet despite having a missing memory, and won them a safe port and respectability as the strong arm of the rebellion. You have charmed a whole planet full of Galra into joining the Coalition! To the Kerogans, who are used to thinking of the Lions as gods, this is direct proof of your divinity.”

Shiro heaved a long-suffering sigh. “To say nothing of fighting space monsters and finding a way to deal effectively with Gantarash. Will they still want a light show?”

Modhri chuckled. “I'm afraid so. Some of the volunteers from the planet below have been asking me for hints, and even offering suggestions. No fairy wings, though. They agree with Keith in that the wings would just look silly.”

Shiro smiled at the smothered laugh from his teammate, not without some relief of his own. “Good enough.”

They led their captives back to one of the warship's main staging areas, where the rest of the surviving live crew were being assembled for evacuation, and as always, it surprised Shiro how few men it took to keep these gigantic craft running. Despite the fact that this heavy cruiser was roughly the size of some cities back on Earth, there were only one or two hundred men aboard. Even counting the wounded and dead, these ships were manned mostly by machines. Pidge came trotting up at that point, jerking her thumb at an empty patch of decking off to their left.

“Dablinnit says to put them over there for now,” she reported dutifully. “We've got some more transports coming in soon, but they'll have to wait a little while. Yantilee's been having some trouble with Ploshurans going after those worlds that Lotor stole the Garrisons from, and is having to juggle things around a little.”

Keith grunted sourly and gave his man a little push in the right direction. “Jerks. Are we going to have to do something about them later on?”

“Probably,” Modhri said grimly. “They've been allies of the Empire right from the start, and have used that close relationship as an excuse to bully and raid the less fortunate whenever they please. The only thing keeping them from forming their own empire is Zarkon, who will not permit rivals to his power.”

Pidge made a face. “Super jerks. Plosser had a few of them on his crew, back before Yantilee took over as Captain, and nobody liked them at all. Come on, let's get these guys placed with the others. Dablinnit says that Yantilee wants this ship up and running again in a hurry, so that the Kerogans can use it to keep anyone else from doing dumb things in their space.”

“Yes, but something about that has been bothering me. Why here?” Shiro asked, casting an inquisitive glance at the badly-bruised fellow at the head of Modhri's string, who bared his teeth truculently at him. “Why Keroga? It's not particularly valuable to the Empire, and they weren't a part of the Coalition. They weren't misbehaving either, and places like Olkarion, Elikonia, Halidex--”

“They'd better not,” Pidge growled.

“--or even Valenth would have been better targets,” Shiro said, unperturbed by his teammate's interjection. “It's not like the Kerogans produce anything that Voltron would be able to use against Zarkon.”

Modhri's brows pinched worriedly, and he turned to watch Hunk and a trio of burly Kerogans bringing in one last group of soldiers. “A very good question,” he murmured uneasily. “The last I knew, Keroga produced gemstones, dyes, medicinal herbs, certain rare fruits and spices, curiosities, and occupation for some of the Empire's more eccentric researchers. There is no profit in condemning that planet, unless--”

“Modhri?” someone across the room shouted, and in a voice that Shiro did not recognize. “Modhri!”

Modhri's head snapped around, eyes wide and surprised. “Athren?”

They turned to see one soldier struggling in a Kerogan's grip, fighting not to run away, but to come forward. “Modhri!” he shouted again, and the Paladins were surprised to hear joy in the man's voice. “You're alive!”

In a flash, Modhri was gone. Perplexed, Shiro shooed the prisoners into their designated waiting area, and then followed his friend, Pidge and Keith right beside him. By the time they caught up, he was talking animatedly with the soldier, despite the fact that the man was being held several inches off of the ground by the Kerogan, who looked no less perplexed than the Paladins did.

“Someone you know?” Hunk asked, waving the other Kerogans onward.

The dangling soldier paused, glanced warily at Hunk, and asked, “You never told them?”

“It never really came up,” Modhri admitted. “I've been very busy, and the Military usually finds some way of killing us whenever we've fallen into their keeping. Mother... Mother accepted the possibility of your death shortly after you left. It made it easier.”

Pidge scowled at the soldier and poked Modhri in the back. “Modhri, who is this guy?”

Modhri smiled contritely and stepped away from her sharp little finger. “I'm sorry. This is Athren, my elder brother. Inzera sold him to the Military years ago, for a theft that he didn't commit.”

Athren made a rude noise. “I was a handy pawn—I'd been silly enough to say in her hearing that I'd steal that landcar myself if I was able. Did they ever find the thing, at least? It was a beautiful old machine, and I spent weeks restoring the engine.”

Modhri nodded sadly. “Ferak paid Hazand to smuggle it over to that private country retreat he likes, the one just outside of the City, and to leave enough evidence to point investigators right to you. I'm afraid that Ferak wasted your work by lending it to that friend of his—the one with the jithaine addiction—two days after you left the planet.”

“That pandering, bribe-hungry wretch,” Athren groaned miserably. “Inzera lets Hazand keep his job only because he knows how to keep her nephews' antics out of the public eye. But Ferak actually let Tzarap into the driver's seat? Isn't he the one who always wanted to replicate that scene out of his favorite action vid... oh, no, not the bridge jump!”

Modhri nodded. “His family made sure that it never got into the news. A total loss, I'm afraid, and scattered over most of that dry riverbed. It took the fool with it, so there's that.”

“There's that,” Athren echoed mournfully. “Gods. That was a priceless antique, too. There couldn't have been more than six of that make and model left in the Empire.”

“Five, now,” Modhri said. “More to the point, Mother lost four more of us to the Military after my own downfall. Have you heard anything of them?”

Athren grimaced. “Yes, actually. By some miracle, Marox and Shethar are here, too—Marox is aboard the Aithron and Shethar, poor fellow, is stuck on that creaking bastard of a garbage scow that is the Hakrist, nursing its cranky navigation system from star to star because the Captain's too damned cheap to have it replaced, he says.”

Modhri snorted. “Probably skimming the ship's maintenance budget into his own pockets. I saw a lot of that during my training. And the other two?”

Athren sobered. “Taram's dead. Shot in the back while on patrol on Umatril. Bentir, also—some damned fool of a lieutenant made an example of him, for no other reason than to show the other recruits that he could. I don't know the full count right now; your... ah... friends here are very careful with that giant robot thing of theirs, but you never know.”

Modhri's expression hardened, and he motioned to the Kerogan to put his brother down. “We'll find out.”

Modhri kept his promises, Shiro thought some hours later. Marox had been located among the soldiers that had already been loaded into Zorjesca's ship, bruised and battered but otherwise intact. Shethar hadn't been so lucky, having been only two decks away from where Keith had stabbed the Hakrist in the engines. He was alive, but the impact had left him with broken bones and internal injuries that would be some time in healing, even with the Castle's medical technology and trained Healers on hand. Modhri's family was overjoyed to have them back, and while Shiro was uneasy with the three new additions to the household, he could count on their relatives to keep an eye on them. He intended to have a long talk with them himself as soon as possible, but there were other calls upon his time...

“There you are, Shiro,” Allura said behind him, and he glanced over his shoulder at her as she leaned on the doorframe. She was tired—it had been a very long day—but resolute, and her expression softened as she took in the scene before them. They were standing in the doorway of one of the recovery rooms, where Shethar was currently resting in one of the cots, smiling dreamily up at his Matriarch while she spoke gently to him. Clustered around the cot were the other two rescuees and their immediate family, and it was as heartwarming a tableau as one could wish to see.

“Am I needed?” he asked mildly.

She nodded. “We need to discuss our next move; the Kerogans are willing to allow us a little time to rest, but they want to see their Gods as soon as possible, I'm afraid. I'll need your help with that, although Yantilee is sending Lantich over to be our native guide. Even so, we'll have to keep a sharp eye on Lance, just to make sure that he doesn't get carried away and do something unwise. Come to think of it, I'm surprised that he isn't here, patching that poor fellow up.”

Shiro shrugged. “He offered, but Lelannis wanted to keep it in the family, and we make those three new men nervous. I can't really blame them for that.”

“No,” Allura said sadly, resting a hand on his shoulder. “I can't either.”

Wordlessly, Shiro turned and followed her back to the bridge, where the rest of the team was waiting for them. Coran was present as well, twirling his mustache thoughtfully as he gazed upon the planet below. He looked up as they entered, and gave them a brilliant smile. “Ah,” Coran drawled. “The heroes return! All right and tight downstairs, then?”

Shiro nodded and sank wearily into one of the defense-drone stations, not objecting in the slightest when Allura took a seat on his knees. She was a warm and comfortable weight, and that was important right now. He drew her back to rest against him and replied, “As much as we can arrange for it. Lelannis has taken over with those three rescuees, and they're doing all right. It's going to take a while for them to get used to us.”

“No kidding,” Lance said with a jaw-cracking yawn that was soon echoed around the room. “Some days, I'm not used to us yet. So, what's next?”

Coran leaned on his control boards and crossed his arms with a shrug. “That's up to us, really. I told the local officials that we'd just been conferring with an elder divinity when they called for help—that is what Yozori is, right?”

Keith nodded and rubbed at his eyes. “That's what Mom says. Galra have a bunch of demigods, but Yozori's the only one that ever got out this far from the Homeworld.”

“Right,” Coran agreed. “Patient bunch, the Kerogans, and they've agreed to let us take tomorrow to rest up from everything. Precedent's on our side, actually; they still have quite good records of their visits from all the previous teams, and know that while the Lions seem to be immortal, their Avatars aren't. That'll give Yantilee some time to get his man to us, too, so that works out.”

“Yeah, and they'll be happy to see him, too,” Hunk said around another huge yawn. “Sorry. Um. Me and Pidge and some of their guys got to talking. They're kind of excited... well, as excited as Kerogans ever get, which isn't much. It's not common for their people to join pirate crews, and they're really interested in hearing how a known atheist wound up meeting the Lions in person. They like jokes like that. And they want to give us a tour of everything, and show us some of the prettier anomalies. Pidge really wants to see the forest that ages backward.”

Pidge gave him a thumb's-up. “Totally. They say that the trees don't just grow backward in time, but they fruit moebius-shaped crystals that glow in the dark and do really unusual things when you hook them up to a power source. They had a mad scientist in all the way from Kedrek once who tried hooking a bunch of them up to a dynamo and a sensor system salvaged from a scout ship, and something really weird happened after he turned it on.”

Keith blinked sleepily at her. “Like what?”

Pidge waggled a hand uncertainly. “I don't know. They're not sure either, but it's sparkly, and the screens show nothing but futures that can't possibly come true in this dimension. It's sort of an anti-oracle, and people visit it to get rid of phobias.”

“Cool,” Hunk said with a smile. “Maybe I can use it to lose my man-eating kitchen nightmare.”

Allura rolled her eyes. “Focus, team. We are fortunate in that Kerogans do not stand much upon ceremony. We will be expected to come down in the Lions, and to land on their main Temple building, which I believe was built for that very purpose.”

“That's right!” Coran said cheerfully, bringing up an image of their future destination, a vast stone building that resembled a Sumerian ziggurat. “Built especially for the Lions after the first team paid them a visit—they had to get rid of some sort of giant monster that time, I think. See the special, fitted pedestals, laid out in color-coordinated stone? Beautiful work, built to last, obviously, but—ooh, they've had to plaster over the carved friezes. That's a shame, since they got the first black Paladin to actually hold still for a portrait, and it captured him perfectly, crude gesture and all. The depictions of Zarkon are all still there, I see.”

Pidge sneered. “Lantich told me that they had to move a lot of statuary into secret underground museums, so that Zarkon wouldn't send someone to blow them up. Maybe we can get them to show us. I don't know about you, but I'd kind of like to see who flew the Lions before us.”

“Me, too,” Keith said. “We've seen images of Alfor and the others, but beyond that?” He shrugged.

Allura smiled faintly and rubbed at her eyes, which felt gritty. Hunk had told her that they'd been asleep for over a movement, but she certainly didn't feel well-rested, and they still hadn't gotten around to discussing that strange Vision that they'd shared. Had they truly witnessed destiny in the making, in a place where all times were as one?

“It's certainly something to consider, and I'm sure that they'd be delighted to show us,” Allura said. “Still, I would prefer to make as good an impression upon the Kerogans as we can. If at all possible, we should do our best to stay out of trouble.”

Lance snorted a laugh and gave her an innocent look. “Who, us?”

“Yes, us,” she replied sternly. “That means no getting into silly situations with pretty girls.”

“Hey,” Lance said, somewhat offended, and shot a glare at Keith, who was grinning at him. “Well, if I can't share the Lance-a-lovin', Keith can't get into any sword fights.”

Keith stuck out his tongue at Lance, which made Pidge giggle. “And Hunk can't go around nibbling the appetizers without permission,” she added.

Hunk made a rude noise. “And you aren't allowed to geek out over nifty machinery or time-traveling forests. Also, Shiro, you have to loosen up and smile sometimes, and Allura, you can drop the queen act. I don't care if you are one. Kerogans are okay with polite, but they don't put up with condescending.”

Shiro smiled wryly and tried to head off any arguments by saying, “Or we could just be ourselves. Wasn't that the way the others did it, Coran?”

“Every time,” Coran said nostalgically. “Even when they really shouldn't have. Let's just say that Blaytz liked the local potables a bit more than was healthy, and wound up making a bit of a scene in the central square of the city. Well, he wasn't the only one. Blue Paladins tend to be a bit noisy after a cup or two of the local rotgut.”

Everybody looked at Lance, who groaned and rubbed at his face, which ached. “All right, all right, I'll be good. But you all have to be good, too. Wow, I'm wrecked. I shouldn't be this tired. Guys, why are we so tired? I mean, yeah, having the Captain around was kind of intense, but we had a week-long nap, Hunk got a nice, leisurely vacation to an exotic locale, and that space battle earlier wasn't anything out of the ordinary, so why do I want to crawl into a hole and pull it in after me?”

“You're right,” Allura said, surprised. “We shouldn't be feeling like this. But what would—oh!”

Something was happening in the Nebula on the far side of the planet. Strange colors were flashing and flickering somewhere near the heart of it, and the clouds of gas and dust were twisting in ways that hurt their eyes. In response, the planet below was sporting great billowing sheets of what on any other world might have been called an aurora borealis in its atmosphere, but the colors and shapes those ionizing fires took on were not normal.

“Oh, dear,” Coran said worriedly, and turned to his controls. “All ships, do you hear me? Relocate to an orbit another few light-minutes from that Nebula, and do it now. No arguing, please; the last time I saw that Nebula put on a light show like this, the one ship that was silly enough to try to get a better look was twisted around through eight dimensions and turned inside out like an old sock for good measure. Don't ask me what happened to the crew, because nobody wanted to get that close.”

To their credit, the entire fleet moved immediately and without complaint. Strangely, the Paladins all felt better for getting some distance as well. Pidge scowled at the flickering anomaly, and made the connection. “That was another of those magic black holes, wasn't it? Like the one we almost hit in the Szaracan Cluster?”

Keith shifted uneasily. “Maybe. If so, this one's a lot bigger. And Red says that something else in there doesn't like it.”

A check of the Lion-bond confirmed that. The Lions couldn't shudder apprehensively, but their Paladins could, and did so. Hunk grunted unhappily. “Okay, I get it. Seriously, seriously do not go into the Nebula. As for us, well, I need a cup of hot cocoa, a bath, and a nap. You guys do, too. I figure that we'll take things as they come when we get down there, and leave all the god stuff to the Lions.”

“Not a bad plan,” Shiro admitted, thinking long thoughts about hot cocoa. “Just one more thing, though. Can you get the Chimera's attention, Coran? I want to know what Lizenne thinks about what happened just now.”

Coran glanced warily at the glimmering nebula and muttered, “Not a bad thought, that. Chimera, have you anybody aboard?”

“I'm here, Coran,” Modhri answered, his image popping up on the screen and looking as worried as he sounded. “Lizenne's down on our training deck at the moment—the bone spear let out a screech that we felt right through the bulkheads a minute or two ago, and she's trying to keep it from punching a hole in the side of the ship. I assume that it had to do with those odd lights over there.”

Shiro heaved a sigh. “Any idea of what's causing those?”

“None at all, nor do I wish to know,” Modhri replied. “It looks like a fight, but I might be wrong; this nebula is smaller than the one around the Szaracan Cluster, but I suspect that it may have more... Things... in it. I'll tell her that you called, when she's gotten the spear back under control.”

Allura nodded. “Very well, and thank you, Modhri. Perhaps Lantich will know more.”

Chapter Text

Chapter 2: The Grand Tour Begins... With A Bit Of Foreboding

Lantich arrived early the following day, and was just as happy to see Pidge as she was to see him when he met them on the bridge. As always, Shiro had to remind himself that the big alien wouldn't hurt her. Lantich was huge, easily seven and a half feet tall, and was basically a cube of bone and muscle. His shoulders were roughly as wide as the Kerogan was tall, and slightly stooped; his long, massively-muscled arms hung nearly to his ankles. He was striped in vivid brick-red and cream, had four small, pale-green eyes in his ogreish face, drooping cowlike ears, and tusks that would have been the envy of a six-hundred-pound wild boar... and a smile remarkable for its sweetness.

“Been busy, you lot have,” he said when he'd caught up with the First Mate sufficiently to pay any attention to her teammates. “Yantilee says to tell you that Valenth's coming along reasonably well. Tranark's being a busybody as hard as he can, which is just fine, and the people there can barely believe what's happening. Except for the food, medicines, and machine parts that're coming in. They believe in those, all right.”

Allura smiled to hear that; she was used to seeing healthy and well-fed Galra on a daily basis, and the sight of so very many impoverished ones at the signing ceremony had distressed her on a deep and visceral level. “I take it that they're adjusting?”

Lantich shrugged huge shoulders. “As well as can be expected. Some folks are making noise against it, that's natural, change is scary, but the rest are too busy getting their share of the goods to bother. You're to tell that fuzzy purple uncle of yours that his cousins are practically national heroes over there—they've been repairing and upgrading the infrastructure right and left, and aren't even asking to be paid. 'S okay. Yantilee's taking care of that.”

Lance grinned. “Modhri will be happy to hear it. What about that ruined city we exorcised?”

Lantich waggled a hand. “They're still a little nervous about that. Gharoc plague's no joke, believe me. The Blades, though, they've got a cadre there that are picking up the bones, and Zoallam's working on the plans for the funereal vaults. Going to be a big death-shrine, that, but pretty, with plenty of room for ceremonial space. There's good stone in the mountains nearby, and Zoallam's itching to carve some. After that, it's clearing and rebuilding, and the three Mayors are already wrangling over the new city plan.”

“Good enough,” Shiro said. “What can you tell us about your own home, though? We've never been here before, and aren't quite sure what to expect.”

Lantich grunted a laugh, glancing at the screens where his homeworld drifted impossibly in the distance. “Already told you some of it,” he rumbled. “Just remember that you ain't the Gods here. That's the Lions. You're the Avatars, the Voices of the Lions, and you've got some of their Power. My lot, we ain't big on empty promises, and they'll want to see which bits of Power you've got. Varda and Hunk have already proven themselves, no problem, I've been sending home vids of what they've done already. You too, Shiro—you've been dead and come back, and gotten Oracle gifts from ghosts. That's rare, really rare, and to be respected. I've told 'em that those two over there can Heal and Purify, and Burn and Freeze, but they'll want to see for themselves, so be ready to prove it, you two. But the Princess?” Lantich shrugged again, cream-striped shoulders rippling with heavy muscle under his tank top. “I ain't sure that I understand what you can do, and neither are they.”

Allura smiled reassuringly. “I'm a Perfect Mirror, Lantich. I can receive, enhance, direct, concentrate, focus, and distribute power. Mostly, I use it to strengthen Voltron, and to lend power to my team.”

“And occasionally to save a planet,” Coran said proudly. “Her father would have burst with pride to know that his daughter had that kind of talent.”

Lantich blinked all four eyes in sequence while he thought about that. “Heart of the Gods,” he muttered eventually. “We ain't even heard of one of those popping up since Zarkon was a pup. We knew the Alteans, back before the Galra got pushy, and they told us some tales of their own. If there's anything a Kerogan Archivist can do, it's remember. We remember things like rocks remember time. A Heart of the Gods! The priests'll like that! They'll set up the big lightning coils, and you'll make the sky-fire dance, I'll bet.”

Allura stared at him in surprise, and then glanced at the others. “I'm not sure that I can. Aetheric fire, yes, but simple electricity?”

Hunk waved a reassuring hand at her. “Don't worry about it. Remember last time we had Lizenne shooting lighting bolts at us? Trust me, that was real voltage, and you caught it and slung it back without even thinking. Energy is energy; it doesn't matter where it comes from, and after that big siphon on Poboio, a couple of Tesla Towers won't give you any trouble.”

Lantich smiled craggily. “Crowd'll love it. Not much impresses us, but lightning does. Mmm. You'll want to do that glowy thing you did for the Initka, too, just bigger. Traditional. All the others've done it.”

“And no wings.” Pidge added.

“Nope. Silly.” Lantich waggled his ears disapprovingly. “People shouldn't look like things that they're not. Last I knew, you weren't an Iberix, Varda, or an Initka.”

Lance chortled and would have said something snide, but the nebula on the screens flickered like a supercell storm again, and in colors that were painful to look at. “What's causing that?” he asked.

Lantich turned and frowned at the nebula, which twisted obscenely at him. “Not sure,” he said uneasily. “We call it 'wyrd-weather', 'cause sometimes it messes with the planet's atmosphere, too. All we know is that there's something big at the heart of it all, something that don't show up on sensors, and it's usually pretty quiet. This, though, I've never seen it this active. Something's got it stirred up.”

“Voltron, maybe?” Keith asked.

“No.” Lantich gave him a worried glance. “Last six times the Lions visited, there wasn't so much as a twitch out of it. Hope that it stays up there, in the middle. If it comes down any further, we'll have hip-deep snow in the deserts for sure, if we're lucky. Last time it touched the world, it was hip-deep eggbeaters.”

The team stared at him. “Eggbeaters?” Coran managed.

“Hand-cranked,” Lantich said solemnly. “Took the emergency crews six months to clean it all up, and they were all miffed 'cause it was lousy cheap steel from the Sandline to the Ringsea. Galra salvagemen wouldn't pay more'n two bepta per ton, too.”

“Weird,” Keith muttered. “Okay. And the tour that they want to give us?”

Lantich ran a thumb thoughtfully over one tusk, but his eyes never left the nebula. “They're letting me handle most of it, but they'll send one of their own guides along, too. Yantilee cleared it with the local brass. I did some wandering before I left, most folks do that, so I know some nice spots. Mostly, I'll be keeping the government flack from persuading you to do heroic things in the iffy areas.”

There was a puff of exasperated amusement from Coran. “Well, and I'll thank you right now for that! Alfor and his team didn't have the luxury of an unhelpful receptionist, and they were neck-deep in petitions the moment that they'd finished chasing those Ploshurans off. Everything from sewing up tears in the space-time continuum to taking out the trash! It was Zarkon, actually, who had to take the others by the ears and make an escape before they did something rash. And I had to help him, too, which wasn't easy. Hopefully, the Galra didn't leave quite so large a mess behind them?”

Lantich gave him a wry glance. “You all had better get a good sleep in tonight, is all I'm gonna say. Keroga's an odd place, even we'll admit that, and it's hard sometimes to tell mess from normal. Just one thing, though.”

“Oh?” Allura asked.

“Fair warning,” Lantich held up a finger and waggled it slowly at them. “Wyrd-weather does more'n mess up what's in the sky. It messes with magic, too, and some science. I'll try to keep us close to the Lions, but you might not be able to call them to you if something happens.”

Allura gave him a curious look. “You have aetheric practitioners among your people?”

“Sorta,” Lantich said, waggling a hand. “Spirit-talkers, really. Thing is, our world's more alive than most. We've got hundreds of different types of spirits living in the landscape—big, small, sleepy, active, elemental, incidental, or whatever. Nothing gets built without sweet-talking the local spirits first, or dismantled, for that matter. That's important. It don't do to annoy something that can hit you with half a mountain, so keep that in mind.”

Shiro frowned, and he wasn't alone in that. “We'll deal,” Hunk said resignedly.

Outside and far away, the nebula flickered angrily, and coils of gas and dust did things that no normal cosmic feature should have been doing.

It was just as Shiro had foreseen, months ago on the Quandary. The Lions flew over the capital city in neat formation while hordes of people cheered below, and then came to rest upon their designated pedestals high upon the ziggurat's walls. They were glowing, of course, the outward expressions of the Lion's power, and when the Paladins descended from the cockpits, they glowed too. Big and bright and noisy, Lantich had said, and they had pulled out all the stops for the crowd in the plaza below. The upper elevations of the huge temple blazed with reflected polychrome light, each color taking the shape of the elemental forces they represented. Keith stood at the heart of a pillar of flame. Lance's blue aura resembled the sort of ocean wave that surfers loved best. Golden crystals orbited Hunk, and leaves and circuit trails glittered around Pidge. Shiro had settled for showing them all his Oracle's Lens, gleaming in a wash of blue-purple light, and Allura...

Well.

Allura was very impressive.

The priests had brought out a pair of very large Tesla Towers, and Allura, after having experimented a little the previous night with Lizenne and some of Modhri's cousins down on the engineering deck, was making the lightning dance around her in great sizzling streamers of light. She was having fun, in fact, and he could feel the electric tingle over her skin at each pass of the crackling energy as if it were his own. It felt alive, that power, wild and dangerous, but willing to play along. She raised a fist unto the sky, and a blast of lightning threaded with her signature rose screamed upward into the heavens; the Lions roared, and the crowd roared with them. Shiro reflected that he hadn't foreseen that part, but that long-ago Vision had been very brief, no more than a quick glimpse of a possible future at the time. Still, he felt that the change was significant somehow, and wondered why that should be. White fire flashed unbidden around his Lens, and he caught just the barest glimpse of something that hadn't happened yet: a whiff of crushed grass, a field of light, a sensation of spinning unstoppably; a song that he'd heard before, but never sung with such power, and the stars were... the stars were moving...

There was a flash from both the Vision and from the big lightning generators at the same time, and a ghostly feeling of triumph that confused him a little; Allura would be doing something very unusual at some point in the future, and he had no idea of what that would be. Shiro put the mystery aside for now, since the intimation was positive and the local Archpriest was about to address the crowd.

That was a moderately impressive sight. Oddly, Kerogans didn't automatically assume that age meant wisdom, as many Human cultures did, and they were prone to getting bored with following just one profession at any given time. Kerogans could and frequently did shrug off years of work and study, often without warning, in favor of learning something completely different. As a result, the current senior prelate—there were five, one for each Lion—was perhaps half the age of his colleagues, although his faith was no less than theirs. That was another interesting facet of these people; seniority was measured by skill, not by time served. Young though he was, the Archpriest of the black Lion stood proudly on the level directly below the Paladins, resplendent in his dark robe, white sash wound around waist and over his shoulders, elaborate pins set with yellow and purple gems glinting on his chest and headdress. He had a loud, booming voice that carried well over the plaza below. Unfortunately, those standing above him couldn't make out much of it.

“Can any of you hear what he's saying?” Lance's voice came to Shiro's ears through his helmet-comm. “It sounds more like Soluk's gronking from where I'm standing.”

“A little, I think,” Keith replied. “He's saying nice things about us. How are you holding together, Shiro?”

“I'm fine,” Shiro said, and surprisingly, this was true. Despite the size of the crowd on the ground below, he felt no more than his usual alertness. “I don't know how I'll feel if they show me an arena, but this crowd isn't giving me any trouble at all.”

“We're lucky there,” Keith told him. “I asked the swordsmith lady on Thek-Audha about it—Kerogans don't do arena sports. If some guys want to settle their differences with knives, they'll go to an official argument yard to do it. That's why she had that big practice space next to her forge, so that people could go at it with the best-quality blades available.”

Pidge giggled. “That makes sense. Lantich once told me that it's not just knives, either. Any weapon goes in an argument yard, and any rank, too. He said once that he got to watch an Archpriest and a garbageman challenge each other over the monthly waste-removal bill, and they used feather dusters. Did you know that Kerogans are really, really ticklish under their chins?”

Shiro stared down at the Archpriest standing below him, seven and a half feet tall if he was an inch and nearly that broad across the shoulders. He was also built like two linebackers pressed together, and had tusks as long as Shiro's fingers. Somehow, ticklish just didn't seem to fit into the picture.

“Who won?” he asked.

“Lantich says that it ended in a draw, with both of them flat on the ground, giggling themselves silly.” Pidge replied cheerfully. “Kerogans aren't a very formal people, most of the time.”

There was a humph from Coran. “Things have changed a bit, then. Last time I was here, it was wall-to-wall ceremonies, speeches that spanned hours, and a very strict social hierarchy with the usual dire penalties for butting in line. That was another reason why Alfor was mad to go exploring in the Nebula, and why the rest of us were just as eager to leave the System entirely. Being venerated isn't all that it's cracked up to be, I'm afraid.”

The Archpriest seemed to feel the same way, and the speech was relatively short and sweet, and it was not long before Lantich rejoined them with a wide-eyed local in tow. He was a young Kerogan, and obviously a Temple novice to judge by the pale blue robe and embroidered sash, to say nothing of the awestruck expression. Zaianne trailed along behind the pair of them, looking both proud and amused.

“Hey, Lantich,” Lance said, making the newcomer flinch and stare. “Is that our official guide?”

“Aside from me, yeah,” Lantich replied easily, tapping an elaborate badge that had been pinned to the front of his shirt. “Gwessin here gets to show you around the urban stuff, museums and the like, but I'm to show you two or three of the trouble spots out beyond City lines. Just in case you can untwist 'em, sort of thing. Traditional.”

Coran grinned and twiddled his mustache. “Quite. Last time I was here, the Archpriests handed Alfor and the team a whole scroll of such, complete with an itemized parts list and a spreadsheet. Long as your leg, it was, and twice as broad, and Trigel made the Archpriest of the Green Lion eat it. With sauce, she was willing to be that forgiving about the imposition, but Zarkon wasn't.”

Lantich grinned broadly and glanced at his companion, who had gone pop-eyed at this little speech. “No foolin'?”

“None, sir,” Coran said cheerfully. “Zarkon was all for inserting the list into the pretentious prelate as well, but from the other end. Well-deserved, I'm sorry to say, but Melenor wouldn't stand for that kind of coarse behavior, and insisted upon providing the aforementioned sauce, as well as an appropriate wine. White wine, as I recall, Brithand Valley Nectar Grand Snee, from the '78 vintage, as befit a religious authority who had just been chastised by the focus of his Faith. She did have exquisite taste, and an exacting knowledge of proper etiquette.”

“She did indeed,” Allura said. “I would love to see the museum collections. I have heard of the Kerogans' skill at stonecarving, and it is high time that my teammates learned a little more about their predecessors.” She smiled wistfully. “It would also be good to see Father again, if only in effigy.”

“Yes it would,” Zaianne murmured, making the novice jump. “And I would like to learn more as well. Zarkon prefers that his people forget that there ever were any Paladins other than himself, and I admit to being curious. The Castle has surprisingly few files concerning them. Lizenne and Modhri will want to look at them, too.”

“Oh, hey, yeah,” Hunk said. “I've kind of been wondering about that. I mean, we've got the armor, but nothing about who wore it. It's a little weird.”

Coran shrugged. “Well, to tell you the truth, Voltron wasn't really the Crown's business until Alfor qualified for the red Lion, and he preferred to work from home. Old Angbard had been letting the teams bunk in the Castle whenever they were on Altea, but most of their records were kept at the Academy. Security measures, you know. What with the various governments sending them off on secret missions all the time, they couldn't let just anyone see the paperwork.”

Lance rolled his eyes. “Right, I get it. Every last little trip out was super-max, hush-hush, tippy-tippy-tippy-top, code plaid, nyeah-nyeah-phooey security level. What a pain.”

Coran gave him a narrow-eyed look and hissed into his ear, “How'd you know about the nyeah-nyeah-phooey security level?”

“I made it up,” Lance said, pushing him away, “and so did you. So, where are Lizenne and Modhri, anyway?”

Zaianne smirked at Coran's offended expression. “With the Fleet captains, having a talk with the local dignitaries. What's left of the Kerogan government is eager to sign on with the Coalition, naturally, but such people always want to argue over the details. That's why the membership contract is so flexible, after all. Allura, they'll want you to read the amended document and check it for pitfalls when they're done, probably tomorrow morning. As a Heart of the Gods, you outrank everybody else on the planet right now.”

“Oh, dear,” Allura said, glancing at her team's amused expressions. “I'll be happy to. Can we spare the time?”

“Yes,” Zaianne said, turning to observe the crowd in the plaza, where a religious service of some sort was taking place. “It turns out that this solar system is rich in a number of elements vital to the production of your Gantarash-splatting resonance weapon; specifically, the rarest of them. The Coalition needs the Kerogans very much, Princess.”

Lantich grunted. “We'll join you like a shot, if only for that. Gantarash think we're delicious, and we don't like that much. Plosser's beast soon learned to stay off of the flight deck, all right, or I'd've dropped one of the fighter craft on the filthy thing myself.”

He turned and poked at the novice, who was looking downright shell-shocked at this little discussion. “Come on, boy, pull yourself together. The Holy Avatars want to visit their fellows, and you're good at showing people around.”

The novice squeaked and tried to pull himself into his robes like a turtle into its shell. Pidge frowned at that. “Maybe we should stop glowing?”

Lantich grinned wickedly. “Nah. It's pretty, and there's a lot of folks out in that crowd that need reminding that they ain't the boss of everything. Want a ride, Varda? The closest museum's down on ground level,” he pointed at a particularly large and grand building a few streets away from the Temple complex. “Over there, the big blocky building with the skylights, and these steps are tricky for a small person.”

Pidge sniffed, but accepted a seat on her friend's broad shoulders nevertheless. “Let me guess; some of the people you want reminding were the ones who forced you to leave the planet, right?”

“Got it in one,” Lantich replied, shrugging his massive shoulders to settle her properly into place. “Let's go.”

Erantha frowned darkly at the three men in the infirmary from the shadows just behind the doorway. On the surface, at least, they looked perfectly ordinary—two family members visiting an injured relative, keeping his spirits up with light conversation and family gossip. Something about them made her nerves tingle, however, and she could not quite bring herself to be easy around the Castle's three newest additions. She could not put her finger on exactly why they made her uneasy, and since Lizenne was not available, she'd had to resort to extreme measures.

“What do you see, Kevaah?” she murmured.

Kevaah studied the trio carefully. It was rare for Erantha to ask anything of him beyond passing dishes during meals. For Erantha to ask him for help was unheard of. On the other hand, she was right to do so. No one else aboard ship at this time was unbiased enough to undertake this project with clear eyes.

“I see three men of Khorex'Var,” he replied quietly. “I see traces of Haggar's influence upon them, but that is nothing new. All men who have served upon Imperial ships for more than a year carry those traces; it comes from exposure to the aetheric shielding on the ships themselves. Athren has more than the others, but he has served on one ship or another for over twenty years.”

“There is something else,” Erantha hissed, glaring at the three men and willing that extra strangeness to show itself. “Like a shadow under those traces.”

Kevaah blinked slowly and tried again. “I do not know what I am looking for. Haggar's power is all shadow to me, touched here and there with the darkest of purples. It is dark and cold and not the same as Galra witch-power, but it wears a very similar face. There is a hunger to it that I do not like.”

“The dragons would know,” Erantha growled; she didn't like being thwarted.

“The dragons are asleep in the envirodeck,” Kevaah replied distantly; he'd been thwarted more or less constantly for most of his life, and was used to it. “I asked the Chimera, and I do not go in there without permission.”

Erantha bared her teeth, but couldn't refute that statement. The heart of the Matriarch's domain was sacrosanct, and she could not enter without permission, either. “I don't like this,” she said grimly. “That filthy witch has done something, I'm sure of it, but I don't have the power to see what that is. I can't even ask a Khorex'Var witch to check for me—they are blinded by their family ties!”

Kevaah vented a snort of grim amusement. “Welcome to my world,” he said lightly, turning away from the infirmary's doors. “It is a blindness that I can only yearn for. We'll ask the Matriarch when she comes back, or Keith. Keith is good at seeing impurities, and removing them.”

Erantha transferred her glare to him. “And until then?”

Kevaah shrugged. “We will wait, and watch. I've asked the mice to keep an eye on them. That's as much as can be done without locking those three men in a cell somewhere, and Lelannis would have our heads if we tried. Do you dare face her displeasure, Erantha?”

The Blade woman sighed in disgust and gestured a negative. Lelannis was protective of her family and had every right to be, and Kolivan would have both of their heads if they did anything to skew the alliance between the Blade of Marmora and House Khorex'Var. “Let's get back to the bridge. I trust the mice with standing sentry, but not with the Castle's controls. I'm sure that they've been teaching Neline to use the defense-drones, too.”

Kevaah chuckled and turned to follow her. “She's too small to man those stations yet. Not for long, though. She is growing, and will be a powerful woman when she matures. No weakling would dare to bite Captain Yozori herself.”

“And no weakling withstands a kiss from her, either,” Erantha added sharply.

Kevaah sighed; that kiss had left him wobbly in the knees and seeing stars for several minutes afterward, and her aura had been overwhelming in its sheer depth. “No man withstands a kiss from that woman. I am fortunate that Hunk distracted her when he did. It would take a greater man than I to please her properly.”

Erantha made a dissatisfied noise in the back of her throat and stepped into the lift. Once back on the command deck, she ran her fingers over the console's controls, looking for other anomalies. Zaianne had made sure that she knew how to work the ancient royal ship's controls, for all that Erantha could not summon a wormhole; mice squeaked cheerfully at her from their own places on the board, and she nodded politely at their greetings before lifting her eyes to the Nebula on the screens. It had subsided a little, although the strangeness at the heart of it did still flash and flicker occasionally, and a portion of the upper streamers seemed to be reshaping themselves into cloud pictures. Very specific cloud pictures, unfortunately. Every so often, a patch of stellar cumulus would adopt shapes that were remarkably similar to obscene hand gestures, and those streamers of gas and dust were currently forming one of the nastier ones. Sneering at this cosmic comment, she returned the favor with one of her own.

A burst of squeaking from behind told her that Neline had once again joined them on deck, and when she turned to look, she saw that Kevaah had dropped into his usual station, and that his lap was full of purple fluff. The fierce little cub clambered further up and onto his shoulders, glaring over the top of his head at the screens. How much did the child understand, Erantha wondered. Could she truly see the malformed lump of space garbage out there as the planet it actually was, the very mixed array of objects around them as warships, and the cloud of bizarre colors and shapes in the distance as a cosmic feature? Impulsively, she tried to remember how she had perceived her world at that age, and could only come up with a dim memory of chasing a cranny-phink under her mother's dresser. She'd caught it, too, an early triumph that still made her smile. An odd noise made her look around again; Neline was growling, low and dangerous, and her amber eyes were fixed upon the Nebula. The bright spot was flashing again, cycling through a whole spectrum of vile colors, and Erantha moved the Castle another light-minute or two further away from it. The other Fleet ships had the same idea, and moved along with her, the Chimera close behind them.

“I don't like it either,” Kevaah murmured softly into the silence; aside from Neline's gravelly growling, the mice had gone very quiet. “That is a hunger in the sky.”

Erantha's head snapped around to stare at her strange companion, whose orange-gold eyes were squinting at the screens as if the image on them was painful to look at. “What do you see?” she demanded, tapping at the controls to bring up the scanners, and receiving nothing that made any sense. “A singularity?”

“No.” Kevaah shifted uneasily and rubbed at his eyes. “Singularities are natural. They are a depth and a drain, but they go somewhere. Nothing of what they consume is truly lost. That was made, somehow, and its depth goes nowhere and into nothing.”

He squinted at the screens again. “Something is working to close it.”

Erantha stared at him. “How?”

Kevaah shrugged, bouncing another growl out of Neline. “I don't know. I can only see a little of it, like the light between stars that no one sees, but is there all the same. That makes no sense, of course. The language does not have the right words. I could say things about shining shadows and fires on the far side of night, but you'd probably hit me.”

Erantha turned back to the screens with a faint hmph. “Perhaps.”

Neline's growls ratcheted up a degree as the lights in the Nebula flickered through a series of nauseating greens, and she let out a burst of angry shrieks when the entire central section seemed to revolve toward the galactic northeast. How much did the cub know, Erantha wondered again, and what was Neline seeing that she herself could not?

There was another flash from the roiling Nebula, and a crinkly feeling in the air that made Neline's fur stand on end. She let out a howl of fury and bounced up and down, baring baby fangs fiercely at the distant enemy. Kevaah grunted and scratched at his arms, and the mice squeaked in complaint. As if in response, the impossible waterfalls pouring from Keroga's ring-shaped ocean briefly formed vortexes in their flow, and ball lightning flickered over the clouds in swarms of firefly light.

“That hole does not want to close,” Kevaah said.

Erantha shuddered and wished that Lizenne was here, or at the very least, the dragons. “Would its closure be a good thing?”

“I don't know,” Kevaah said, sounding worried.

Chapter Text

Chapter 3: Sightseeing

“Wow,” Hunk said, staring at the statuary that stood, rank upon rank, in the huge room. “Just... wow. And I thought that the gem-cutters back at the Temple were good. I've never seen anything like this!”

“I have,” Shiro said admiringly. “It's a mosaic technique called 'Parchin Kari', but I've never seen it done as statuary.”

Kerogans were indeed very, very skilled at working stone, and their visit to the nearby museum was turning out to be an experience. Keith wasn't usually much interested in this sort of thing, but even he would have to admit that he was impressed. There were hundreds of statues of the various local heroes, and thousands of Lion statues everywhere—he'd counted over two hundred of them just walking down the steps of the ziggurat, and more had loomed at regular intervals over the crowd that parted so neatly before them in the plaza at the Temple's base. More still had lined the streets they had walked so casually down, and depictions of Zarkon in noble poses had been a common sight as well. Here, though; here in the cool halls deep below the ground in the restricted area of the museum were all the others. These statues in particular were the ones that had been removed from the great Basilicas for their own safety, and they were masterworks of the gem-cutter's art. Life-sized, every feature preserved faithfully, each statue carved from hundreds of different kinds of stone, the sections cemented together to show their subjects in full, living color. They looked as though they might step down from their pedestals at any moment, reaching out with stony hands to clasp those of their living successors. Eyes seemed to glitter with life, faces glowed with it. There were two sets of statues for each group; one in armor and one in casual clothing, and even the garments were perfect, right down a fraying spot on the elbow of a long-dead green Paladin's shirt. Even the scuff-marks on well-worn armor had been preserved thus, and the effect was remarkable.

“The technique is called 'Padcha Zim'Lodros',” their guide said helpfully, “which means 'Souls in the Stone'. Only the very best artists may make images of the Avatars.”

“Awesome,” Lance said, gazing admiringly up at the image of Blaytz, who was wearing a smile that looked remarkably similar to his own. “Do we get to pose for statues, too?”

Lantich smirked. “You already have. For the first set, anyway. The level you all were standing on to greet the people? Loaded with image scanners. They've got your measurements and colors from top to toe now, and I'll bet anything that the carvers are already hard at work.”

“And beautiful work it is, too,” Lizenne said, smiling admiringly at a previous yellow Paladin who had been portrayed in a casual pose, draped in voluminous robes carved from golden tiger's-eye to simulate shimmering silks. “Absolutely lovely. I had a small piece when I was a girl, a carved dramish in loralite, mildagene, and thurmot. Father traveled widely for his work, even visiting this planet once, and he could never resist picking up trinkets at the street market booths. It was only apprentice work, suitable for selling to ignorant offworlders, but I treasured it all the same.”

Modhri hummed thoughtfully. “I remember it. You used to ask me to hide it somewhere safe whenever Akazia was in the house, because she would have smashed it in a second. Apprentice work or no, it was beautiful. I assume that the Archpriests will come up with an excuse to get images of the team without their armor on, Gwessin?”

“Well, yes,” Gwessin said, fingering his sleeves nervously. “It's traditional to invite the Avatars to a great banquet in their honor, and to make offerings to the Gods. Come dressed however you like; it is important that the Sacred Guests are to be comfortable, and made welcome among the faithful.”

Shiro glanced at Hunk, who was suddenly very interested, and smiled. “I'm sure that we'll have a good time. Are we allowed to bring our friends along?”

Gwessin pointed to Coran, who was standing next to a statue of himself, and it was difficult to tell the two apart. “It is not unheard of. Indeed, the artisans are very hopeful that you will. The only Galra they have been permitted to make images of is Zarkon himself, and they do not like his expression. We have heard of the exploits of the Blade of Marmora, and those of the Rogue Witch, and even of the great beast that rampaged through the Center itself. We have heard of the Ghost Fleet as well, and... well, I must say, Your Greatnesses, that the artisans are praying that you will indulge them.”

Shiro glanced up at a nearby statue of Zarkon, carved when he was still young and heroic, topaz eyes still clear and untouched by what had tainted him in later years. A small bust of the same man stood next to it in a crystal case, showing the Emperor as he was now: eyes pale, face scarred and scored with age lines, his expression as cold and distant as the rogue moonlets in the Kuiper Belt. Haggar was not here, he'd noticed; they'd visited Keroga before that woman had joined his circle of friends, and nobody had seen fit to carve a more modern representation of her. Rather to his relief, in fact. His team had done wonders, but he didn't particularly relish the idea of coming face-to-face with even a statue of his nemesis.

“We can do that,” Shiro said, turning a little further to see Allura, who was staring up into the faces of her parents, tears trickling down her cheeks. The pair had been portrayed as standing together, Alfor's arm around Melenor's waist, and they smiled proudly across the gulf of years at their daughter with loving faces. “But I'd like to get to know those who came before us first.”

Zaianne chuckled. “Pidge has already gotten a head start.”

Sure enough, Pidge had vanished. Keith looked around for her and called out, “Pidge?”

“Check it out!” her voice came back from the far end of the room.

Curious, they headed in that direction until they came to a very impressive display of statuary. Gwessin made a series of bows and holy gestures of respect toward the installation, muttering prayers under his breath in an awed undertone. Even Lantich had to stop and stare, and he had to swallow hard before he could speak again.

“Didn't know that they'd hidden that thing here,” he said, earning a hard look from their guide. “Phashpan, if Zarkon ever found out... he'd had the Ghamparva searching for it, but they never found out where it was hidden.”

Gwessin unbent enough to smile. “It was never in one place for more than two pulsha at a time. You can't steal something if it's not there.”

Pidge, who had been examining the incredible piece of devotional statuary, cocked Lantich a quizzical glance. “This one's kind of important, huh?”

Lantich snorted. “You could say that. This is the Holy of Holies for us. Used to be kept at the Shrine of the Primal Manifestation until the Empire caught up with us. The Priests got it out of there only minutes before Zarkon's ships blew the whole compound into a smoking hole from orbit. Twenty-six thousand people died, but it was worth it, 'cause the True Faith didn't die in that smoking hole like Zarkon wanted it to. In the end, he just hijacked the upper layers of our religion without ever thinking that the Lore might go deeper.”

Lizenne sniffed disapprovingly. “He has no deeper understanding of his own people's faiths, much less anyone else's. Voltron certainly made an impression on your ancestors, didn't he?”

Lantich grunted a laugh. “You could say that.”

The others could only stand and stare. Enshrined before them was a perfect likeness of Voltron itself in a heroic pose, ten feet tall and carved from immense quantities of flawless gemstones. In a semicircle before him were the five Lions roaring, half as tall as the combined form but no less resplendent. Beside each Lion were the corresponding Paladins, captured perfectly in noble poses.

“By the Ancients,” Coran breathed, eyes shining. “That's even better than the images in the official files. That's the original team, that is. Not many people ever got to see 'em, since they were just as secret as Voltron's blueprints in the beginning, but my goodness, they didn't stay that way for long.”

“They're all Altean,” Lance observed. “I thought that Voltron didn't care where his Paladins came from.”

Coran waved a hand airily. “The original chunk of hantalurium landed on Golraz, yes, but they didn't have the technical skills to work the stuff at the time. The Lions were actually built on Altea, to a plan designed by Alteans, and Alteans were the first people the Lions ever saw. Even legendary entities have to start somewhere. In this case, they started with a remarkable ragtag of extraordinary people. Lord Commander Garsham Chambarc Spiremont III, for example, one of old Angbard's distant cousins and the hero commander of some big space battle or other, the first black Paladin. A natural leader, if a bit short-tempered, and was widely recognized for being the sneakiest tactician in three Sectors. Absolutely loved setting elaborate booby traps, he did. Had the bad habit of leaving 'em armed and not warning people about them, and let's just say that the mice walked very carefully wherever that man had been.”

Garsham had been a tall, dark fellow with a narrow, foxy face and eyes whose hard expression had little to do with the stone they'd been carved from. Shiro recognized him as a hard man in truth, and one who brooked no nonsense from those under his command. Adam had kept him from becoming someone similar by opening his world up to better things.

“The red Paladin, Kerou Trenatti,” Coran continued, indicating a woman whose hair had been an even more fiery red than Coran's own. “Professional daredevil and duelist, and the best fighter pilot in the Altean military. Absolutely fearless and utterly without restraint where it came to dangerous situations, she frightened friend and foe alike with her antics. The fights she used to have with Garsham over her bad habits could be heard from miles away, but he could usually persuade her to courses of action that weren't liable to leave marks visible from space. Unfortunately, she held certain extremist views that got the better of her in the end. ”

Keith stared into the hot, tawny eyes of a woman with the soul of a tiger, and realized that this could easily have been him if Shiro hadn't stepped in to civilize him just in time. She was beautiful, but as a tiger is beautiful, and that sort of beauty stopped being admirable when it had its teeth in your throat.

“Thirset Tambard Lannitan,” Coran said, indicating the blue Paladin, a lanky young man with the face of an experienced tavern brawler. “Altea's best marksman, even when blind drunk. He had an instinct for his targets, and his hands were so steady that you could build houses on them. He was all business when he was on duty. Unfortunately, when he was off duty, mostly what he made was trouble.”

Lance had seen this man before, when Choluurush had shown him her previous Paladins, and had to admit that Thirset looked like the kind of person that he himself might have become if Hunk hadn't been there to talk him out of playing the more dangerous pranks, and if his mother hadn't used her chancla to such good effect.

“Father once told me that every tavern and firing range in Altanis City would lock down whenever they heard that Thirset and Kerou were out on a tear together,” Coran muttered. “It was often said that if a building caught fire in the entertainment district, you'd be sure to find those two at the bottom of it. Unsurprisingly, they weren't encouraged to spend much time in public venues. Ah, well. At least they had this person to keep track of them—Releen Perkath, the green Paladin. Genius engineer, specialized in nanite technology. They could do almost anything with machinery, so long as it was microscopic. Didn't relate well with people who weren't on their mental level, though, and was a bit of a recluse.”

The first green Paladin had been slender and willowy even for an Altean, green-eyed, pale-haired, and oddly indistinct. The gaze was aloof, the expression distant, as if they were concentrating on an interesting idea, and the features were androgynous; Pidge was used to being somewhat boyish, but this person was either both or neither, and she couldn't tell which. Such distinctions obviously hadn't mattered to Releen, who looked as though they would have considered the whole subject to be a waste of their valuable time.

“Who's this guy?” Hunk asked, jerking a thumb at his own predecessor. “He looks nice. I bet he was super nice, and held the whole team together.”

He did, indeed. The first yellow Paladin had been tall and broadly-built, with kind dark eyes and a gentle smile on his square, plain face.

“Good eye,” Coran said. “His name was Drunbar Malkennon, and Father liked him the best of the lot of them. So did everyone else, really. He was patient, polite, clean about his habits, and liked to collect interesting mineral specimens as a hobby. He was shy, though, and something of a savant. Absolutely brilliant where it came to xenogeology, but a little slow of thought at other times, and he often let the others roll right over him. He could be very frightening on those rare occasions when he lost his temper, however. He had a bit of the old berserker blood in him, I'm afraid, and he was uncontrollable when it was stirred up.”

“Poor guy,” Hunk said sympathetically. “One of my great-uncles was like that, and the whole family spent a lot of time keeping him calm and happy. He got really mad once, when he saw some guys tying a stray dog to a mag-lev train rail, and nobody could even slow him down.”

Keith scowled. “What happened?”

Hunk shrugged sadly. “There was a big fight. The dog got away and the bad guys got caught, but my great-uncle saw the train coming, and... well, the train won. I was little at the time and hardly knew him, but it was still really sad.”

Coran nodded solemnly. “That was pretty much what happened to Drunbar, according to Father, only the dog was a kidnapped Panukash noble, the bad guys were a large crowd of Baininki mercenaries, and the train was about three-quarters of a towering cliff. But yes, it was very sad. He's the one who lasted the longest, actually, and was able to help with the training of the next set of cadets, whom we see so elegantly portrayed over here...”

The next few hours were spent swimming in a stream of names and anecdotes as Coran colored in the past for them, and throughout it all, Shiro was able to see the pattern emerging. Each Paladin had been very much of a type, he noticed, and the Lion's choices had all been refinements upon those types. Step by step, Paladin by Paladin, even those who had come to their teams late. The Kerogans had kept up with the news during Voltron's career, and most of the complete sets were accompanied by busts of those who had filled in where the previous ones had fallen. Kenard'ip'ip thak-Mudwhai, the magnificently-mustachioed black Paladin whom he had learned of on Poboio, had had no less than three of these successors, and many others had had more. There had been no more than six or seven complete teams, but over a hundred Paladins.

“Ancients,” Allura breathed at the end of it. “I had no idea. Was I truly so sheltered?”

Coran gave her a slightly guilty glance. “A bit. Alfor was hoping to break you in gently, and your mother did her best, but it was very bad out there at the time. For many, the only difference between an ally and an enemy was the direction in which they were shooting, and those directions changed all the time. The Carlumnians had been trying to engineer the complete collapse of two entire interstellar empires, more or less simultaneously, and they came very close to succeeding. To tell you the truth, if Zarkon hadn't wiped 'em out, someone else would've had to. If he'd just ended it there, it might have been worth it, but...”

Coran shrugged; there really wasn't anything else that he could say.

“That corresponds with my own studies,” Lizenne murmured sadly. “Voltron was the only thing that was keeping the situation even marginally under control. He might still have done so after the destruction of Golraz, but I don't think that Zarkon had a successor ready.”

“He didn't.” Coran said, turning to gaze at the serried ranks of stone heroes. “Oh, there was a likely young fellow, a cadet who was almost ready for the black Lion. Zaidrex Thashtan'Ist was his name, from Kedrek. Clever, intelligent, resourceful, and so pure of heart that it made your teeth ache. He also had that budding charisma that people follow instinctively, if only out of curiosity, and he practically worshiped the ground that Zarkon walked on. Zarkon couldn't stand to be in the same room with him, to tell you the truth. Where it came to the black Lion, Zarkon didn't share. Zaidrex never gave up hope of winning him over, and when it all came crashing down, the poor lad couldn't bear it.”

“Suicide?” Keith asked.

Coran nodded. “He couldn't live in a world where all of his ideals had been destroyed at once. It was Trigel who found the body, just minutes too late, and any hope of getting Voltron assembled again died with him. That's why Alfor felt himself forced to hide the Lions, rather than get another cadet from the Academy. Zaidrex was the best, and none of the other candidates even came close.”

Zaianne sighed. “It happens. There is a certain subsection of our population that will fixate on one authority figure, and one only. If that leader should die suddenly, they will refuse to believe it until they see the body for themselves, and might well end their own lives in order to follow their hero. Or worse, if that authority figure should betray his followers, then death becomes the preferable option out of simple shame for basing their faith and personal honor on a lie.”

The Paladins stared at each other, and then at Keith. They'd seen something like that in their early days as Paladins, and even before then. Keith had refused to accept the allegations of pilot error in Shiro's first disappearance, just as fervently as Pidge's own refusal, and to the point of assaulting the Garrison's Commander and getting himself thrown out for it. Later, when Shiro had vanished again after their first fight with Zarkon, all of them remembered how difficult it had been for him to lead the team, and how desperately he had searched for any sign of their missing leader. All of them, Keith especially, had defied deadly dangers to retrieve what had been left of him, dared the impossible, and then cheated death itself. Even now, they all would do it again if they had to. On a deep and visceral level, they could no longer live without each other.

Allura went pale at these truths, and shuddered. “How dreadful.”

“But not all that uncommon,” Coran said, flicking a finger at a nearby stand of busts. See that lad there, the Vespegorian with the orange spots on his cheekbones? After one of his teammates died, he lost every bit of self-preservation he had. Every mission after that became a suicide mission for him. Took seven tries to get himself killed, too. He just couldn't keep going without having his best friend beside him, but he couldn't abandon his duty, either.”

Lantich shrugged. “Them's the breaks. It's done and gone, and we're here and now. The Lions've seen fit to add a sixth Avatar, and maybe this time it'll be enough. You've done pretty well up to now.”

“Indeed,” Modhri said quietly, and quirked an eyebrow at Gwessin, who had listened to Coran's lecture in pop-eyed silence. “And we've allowed our hosts to add considerably to the Lore, hmm?”

Gwessin stared at him, clutching at the front of his robe. “How..?”

Modhri tugged on one ear. “I can hear your recorder. You'll want to replace it soon, and with a better-quality device—the bearing on the left fidelity buffer on that one is starting to go. Don't look at me like that, young man; I'm a ship tech, and I've learned to pay attention to the little background noises.”

Gwessin gave him an embarrassed smile, and Zaianne aimed a wry glance at her sister's husband. “Are you sure that you won't join the Order?”

“Positive,” Modhri said firmly. “I have far too many other matters of importance to see to. Gwessin, might I ask just when your superiors are planning the great banquet in honor of the Paladins?”

“Tonight,” Gwessin said, easing away from the three Galra. “Full dark. Under the stars, on top of the Great Temple, that the Lions may share in the welcome.”

“Really?” Lance asked, and checked the local time. “Oh, crud, we'll have to get back to the Castle soon, like now. We've got to get ready!”

Pidge smirked at him. “Going to dress for success, Lance?”

“Pidge!” Lance protested, waving his hands at the statues in casual dress. “Will you actually look at these guys? Fashion plates, the lot of them, and I'm not going to be immortalized in stone with my butt hanging out of my trousers. I've been sort of toying around with more party wear for all of us anyway, and it's rude to show up at a black-tie affair in jeans and a T-shirt. That means you, too, Mullet. Come on, come on, let's go!”

Shiro's lips twitched up into a smile, and he nudged the hapless novice. “Best to do as he says. How fast can you get us to the landers?”

Gwessin shrank in on himself a little, but rallied his courage. “We will find out,” he said, and hurried everyone out of the room.

Athren Khorex'Var was dreaming. He knew he was dreaming, and couldn't stop.

When he had been very young, his parents had taken him and his siblings out to a festival. He could still remember the bright lights and colorful decorations, the happy crowds, the street booths full of treasure, and especially the traditional puppet shows. Most of those had been stocked with animatronic puppets that played out the Emperor's exploits upon the depositing of a coin, but he had always sought out the unregistered ones, operated by real, living puppet-masters. Those told the old tales, the ones that had been ancient well before Zarkon had taken the Throne. What had fascinated him even more than those grand old legends had been the skill of the puppeteers themselves, who could make those simple wooden dolls move and live for the duration of the play.

Someone was pulling his strings now, and with an expertise that told him that his puppeteer had been doing this for a very, very long time. He had no more control over his own body than those little wooden manikins had, and he ambled around the white halls of the Castle with someone else watching and listening through his eyes and ears. Those halls and rooms were full of family, cubs streaming past him in squeaking groups, and they waved and called to him in words that his puppeteer was not interested in hearing. It allowed him to wave and smile back, and even to reply, but he was propelled onward, ever onward, toward what goal, he had no idea.

His operator eventually found it on the engine deck, and he stood for several minutes studying a device that he had absolutely no familiarity with before turning away. He was directed to the flight deck after that, and was treated to the sight of a lander returning. The Paladins poured out of the main hatch the moment the thing was down and settled, along with the Rogue Witch, her man, and the red Paladin's Blade mother. All of them were talking loudly at each other, very much at cross-purposes, and all of them in a hurry. The Paladins scurried away in a rush led by the blue one, and the Witch and her man trotted away toward the docking-tube annex in a similar hurry. Only the Blade woman deigned to notice him, and he felt his operator use his voice to ask what was going on. A dinner party, he was told, in honor of the Lions, and tomorrow an excursion out to the countryside in search of problems to solve. No, the Lions would stay at the Temple. After all, the Paladins wouldn't be gone for long.

Satisfied, Athren's operator murmured a polite goodbye and headed him back toward the residential levels. On the way there, he met up with Marox, who was also a fellow dreamer at this time. A nod from his cousin told him that his operator had also found what it had sought, and together they went to visit the third. Shethar was healing, but still too damaged to function optimally; even so, others of the family had been by to speak with him, and there had been parts of their household gossip that had been very helpful indeed. After that, Athren and Marox were directed to the staff kitchen, where they participated in card games until the Paladins and their companions returned from the planet below. Athren had been fortunate enough to have been answering a call of nature at that time, and was thus able to see them stop at his level so that the yellow Paladin could head into the kitchen for a chat with the head cook. They were tired, he observed, but cheerful, dressed in flattering formal wear and smelling of exotic spices and sauces. The Rogue Witch, her man, her dragons, and the Blade woman had already gone their own ways, and Athren watched the Paladins until they stepped back into the lift and were gone. After that, he rejoined the card game, after which he and Marox were permitted to return to their quarters, and to sleep.

When they woke up, they remembered nothing at all about strange dreams.

“So,” Lance said with a huge yawn; despite sleeping like a brick, he was still feeling the effects of last night's party. “What's on the itinerary?”

They were currently sitting in one of the Castle's landers, with Coran and Zaianne piloting them down to the planet for the day's projects, and were facing those tasks with varying degrees of enthusiasm.

“Just two or three things,” Coran said with all of the disgusting cheerfulness of a natural morning person. “While you were all posing for glamour shots, Madame and I were speaking with the Archpriests. Be glad that they were a bit afraid of your mother, Keith, or else we would be doing these errands all week.”

There was a soft chorus of sighs and snickers from the team. “Oh, all right,” Lance said tolerantly. “I admit it, we were showing off for the cameras, but hey, we're due a little bit of fun, right? And we looked amazing while we did it, too.”

Allura giggled. “We certainly did, although Mother might not have approved of the neckline of my dress, Lance.”

Lance sniffed primly. “You've got a really nice neckline. Why shouldn't you show it off a little? I mean, with your skin tone, and those fabrics, and the light from those bonfires adding color... wow.”

Pidge snorted. “Save your wows. Soluk and Tilla stole the whole show right out from under us. Can you believe that Keroga doesn't have anything like them at all? They don't have lizards on that planet, or much in the way of spiky creatures, and most of their mammals have only three legs. And their colors! Those master stonecarvers got into a huge argument over jaspers and sandstone, and then Tilla grabbed that whole roast beast right off of the grill. And then those stonecarvers got a look at Lizenne and Zaianne and Modhri, and then I could finally get at the buffet. Did you get the recipe for those little steamed things on skewers, Hunk?”

“You betcha,” Hunk said happily. “And the soup, the vegetables, the sauce for those vegetables, and the salad, and most of the desserts. Also, the rub for that fried pink meat that Shiro liked so much. By the way, that was fish. It just tasted like prime lean steak.”

“Huh,” Keith said thoughtfully. “And the stuff that looked like bacon but tasted like fish?”

“Bird. I asked.” Hunk nudged him with an elbow. “And it tasted like really good fish, too. Yellowtail, I think. Want me to ask the Kerogans if I can go shopping later?”

Keith patted Hunk's shoulder; due to the amount of energy they spent on training—both physical and aetheric—every day, meals had become very important to the entire team. “Go wild, buddy.”

Lance sighed and stared at the starscape visible through the front screens. “I just want to know what Lizenne was wearing. I mean, Modhri looked so sharp in that suit that he could have cut his way out of a bad situation just by straightening his lapels, and Zaianne, you looked like the Queen of all Ninjas, but Lizenne looked like she was wearing fire, and I couldn't get close enough to get a good look at it.”

Zaianne gave him a smile over one shoulder. “And good luck getting her to let you get that close. That was evora silk, and it rivals your soluna silks for rarity and value.”

Allura's gaze became very intent. “I've only ever heard rumors of that fabric. My cousins schemed and plotted nonstop to obtain some, but they never managed it. Doesn't it come from the Core Worlds, and how did Lizenne get it?”

“Comes from Simadht, to be precise,” Coran replied. “One of their geneticists' little projects, I believe, since one of the side effects of their pale coloration was that it left a lot of them with sensitive skin. They came up with some fine dyes, too, and even the old Galran royal Lineages back in the day didn't have much more luck than our girls did in getting any. There are some things that the Simadhi just don't share.”

“No, but they can be persuaded to sell them if you can bring the Emperor's authority to bear, as their appointed Governors have had a history of doing.” Zaianne chuckled. “The Simadhi do produce a number of very fine fabrics for trade, but they tend to keep the best textiles for themselves whenever they can. As for how Lizenne got a sample, when two Houses have become fully allied, it is traditional for the Matriarchs to exchange small, personal gifts of great value as a way of cementing their friendship. Lizenne presented Lelannis with a tambok-fang knife and a bouquet of venadra flowers, all of the very highest quality. Lelannis presented her with three bolts of evora silk, dyed in the celebrated 'Soul of Fire' colorway, and the services of the seamstress who couldn't bear to leave that precious fabric behind. Believe me, the value of both offerings are equal, and astronomical.”

“Oh,” Lance said and slid down in his seat, pouting. “I want to visit Simadht.”

Zaianne laughed. “Later. If nothing else, your interest in their best silks will surprise them. Warriors aren't often much concerned with playing dress-up.”

“I,” Lance shot back, “am as heroic on the runway as I am while fighting the bad guys. Besides, doesn't Allura count as a sort of Matriarch, too? Modhri said she was. She needs an evora silk gown, too, and in seashell colors. She'd look awesome in that.”

“That's true, but she has already received their gifts,” Zaianne said, all humor gone. “Lizenne's knowledge of Tahe Moq techniques is unique in this universe, and you would all have died long ago if she hadn't been training you so rigorously in them. Allura and the rest of you now have the loyalty and friendship of the most skilled starship-manufacturing House in the Empire. Khorex'Var didn't have to throw in their lot with the Coalition, Lance, but already they are spreading themselves throughout Coalition space, turning their expertise to our benefit. Allura, I hope that you understand and appreciate the gifts that you've been given.”

“I do,” Allura said, “and I will do my best to honor their faith.”

Shiro smiled. “I'm sure that you will. Lance is right, though; you would look stunning in evora silk.”

Allura blushed and giggled. “So would all of you,” she said coquettishly.

They landed without incident and found themselves expected; Lantich and Gwessin were waiting for them next to one of the oddest shuttlecraft that they'd ever seen. It was segmented and heavily-armored, with each of the three sections outfitted with its own antigravs and steering systems, and the overall effect was that of a short, chunky, flying caterpillar. Lantich noticed their puzzled looks and knocked a heavy knuckle on the hull.

“Standard exploratory skiff,” he said by way of explanation. “There are places that don't much like being flown over, and will try to bring a flier down if they can. Skiff's designed to withstand the worst of it, and to break into three lifepods if necessary. Each section has a standard survival kit, too, if the lifepod can't get back to an inhabited area. They're a bit slow in the air, but they're safe.”

Gwessin patted the skiff as well. “It should serve our purposes well. The Archpriests have asked me to set you three tasks, your Greatnesses. They should not cause you undue difficulty. Ah... you are bringing only two companions?”

Coran waggled a hand depreciatingly. “If you mean the dragons, they're back up on the Chimera. Some of the spices in the food they ate last night had—hmm! Unforeseen effects upon their digestion, and we would rather not subject the Archpriests to that sort of thing. The others are in council with the Fleet Captains, the Blade of Marmora, and certain local dignitaries. We've the beginnings of a major trade coalition forming up, and Yantilee's determined to see that everyone gets their fair share. We're following the Paladins around because someone has to keep an eye on them.”

“Ah! Advisers,” Gwessin said, sounding relieved. “I understand. The Divine Avatars cannot be expected to concern themselves with mortal matters; the purposes of the Lions are above such things, yes?”

Keith sighed. “Something like that. We make it safe enough for mortal matters to happen, and then keep it safe. So, what are the tasks?”

Gwessin blinked all four eyes nervously, one after the other. “One of the two Great Canyon bridges has caught fire, and has been on fire for most of the week. It is a steel bridge, and the fire isn't doing it any real damage, but it is blocking a very great deal of vital traffic. Secondly, there is a tower, built many centuries ago by an eccentric landowner in the area, that has been building itself taller. Ordinarily this would not be much of a problem; there are several antique buildings that remodel themselves regularly, but the tower isn't very good at it and keeps falling over. Since it has been pulling extra building materials out of a nearby town, they would prefer that it stopped doing that. Lastly, there is a lake that has been doing something very unusual.”

Lantich grunted a laugh. “Sky-Pearl Lake?”

Gwessin looked embarrassed. “Well, yes. The shipping guilds are getting tired of maintaining the launching ramps.”

Coran frowned. “I don't recall that one. New, is it?”

Lantich gestured an affirmative and waved them into the skiff. “Long since your time. 'Bout fifteen hundred years ago, some bright boy decided that the sunken spot between the Morkup and Bulashir Rivers would make a nice shallow lake, good for getting cargo from Thushka City over to Ilse, and good for farming gimoshp vines. Can't make happurg brandy without gimoshp, you know.”

“Quite,” Coran replied, stepping into the skiff and taking a seat. “I did visit a distillery, last time I visited.”

“Yeah, and there are still stories bein' told about that,” Lantich replied. “Anyway, they diverted the rivers a little, just enough to fill that low spot and keep it fresh, and for a while it did just fine. Then the Nebula had an active period about six, maybe seven hundred years ago, and something weird happened.”

“Define 'weird',” Pidge said, strapping in.

Gwessin plopped down in the pilot's seat, looking even more embarrassed. “Well, usually when we plan large projects like this, we are very careful to check the site thoroughly, in case we might disturb something... ah...”

Lantich thumped down in the copilot's seat and nudged the novice. “What Gwessin's having trouble saying is that he's a descendant of the planners, and they botched it. The Assayer's Guild was under big pressure to get that lake project started, and somebody took a bribe. There was something asleep under the soil, all right, and they either missed it or kept quiet about it. When the Nebula woke it up, it changed a few things. For one, whatever was down there liked its gimoshp big. For another, it didn't like being wet. For a third, it didn't think that little things like gravity mattered. The lake's still there, it's just one huge ball of water, with fish and water plants and animals and everything, hovering a hundred cora off the ground in a sort of woven nest of giant gimoshp vines. The Brewer's Guild likes it fine, since they still produce a fine crop of happurg nodules every summer, but the shipping guilds have had to make some expensive concessions.”

Hunk grinned, fastening his crash harness and wondering absently why the Lions didn't have them. “I can't wait to see it. So, where to first?”

“Furthest-flung first,” Lantich replied. “That's the tower. Sky-Pearl lake next, then the burning bridge. Everybody strapped in?”

Shiro looked around at his fellow passengers, who had indeed fastened their safety belts. “Looks like it. Let's go.”

“Holy crow!” Lance blurted a little time later.

They were approaching the tower now, and everybody had to stare in amazement for a few seconds. The thing was huge, and looked like something out of a fantasy vid. It thrust toward the sky as straight as an arrow and as tall as a skyscraper, but it had been pieced together out of a colossal jumble of elements from at least a dozen styles of architecture. Part masonry, part wood-frame, part glass and steel; half Minis Tirith and all urban chaos. To make it worse, the upper stories were stealing bits from the lower stories and vice versa in a gigantic parody of a Jenga game. As they watched, a huge support beam was yanked out of the third floor; the whole structure leaned, and then fell over with an immense and ponderous grace to scatter itself over a wide stretch of countryside with a sound that was almost too loud to hear. Almost immediately, however, the broken pieces began to move back toward the base of the tower, rolling and bouncing at great speeds over the barren plain to leap into their places in the walls that were already rebuilding themselves. This was obviously not the first time that this had happened, since the entire plain was depressed at least eight feet into the surrounding countryside.

“Ah, Gods,” Gwessin moaned. “It's stolen the Guild warehouses. Forty-three bhora of best-quality dressed stone. The Architects will be distraught!”

“My goodness,” Zaianne managed.

“Yeah, that's pretty impressive,” Coran said. “Last time I was here, we encountered a public restroom with the same problem, only a good deal more extravagant. Marble walls and floors, precious-metal fixtures, gigantic mirrors, every decorative motif you can think of on the walls and ceilings, gilded and gem-encrusted into the bargain! Sparkling clean, too, for all that the silly thing often forgot to pipe in water for the sinks, and it was terrible at remembering to maintain a proper stock of toilet tissue. Gyrgan took care of that, so he did. He said that the poor thing was horribly embarrassed to be a mere sanitary structure, and was determined to become something better. It just wasn't very good at it, and the anxiety over that was driving it mad. Thankfully, Gyrgan got it calmed down and they settled on a very nice design with all the mod cons, plus a conversation space and a quaint little cafe.”

Lantich nodded, steering their skiff down to a spot on a high bank surrounding the area and well out of range of the tower, which was already seven stories tall. “It's still there, and a popular spot to do both kinds of business. Most of the place-gods that inhabit live buildings can be talked to about structure and style, but nobody's been able to get through to the tower.”

Allura looked down at the huge, circular plain around the tower, which had been landed on so heavily and so often that the dirt had been packed as hard as concrete. “I can see why.”

They stepped out of the skiff and watched for a time as the tower exploded upward in a show of high-speed construction unmatched anywhere else, and then wobbled and fell over to hit the ground on the far side of the field with a bone-shaking impact.

Zaianne eyed the unusually temporary ruin with interest as it began to dissolve into separate blocks and sections. “There is a life-force there. It feels familiar somehow, but terribly frustrated. Be careful, team; this is a very strong entity, and one with an artistic temperament.”

“We certainly can't fight it physically,” Allura said, shuddering at the thought of facing something that could use a twenty-meter steel beam as a club. “But if we could get a better look at it... and you're right, it does feel familiar somehow. A little like...”

“Like the forest in the Szaracan Cluster,” Pidge said, eyes glinting. “They might be cousins, when you think about it. The Cluster was only one spot in a really big nebula, remember, and that one was an old battleground, too. The Elder Races had weapons that could punch holes in reality.”

“And they left a serious mess behind them, too,” Hunk said with a grimace. “Bleah. My Grandma would have smacked all of them with her cane if she knew that those guys had just left all of that mess floating around without cleaning it up.”

Keith glanced warily at the sky, which was a suspiciously innocent-looking lavender-blue with little poofy white clouds. “I'd still like to know who left that mess up there. There's something in it that I don't like, and neither does Red.”

“No argument there,” Lance said grimly, following his gaze. “It doesn't like us, either.”

“That'll have to wait,” Shiro said, and paused with a wince as the tower fell over again; a shower of small accent tiles pattered down around them, which then began to roll briskly back toward their source. “First things first, deal with the architect's nightmare in front of us. We'll worry about patching the cosmos later. Ready, team?”

“Right,” they chorused, and concentrated on their bond as they had done some time ago, on a planet with a certain similarity to this one.

A few seconds later, they had to do the aetheric equivalent of putting on polarized sunglasses. The young Jensilgen forest on that faraway, unnamed world had been a slow and sleepy elemental, singular and supreme on its adopted planet, without competition and largely unbuffeted by the winds of change. Keroga was crushingly crowded with aetheric entities, which swarmed in a riot of color, motion, and noise. There were tiny ones lurking under rocks, bigger ones in every weed and puddle, giants under the earth and in the sky, and great nebulous forms blew about in the air itself, snagging at rock spires or floating free as the whim took them. All of them were pushing at each others' boundaries and trying to shove each other around. Only the biggest and most active were exempt from this, and for good reason—the one haunting the tower was enormous, a roil of brilliant reds, and it emanated exasperated rage as it tried again and again to achieve a dearly-desired goal.

There is no way we can fight this, Lance said, and the others agreed.

So we won't, Allura said, and bent her attention to the entity in its circle of packed earth. Greetings, she said to it. What seems to be the matter?

The tower jerked in surprise, its already hundred-foot high construction developing a peculiar kink because of it. It had never been addressed directly before, much less politely, and the sheer novelty of it shocked the entity out of its fury.

(?) it said, an emotional impulse rather than a word.

Cleverly, Pidge expressed admiration for its building skills, and wondered what its guiding purpose was. The response was immediate. Like all frustrated artists, the entity was dying to pour its woes into a sympathetic ear, and the team was deluged with images and aspirations. Like the public restroom that Gyrgan had dealt with so long ago, the entity was stricken with a massive inferiority complex. It had been intended only as an ornamental structure, a bit of pretty stonework to add class to the backyard of a petty aristocrat. It wanted more than that—it wanted height! Fame! Majesty! Grace! Interest! It yearned to touch the very heavens and be beloved worldwide for its magnificence and beauty, but it Couldn't! Quite! Make! It! Happen!

Since those last five words had been punctuated by twenty-ton stone blocks pounding the earth hard enough to cause seismic tremors, they figured that this was a problem that had been going on for some time. Let me try something, Hunk said carefully, and opened certain parts of his memory to the stymied artist. While his family hadn't traveled much, virtual-reality tours of national landmarks were cheap and popular, and they'd played up the best features of those grand structures to overawe the virtual tourists properly. Hunk had seen enough of them to make a good start, and staggered their hapless subject with a stunning view of the St. Louis Arch. Lance followed that up immediately with a view of a lighthouse on a clifftop at sunset, its light beaming over the thundering waves. Shiro contributed views of the ancient temples and palaces of Japan, and Pidge added one of the Acropolis of Athens, adding notes on the special engineering technique that made it look taller than it actually was. Not to be outdone, Allura demonstrated the soaring majesty of Altean architecture in shades of cloud and snow, accented with gleaming blue. Lance grinned and thought about the ice-sculpting festivals in China and Russia, and the sandcastle competitions in the warmer latitudes. Keith thought about the Statue of Liberty and the huge Burning Man structures that were built out in the desert every year and set on fire, and followed those up with the Pyramids of Giza and several Egyptian temples. Hunk tripled the difficulty with the Winchester Mystery House, which still baffled tourists every day with its extravagant opulence and bizarre floor plan. Tree houses were explored, and Earthships, and cathedrals; mansions and hotels and Disney World, as well as the subterranean homes and communities that had been developed in the hot, arid places on Earth. Even floating cities, both marine and aerial were considered, and starbases. Allura thought of some of the alien planets she had visited with her parents, where the architecture had been both fanciful and wondrous. Her favorite had been the Temple of Mai'Essseeriopt of the Winds, a structure that had been constructed out of miles and miles of ultralight silk, and hung suspended in the perpetual updraft off of a high cliff. More kite than anything else, shimmering and billowing in the light, flying long, colorful banners from every edge, it had seemed a thing out of a glorious dream.

All of them felt it when inspiration struck, which it did with the force of a falling tower. Shiro added another view, just to put the icing on the cake, of Stonehenge, with an emphasis on the sheer permanence of the ancient structure. Seven thousand years of it, and the mystery of it, the importance of it throughout the long centuries, and its fame. It had imitators all over the world, and even on other worlds; Pidge added that some joker on the Moon had built a miniature version a little distance away from the Moonbase, complete with the appropriate stellar orientations. There followed a burst of helpless indecision from the entity: where was it to start?

Who says you have to do just one thing? Hunk asked. Pick two or three and try them out, then try something else, and then start mixing elements to form your own style. Maybe you'll find something that feels really nice, and then people can move in and help you take care of yourself. They'll have new ideas for you, too.

Gardens, Pidge whispered temptingly, inserting an image of the Garfield Park Conservatory. She'd actually visited that one once with her mother, who had spent hours talking with the volunteers about soil chemistry. The tower entity was astonished—it had never even considered the possibility of greenhouses, and the lure of producing rare and wonderful things was an enticement all by itself.

Koi ponds, Shiro murmured coaxingly, remembering a few he had seen on outings with his grandfather, which had been celebrations of life in and of themselves, from those that typified elegant simplicity to those that had fairly exploded with flowers and sculptures. Lance backed that one up with memories of his neighbor's pond, which even had its own waterfalls.

Rock gardens, Hunk thought, remembering another neighbor's backyard. The woman living there had had the worst black thumb in the world, one so bad that she couldn't even grow crabgrass, but she had built the best Zen garden that anyone could ever hope to see.

The half-built tower dissolved, its various materials rolling around the central point in an unbelievable vortex of stone and metal. Hard-packed ground split with a vast crack and rumble as foundations were sunk all at once, dozens of large round pits that were quickly and neatly lined with stone in quaint patterns. The Paladins watched in awe as stairwells slotted together and floors bloomed from them, walls rose and roofs spiraled out from the peaks like snail shells. Windows sparkled with light and color as stained-glass panes constructed themselves in the apertures, cobbled paths sprouted from doorsteps and ran together in elegant, twisting pathways. Where several paths met, circular plazas formed, and in the centers of those circles rose tall ornamental spires capped with gleaming metal points, like Egyptian obelisks.

Oh, wow, Hunk said admiringly, oh, wow, that's really nice. That's pretty. My folks would love to live in a neighborhood like that.

The entity... well, it couldn't exactly blush at this praise, but it could be very pleased by it, and it followed that flush of happiness with a few requests. They were quite reasonable as such things went, and the Paladins came out of trance well pleased with this solution. Lantich and Gwessin were still standing nearby, staring at the beautiful little town forming up below in amazement.

“What did you do?” Gwessin asked breathlessly.

Pidge cleared her dry throat and fished around in her lunchbox for a beverage packet. “It was hung up on towers,” she told them after a long sip. “It just needed some inspiration, is all.”

“And will need more in the future,” Allura added firmly. “It wants a tourist trade, regular convocations of skilled architects and landscapers to keep its mind fresh, a population of residents who won't mind frequent remodels, and a suggestion box. And someone willing to teach it how to read. And possibly a library, and a great deal more glass, both clear and colored. It wants to try putting together a greenhouse, and it doesn't have quite enough to spare for that project.”

We can do that, I think,” Gwessin said absently, staring at another pit that had opened up in the center of the village; whole houses were being reshuffled to make room for it, and water was already filling the new depression. “The building and designing Guilds have been agitating for a place of their own, and the Glassmaker's Guilds could use the business. I'll see if I can't get the Spirit Talkers to send in someone who knows about masonry, too, and set up a message-wall for it. This could be of great benefit to this area, although the family that owns this land will make demands of their own... well, that is the Legist's Guild's problem, and will have to wait until the place-god can understand what they want of it.”

Shiro smiled. “I'm glad that we were able to sort this one out so easily. Shall we move on? It was the lake next, wasn't it?”

“Yeah,” Lantich said and turned back toward the skiff, although he was reluctant to tear his eyes away from the increasingly attractive scene below. “I hope you can sweet-talk that one, too.”

Chapter Text

Chapter 4: Wyrd-Storm!

Sky-Pearl Lake was nothing short of awesome. It was one thing to hear of a giant sphere of water floating above its bed, but it was quite another to see it, and Lance in particular was properly awed. He was also completely against doing anything about it. Not that the others could blame him; the gimoshp vines were indeed titanic, wound together in a vast woven crown of gigantic stems in subtle shades of bluish-green and rose, with cartwheel-sized, pure white starbursts of flowers growing out of the vines themselves and spreading a faint, pleasant sweetness into the air. Above it all like the biggest crystal ball in the universe was the lake itself, clear and pure as glass, with areas of greenery beneath which large fish and aquatic creatures could be seen swimming.

“Now, that's impressive,” Zaianne said, trying to calculate the volume of water floating serenely before them. “I've seen something like that, as a matter of fact, although not to this scale. The Beppalussiri Electrician-Monks of Yalumatti Quenta practice water sculpting. They use electrostatic systems to suspend fluids in wonderful constructions, and their yearly Festival of the Fountains is a great treat to attend. This example, although very simple, would delight and amaze them.”

Coran hummed thoughtfully as something very like a small plesiosaur breached the surface, snapped a leaping fish out of the air, and plunged back into the floating lake. “Quite a spectacle, I'll admit. While I've never met your monks—probably since my time, more's the pity—I did have the privilege of visiting the Envit-Phoom-Tulioo Ice Palace on Utto. Utterly lovely, carved right into the side of a glacier, and added on to bit by bit every year as parts of it fell off into the sea. Famous for its cold-drinks bar and stunning visuals, maintained by specially-trained and arctic-bred Throgelpons, and briefly the home of His Ultimate Magnificence, the Grand Parginoop-Balla of Vishap-in-the-Pit. I say 'briefly' because while the fellow might have been mightily enamored of the beauty of the place and the exquisite quality of the drinks bar, he'd forgotten that his kind of organism went dormant at freezing temperatures and stayed that way until springtime. By the time that the Throgelpon in charge of inspecting the royal bedrooms had found him and had finished thawing him out, the Sacred Throne had already been usurped twice, and he was out of a job.”

Lantich snorted. “Bit of a letdown, there.”

Coran waved a hand dismissively. “Not really. He hadn't wanted the job in the first place, and took the opportunity to move to a nice tropical island where he made pottery for a living, just as he'd always wanted to. So, team, will we be letting this thing down as well?”

There was a loud crashing, rumbling sound from somewhere nearby, making them all look around in surprise. As they watched, a huge ramp perhaps a quarter-mile away launched a flat-bottomed barge high into the air, the craft skimming over the top surface of the liquid orb to drop down onto a landing ramp on the other side. By the way that the ramps shook at the impacts, regular maintenance was an absolute and expensive priority. One that did not impress the blue Paladin one jot, however.

“No,” he said flatly. “No, no, no. That's too amazing to mess with. I am not going to pop that bubble, it's unique! I've never seen anything like that, and look—all those plants and animals have already adapted really well to it, and I'm not going to ruin it for them, and what about those vines? Those are seriously, seriously special vines, and you can see where they've got roots in the bottom of the bubble to take in water. If we mess with that, they'll probably die! That would be like chopping down a Sequoia to make a load of 'Save The Trees' fliers, and I'm not gonna do it. Haven't you ever considered just building roads around it?”

Lantich and Gwessin glanced at each other. “It's been tried,” Lantich admitted, “or proposed, anyway. Problem is, land good enough to grow gimoshp is valuable, and none of the landowners around the lake are willing to turn loose of so much as an inch. Look, see how much permanent turf we've got here? Keroga's mostly desert, remember.”

Keith rolled his eyes. “I get it. You ought to hear the arguments over how much water comes over the Renaissance Dam in Ethiopia every year, and who gets what share of it. Just about every country downstream of it freaks out whenever someone mentions water conservation since it doesn't rain over there, and they have to get it all from the river. Anyway, what about air freight?”

Gwessin gestured a negative. “There are wind spirits all around the rim of the valley, and they don't like freight traffic flying through them. The last air-truck that tried it was struck repeatedly with lightning and high winds, and had to be winched out of the center of the lake.”

They glanced up at the lake, which glimmered at them. Hunk frowned. “What about elevated rail? Mag-lev isn't hard, and if you build it right it ignores wind and collects lightning for reserve power.”

Lantich and Gwessin stared at him in confusion. “Elevated... rail?” Gwessin asked.

“Trains,” Hunk said. “You know, like an engine in front that pulls a bunch of cars behind it? On rails?”

They stared at him in blank incomprehension. “We've never had anything like that,” Lantich admitted. “There ain't a Guild for it.”

Hunk gave him a flat look. “You guys never had rail. You've got landcars and aircars and starships, but you never came up with rail?”

Gwessin shrugged helplessly. “'Rail' suggests a permanent installation, am I right? Many miles of it?”

“Thousands of miles where we come from, in some places,” Hunk said. “Cross-country, coast-to-coast, mountain travel, and there was even that undersea tunnel that they were thinking of building between some of the Polynesian Islands. Why?”

Gwessin rubbed at his face and sighed. “Your terrain doesn't move much, does it?”

Shiro waggled a hand. “Not much. We get the occasional landslide, flood, volcano, or earthquake, but the land mostly stays put.”

“How strange,” Gwessin muttered and flicked a finger at the sky, which was still an ominously innocent lavender-blue with poofy little clouds. “Such things as permanent roadways have been historically impossible for us. Every time the Nebula stirs itself up, things change down here. Sometimes, hundreds of square miles of landscape are reordered, and completely without warning. Those ramps have had to be moved twelve times in the past fifty years.”

Hunk frowned at the rim of the lake, which looked stable enough at the moment. “Huh. How about pylons and modular sky-rail? That worked pretty well in the Sahara, and those big dunes move all the time. It would've worked a lot better if the local governments hadn't kept embezzling the maintenance money, but hey, dumb people gotta be dumb. At least this place doesn't look like it gets haboobs too often. Guys, let's just ask the local spirits if they're willing to let folks build that sort of thing first, and then I need the rest of you to get some tall-structure engineers and a property-rights lawyer over here.”

Some time later, Lance glanced up from putting together another pinwheel and studied the growing argument a little distance away; a study that lasted only a handful of seconds before the wind tried to twitch the toy out of his hands. That was another weird thing about this planet—nobody had ever gotten around to inventing kinetic sculpture. No kites, no pinwheels, no streamers, no chimes, no aeolian harps, and even flags and banners weren't used much here. Talking to the local spirits hadn't given them any trouble at all; the vast entity beneath the lake was a sleepy sort of thing that only got upset if someone suggested moving traffic through the lake bed itself. It liked its quiet, vine-tangled spot, and it liked its beautiful watery suncatcher, and it didn't want them spoiled. Beyond that, though, it didn't care. The wind spirits were easy, too, and firmly on Lance's side where it came to keeping the unique lake, the interesting air currents, and its fragrant water plants intact and undisturbed. They also didn't have any problem with the project that Hunk had proposed, so long as there were lots of toys to play with dangling from the framework. Lance had to hand it to Hunk there—the changes that happened to the landscape seemed to ignore things like spires for the most part, and tended not to break up pairs or groupings when the land was on the move. Hunk's vision for a high-speed, extensible, modular magnetic-levitation rail line was inspired, with a lovely lacy framework that combined strength and beauty with ease of maintenance, replacement, and repair.

No, that hadn't been any trouble at all. The problem was the local Guilds, who had never, ever, even considered anything like this. The landowners were squawking, too, although not all that loudly because the footings for the pylons wouldn't take up hardly any space at all, plus they would provide a handy trellis for normal-sized gimoshp vines. Currently, the spokesman for the Metalworker's Guild seemed to be winning, but the Masonry Guild's guy was making demands in a loud, booming voice that was impossible to ignore. There were at least three different Engineering Guild reps scribbling frantic notes as Hunk lectured them on fun things to do with electromagnets and superconductors, and the Craftworker's Guild spokesman was too busy fighting the wind-spirits for possession of Keroga's first kite to bother with something as trivial as a major inter-Guild dispute. There were a gaggle of lawyers as well—each Guild had sent at least two along with their representatives—and those were waving their arms and shouting just as loudly as everyone else. Lance shook his head and finished pinning the pinwheel to its stick, then let something that he couldn't quite see whirl it away into the sky. He watched it go with a smile, and then rejoined his team in the rippling shadow of the lake. Since it was around lunchtime, they'd spread out on the turf near the edge and were having a picnic while the locals wrangled.

Zaianne handed him a beverage packet once he'd thumped down beside them, and he accepted it gratefully. The air was dry here despite the proximity of the lake, and the wind smelled like hot sand. “How's it going?” he asked.

Allura flicked a finger at the argument going on only a short distance away. “Noisily, but it gives us a chance to relax, at least. Even Lantich and Gwessin have gotten involved. Hunk should finish up soon, I hope.”

Lance glanced over at his childhood friend, who was in a first-class lecture mode. “Maybe. The last time I saw him like that was in eighth grade. We'd had a substitute teacher in science class that day, and the poor guy got one of the laws of physics wrong. Hunk spent the rest of the class telling him exactly what the right answer was, and why, and I'd never seen someone being that badly outclassed before. I think that he was a closet Flat-Earther, anyway.”

“A what?” Coran asked.

Pidge sneered. “Somebody who thinks that Earth is a flat disk instead of a globe, and that there are huge ice walls around the edge to keep the seas from pouring away into space. And these are the same guys who use global-positioning systems, which use orbital satellites to work, too. It's a religious thing, I think.”

Coran chuckled. “Yeah, that can be a problem. Alfor and I ran into a bunch once who believed the precise opposite. It was a rather peculiar situation actually—it wasn't a planet at all, but a huge space habitat, built somewhere back in the mists of time by one of the Elder Races. The Xor Hanai, I believe, before they vanished. The Gneep-Napp people evolved from something they left growing in one of the garden sections, I think. Built to last, the Xor Hanai did, though, and that habitat was no exception. Despite the fact that the place was indeed disc-shaped, with the living space laid out under a transparent dome and governed by very visible systems that kept it livable, the inhabitants were absolutely convinced that it was a globe. Alfor even went out to the edge with a few of 'em and knocked on the dome itself with one fist, right where it met the decking, and they got quite nasty about it.”

Lance snorted. “You should see some of the weirder fanatics we've got at home. My cousin Maria-Dolores once attended a religious retreat where they—oh, hey, Hunk. All done?”

“Yeah, pretty much,” Hunk said, plopping down and popping open his lunchbox. “It's a good design and they've got the tech and the skill for pretty much all of it, but figuring out who's got authority over the new stuff is gonna take a while. Guilds are good, but they don't take changes like this real well. I'll give them about fifteen or twenty more minutes, and then I'll go grab Lantich and Gwessin and we can go and check out that burning bridge.”

“Sounds awesome,” Keith said, stretching out his shoulders. “I'm starting to get bored.”

About a half-hour later, they had to stand and stare again. The bridge itself was nothing special, being a suspension bridge much like those on Earth, although the fires that engulfed it were quite impressive. It was the view from the road that really got their attention, though. Firstly, that the Great Canyon was amazingly wide and deep; so deep that the Amazon-sized river below looked like a glinting blue thread at this distance, and the cities strung along its incredible length resembled glittering filigree baubles. Secondly, that a few hundred yards away was the waterfall that the river passed over on its way to the Ringsea, and that was more than a little unusual.

Pidge glared at Gwessin and Lantich. “You guys are breaking science again. Does this happen often?”

Lantich scratched thoughtfully at his chin, observing the vigorous flow of the water up the cliff, rushing and roaring merrily skywards in complete defiance of gravity. “Must be high tide at the Ringsea right now, so yeah. Twice a day, Miss.”

“That's not how it works!” Pidge snapped. “On every other world--”

Lantich grinned. “Those ain't Keroga. At least the moons work right, and the surfing's great in the summer. You get waves three hundred cora high on some coasts.”

“I'll want to see those someday,” Lance said sourly. “Still, this is a little weird even for you guys. Waterfalls don't act like this. They're not supposed to flow up the cliff. How deep is that canyon, anyway?”

Gwessin, who had been staring unhappily at the burning bridge, turned his eyes to the awesome depths instead. “Well, given that the land has subsided a little in this area in the past ten years or so, and risen in spots due to the occasional bout of wyrd-weather... I'd say, oh, perhaps a mile, give or take a hundred cora here and there. It's hard to measure accurately. The Derubima Crack Cascade is a shorter river system, but the falls are reliably much taller.”

“It's very impressive,” Shiro said sincerely. “I expect that the fishing is interesting.”

Lantich shrugged. “Not so much in this season. Later on, when the thurjicam sea eels start their breeding run up to the highland lakes, then you've got good fishing. Right now, all you've got here are slippery gellas and frashwick sprats, and those are hardly worth the effort. How's the bridge look to you?”

“Incendiary,” Coran replied. “Also very impressive. Saw something like that, once, back when Alfor and his lads were just getting started. We were visiting the world of Thrangnash, which had an atmosphere so dense that almost no visible light got through the cloud cover. Just as well, really, their star was a purple giant, and let me tell you, the glare from those things will crisp you up around the edges in seconds! That made it awfully dark, though, and the locals had developed a special sort of bush that would burst into flames on command, and they used those for lighting. Blaytz didn't like them, though, and they made Zarkon jumpy. I thought it was quite pretty myself, since they'd bred them to burn in several bright colors. Alfor brought back a few for Melenor, who loved them. The Castle gardeners weren't so pleased, but a Queen needs a few eccentricities to round herself out.”

“They're still around,” Zaianne said. “Thrangnashi firebushes are very popular on Kedrek and Golraz Beta, where rock gardens are the norm. They're pretty to watch on a clear night.”

Allura smiled. “Do they still shoot poisonous thorns when people get too close?”

“Only certain heirloom varieties,” Zaianne replied. “Khaeth? What do you see?”

Keith had been watching the bridge, and with more than his mundane eyes. Attuned to fire as he was, he found the swarm of elementals nesting in the joists and trusses fascinating. They weren't hurting the bridge at all; what they wanted was the oxidation that was forming on the substance of the span, a natural result of having a metal bridge anywhere near water or weather. They weren't even aware that they were in the way, and the way that they chased each other over the cables and roadbed struck him as charming, like watching cubs at play.

“It's okay,” he said absently, watching a string of little fireballs zooming up and down a section of cables. “They're actually cleaning it. The architects used a really, really good grade of steel, but it's a little rusty, and they're sort of licking the rust off. Give them another week or so and it'll look all shiny and new.”

Gwessin humphed. “Perhaps, but the blockage in traffic is causing economic problems on both sides. If you could just--”

Suddenly, a soundless pulse rang through the air, one felt not by the body, but by the mind. Every fire-spirit on the bridge exploded away from the span in all directions, heading for the horizon like shooting stars with urgent appointments elsewhere.

“Nice job, Keith!” Hunk said.

Keith was staring around in alarm; that pulse had not felt good... “That wasn't me! Something else scared them off—whoa!”

It was as if someone had struck the sky right above them from the outside, hard, with something blunt and heavy. Bruised colors spread like ink dropped into water, chasing the clouds away and leaving ugly, pulsing areas in their place. Writhing bolts of green lightning sizzled over the dome of the heavens, and a sudden wind that smelled of corruption blew hot and fast around them. The Paladins groaned and cried out in alarm; that was the same void-weight as before, and it blurred their vision and sapped their strength with terrible efficiency.

“Wyrd-weather!” Lantich shouted above the howling of the wind. “Back to the skiff! Now!”

Groaning, the team forced their leaden limbs to carry them back to their conveyance. Something very bad was happening in the orbits above this planet, and they had no idea what it was.

Zarkon shifted restlessly on his throne, the words of both the living and the dead buzzing around him like insects, both annoying and meaningless. Something was not right. He had felt this way for the past two or three days, a feeling of vague but unwelcome pressure in the back of his mind. Shadows glimmered faintly at the edges out of the corners of his eyes, and something about that was hateful; he had no idea what that was about, save that something in him despised it. Alfor and the others were keeping their distance as well. Not out of fear, but out of respect, and for all that it gave him relief from their heckling, his ignorance of what was actually going on infuriated him.

Eventually, he could stand it no more and thrust himself upright; the inconsequential little man on the floor below choked off in the middle of giving a report and stared up at him in shock. “Enough,” Zarkon growled, utterly disinterested in whatever it was that the man had been harping on about. “You are all dismissed. Begone.”

The room emptied with gratifying speed. As well it might—the last fool to protest against his disinclination to justify their existence had wound up as a spreading stain on the decking, an act of casual murder that had frightened them all badly and had served to relieve some of the tension building up inside the Emperor. Not enough, though. Not nearly enough. Zarkon had a powerful urge to exterminate something utterly. With a sour grunt that echoed faintly off of the throne room's walls, he went to see what Haggar was up to.

She was working in her lab, of course, making last-minute refinements to her greatest project to date, a large group of new Druids arrayed around her. The sight of them working eased his raw nerves somewhat, and he turned his eyes to the large screen on a nearby wall. It showed Keroga from orbit, with the swarm of Coalition ships nearby. Zarkon's eyes sought out one particular ship among the lesser craft; a pale, sharp-peaked ship, touched with blue and absolutely unique now, that had once been his second home for twenty-seven years.

The heart of the Nebula on the far side of that planet flickered in a number of peculiar colors, and twisted in ways that such cosmic features did not. It was beautiful in its way, but something about it was wrong. Something was agitating it, and he felt its agitation as his own. The Nebula jerked, the inner layers swirling in angry whorls, and an answering hiss sounded from Haggar. She was beside him now, watching the screens with worried, angry eyes.

Something was wrong, and brightness flickered over the edges of every shadow in the construction chamber. “Ready the Robeast, Haggar,” Zarkon snapped, his voice harsh with stress. “Now. Now. Stop them. Stop it. Stop it now.”

She moved to comply at once, no doubt feeling the same compulsion as he did. He had known her for a very long time; so long that his heart and her heart were nearly one and the same. Orders were given. He felt the weight of them on the air, and Druids obeyed. He could feel their every movement as they slid away to fetch the final elements that would make the compound weapon whole. The air was thick with need now, and through that medium he could feel the movements of the Druids keenly, like ball lightning sizzling through fog. He heard, dimly, the protests of those final elements, but it did not matter. It did not matter, so long as they fulfilled the only true purpose for their existence—to furnish Haggar with the energies she needed to activate the Empire's most glorious creations. The array burned in his mind, and he felt it in the same way that sea creatures felt the currents when she moved that vital essence from those weak bodies of mere flesh to the superior casings of neoceramic and metal, of energy fields and mighty engines. Almost, almost, he wished that he could do the same, to cast off his own dull flesh and become something greater. Something that he'd gotten a taste of while piloting Voltron, once upon a very long time ago. A state that he'd been denied, and prevented from achieving by fools and traitors, and had been thwarted time and time again in his more recent attempts to regain it.

“Go!” he roared at the scintillating machines. “Go, and destroy them all!”

Haggar waved a hand in dismissal, and the magnificent apparati ejected themselves from the Center in a screaming rush. They knew who their enemies were, and thirsted for their blood.

Shiro groaned and clutched at his head as the skiff chugged back toward the City, and he wasn't alone in that. The void weight pressing down on his consciousness felt like two tons of burning stone now, and his mind was full of dark planes gleaming in the solar wind, and stars, stars, stars, and the stuff that made them flowing in ways that it shouldn't. His inner ear heard strange sounds: a deep, strangely semi-metallic chiming, a booming sound, like sails that could span continents catching an unimaginably powerful thermal, a rumble so deep that the bones of planets trembled at the force of it. There was a scream of wind that was not wind as they knew it, and then the tension popped, leaving them all limp and gasping in their seats, listening to Gwessin's muttered prayers and Lantich's gravelly cursing. Coran was being very quiet, which struck Shiro as a bad sign, and there was a hiss from Zaianne that might have been a worse one.

“Gevolchag-gnap covrosh!” he heard Lantich curse, and gritted his teeth against sudden hard lurches from side to side. “Did Voltron's own Spirit go up there and bite the Nebula on the butt or something? Never seen it this bad. Forget eggbeaters, this'll get us a flash flood of k'ver ichor if we're lucky, and storms all along the river valleys to follow. Or a flush of gitters. Can't be sure, not with a wyrd-storm this bad. You lot okay back there?”

“Could be better, I'll admit that much,” Coran said shakily, rubbing at his head. “I feel like I've just had a tooth out in my brain. Madame?”

“Much the same, and I don't like it,” Zaianne replied. “We need to get back to the Lions now. Can't this thing go any faster?”

Gwessin heaved at the control yoke, banking hard to the right; a long stream of something like pink fire streamed past the windshield and corkscrewed away into the sky. “Not if you want to stay the same shape as you are now. I've had to divert reserve power into the unreality dampers just to keep us in the air! This is a wyrd-storm, and unless the Avatars can block it, we're stuck.”

Shiro shuddered at the unseen forces raging around them; this wasn't aetheric, it was pure chaos. “No. Nothing we could do could block this. Trying it would just get us killed. This isn't anything we can do anything about. Not even in the Lions. Some things... some things are just too big. This is one of them.”

“But what is it?” Coran demanded.

Shiro shook his head, trying to clear it. “I don't know.”

Any further questions that Coran might have asked were lost in a series of wrenching movements as the skiff was caught up in the grip of the storm; their pilots were too busy to speak and the passengers were hard-put to keep from having their bones shaken loose by the vicious jouncing. Just as they thought that it couldn't get any worse, something hit the skiff, hard, and from directly above. Alarms blared, and an emergency blast door slammed down between the passenger cabin and the pilot's station; another cut them off from the rear of the skiff. They felt the skiff separate into its three segments almost gently, and after that they were forced to endure tumbling and shaking so violent that the final thud of the cabin hitting the ground was almost a relief. Shaken silence reigned for several long, horrible minutes, until Hunk groaned.

“Aaargh,” he said blurrily, and swallowed hard, trying to keep his lunch where it belonged. “That was ugly. Is everyone okay?”

“Sort of,” Lance replied, no less dazed-sounding. “Wow. Crash harnesses are nice. How come the Lions don't have those? I'm gonna ask Choluurush about that. Everybody, remember to ask the Lions about crash harnesses.”

Keith groaned. “Yeah. Definitely. Pidge? Allura? Shiro? Mom? Coran?”

There was a growl of pirate profanity from Pidge, and Allura said something in Altean that didn't translate, but she sounded intact. Shiro looked up blearily, head pounding from the aetheric strain he'd suffered, and saw that the skiff segment had landed at an uncomfortable angle. “I'm all right. God, what was that?”

“Nothing that I want to have to deal with again,” Zaianne said irritably, struggling with the catches on her harness. “Well, now we know why even Captain Yozori avoids this stretch of space. Coran, snap out of it, you've had worse.”

Coran grunted and began to fumble with the catches as well. “Yes, but it still wasn't any fun at all. Where are we?”

“Down,” Keith said, popping his harness loose and staggering upright; the floor was tilted at a strange angle, and the roof had crumpled inward a bit from that nasty impact earlier. “Other than that, I don't care anymore. We should probably call the Lions, guys. It's gone quiet outside, and I'm not sure that I like that.”

“I've been trying,” Pidge said unhappily. “We're being blocked! I can tell where they are, but I can't call Shechethra here. It's a little like that aetheric damper that Haggar made, the one that the Gantars stole. Remember that?”

Shiro frowned and helped Hunk get loose of his crash harness. “Yeah. I didn't like it then, and I don't like it now. It doesn't seem to be affecting our armor, though. Just our minds.”

Allura gave him a worried look. “Are you all right?”

“Just a headache, sort of,” Shiro replied. “I keep Seeing things when that Nebula acts up, though. Darkness that shines. Stars. I hear something like steel ringing, and something like... like huge sails, or maybe wings. Something's happening up there, people, and I'm not sure that we can deal with it. I'm not even sure that we should try.”

Zaianne cast him a sharp look. “Like the anomalies in the Szaracan Cluster?”

“A lot like those, yes.” Shiro paused and thought about it. “Exactly like them, but stronger.”

Coran humphed and opened a cabinet in a nearby bulkhead, removing something like a large backpack. “Huh. Ran into a few of those, back in the day. All sorts of odd things lurk out there in the black, infinite depths of interstellar space, and even odder things float around between galaxies. Trigel did some studying on the subject after she and the team knocked into their first Great Akkandar, and she said that civilizations all over known space and beyond had old legends of gigantic monsters in the sky. Usually around nebulae like the one we've got right next door, come to think of it. Old mechanisms, bio-mechanical weapons, the occasional derelict warship left over from the Elder-Race wars, though that last was really rare, and people soon learned not to waste scientists on trying to study them.”

Pidge's eyes glinted at the thought of ancient super-tech. “Why not?”

“Because those scientists tended not to come back,” Zaianne answered grimly. “Or if they did, they weren't people anymore. The Empire found one such wreck in orbit around a blue giant star only seventy years ago. Scientists flocked to it, eager to learn the secrets of the ancients, only to discover that the thing was not as dead as it had looked. It was damaged, but alive, and it took those people and the ships they came in on as spare parts and raw materials. It had a mission to complete, and it would seize any opportunity to do so.”

“What was the mission?” Hunk asked.

“Nobody knows,” Zaianne said, easing the hatch open carefully. “Nobody ever got far enough in to find out exactly what its purpose was before they were taken. They eventually called Haggar in, and she took one look at the thing and promptly sent it plunging into the star it had been orbiting. She never told anyone what she had seen, but her actions suggest that it wasn't good.”

“Maybe,” Keith said dubiously. “She's a villain, too, remember.”

“Maybe not,” Coran admonished. “There are things that even the maddest maniacs won't touch, and you can't rule an Empire if some ghastly, all-devouring, transdimensional abomination has eaten it all up. Come to think of it, the fourth Voltron team had to stop one of those, once. Grandfather said that it was a dreadful experience, and was rightfully miffed that he'd had to sacrifice his favorite socks to do so. Custom-made, those were. Mother had gotten them for his birthday from the finest speed-knitter in the City. Bright green, as I recall. It was his favorite color.”

“Socks aren't going to do it this time,” Zaianne said warily as she looked at the view outside. “We seem to have landed on a hilltop, but the rest of this skiff is gone, and what we've got doesn't look airworthy.”

Hunk winced. “Should we be worried about Lantich and Gwessin?”

Zaianne shook her head, peering hard at something in the distance. “They'll be fine. Kerogans are tough, and this is their home ground, not ours. I can see the City from here, but there is a great deal of rough terrain between us and the Lions, and I don't like the look of any of it. Coran, does that survival kit have anything like a map?”

“Probably,” Coran said, rummaging around in the pack. “Hmm. Emergency bedding and thermal wear, pop-tent packets, collapsible sunshields, enough dry rations for about three days, a device for distilling drinkable water out of any available source, a small toolkit, firestarter, firestopper, what might have been a communicator if all that shaking around hadn't broken it... aha! Map projector. Constantly updated by satellite, too. Handy that. Let's just have a look.”

Unfortunately, the mapping satellites hadn't fared any better from the wyrd-storm than they had. Ordinarily, the image would have been a tidy mosaic fitted together by several satellites working in tandem, but that was no longer the case. Several areas of the map were nothing more than fizzing patches of static, while others were just gone. The whole southeastern corner was apparently playing a game show, and a strip along the top was nothing but swirling stars. Pidge took the device from Coran and did something that smoothed out the anomalies, but at a cost.

“Okay, this image is from the last major update it did,” she said, homing in on one particular quadrant. “That was about a month or two ago, so things might have changed since then. We're... here. About four point two miles on a direct line from the City, but Zaianne's right; we're right in the middle of what looks sort of like an old floodplain, and a really big one. There are a ton of hills and valleys and bogs and canyons and stuff. The actual distance that we'll have to travel to get around all of that may be more than twice as long.”

Shiro peered curiously over her shoulder, one finger tracing a pale thread that wound through the admittedly crowded landscape. “This road seems to bypass the worst of it. Twice, actually. There's a branch here; this one goes through... uh. Does anyone know what this symbol means?”

Zaianne frowned and gestured a negative, and Coran did the same. Everyone else shrugged. Shiro scowled at the uninformative map and continued. “It's the most direct route, so we should try it, at least. The other one's a little scenic, but they both lead to the City. Until we can call our Lions again, we're going to be doing some hiking either way. Can anyone reach their Lions yet?”

“No,” Allura said, standing up and having a look outside of the hatch. “I've been trying to contact Black since the storm began. As Pidge said earlier, I know where he is, but I can't speak with him. There is a field of something, I'm not sure what, that is scrambling our connection.”

Hunk heaved a long, unhappy sigh. “Well, let's get started. Cripes, but I hate hiking. What's the weather like out there?”

Allura sniffed at the air. “Strange. The air is cold, but the wind is hot, and it smells peculiar. I do not like the color of the sky.”

Shiro went to peer over her shoulder too, and agreed with her assessment. The last time he'd seen that muddled mass of hues was during one of Lance's art classes, when one of the cubs had tried mixing together all of the colors of paint he'd had available into an unpleasant, slimy-looking, brownish blob. The sky roiled with it, and seams of green and purple lightning writhed through the clouds like maddened snakes. The wind howled and roared over the hills, baking hot against the somehow frigid air, and it stank of rotting tangerines.

“I don't either,” he said. “We'll have to keep an eye on that, and take cover if it starts to drop things on us again. I don't know what hit us earlier, but I don't want to be out in the open if we get more of them.”

They filed out, and Pidge climbed up onto Hunk's shoulders to have a look at the crumpled roof of the skiff, and she was pale and worried when she climbed back down. “We definitely don't want to be out in the open if we get more of those,” she said. “Whatever it was, it had claws that could go through hullmetal.”

Shiro sighed. “Let's get moving, then. The sooner we're out of this cloud of disruption, the better.”

That sentiment was echoed well above and away in orbit, where the view of the phenomenon was better.

“What in the name of the Amnorank of Itpa was that?” one of the Fleet captains demanded, torn between outrage and perfectly justifiable fear. “Eya'd-and-I'd say we should back off further, but we'd be clear out of the System if we do. Eya-and-I have never seen a nebula behave like that, even that one time when one spawned a close-in binary pair not three lightyears from where Eya-and-I was born.”

Erantha had to take a moment to remember that Captain Secolad-Mepda was a Thrittolone, a people who believed that every individual of their kind were paired with a small, personal god at birth, both of which parties were mentioned in their nomenclature and pronouns. Neline didn't give a damn and let out another furious screech, bouncing angrily on Kevaah's shoulders.

“I don't know,” Erantha said, her own hands dancing over the controls, trying to wring some sense from the sensor data; a glance at Kevaah told her that he was unhappy about this, too. “All that I can say is that there is something that our sensors cannot make out, and that it is fighting with something equally obscure, and both of them are very large and very powerful. Powerful enough to influence what is happening on Keroga itself, and I have no idea of how to stop it.”

“Ain't no way to stop it,” replied one Kerogan Captain sourly. “Ages and ages we've had to study the wretched thing, and we can't do better than damp down a few of the side effects and find ways to manage the fallout. The best and craziest Empire scientists have come by to poke at it as well, and they've had no better luck than us. Mostly worse luck. Some, a lot worse. There are places people can't go anymore on planetside, Lady. We've lost towns and settlements to both local and imported researchers, and maybe the only thing keeping this flare-up from toasting off another whole city is the presence of the Gods and their Avatars. What are they up to right now, anyway?”

Erantha blinked at that last comment, even as her hands brought up the pertinent information. “Troubleshooting. The Hierarchs wanted them to sort out a tower, a lake, and a bridge today, and they're still down there. What do you mean by 'another whole city'?”

There was a snort from the Kerogan. “The Capital used to be the little sister of another city. Two cities, they used to be, Billawar and Doskone. Billawar's where they put all the religious folks and the Guilds associated with 'em, while the more worldly crowd got on with the here-and-now business in Doskone. Worked fine, until some bright boy in one of Doskone's big science centers started using some theoretical physics to poke where poking wasn't wanted, and boom—Billawar gets a big influx of panicking refugees, First Responder's Guild sends out some scouts, and those of them that came back from there alive said that nobody was to go there anymore. Not until some bit of wyrd-weather shuts down whatever turned the ground bad. It's a sticky one, though—that area's been a no-go zone for ages, and the Roadbuilder's Guilds had to put together a whole new permanent avenue, just to avoid the place.”

Erantha frowned. “No one has gone there since?”

“Nope. First Responders is the most respected Guild we've got. Best, bravest, strongest, most sensible, cleverest crowd of all of 'em, and the tests for joining are the toughest of any Guild's. They have to be, since the bad spots will kill anyone less than the best in a twinkling. Sometimes with a lot of twinkling. The rest of us just do as they say, and if they say 'keep out', we keep out. Even the Guild scouts keep away from the really bad spots, and Doskone's one of 'em. We Kerogans ain't all that big on reckless.”

A flick of Erantha's fingers had one screen zooming in on a satellite view of the Capital and its surrounding countryside, and what she saw to the northeast made her blood run cold. Sure enough, there was a ruined city there. Quite a large one, and with an unsettling blank spot near the center that the Castle's sensors couldn't quite focus on. Aside from the smashed, tumbled, and twisted buildings all around it, the entire area was lifeless; she could see no evidence that the native life forms were reclaiming more than the outermost edges, and that cautiously. What made it worse was that the place lay directly between one of the Paladins' scheduled stops and their Lions. A certain dread began to form in her mind.

The Paladins had a gift for landing in the very worst kinds of trouble...

Neline shrieked again, and Erantha's eyes flashed to the Nebula. It was twisting at odd angles again and the light show wasn't any worse than it had been, but the atmosphere on the planet below looked as though someone had dumped something unpleasant into it. Was that what was upsetting the cub?

“Erantha!” Kevaah barked over another burst of explosive squawks. “Above the second moon—what is that?”

Sure enough, coming up from behind that green-tinted orb was something nearly as large as it was. Erantha got an impression of sleek curves and jagged edges outlined in streaks of purple fire; something ridged and clawed, something that rippled strangely here and there, something dark and terrible and hungry. As she tried to identify the thing, a cluster of what might have been eyes blazed to orange life, and it humped a portion of itself that might have been its shoulders. In response, the ridges over those heavy projections exploded away from the main unit and streaked away, dragging trails of purple light behind them. Erantha had never seen such a thing in all of her life, but there was only one thing that it could possibly be.

“Robeast,” she whispered, and then banged a fist on the comm's broadcast button. “Robeast! Hear me now, all of you! A Robeast is here! All Fleet ships, battle stations; I repeat, battle stations, and do it now. Paladins, get to your Lions! Lizenne, Modhri, where are you?”

“We're coming, Erantha,” Modhri's voice replied breathlessly over the sudden chatter from the Fleet ships. “The meeting with the local government wrapped up early, and they were kind enough to show us their observatory. We were trying to get a better look at what the Nebula was up to when the thing warped in, and none of us are wasting any time in getting back to our ships. Lizenne, have you... no? That's odd. Erantha, can you contact the Paladins, or Zaianne or Coran?”

Increasingly worried now, Erantha tried again, and got nothing. “No. I have no idea where they are.”

“Tajvek,” Modhri sighed. “Do your best to keep the Castle intact, then. All we can do now is hope, and to survive whatever this one throws at us.”

The monster above the moon and its many secondary units roared a challenge, a sound as of massed voices screaming in berserk rage, and Erantha was soon too busy to ask any more questions.

Chapter Text

Interlude #3: A Time To Remember

“What do they want of us?” Lotor demanded irritably some time later, although his companions knew that his hot tone concealed nerves rather than anger. A trio of Kolkurra had asked for them by name, and the Hakkox overseer had granted that request without complaint.

“Calm down,” Thask replied quietly as they headed down the hall toward their unlooked-for assignment. “It's a sort of religious observance, and it requires a partner, is all. We won't be harmed. You may even enjoy it. I do.”

Tannok, the third member of their group, scratched under his collar and rumbled, “How so?”

“For one thing, you won't itch as much for a while.”

Tannok's bushy eyebrows lifted; his ancestors hailed from the northern Domains of Galran Prime and he was by far the shaggiest man in their group.

“Every so often, the Kolkurra feel the need to reaffirm their sacred oaths to protect and care for those they guard,” Thask continued. “They meditate upon their duties while performing a necessary service for the lowest-ranking members of the household. The action itself is an offering of humility to their gods, but there is no reason why it can't be a pleasant experience for both parties. Basically, they're going to groom us.”

“Groom us?” Tannok asked, surprised, “What, like graal-cats?”

“Yes. We're furry, and they like that. Fur-bearing creatures are rare on this world, and very few of them have been domesticated. You'll get a good brushing-out, and don't tell me that you don't need it.”

Tannok smiled sourly; as good as the evening visits to the bathing chambers had been for them, they had caused mats to form in Tannok's fur, and Lotor's long silvery hair had sprouted its own fair share of of tangles. The luxury of bathing had not come with combs, alas, and they had had to make do with their fingers.

Lotor scowled. Certain of the Kolkurra made him nervous. “The one who asked for us was the one who likes to pet me. Will she ask for anything else, I wonder?”

“No,” Thask reassured him. “Palku thinks that you're pretty, yes, but as a graal-cat is pretty. Your silver hair and bluish fur are very rare here. Just let her do it, boy. It's easier duty than spending the day scrubbing out the restrooms on the public levels again.”

Lotor growled, but subsided. Thask was right, of course. After six years in this place, he was entitled to be right all the time. Now, if only he hadn't been right about there being no escape. Lotor had no idea of how long he and his men had been here, a month or two since their capture at least, and there had been no word of any real attempts by the Empire to recover them, nor had any of them found any way of reclaiming their freedom. The shock of his father's abandonment of them had worn off some time ago, but Lotor still carried a secret hope that the Emperor would send rescue anyway. In the meantime, he had no choice but to do as he was told.

“Why'd they ask for us in particular?” Tannok asked, interrupting Lotor's glum thoughts.

Thask rubbed at the faint scar where Lotor had struck him on his first day here. “A little penance, a little prudence, and a little indulgence. Murkasi was one of the guards standing by when overseer Elik and I took Lotor to my owner that first time, and wasn't able to stop him from hitting me.”

“I said that I was sorry about that,” Lotor grumbled.

“I know.” Thask said. “Murkasi had expected you to be violent, but not at me, and didn't move in time. He's been feeling guilty about that ever since, and will use this observance to absolve himself of that. I'm fond of him, and it will be good for both of us. Palku knows that she frightens you, Lotor.”

Lotor glared at him; he didn't like having to admit to being afraid of anything, and the fact that Thask saw right past his bold facade annoyed him. Still, there was no use in denying the truth around the old man, particularly after how badly he'd fared during their one escape attempt. “Well, after those stories you told us--”

Thask smiled grimly and shook his head. “Those were young Kolkurra. Kolkurra mature very differently than we do; their childhoods are very short, lasting only about eight years, and their approximate age can be told by their colors. Their pups' spots and mane-streaks are silver when they're born, which deepen into bright gold in their eighth year; at that time, they become very dangerous, and not just to us. It is at that time when they have their adult strength, but none of the training, the patience, or the empathy toward others that the full adults have. Young Kolkurra at best are boisterous, opinionated, and aggressive, and at worst they can become killers. The whole bondservice system was developed as a way of dealing with these dangerous youths, holding them reasonably harmless for the ten years it takes before their gold deepens into bronze, and even so, not all of them survive it. The less-violent ones are often sent to training camps to teach them self-control, and they are often posted to places where such rough traits are actually useful. Places where newly-bonded violent criminals might still cause trouble. Places where a sufficiently desperate slave might actually stand some chance of running away. They can be very hard on those who refuse to obey. I will not lie; by the time that my owner first brought me in, I was terrified of them, and it took some time for the household guards to convince me that I would take no harm from their hands. Palku was among the guards in the communications room when my owner spoke to your father, and she has noticed since then that you're a bit high-strung, and in need of gentling.”

Lotor hissed. “I am not a feral animal!”

“No, but you are stressed, and you need to relax,” Thask said, lifting a hand to pat Lotor on the shoulder, and quirked his eyebrows ironically when the younger man jerked reflexively away. “See? I haven't the strength to injure you, and yet you jump at my touch.”

Tannok chuckled. “He's got you there, Prince. What about me?”

“You're very furry, and Leonar has a weakness for lots of soft fur. Ah, and that reminds me...” Task fixed them both with a stern look. “These rituals come in two parts. Graan kura Sholviru is the Offering of Service—that's the bit where they brush and polish us. The next part might alarm you a little, you in particular, Lotor. After the grooming session comes Graan kura Phaosuur, the Offering of Protection. What that means is that they will cradle you like a cub and hold you close against them. Don't fight them, not even if they start rubbing you behind the ears. You won't be able to pull loose, and you'll hurt their feelings if you try. It is very important to them that those they protect come to trust them. Relax, stay quiet, and let them cuddle you until their meditations are complete. I recognize that you might see the episode as demeaning, but remember that you have already been demeaned, and you are not permitted to defend yourself. The Kolkurra are your protection now against any outside threats, and it is always a good idea to be on good terms with your guardians.”

Lotor humphed. “And if I befriend the creature, will she help me escape?”

Thask sighed and flicked Lotor a reproving look. “Don't be silly. You're the property of her liege-lord and that sort of thing is absolutely forbidden. She might ask if she might buy you from him later on, but that's as far as it goes. You aren't required to like her, but you are required to obey. That's what being a slave is all about, really. Ah, here...”

They had come to a room near the bathing chambers where the doors stood wide open, revealing three very large persons within. Lotor and Tannok stared; they'd never seen Kolkurra without their armor on, and it was strange to see them so now, barefoot and dressed in loose trousers and sleeveless shirts, their lack of martial gear somehow making them look even more imposing. Lotor gazed at the powerful torsos and well-muscled limbs and couldn't help but remember Sendak, who'd been something of a giant. Kolkurra were much taller, with glossy night-black hide speckled here and there with scatterings of bronze spots and large, gleaming green eyes in their long canine faces. Each one had large, upstanding triangular ears and shoulder-length manes of stiff, bronze-striped dark hair. An attractive but rather intimidating people, and they spoke to each other in deep, quiet voices that carried well on the still air.

“--actually got to meet them,” one of the males was saying as he sorted a selection of combs. “They're small, he said. The biggest of them is only about this high--” he held a four-fingered hand out on a level that was roughly the same as Lotor's own height, “--and the littlest is no bigger than a month-old pup! Small but brilliant, he told me.”

“They would have to be,” the female—Palku—replied. “Dull creatures do not get chosen for that work. Besides, it was made by a small people. Size is no indicator of competence, or lack of it.”

“That's so,” the first said easily, “but they're omnivores, and they startle easily, and often blurt words impulsively when startled. The large one called him something odd when they first met—Anubis Knight.”

The third hummed thoughtfully. “I can understand 'Knight', I think. An old term for an elite warrior, right? Often a mounted warrior, and considered to be among the most honorable. A complimentary expression, actually. What does Anubis mean? It has a nice sound to it.”

“Anubis was a god,” the first replied, showing rows of triangular teeth and a curling, ruddy tongue in a smile. “From one of their ancient pantheons. A guardian of the dead, and one who escorted souls on the dangerous journey to the afterlife. We resemble the representations, it seems.”

“That is... very appropriate,” Palku said, “and a kind thing to say. It is nice to think that an entire people once trusted the protection of someone like us, even after death. I like that they recognize that we do not let even death get in the way of our duty. Knowing their people will be interesting.” She paused for a moment, ears rotating this way and that. “I hear your heartbeat, Thask. Come in, and bring those two with you.”

“Caught,” Thask murmured dryly to his companions, “come on.”

Lotor and Tannok followed him a little warily into the room. Thask delivered himself without hesitation into the hands of the slightly shorter male; Lotor and Tannok followed his lead, and soon found themselves divested of their suits and settled down onto pads on the floor, with the three Kolkurra sitting down behind them. Lotor bore Palku's ministrations stiffly, at least at first, and not just because their owner considered underwear unnecessary; nobody had combed his hair out for him since he'd been very little, and he was not sure that he liked the feel of Palku's hands on him, or the huge warm proximity of her body. Still, once the worst of the tangles were out of his hair, the feeling of the soft brushes pulling dead fur from his dorsal coat was very soothing, and he felt himself relaxing despite his earlier misgivings. Glances to either side revealed that he was not alone in that. Thask was enjoying himself visibly, leaning into the brush strokes while the huge Kolkurra carefully negotiated between the long stripes of scar tissue. Tannok was sprawled shamelessly on his pad already, grunting in pleasure while the larger Kolkurra male pulled several cubs' worth of shed fur out of his pelt. Lotor puffed a faint breath and closed his eyes. Perhaps if he pretended that Palku was one of his own serving-women back home...

Or his mother.

That surprised him a little. He hadn't thought about his mother in years. She'd been of a wealthy if not particularly noble Lineage, and had been a second choice—the woman originally promised to his father had vanished along with one of her brothers following a bitter feud within the family itself. His mother had been handsome rather than beautiful, and she had hated the carefully-constructed cage of politics and responsibility that had forced her into becoming one of Zarkon's Consorts. She'd been dutiful enough to give the Emperor a fine clutch of sons, but no daughter, and had gone back to her family's home the moment that Lotor and his brothers had come of age. She had combed his hair morning and evening in the days before he'd grown embarrassed about that sort of thing, and after she had left he had never permitted anyone to touch his scalp but himself. Her hands had been gentle, but her face had been hard when he had watched her in her vanity's mirror. He remembered asking her about that, not long before she had left.

I am unhappy in my marriage, she had told him. I did not choose your father; my Matriarch forced me into it, and believe me, she will pay for that! You and your brothers I love dearly, but never your father.

He'd been upset about that, having idolized his sire even then, pointing out the great privileges that she had received as an Imperial Consort, and the great responsibilities to her husband and her Empire that had come along with them.

She had only shaken her head. I am no Consort, child, I am a means to an end, her voice echoed bitterly in his memory. Your father has forgotten how to love—both how to give it and how to receive it. According to Laws older than he is, he must have children to stand ready to support him, but he has forgotten why. If he has any Consort at all, it is his witch. She's older than he is, and is far closer to him than any other living creature.... and is just as forgetful of certain things as he is, if not more so. She is the reason you have no sister, Lotor. I would not permit a daughter to be born into your clutch, for Haggar would have taken her for her own aims before the cub could walk. I will not sacrifice any daughter of mine to her greed!

He hadn't known what she'd meant by that at the time, and it had taken him several more years to discover the truth. Lotor scowled, eyes still clenched tight shut, and flinched slightly when a large hand brushed his cheek. His mother had touched his face like that one last time, just before he'd left. He'd promised her that he would get rid of his father's ghoulish sorceress when he became Emperor...

You will never be Emperor, his mother had told him, caressing his cheek, her eyes full of regret. I am the only person who will tell you this, for no one else will dare. Zarkon will not step down while he lives. Haggar will not permit him to die. The Druids protect them both with their lives, and the entire military also. Only when Zarkon's wish comes true will they finally meet their end, and that may spell the end of the Empire. You cannot rule what does not exist, my son.

He'd grown up with the knowledge of his father's greatest desire, of course. All the starry universe knew what he wanted the most, and the Emperor's sons all were practically born knowing it. The Lions, particularly the black Lion; Zarkon would destroy every living world in the cosmos if that was what it took to bring the Lion back into his possession. All his life he had known that the Lions had been stolen long ago and hidden by a weak and foolish man, and he could not quite see how their recovery could harm someone so strong as his father.

They will not come alone, she had whispered into his ear. For ten thousand years he has searched, and for ten thousand years there has been no sign. The Lions govern their own fate, Lotor, and if they will not have somebody, they cannot be forced. They must have Paladins, but the choice of candidate is ultimately theirs. Your father has had his turn, and he failed them, and they will not have him again. His rage at this rejection will know no bounds, and those five poor souls will be forced to kill him to keep him from destroying everything. Perhaps you will find one and perhaps it will choose you. Perhaps you will capture them and their Paladins and bring them to your father as a gift. Perhaps you will simply stand aside and watch as he and they fight it out for themselves, and then try to pick up the pieces afterward. I cannot tell you what will happen. Know that I love you, Lotor, and that I hope for the best. Do your duty as you see fit, and be careful of making promises that you cannot keep.

Palku laid a hand on his shoulder and pushed him down onto his side, rubbing the brush briskly along his flank and leg. He opened one eye a little and saw tufts of shed fur floating down lightly onto the mat; no one had done this to him since he'd lost the last of his baby coat, and yet he couldn't quite get up the enthusiasm to protest this treatment. Tilting his head up, he saw that Tannok's Kolkurra—Leonar, he thought the fellow's name was—had raked and was still raking a very impressive pile of hairballs off of his crewman's back. Thask, he saw when Palku rolled him over to get at his other side, seemed to be dozing while Murkasi slowly and carefully worked his way down the old man's body. The care was necessary. There were old lash marks under the graying fur, well-healed but still present, and the protruding bones looked as fragile as a bird's. His collar, cuffs, and ear tag gleamed dully in the dim light, and Lotor saw that the fur had worn away to bare skin under those bonds. Lotor closed his eyes again, vaguely sickened by the sight. The Galra military chose tall, strong, aggressive young men for its soldiers and trained them to a physical and mental peak; to see the ruin of that so plainly was heartbreaking, and he wondered how long it had taken these giants to win the old man's trust.

He was rolled onto his back and the soft brush applied to his belly and chest, and one large hand laid a palm along his cheek, the fingertips curling around his ear, stroking the nerve knots. Lotor reacted instinctively, his eyes snapping open and his hands catching Palku's wrist. Palku paused, motionless except for the fingertips behind his ear; Lotor trembled and relaxed, almost against his will. He felt none of the rush of soft emotions that he'd been told he would feel when a Galra woman did that. Palku was not of his kind and could not trigger that reaction. It was very soothing, however, and he stared into her green eyes, lying very still as the soft brush completed its circuit around his abdomen and inner thighs. She'd done this numerous times before, he realized a little muzzily, and knew well how to keep a Galra man calm while she was working where he was most vulnerable. Ah, gods, his hands were child-sized compared to hers...

There was a sigh to his right. Murkasi had gathered Thask up into his arms like a father cradling a cub and was holding him close, long head bowed protectively over Thask's bony body. Thask had curled up like that theoretical cub and had apparently fallen asleep in the Kolkurra's arms, resting in perfect safety. A few minutes later, strong arms encircled Lotor as well, and he rested his head more or less willingly against the huge shoulder, trying to remember if his father had ever held him like this. His mother, yes, many times. When he was little, he'd sought this comfort from her whenever he'd been frightened, hurt, or sick. He remembered her warmth, her strength, her scent, her reassuring voice telling him that everything would be all right in a little time, and mostly it had been. Had his father ever done this?

A memory stirred, down at the bottom of his mind, old and dim and vague. He'd been very, very small, wrestling with his brothers and too young to know that biting was animal behavior yet. He and his brothers had still had their baby fur then, and pulled tufts of it from each other in their infant ferocity. That privilege should have been his sister's, but he'd had no sister.

His father and the witch had come then. He remembered them as a mountain and a thunderstorm, forces of nature too big and powerful for a cub to understand. He'd been picked up and held by monster hands and examined by two pairs of monster eyes, one pair glowing a hot yellow, the other pair pale and cold. He'd been treated not as a beloved son, but as a newborn animal; an animal that had value, perhaps, but an animal still. Lotor remembered that he hadn't liked the way that they'd smelled. The thunderstorm had stunk of something both sweet and foul, and the mountain...

The mountain had smelled of metal, Lotor realized now. Not like a drone or a Sentry, but a strange alien tang that he hadn't recognized until just this moment, and hadn't really registered it when he'd caught that same scent earlier in the past year, when he'd run through the streets of Thek-Audha with the Paladins. The Lion, Lotor realized. His father had smelled of Lion. The Emperor had smelled, to his infant self, like a machine that could and would kill millions to achieve an aim. Like a weapon. Lotor recalled that his infant self had squawked indignantly at this assault upon its senses and had bitten the hand that had held it. His father had put him down at that point and had gone away, taking his thunderstorm with him. Neither of them had ever come back.

Lotor heard the strange rhythm of an alien heartbeat under his ear and breathed a faintly musky alien scent, but it was deeply comforting all the same. In the early days of the first year of Academy, he'd heard some of the other young trainees crying for their fathers in the night, and had scorned them for their weakness. Now he wondered if he should have envied them instead, for they had possessed something that he had not. Your father has forgotten how to love, his mother's voice whispered to him again from the depths of the past, and he whimpered faintly when he found that he could not immediately recall her name.

Palku's hand patted him gently on the back, and he closed his eyes and gave himself up to her embrace.

Lotor was somewhat subdued when the Kolkurra let them go, although his two companions seemed to be in good spirits. Tannok especially looked much more comfortable now, and Thask had a faint, dreamy smile on his face that made him look years younger.

“Not what you expected, boy?” Thask asked quietly, helping him back into his jumpsuit.

“I didn't know what to expect,” Lotor muttered. “I'm not sure how I feel about it now. Palku seemed satisfied.”

“Yes.” Thask rubbed at one shoulder and yawned. “Do not be surprised if she asks for you again later. Leonar was having a fine time with you, Tannok.”

Tannok snorted and scratched the back of his neck vigorously with both hands, dislodging yet more loose fur. “Oh, yeah. Felt good, too, and I got a good nap in. Back home, there's a spa that'll do the same, but it costs a cool two hundred and seventy thousand gac per month for a membership, and they throw you out if you cuddle the employees.”

Lotor humphed, straightening his suit as much as he could. “You are thrifty; here, all it cost you was your freedom.”

Tannok merely shrugged at this acid comment. “I'm a common soldier, Prince. Military men don't have much freedom to start with, and we get into all kinds of stupid situations while following orders. Half the time our commanders will run off and save their own skins while we're left to take the consequences for them, and then they declare us dead so that the brass doesn't have to worry about expensive and embarrassing things like trading hostages or rescuing prisoners. I might've been killed or crippled when Voltron chopped our ship in half. That mad Hoshinthra might've caught up with us. We might've been sold to a mine or a quarry like Thask was, and been worked to death in a pit by now. I like to think that we might get rescued sooner or later, but I'm not holding my breath. It could be worse. This isn't all that bad, and it's getting better. Hah. It's not too different from boot camp, really, and overseer Elik doesn't yell at us anything like as much as Sergeant Omorth did.”

Lotor flicked him a dark glance. “And what about our own oath, that we will be stopped only by victory or death?”

Tannok heaved himself to his feet and fastened up the front of his coverall. “That's for officers. The rest of us have to deal with reality. Think the guys'll still be working on the restrooms, Thask?”

Thask nodded. “Very likely, and both they and Elik will appreciate it if you two go and help them. Might get you a treat with tonight's dinner, if you do.”

“You're not coming?” Lotor asked.

Thask sighed. “I can't. I have duty to my owner today, and you probably won't see much of me tomorrow or the next day, and possibly a third. He's molting, and will want me to help with that. It's a very uncomfortable time for his kind, and he likes having company.”

Tannok helped the old man to his feet. “Huh. How come he let Murkasi groom you instead of keeping you to himself all day?”

Thask smiled and nodded his thanks for the lift. “Because Phaelrah are very aware of what is owed to those who serve them. Murkasi needed to apologize to me. I needed the brushing and the nap. These are simple needs, easily and quickly seen to, which the process of molting is not. I will see you later, gentlemen.”

Lotor and Tannok watched him go, then headed back to where they'd last seen their group. They'd moved on in the last two or three hours, but they weren't hard to find, and Elik was indeed pleased at their return. Restroom duty was distasteful, but it wasn't difficult, and their owner's preference for a clean house actually made it easier. Even the most frequently-used of the public restrooms were never as bad as the ones back in Academy; while Lotor's rank had excused him from the lowly work of cleaning those, he could still remember actually using them now and again. As well-appointed as that school had been, generations of raucous young men with indifferent habits and a tendency toward pulling pranks had left its mark. His and Tannok's efforts did win the group a very welcome sweet with their evening meal that night, and while Lotor himself was not interested in describing his grooming session, Tannok found nothing wrong in enlightening the others. They'd all get their turns, Lotor knew. He'd seen the guards watching them with those steady green eyes. Even Annuk and the nearly hairless Kedrekans were starting to look dull and patchy in spots, and would need care soon. Even so, it was difficult to picture Annuk, the big, surly, taciturn fellow from Golraz Beta, submitting to that treatment. Well, who knew? He might just enjoy it. Either way, he had no choice; this world bred fighters that were stronger than Galra.

And better cared-for. Tannok's words weighed heavily on his mind; he'd known that a common soldier's pay wasn't extravagant and that their lives were spent in a very tightly-structured environment, but he hadn't thought that it was that bad. Lotor had known that out on the Fringes, a captured Galra tended to wind up as property, or even as food, and that the Academies taught their recruits that this was what happened to soldiers that did not measure up. He was very aware how much propaganda they were fed along with their ghrembak stew, and how heavily their training focused on the idea that other races weren't really people. He'd received his own share of that, and had viewed other peoples as inferior at best and vermin at worst. Up until now, anyway. Thask's descriptions of the Chashmara Partnership suggested a system that preferred to focus on combining the strengths of many, rather then subjugating all others to the governance of one, and that the results had exceeded the original expectations. He wondered, as he settled himself down to sleep that night, whether or not the Empire had decided to test that strength yet.

Thask rejoined them in their refectory four days later, looking weary and with numerous half-healed cuts on his hands and arms. These he shrugged off as occupational hazards. “It was a difficult molting,” he told them simply, “my owner has been under some considerable stress lately and has not been paying proper attention to his health. New Phaelrah scales are delicate, but they're as sharp as broken glass, and I was up at all hours prying the old ones off. He did apologize for the damage, at least.”

Lotor gave him a curious look. “What do they look like under those curtains, anyway?”

“I may not say,” Thask said gravely, and held up a hand sharply when the others protested. “I may not. Phaelrah are an intensely private people, and won't even tell their personal names to anyone who isn't intimate with them. I know the name and face of my owner, but I am not permitted to reveal either to anyone. That's what the curtains are for, really. Those patterns on the silks are actually writing, and they describe everything about them that other people might need to know—bloodline, profession, achievements, status, rank, gender, age, how many offspring they've produced, their approval rating, everything but face and name. If you truly want to know, accept a bondservice contract from one. Have any of you received offers yet?”

There was a ripple of negatives from his audience, and one solitary affirmative from a rather bashful-looking Ramash. “One of the Kolkurra is interested in me, sir,” he said shyly. “If she offers me one, should I take her up on it?”

Thask rubbed a thumb over his chin thoughtfully. “Halzaru?”

“Yes, sir. Um... she's nice.”

Thask puffed an amused breath. “Yes, she is, and wealthy enough to consider buying you. Whether or not you accept is up to you. It is the one real choice that you still have, Ramash, so use it wisely. If you think it might be a good idea, tell her, and she will take you to my owner, who will lay out and explain every last detail of a bondservice contract for you. That's mandated by law, by the way. There are both risks and benefits in accepting such contracts, and you must understand them all fully before you make your choice.”

“Some don't?” the young man asked in surprise.

“A slave might refuse a dozen contract offers before he finds a potential bondholder that pleases him,” Thask said solemnly. “A slave has no rights, only privileges that may be awarded or taken away. If he is considered good enough for a contract, then he is not property, but a person, and therefore has the right and the responsibility to choose. Some never do, finding that this simple life is good enough... particularly if their master is as generous as ours.”

Lotor humphed uncomfortably, picking at one wrist-cuff. “Is there any news from outside that we should know about?”

“Arguably, although what I can tell you is limited,” Thask murmured, steepling his fingers, pale eyes gazing into the middle distance. “My owner was not much interested in watching the news, and he had told his colleagues that he would be indisposed for a few days. Most of it was internal stuff. Trade statistics, disputes that needed an upper-level mediator, intersystem relations with this world's nearer neighbors. There is a little news from outside, though. It seems that the Chashmara Partnership has granted the rights of safe port and passage to the Ghost Fleet throughout their sphere of influence, and that the Empire's officials have been dis-invited from the assemblies of the Kraalsada. Yes, there have been attempts by your father's agents at contact, and some have even crossed the border; none have been particularly successful. Not very good at diplomacy, are they?”

Lotor ran a hand over his face with a sigh. “No, not really. Lack of practice. Anything else?”

Thask smiled faintly and continued. “The Blade of Marmora has also been granted right of residency at certain undisclosed points here and there around Partnership space in return for certain specialized services. I'd thought that they were a myth. As I said, there have been a few probing strikes by Imperial forces against some of the outlying Partnership worlds. The Kolkurra were not pleased. You might be relieved to know that those attackers were driven off, rather than captured or destroyed.”

He paused, realizing that the others were staring at him. “What?”

“The Blades?” Hadresk whispered, looking horrified. “Here? What about the Ghamparva? Have they been seen?”

“I don't know.” Thask picked up a fruit out of the common bowl and turned it in one hand thoughtfully. “I am completely ignorant of the movements of either group. To tell you the truth, I would prefer it if they both kept their distance, since both of them have ugly reputations. It is just possible that we might get a visit from one or the other, perhaps both, if only to have a look at Lotor. The Emperor knows that he's here, after all, and will tell the Ghamparva if he feels it to be necessary. The Blades will have their own ways of getting information if the legends are in any way true. Someone has to be the Crown Prince, and I don't know if there are any other suitable candidates.”

Their attention shifted to Lotor, who gestured a negative. “No. The only other prince who was in any way suited for that rank was Kelezar, and he's dead. He committed treason against my father, and was given to Haggar as a lab animal.”

A shudder rippled through the crowd. “What'll they do if they find Lotor here?” Brennix asked.

Thask shrugged. “Either leave him in my owner's care or, more likely, they'll try to buy him. I'm sorry, boy, but you represent a mighty tool to the ambitious. I doubt that the Kraalsi will sell you, by the way. The Kraalsada are well-aware of the usual fate of pawns in this sort of game, and they don't encourage that sort of nonsense.”

Lotor grunted sourly. “Perhaps being sold to them wouldn't be a bad thing. I can't escape this place, but perhaps the others might be more... what, old man?”

Thask was shaking his head. “Do you really think that either of them would give you the smallest chance? If they did retrieve you, a large part of their future plans would rest upon keeping you firmly under their control. You would have even less freedom in their hands than you do here, and neither of those groups are known for being kind to their captives. If the Blades are anything like the monsters and terrorists that they've been rumored to be, they will very quickly break your will by whatever means they find necessary. The Ghamparva have been known to enslave their pawns with addictive chemicals, brain implants, psychological programming, and worse. Haggar herself might take an interest, and your father will not protect you from any of them. You've failed him too often, boy.”

Lotor stared at him in horror. “How did... how do you... what do you know, Thask?”

Thask took a bite out of the fruit, chewed and swallowed before answering. “My owner woke in the middle of the night on the second day of molting, unable to sleep any more than that because he itched so badly. To distract himself while I worked the offending section of old scales loose, he did some research on you, and on the Emperor's rather shabby treatment of his own offspring over the last few centuries. I know of worlds where a man could be executed for misusing and neglecting his wives and children like he does. I will not say more of it in public without your permission, for that information is also yours. Your only personal possession left, I'm afraid, so don't waste it.”

“And what about your owner?” Chorex growled suspiciously. “What has he to gain from all of this?”

Thask finished off his fruit. “A batch of well-educated statesmen, eventually. The Kraalsada, my Kraalsi included, are not worried about the Empire's strength, but they are not willing to see it continue as it has been. It's large, yes, and wealthy and powerful, but it has some extremely bad habits, it's run by a dictatorial madman and an aetherically-able sociopath, and those two won't engage in trade or diplomatic talks unless they are the ones dictating the terms. Zarkon and Haggar need to be removed, for the sake of both the Empire and the Partnership, but they will neither materially aid nor hinder the Paladins in this aim. They'll still buy Galra slaves for the time being, either from reputable dealers, or they'll take their own from trespassing warships, but that will stop the moment that the next Emperor tells them to. They know better than to allow border-raids. And now it is late, gentlemen. I've been short on sleep for four days running, and I don't weather that kind of thing very well anymore. Tomorrow the kitchen staff will be installing a new set of large appliances, and we will be required to help with the removal, the installation, and the cleanup. Don't groan so! The head chef always tests a new cooking range by making pies, and if we do our duty with dispatch, we may be granted a portion of those. It's worth the extra effort for a slice of one of his ulkeshm pot pies, believe me.”

“And you'll be there to help us?” Tannok asked.

Thask nodded. “I asked for that duty. I will be very tired and sore tomorrow evening, but I will have earned pie. My pleasures are few and simple these days, and pie is one of my favorites.”

The following day went much as Thask had predicted. Old and frail though he was, the man worked with a will to get the outdated cooking ranges removed and replaced in as quick and efficient a manner as possible. The others followed his example, if only out of curiosity. The cooks and their assistants were all Hakkox, more lightly-built but no less stony than overseer Elik, and the head chef kept them busy by having them prepare pies for the first baking. Once everything had been installed and hooked up properly, the group rested while the pies were baked, and were soon looking hopefully at their superiors and sniffing appreciatively at the sweet and savory aromas coming from the new ovens. Just as Thask had said, they were allowed to sample that first test batch, and they soon found out why the old man liked it so much. Even Lotor was willing to admit, if only to himself, that ulkeshm pot pie was well worth the hassle of hauling an old, grease-encrusted oven out of its mountings, and for the words of praise that Elik gave them for getting the work done well ahead of schedule. They were then taken to the bathing chambers to flush out and clean the baths, but that was simple work compared to their earlier efforts that day, and they had the privilege of taking the first soak once they were done. There was more pie with their dinner that night, happily, and sleep came easily to them afterward.

Chapter Text

Chapter 5: ...Oh, Crap.

“Is it gone?” Hunk asked, peering warily around from behind a chunk of broken masonry that might have been a bus stop once. “I mean, I like rabbits, but that one could have eaten a truck.”

“That wasn't a rabbit, Hunk,” Lance said patiently. “It was fifteen feet tall, lime green, had six eyestalks, transparent skin, three legs, little pigeon wings, and saber teeth. And it was powered by clockwork. It had a big key sticking out of its back, like an antique wind-up toy. I could see the gears moving right through its hide, too.”

Hunk humphed at him. “It was fluffy, had long ears, a little bunny tail, and it hopped on big bunny feet. It was a rabbit, Lance. Just a really weird one. Reality's pretty badly bent here, all right. Pidge, stop trying to run the math, you'll get a headache. Allura, are you okay? Everybody?”

They had been forced off of the road by a stampede of very strange creatures, Hunk's rabbit having been something of a straggler, and everyone had scattered into the bushes. “We seem to be intact,” Allura said, watching her group creep out of the undergrowth. “Ancients, but that was peculiar. Did this happen the last time you were here, Coran?”

“Not as such,” Coran admitted, fighting his way out of a large, blue-green shrub. “Mind you, we didn't spend much time on the road. No, we spent most of our time in the cities and townships, come to think of it, when we weren't getting sent out to fight monsters or something. Just one monster at a time, thankfully, although they tended to be rather large and cranky creatures. Things have changed a bit since then. Aha! Is that the fork in the road?”

They looked around, half-expecting a giant piece of flatware sticking out of the pavement, but they were spared that stupid joke, at least. Instead, a little distance further on, the road diverged, although a little oddly. Keith, who had enjoyed road trips back on Earth, headed over to check it out. Shiro came up behind him and frowned at the split.

“The pavements are different,” he observed.

“Yeah,” Keith said as the others approached. “The one we've been following is older, but nobody's used it in a long time. Grass growing between the stones, right? This branch is newer, made of some sort of brick, and gets more traffic. Just not much more. What does the map say, Coran?”

Coran pulled up the image again, and hummed thoughtfully. Some of the satellites had recovered from the bout of wyrd-weather, and certain features had changed. “It says that this planet is stranger than it needs to be. See that? This new road's gone and added a few twists and turns while we were busy, and—whoops, there goes another one. The old road hasn't shifted, though. So, which do we take our chances on, team?”

“I was going to ask you that,” Shiro said. “We need to get back to the Lions as fast as we can, though. I know that much.”

Pidge gave him a narrow look. “Getting hints?”

“No,” Shiro said, looking up at a sky that looked as though it was seriously considering the possibility of raining mustard. “Just a feeling that we need to get moving. Something's wrong. I can't tell what it is, but it's wrong.”

Allura frowned. “Is it the trouble with the Nebula?”

“No,” Shiro said, taking off his helmet and scratching behind one ear before putting it back on. “It's something else, and we can't waste any more time. Pick one road and follow it.”

Lance shrugged and squinted at the map. “Let's follow the old one, then. Coran, can you zoom in a little? Yeah, thought so. There are other little roads here, see? If the old one doesn't help us, we can take a side street back to the new one.”

That was good enough for the rest of them, and they set off at a ground-eating trot. It wasn't difficult, at least; the ground here was fairly level and clear of obstructions, and their training had brought them to a peak of physical fitness that few of them could have imagined only a few years ago. It was the landscape that began to worry them after a time. It was gradual, but the vegetation became sparse, and the local creatures became few, and then vanished altogether. Colors were muted, and then faded entirely to gray, becoming almost completely monochrome by the time that they reached what had once been a city. It had been a great metropolis in past years, with broad, skillfully-paved streets, large buildings, and bustling mercantile centers. They were empty now, and looked as though the people who had lived here had left in a hurry. As well they might; something very big and explosive had happened here, and there was not one single structure that hadn't taken serious damage. Perhaps the most worrying thing of all was that the ruins were utterly silent. No animal sounds, no wind sounds, and the air was very still. Their own footsteps rang like bells in that silence, and when Zaianne spoke, it sounded shockingly loud, even though she spoke in nothing more than a murmur.

“I don't like this,” she said tensely. “Whatever broke this place may still be here. No sudden movements, people. Walk, don't run. Be very, very quiet from this point onward.”

“There aren't any of those spirits here, anybody notice that?” Hunk asked in a low voice, looking around nervously. “This whole place is empty. Like, super empty.”

Zaianne nodded grimly. “That's what I'm worried about.”

They continued onward for another half-mile or so, staring around with wide eyes at empty, crumbling structures that nevertheless loomed threateningly at them. The silence deepened as they came closer to the center of the city, and there they had to stop. Something was blocking the road; indeed, they had never seen a blockage that was quite so authoritative before.

“What is that?” Shiro breathed, staring in amazement at the monumental carving that stood, bizarrely and terrifyingly intact among the ruined buildings all around it, gleaming in stark relief despite the heavily-overcast sky. It represented some sort of winged entity that would not have been out of place in one of the more serious Halloween displays, although the pose and attitude spoke more of warning than of menace. The creature, if the statue was to scale, was as big as a Lion and somewhat Humanlike, although entirely skeletal and utterly predatory. It was portrayed as squatting on its haunches, a long, tufted tail curled around its clawed toes. The rib cage was massive, arcing forward into a blade-edged keel, obviously to support titanic lungs and flight muscles that would have powered the pair of vast, batlike wings that sprouted from the shoulders. The wings were spread, tips pointing toward the sky, the black stone of the wing-webs in stark contrast to the pale color of the bones. One clawed hand was raised up, bony fingers spread in a warding gesture. The other hand was very different—the fingers were small and stubby, save for the index finger, which had been given over to a massively overdeveloped claw that was more like a scythe blade. This was held horizontally across the body, sharp edge held upward; once again, presenting a barrier rather than a threat. The skull glared down at them out of cavernous eye sockets, fanged jaws firmly shut, the angle of the head more disapproving than angry. Three gems shone in that colossal structure: two glinted in the eye sockets, a pair of faceted spheres set into those pits that shone with the same washed-out, grayish yellow of a winter sun. The third sphere was far larger and set within the rib cage, where it glowed like a red giant star in the grayish light. Even though it was just a statue, the whole thing radiated “YOU SHALL NOT PASS” far more effectively than anything they had ever seen before. Even the most fearsome of Balrogs would have taken one look at that statue and slunk back to its lair, probably taking any itinerant wizards that might have been hanging around along for comfort's sake.

Coran breathed a long, shaking breath and backed away. “It's a warning, that's what. We'll need to find another way 'round, and quickly. Whatever's past that statue shouldn't be bothered.”

“He's right,” Zaianne said in a tone of voice that surprised the Paladins—that was fear, and Zaianne normally feared nothing. “Come on, back to that fork in the road. The other way might be less direct, but it will take us well away from this area.”

Hunk blinked at her in confusion. “What? But that'll take us miles out of the way.”

“Yes, but it gets us miles away from whatever lies beyond that,” Zaianne said, waving a hand at the jumbled ruins beyond the statue. “That looks like it was a palace or a major industrial structure of some sort, possibly a research institute, and to find a Panct'Narap-Hrralka anywhere near one of those is a very bad sign. Now, let's get going before we wake up whatever that statue is guarding.”

Pidge stared at their map for a moment, and then flicked a hand to the left. “That way. That side street there will take us right to the other branch of the main road, and it looks pretty clear.”

That was good enough for the team, and they turned off without further complaint, trotting along in worried silence for a while before pausing at a crumbling but still intact gateway to catch their breath, although Coran and Zaianne still cast worried gazes back the way they had come. Neither of them even began to relax until they were far enough away for color and sound to return to the world around them.

“That bad, huh?” Keith said, frowning at seeing his normally fearless mother so worried. “Just what are those, and who put it there?”

“And how come nobody's stolen the jewels out of it?” Pidge asked. “The ones in the eyes were belsharite crystals, big ones, and of really good quality, and that big red adarthaline crystal had to have weighed, like two hundred pounds or more. That rock alone is worth enough to set up whole pirate crews for two or three lifetimes.”

Zaianne shook her head. “Nobody steals the gems from a Panct'Narap-Hrralka. Ever. Nobody touches such guardians at all. Partly because that would rob the carvings of their power, but also because the statues themselves do not permit it. I suppose that you could call the things artifacts of a sort, although not necessarily ancient ones. That one was brand-new.”

Coran humphed nervously. “Still turning up in odd spots, are they? Generally in places where some damned fool has been messing with things best left alone?”

Zaianne nodded. “Now and again. Both the Empire and the Order have investigated them in the past, and have suffered for that curiosity. These days, any world with one or more of them present is labeled as Proscribed, and left strictly alone. Even Haggar avoids them. I'll tell the local authorities about that one when we get back; that alone will get the Imperial forces off of this world, and will keep them off far more effectively than Voltron will.”

Lance vented a low whistle. “Bad juju, I get it. Now spill—we might have to do something heroic, and I don't want any surprises.”

“Well,” Coran said reluctantly, “It's not done to talk about it, not under a bad sky like this one, and certainly not without a stiff drink to hand...”

Allura glared at him. “Coran,” she said sharply. “Stop that. Did Father ever fall afoul of those things?”

Coran deflated. “No. Even back in the early days the Paladins wouldn't go near those, although Gyrgan had to sit on Alfor to keep him from poking about near one once. Gyrgan's people had had some experience with such things, and he preferred to let whoever they were fighting that day make that silly mistake, although few enough of them were mad or stupid enough to do so. It's uncertain death to meddle with those, everyone knows that.”

Shiro frowned at him. “Uncertain death?”

Zaianne puffed a brief, bitter laugh. “Precisely. To ignore the statue's warning is to die, but nobody has ever been able to ascertain exactly how. Anyone trying to find out winds up dead as well. Whatever does it either doesn't show up on the scanners, or when it does, it makes no sense. Whatever those statues stand guard over can't be seen, heard, smelled, touched, tasted, or mechanically detected until it's about to destroy you. Most people have learned to stay away.”

“It's not the statues themselves that are the problem,” Coran said darkly. “It's thought that the Hrralka themselves were one of the Elder Races, and one that had left the field early on. Well before my own distant ancestors had learned that banging rocks together might be a good idea, to tell you the truth, and nobody knows where they went. There was some evidence that they might have moved into the dimension next door, they were halfway there already, but nobody's too sure.”

Pidge's eyes lit up. “Interdimensional travel? That's too cool. What do you mean, they were halfway there?”

Coran waved a hand at the looming shape still visible some distance behind them. “That's what they looked like, apparently—all bones, glowing lights for eyes, and a fireball where the heart should have been. Legend had it that their fleshy bits were tucked away safely in a congruent dimension, leaving only their bones and souls hanging about here. Very strange bunch, very advanced in the Aetheric Arts. Fairly benign, though. Back before Zarkon went mad, our xeno-archaeologists often found images and stories of them in the ancient legends, histories, and religions of a lot of different planets, and always in a protective role. Never as villains, never as conquerors, and never as rulers. Come to think of it, I don't believe that anyone ever found their homeworld.”

“They generally showed up whenever someone did something that caused reality itself to unravel,” Zaianne added. “We've found several instances of that in the histories of some of our contacts, and as far as anyone can tell, maintaining the dimensional boundary is what they do; nobody has ever been able to find a way to talk with them, and when they do visit, they stay only long enough to do their jobs. There would generally be a great deal of noise, usually an earthquake and some odd lights in the sky, and in one case an entire mountain was transplanted over the site to keep whatever they did there nailed down. Then they left, placing one of those statues as a marker, and a warning. The people native to that area still won't go anywhere near it.”

Shiro had to boggle a bit at that. “They transplanted a mountain?”

She nodded. “Like it was a potted tilsalur. They uprooted it, moved it about two hundred and fifty miles to the northwest, and placed it into what had formerly been a prairie, the edges of which were tucked in around its foothills as neatly as a fresh bedsheet. They even filled in the hole where it had been previously, which shows some consideration for the locals, at least.”

Hunk let out a low whistle. “Now, that's what I call earthmoving. Okay, fine, if they want me to stay clear of places like that, I'll stay clear. Wow. Okay, I think I can see the new road over there, now... uh. Coran? Does the map say anything about that?”

They stumbled to a halt and stared. Something patently impossible had happened to the roadway up ahead. Coran muttered an expletive under his breath and activated the map projector, which didn't like it much, either. “All right, now that's just silly. I've heard of forks in the road, and dilba-splitters, and even brygnerps—never in polite company, mind you—but corkscrews?”

It was if the roadway had been a length of plastic ribbon, and then some giant had run it over one blade of the biggest pair of scissors in the world. What had once been a reasonably straight stretch of road was now a loose coil lying on its side, the verges stretching awkwardly up and over the loops.

Lance, surprisingly, grinned at the strange formation. “I've seen something like this before, in a video game. It was the front hall of some temple or other, and it was all twisted up with the far door up near the ceiling. The only way that you could get up there was by following the red carpet. Let's see if we can do that in real life.”

“Define 'real',” Pidge said as he ran ahead to try it out. “Guys, I don't like this planet anymore. I mean, the floating lake was great and the mile-high reverse waterfall was impressive, but the weather's iffy, the real estate has its own ideas about zoning, and the landscape does stupid things when we're not looking.”

Coran vented an amused snort. “Just be glad that we're not here in dramish season. Having to wear a nose-guard on top of all that is terribly annoying. Come on, let's go join Lance; his video-game logic seems to apply here, too.”

Hunk gazed disapprovingly at Lance, who was standing upside down on the underside of an arch and waving at them, still with that big grin on his face. “Oh, all right, fine. I may need to hold on to someone's shoulder, though; too many barrel rolls make me dizzy.”

Keith heaved a long, disgusted sigh as Lance danced a few steps down one side of the loop, perpendicular to the ground and apparently having a great time. “I hear you, Hunk. Crud. Just when you think that the Universe can't get any weirder, right? I mean, back at the Garrison, I had to take a remedial Physics class with Professor Leary, and he kept going on and on about how there were certain laws that were absolute no matter what, even if there was a black hole in the area.”

“Hey, yeah!” Hunk said, starting off down the road. “He had to sub for one of my Physics teachers when she went on vacation, and somebody asked him about that really weird quasar that had just been discovered, like, a week before then, the one that didn't play by the usual quasar rules? He just about blew a gasket. Let's not tell him about this place, okay? He'd freak.”

“I myself am starting to contemplate doing just that,” Allura said, looking back over her shoulder. “I also think that strange rabbit creature might be following us, and I really don't want to have to deal with it.”

The others looked back over their shoulders as well, spotting a pair of of very large, transparent green bunny ears peeking up over an overgrown hedge. Shiro glared at the ears until they ducked down out of sight again. “Let's get going,” he said, also in no mood to deal with giant clockwork pseudo-lagomorphs.

It wasn't really all that bad, they found a little time later. So long as they kept their eyes on the pavement and didn't think too hard about what this particular kink in reality was doing to it, it wasn't all that different from passing through a tunnel. Very much the same, actually; it was cool and quiet within the coils, the air strangely still. Outside, on the other hand, odd things were happening. Something had stirred up the local wildlife, and bizarre creatures both great and small were on the move, stampeding back and forth as if some terrible monster was chasing them. The trumpets, booms, and squeals of animal distress echoed oddly in the corkscrew road, and the urgency in those cries inspired the Paladins to greater speeds. Some of those beasts were very large, and they didn't really want to meet whatever was scaring them like that.

Suddenly, a scream of insane wrath tore through the air, a sound that could not possibly have come from a living throat. Everything larger than a beetle abruptly exploded away from the area, fleeing as fast as they could to get as much distance from the source of that cry as possible.

“What was that?” Keith asked in a flat voice, although he had heard something like it before.

Pidge, who was closest to the edge of the road, peered out through the gap and saw something that frightened her. They were on the underside of an arch at the moment with the sky below their feet, and something large, dark, and threaded with a very familiar purple was plummeting toward them at terrifying speeds.

“Get down!” Pidge yelled. “Move! Get down on the actual ground, right now!”

Nobody was about to argue with her, and they sprinted forward as fast as they could, the world twisting around to right-way-up as they did so. Even so, they barely made it in time. Something hit the corkscrew road about a hundred yards behind them, splintering the coil with a deafening roar of shattering stone, and just kept going as the thing from above opened the road up like a zipper. The team was forced to dive into the spaces between coils to avoid being crushed by tons of falling masonry as the monster cannoned through the stonework right over their heads, and when they were able to look up again, an awful sight met their eyes. Rising above the wreckage of the smashed road ahead of them was an enormous, vaguely man-shaped thing: hulking, yet inhumanly sleek, a shimmering charcoal gray lined with veins of violent purple, and seemingly headless and lacking legs below the knee. Sizzling spheres of captured lightning had been embedded in its shoulders and down its spine, and the two long arms ended in claws that rivaled the Panct'Narap-Hrralka's for sheer length and lethality. Dark vapors exuded from its surface, and it emitted an ugly rumble that sounded more like a hungry growl than flight engines. Above all else, there was an aetheric stink emanating from the thing that they recognized instantly.

“Robeast,” Allura breathed, shuddering.

Coran frowned, brushing dirt from his shirt front. “Are you sure about that? It seems a tad small for one of those. Even the first of them was about Voltron's size. This one's hardly bigger than a Lion.”

“We're sure,” Shiro said, eyes never leaving the hovering monster, which was turning this way and that as if searching for something. “It doesn't have to be big because it isn't alone.”

Zaianne hissed in alarm. “That isn't all that it is. There's something familiar about that thing. I can't quite tell what it is, but--”

The Robeast paused in its revolutions and let out a triumphant shriek—it had spotted them, and it spun on its short axis to face them, brandishing its long saber-claws briefly before cannoning forward. Once again, the team was forced to dive out of the way as the monster flashed past, paving stones fountaining into the air in its wake, its huge claws plowing up the roadbed as though it was made of sand.

“Crap!” Hunk yelled, flinching as shattered blocks and debris rained down around them. “Not good, guys, not good! We need the Lions, and now!”

“I still can't reach them!” Allura shouted back. “The field of aetheric disruption is still too thick here—I think that it may be centered on the ruins. We need to get some more distance.”

“Run!” Lance yelled, and for good reason; the Robeast had come to the end of the road and was lining up for another rush at them.

“Away from the city!” Hunk added, and they all took off running as fast as they could.

In the sky behind them, something howled in dreadful glee; seconds later, they were forced to scramble out of the twisted roadway through a huge pothole as the pavement exploded over their heads, and they tumbled awkwardly into a ditch. It was muddy and full of weeds, but it was a softer landing than any of them had a right to expect. Broken stones banged and rattled bruisingly off of their armor, and it took them precious time to untangle themselves as the monster circled above them, hooting in derision.

“This is bad,” Coran said with admirable understatement. “A monster that plays with its food is always a pain in the rear to have to deal with. Alfor hated that sort of thing, you know, and he--”

“Dealt with it, I assume,” Zaianne cut in sharply, narrowing her eyes at the flying freak. “An enemy that gloats is a fool; time wasted on taunting is a gift to its foe, who may use that time to think. That thing is fast and powerful, but it does not brake well.”

Shiro glared at the monster, which was starting to circle them again. “Lance, Hunk, find out if its hide is impervious to your bayards.”

Lance pulled his arm free of a clinging vine and grabbed for his bayard. “Yeah, and aim for the electro-thingies, too, right? That's how it works in the video games, you always aim for the shiny part. Hunk, can you do that seeker-pulse thing?”

“Yup,” Hunk said, taking careful aim at their target.

Blue and golden beams fountained upward at the Robeast, which didn't bother to dodge. To their disappointment, their bayard-fire was simply absorbed into the floating grayish construct. It uttered a mechanical whoop and the forward third of its length split open; something in there flashed, and their fire was returned to them in the form of a beam of pale-purple annihilation. The Paladins scattered, almost too late; the blast on impact knocked them flying.

“Nope, not a video-game boss,” Hunk panted, heaving himself out of the mud wallow he'd landed in. “Welcome to reality, Lance.”

“Reality sucks,” Lance retorted breathlessly from the other end of the same wallow. “Hey guys? The Robeast's impervious.”

There was a growl from under a nearby bush. “I noticed.”

“Well, team,” Coran said, disentangling himself from a large and unfriendly bramble, “we're just going to have to use the same tactics that Alfor and his lads came up with in a similar situation, back in the day. Worked a treat.”

Shiro spat out a mouthful of dirt and grass; he'd landed face-first on the verge and wasn't happy about it. “And those are?”

Coran smirked and executed a smart about-face. “Point yourselves at the Lions and run like your pants are on fire. Like so--” he said, and took off at a sprint.

The Robeast bayed like something that ate hellhounds for breakfast. Smaller lightning-spheres bubbled up on its arms, pulsing rhythmically in the stormy light. Seeing no better solution than Coran's, the team took off after him, minds pushing at the aetheric barrier that kept them from contacting their Lions all the while. Above them, the sky was roiling again, and the wind whipped around them in a burning rush as whatever was stirring up the Nebula gave it another twist. The Robeast shrilled again, this time in confusion and anger; it was no more immune to wyrd-weather than they were, and this was a bad one. Something above the cloud layer burst with a thunderous shout, and it began to rain shadows. Something like shadows. They sparkled, tasting of peppermint and tennis, and vanished before they touched the ground. The dark bright fragments spangled harmlessly off of the Paladins' armor, but they drew glinting lines on the Robeast's charcoal-colored hide, and some of the smaller globes burst with a sizzle and a spatter. The sound that the pseudo-creature made upon receiving that injury, small though it was, spurred the team to a faster pace; the Robeast was really mad now. With a heavy thrum of military-grade antigravs, it shot after them, spewing fountains of ion fire from its remaining globes.

Allura flung herself to one side to dodge a searing bolt, reaching mentally for the black Lion with all of her might. Futilely, alas—the aetheric plane was no more quiescent than the physical weather right now, and she couldn't get through to him. Worse, the Robeast's shots were destabilizing the ground beneath her feet. She could feel the earth trembling under her with every step, and every rock and pebble was vibrating with terrible force. Something was wrong; it was as if the spirits that seemingly inhabited every twig and patch of sand here were remembering something very like what was in the air now, and they did not like it at all. It wouldn't take much to--

Another bolt of searing fire speared down from above, and the earth itself tore open like rotting cloth practically beneath her feet, jerking itself apart rather than take that strike. Allura watched in horror as their team was forcibly separated; all of them were thrown to the ground as the chasms widened between them.

“Keep going!” Shiro shouted over the mind-boggling noise. “We'll try to catch up! Get to the Lions!”

“Move, girl!” Zaianne snapped, and Allura had no choice but to do so; the landscape itself was fragmenting around them, carving itself up in slices under the pressure of the arcane forces boiling all around them, and they had no choice now but to run. There was a hideous crackle behind them; Allura spared a second to glance in that direction, and what she saw there spurred her instantly to flight. The entire city was sinking below the surface, all in one piece and as smoothly as if it had been on a hydraulic plate, but it was going down fast and pulling its outskirts in after it.

Black, where are you? She thought, pushing hard at the aetheric discord that kept her from contacting her Lion. Black, please!

She could feel the others doing the same, and could feel them having no more success than she was. She soon had no time to think about anything other than getting clear; the earth beneath her feet had developed a serious dislike for what was in the sky, and had reversed its tactics. Titanic spires of stone were now stabbing upwards out of the ground, knife-edged shards as big as the Castle in some cases, edges glinting with bright shadows. It kept the Robeast at bay, but the Paladins were equally at risk; the shards gave little or no warning before they emerged, and they were being tossed around like pebbles on a drumhead.

Lungs heaving, the long muscles in her legs trembling and sore from their exertions, Allura clawed her way through the homicidal landscape. She had lost the others somewhere back there—they were alive, she could feel that much, but scared, and several of them were hurt. She had no idea of where Coran and Zaianne were, and that frightened her, but she could not search for them now. The only thing that mattered was that she could get clear of the chaos, just enough to call the Lions. She was getting close to the edge of the field of disruption now, she could feel it starting to lighten, but the ground was sliding under her feet, pulling her back. Her breath burned in her throat now, and she was running out of strength.

A breathless cry was forced from her as the ground split open not six inches from her left foot, and a monstrous stone knife blasted up from beneath, carrying her into the air with it. She fired her jetpack, trying desperately to gain some control over her unexpected flight, and passed right over the Robeast's back as she did so, almost close enough to touch the thing. It had been tracking her, she realized, with a dreadful single-minded purpose that ignored even this level of adversity, and it swung at her with one lethal paw. The blow was terrible, for all that it was only glancing, and she screamed in pain as she fell. Her armor had taken the worst of it, but if that thing hadn't broken her shoulder and a rib or two, she would be very surprised. Her jetpack did its best, but she landed hard in a sand pit and had to lie there, dazed and gasping, for a long moment.

Someone touched her mind, then, and she felt a fivefold sense of alarm that did not belong to her. Black. The black Lion, and through him, all of the others. Allura had been knocked just far enough from the worst of the disruption field to make contact. Come, she pleaded urgently, come now, and hurry!

There was a shuddering snarl on the air that was not thunder, and Allura looked up at the monster in the sky. It was right above her, globes crackling and spitting, claws spread, its torso splitting open to reveal the actinic glare of its ion cannon. She tried to rise, and couldn't; the fine sand beneath her defeated her aching legs, and her shoulder and back were a mass of agony. Helpless, Allura watched her death powering up its main gun for a final strike.

A roar of outrage split the air, and the Robeast jerked in surprise, the shot going wild. It had no chance to take better aim, for something huge and golden cannoned out of the clouds and bodyslammed it away. Allura nearly blacked out from sheer relief, but struggled to her feet nonetheless; the Lions had come, and she staggered into Black's cockpit the moment that he presented it to her.

“Thank you, Black,” she panted, collapsing into the pilot's seat. “Team, are you all right? Where are Coran and Zaianne?”

“I've got Coran,” Pidge replied, sounding no less pained and breathless than she did. “Ow. And I think I twisted my knee. He's okay, but kind of banged up—we took a bad tumble down a crag, and Shechethra caught us just before we fell into one of those big canyons.”

There was a groan from Hunk. “I... I'm here. I've got Zaianne, and... uh. Might be a concussion. I hit my head kinda hard and I don't feel so good. Guys, you okay?”

“Come on, come on, come on,” Keith said sharply, voice raw with stress, and there was a sudden “Oof!” and a clonking, scrambling noise complete with a hoarse swearword from Shiro. “Gotcha, buddy,” Keith said shakily. “Crud. That was close. I'm here, Allura, and so's Shiro, and I really hate this planet's geography. We had one of those spires come up right under us, and if Red was any slower, we'd be dead right now. Lance?”

“Help!” Lance yelled, the blue Lion zooming past in the distance with the Robeast hot in pursuit.

Wordlessly, the team came to the aid of their embattled comrade, Allura directing Black to manifest the Jawblade and drawing a long slash down the Robeast's left flank. It screamed, rolled, and lashed out with both sets of claws, knocking Black away; the slash in its side wriggled and closed back up seamlessly, more lightning-globes bubbling up over the healed section. The Robeast arched its back, crackled violently, and then emitted a huge burst of seeker pulses that forced the Lions away.

“Not good,” Allura heard Pidge say. “Guys, I think Haggar managed to steal some of the Ghamparva's ship-tech secrets. Shechethra's telling me that this thing is loaded like Lotor's fighters were, especially that main cannon it's got. Not exactly like them, but close enough.”

“Great,” Shiro said. “Can you see if--”

“Paladins, do you hear me?” Erantha's voice came through their comms, sounding more urgent than they'd ever heard her. “Answer me!”

“We're here, Erantha,” Allura responded, dodging another ion bolt. “Unfortunately, we're being attacked by a Robeast.”

“So are we,” Erantha replied, “there are eighteen of them up here, one giant and seventeen lesser units. The Fleet is doing its best, but they're outmatched, and their captains are still on-world—there are two more of the lesser units circling over Keroga's main spaceport, and neither the captains nor Lizenne and Modhri can lift off while they're clogging up the airspace.”

“Crud,” Lance said. “Coran, how did Alfor deal with things like this?”

Coran vented an embarrassed cough. “Tactical withdrawal to a battleground of our own choosing, usually, and we never had to deal with things quite like this. We fought space monsters galore in those days, but most of them weren't purpose-built for combat with Voltron.”

Zaianne growled. “We'll use what we have to hand, then. We can't waste time on fighting this thing, but we can't leave it behind us.”

Allura glanced over at where the ruined city had been. There was only a vast pit now, with the statue perched on a stone spire near the center and a great, roiling, cloudy mass of strange lights and motions boiling around it. “You're telling us to knock it into whatever killed that city, aren't you?”

“Entire armadas have been torn apart by similar phenomena before,” Zaianne replied darkly. “It's risky, but our friends need help, and now.”

“Madame!” Coran protested, “that's a terrible idea! It could cause a catastrophic explosion, or wipe out every living thing in the area, or turn this entire region into a giant bowl of squillip soup!”

The Robeast opened fire again, forcing the Lions into evasive maneuvers.

“Do you have a better idea?” Zaianne asked.

Coran sighed. “No, Madame.”

Allura was about to voice a few objections of her own when a subliminal tingle jittered across the back of her mind, and for just a second she tasted bright shadows; a flavor like deranti spice and freshly-honed steel flickered across the roof of her mind and was gone. “We'll do it,” Shiro said with the terrible certainty of one who saw further than most. “It'll be fine. We can't afford to lose the Fleet ships.”

“Form Voltron!” Allura said, and felt the others respond immediately.

Unfortunately, so did the Robeast. The maddened cyborg had absolutely no intention of hanging back while the Lions assembled, and the Paladins were forced to scatter when the thing blew through their formation like a freight train, knocking the Lions tumbling.

“Oh, come on, that's completely against the rules!” Lance complained. “The evil monster always lets the heroes make their transformation before piling in!”

“I don't think that Haggar watches anime, Lance,” Keith said, “and all those transformation scenes were filler and you know it.”

Hunk grunted, making a rush at the Robeast and missing. “Yeah. I always sort of wondered what the bad guys were doing while the heroes were showing off, anyway—painting their toenails, eating popcorn, styling their hair, whatever. Some of those scenes were like, five minutes long, anyway.”

Pidge made a rude noise as she dodged another ion beam. “A lot of those shows were crap, too. I always figured that Anime-Earth would've been conquered eighty-seven times already if the invaders from wherever had just hired one good sniper with no sense of humor and a pair of drama-proof sunglasses. And earplugs, for all the yelling and monologuing.”

Lance humphed and tried blasting the Robeast with the ice ray, which had no real effect on the monster other than to make it return fire with a searing ion blast. “You've got no respect for an old and honorable tradition.”

“It's inefficient,” Pidge shot back, raking the Robeast with a salvo of green lasers. “Plus, I get really tired of hearing the theme music over and over. Look out, Allura, it's coming right at you!”

“I see it,” Allura said, scowling at the vile creature. She manifested the Jawblade again, executed a barrel roll that had the black Lion skimming over the Robeast's left flank, slitting it open from shoulder to leg; once again, the pseudo-flesh wriggled and knitted itself back together without leaving so much as a scar. “This isn't working. Pidge, Keith, can we mind-bomb it?”

There was a pause as the green and red Paladins got a feel for the monster, and Allura got a brief impression of something utterly vile. Keith gagged briefly, and Pidge replied in a sick voice, “No way in hell, Allura. Like Shiro said earlier, it's not just one thing. It's a lot of things, all acting together, and Haggar's done something really weird with the shielding. If we tried to pop that, our skulls would pop, too. If it was just one thing, maybe, but not twenty-one all at once.”

“It's almost like when we did that atinbuk hunt earlier,” Keith said hoarsely. “The way all of us were acting as one? Haggar's gone and perverted the whole Pack dynamic. They're all as one, but... but it's wrong.”

From his horrified tone of voice, Allura inferred that Haggar had violated something that her teammate held to be very sacred. In truth, she felt much the same way—the Pack-bond went deep, down into the blood and bone and soul, a kinship like no other. That Haggar would deliberately take something like that and twist it into something like this was unforgivable.

Shiro heaved a shuddering breath, wincing at the pain in his side. “Coran, how much aetheric chaos can the Lions take?” he asked in a pained voice.

“What, like what just swallowed up that city?” Coran replied, sounding shaken. “Quite a bit, actually, and they'll tell you when they've had enough. It's their pilots who are generally the more vulnerable party, and the Lions won't hang about where their Paladins are likely to be turned into something nasty. Most of 'em are willing to listen to good advice from those big cats, although Red did have some words with Alfor the last time we were here over just exactly how far he could push those limits around the Nebula. Red wouldn't let him take her anything like as close in as he wanted to, but even so, Alfor's beard changed color at random for the best part of a phebe afterward. Brave man, Alfor was, but silly at times.”

“And Yellow's the most heavily shielded,” Shiro said, ignoring the anecdote. “Lure it out over the pit, team. Hunk, do you think that you can bodyslam the Robeast into it?”

“If we do a move like the old 'Missing Man' formation, yeah, probably,” Hunk said, paused, and groaned faintly. “Ugh. You sound like I feel, Chief.”

“Cracked rib,” Shiro replied shortly. “Lance?”

The Robeast bellowed and charged directly at the blue Lion; Lance roared right back, Choluurush echoing him thunderously and executing a supple twist that had the Lion's claws raking through the clusters of lightning spheres down the center of its back. There was a flash like a Tesla Tower exploding, and both the Lion and the Robeast were hurled apart by the force of the blast.

Lance spat an expletive that he had to have picked up from one of the Marmorans. “Sorry, sorry, can't do much right now, guys. Too much interference, both from this freak and from... uh. Whatever's going on down there. Wow, that doesn't look good.”

The vast pit below and to the east was a churning, roiling mirror of what was happening above the sky, writhing with bizarre colors under the thick, vaporous surface and flashing with strange lights. In the heart of it was something dark and terrible, held back by one thing, and that thing only. Untouched by these perturbations, the Panct'Narap-Hrralka still stood on its rock spire, and out from that statue had emanated a glimmering webwork of threads; like a spider's web it seemed delicate, but was enormously strong, and the entire pit had been webbed over.

“I've seen images of something like that before,” Zaianne said tensely. “There is an asteroid in the Paradu System that once was the core of a planet. Something happened there that hollowed it out like a blown egg, and there is a webwork much like that one that englobes it completely. Anything that ventures within two light-minutes of that object does not survive to go anywhere else.”

“Great,” Hunk said grimly. “Everybody be real careful, all right? Oh, yeah—crash harnesses. Everybody tell your Lions to do crash harnesses, all right? I think we're going to need them.”

Allura smiled and nudged Black, who complied with a faintly embarrassed, sort of: now, why didn't I think of that sort of feeling. Her shoulder and back ached miserably at the extra pressure as the straps materialized over her torso, but she knew that the support the harness supplied would help. “Let's get this over with, team. Mob it first—get it angry enough to stop thinking, and then ram it into the pit.”

That, at least, was easy. Tough though the Robeast was, it wasn't very bright, and it reacted to the repeated and rapid-fire attacks with incoherent rage. It only got angrier when the Lions dodged its counterattacks, and was all too willing to follow them over the churning sink of obliteration that had once been a thriving city. Above that, the statue's web glittered, dark and bright at the same time. The Robeast didn't like that, though, and strove for height; Hunk growled and pushed his Lion up faster, then fell out of the sky directly on top of it. There was another of those huge flashes, and a sound like a thunderclap—Hunk found himself going back heavenward at a startling rate even as the Robeast was flung downward at roughly the same speed. Lance saw his opportunity and took it, having been a great fan of bumper-cars in his childhood, and slammed Choluurush's shoulder into the Robeast's back as it fell. It screamed and slashed at him, missed, and hurtled downward, nearly regaining its balance before Keith blasted in with one more body-slam. Indeed, he cut it almost too close; the lines of the web writhed below him and looped up sharply, missing the Lion's tail by inches. The Robeast screeched as the shining black lines caught it, and the Paladins watched in horror as the web took the thing apart.

The lightning-globes sizzled and burst like balloons as the hide split open like a melon struck with a machete, exposing bizarre quasi-organic machine viscera. That came apart into sections, which themselves came apart into smaller sections, continuing in that that fine division until nothing was left. Something in the pit screamed in fury and surged up against the web that held it down, but the glinting threads held and the sound was distorted, as though it were shouting into spinning fan blades. It was nothing but noise, but the Paladins got away from the source of that ghastly sound in a hurry.

Pidge shivered. “It disintegrated that thing, just like that! I've never seen anything like that effect before.”

“If we're lucky, we won't have to see it again,” Keith said with a shudder. “That web nearly had me. Let's get Voltron assembled, all right? There are a lot more of those to deal with, and... crud. Lance, make with the healing. Shiro doesn't look good. Allura, give Lance a boost, okay?”

“I will be more than happy to, Keith,” Allura said, grimacing at the pain of her own injuries.

Chapter Text

Chapter 7: Revelations

Several miles away, Modhri was gazing worriedly at the sky through the screens of the lander, and also at his wife. That the bowl of the heavens was full of some of the nastiest colors and shapes he'd ever seen was bad enough; the two monsters circling the starport's launching field were worse. Worse even than that was the way that Lizenne was staring at them; it was as if she recognized them somehow, and that recognition was making her angry.

“Dare I ask?” he murmured cautiously.

She hissed between her teeth, eyes tracking the pair of flying freaks intently, her hands busy on their lander's sensor controls. “Something's wrong,” she said, “there is something familiar about those things—I know them, I feel it in my blood. They aren't acting right, either. Why haven't they attacked? Every other Robeast we've run into thus far has smashed about indiscriminately. They shouldn't be circling like this.”

Modhri frowned. “You're right. The City should have been in ruins by now, if only to keep the Fleet captains from getting back to their ships. Perhaps Zarkon wants them—and us—alive?”

“I doubt it. We've already proven ourselves to be far too dangerous for that,” Lizenne said with a brief smile, and then looked up sharply when the Robeasts let out tearing, furious shrieks. “What now?”

“There!” Modhri said, pointing at the main screen; something large, multicolored, and very welcome was heading toward the City at high speed. Both of them ducked instinctively as Voltron roared through the air above the launching yard and hurtled away to the west, the two Robeasts following close behind.

“Launch! Launch! Launch!” they heard the Towermaster shout through their comms. “The God's drawn the monsters away, and now's the time!”

Modhri was already lifting the lander, and dozens of other small craft were springing into the air around them. They rose in a dense swarm, veering hard away from the port and heading for an area of clearer sky to the north. Modhri was hard-put to keep from knocking into any of the others in the rush, for they all wanted to be gone as fast as possible; far away to one side, a vast blade flickered in the storm light as Voltron slashed at his foes.

“Team, status?” Lizenne said, working the comm's controls.

“Could be better,” Shiro responded breathlessly. “These things are a lot more maneuverable than the last one, and tough. Everybody, get to your ships as fast as you can, and be ready to provide backup—Erantha said there were a lot more of these, plus one much larger unit. We'll try to get them away from the planet.”

“We ain't built to fight these things!” one of the captains protested. “Been getting communications from our craft, and we're outmatched up there.”

There was an almighty clang as the Sword made contact with a perversion of science. Shiro vented a pained grunt. “Then get clear. Fall back, and watch for any conventional craft. We'll deal with these.”

Lizenne frowned. “You're injured.”

“Got hit by some bad terrain. Lance took care of the worst of it. Get moving!”

“Acknowledged,” Modhri said, taking the ship up into the upper levels of Keroga's atmosphere.

Modhri soon had his hands full. Despite the absence of the worst of the discolorations, the winds were savage up here and full of flying debris, some of it more improbable than others. Rain, yes; hail, yes, lightning and high-altitude birds and insects, yes and yes. It was the clockwork lizards that startled him, zipping past on their little propellers. He heard Lizenne chanting softly beside him, which generally meant that there was more floating around them than met the eye. It was all that he could do to keep the wild airs from tearing their lander's wings off until they were past the ionosphere and hurtling through one of the great orbital rivers.

“Bad?” he asked his wife, who was breathing hard.

“Very,” she replied, wiping sweat from her eyes. “The local spirits are in a frenzy down there. Something other than the Nebula has sent them into an absolute panic. I can't quite tell what... ye Gods.”

Modhri had to catch his breath as well. They were at just the right angle to see it, although that wasn't entirely true; there was no good angle to see something like that. A mere handful of miles from the City below them was a gigantic, boiling pit of aetheric nastiness, and it sat directly under the epicenter of the Nebula-generated nastiness in the sky.

“There are things that I would prefer not to know,” Modhri told Lizenne, and turned his attention to the star-washed space above them. “For now, we have to get back to the Chimera. He's doing his best, but he needs his pilots.”

Lizenne looked up and spat a foul curse. Even from this distance, she could see the eighteen dark shapes harrying their allies. Their companion craft had already sped off to rejoin their own parent ships, leaving Modhri and Lizenne in the clear. Far away, they saw Voltron blasting up through a major storm system with two more dark shapes following him. Neither of them were at all surprised when the other Robeasts broke off their attack on the Fleet ships to chase the giant battle robot.

“What are they?” Lizenne whispered. “I know them. Who were they?”

“I don't know,” Modhri said with a pang of sympathy for the unfortunates whose essence had gone into the making of those monsters. “Chimera's sensors will be able to tell us more, I think, and you've systems of your own that'll boost your perceptions.”

Lizenne growled in frustration and fell silent, allowing Modhri to get them to their ship without further distractions. The Chimera was glad to see them, and got their lander docked and stowed as fast as he could. Once it was secured, Lizenne leaped out of her seat and ran for the lift, Modhri right behind her, and they flung themselves into the pilot's seats, ready to face whatever came. Modhri was privately relieved to see that the more vulnerable Fleet ships had already gone, leaving the orbits clear.

A rattle of fingers on the controls called up a rush of sensory data on the copilot's screen, and he glanced briefly at them. The readings showed the usual, moderately impossible stats that one tended to get when scanning a Robeast, but that wasn't what worried him. Lizenne was muttering again, one hand tracing golden symbols in the air as she tried to get information that no known technology could gather. As if in answer, the Castle roared past, surging forward to give Voltron what aid it could.

“Get us closer,” she said angrily. “The team needs our help, and now.”

Modhri nodded and sent the Chimera forward at full burn. “Any further clues?”

“Not yet. Whoever they were, Haggar destroyed them.” Lizenne vented a long hiss, staring hatefully at the largest Robeast. “There are only rags and tatters left of what they were, but they were mine.”

Modhri flashed her a worried glance and kept going, following in the wake of the larger Altean ship. There was a terrible anger building under the surface of Lizenne's voice, and the last time he'd heard anything like it, she'd killed a Gantar with her toenails. She was a powerful woman with powerful instincts, and the instinct to protect what was hers was one of the strongest imperatives in a Matriarch's psyche. Still and all, Voltron did need their help, and quickly; like all of the other Robeasts they had encountered thus far, the dark shapes in the distance were focusing on Voltron to the exclusion of all else.

“Chimera,” he asked quietly, “status check of the dragons, please.”

“Dragons Tilla and Soluk are in the envirodeck, pilot Modhri,” the ship's AI responded, just as quietly; he'd become more sensitive to the moods of his pilots and passengers of late, and didn't want to distract Lizenne either. “They are situated in the rock ridge and appear to be chanting. Aetheric emanations are building fast; no adverse effects detected.”

“Very good,” Modhri replied, glancing at the Nebula, which was still roiling violently. Hanifor craft were very good, durable ships, but there were things that they simply were not designed to deal with. “Make sure that they have ready access to water and food, Chimera. I have a feeling that this is going to get worse before it gets better.”

“Acknowledged, pilot Modhri.”

There was a flash from up ahead as the Castle fired its main cannon, sending a beam of searing brilliance to slash across the largest Robeast's ventral surface, which gave Voltron enough room to strike it with the Sword. Unfortunately, this did not seem to have much of an effect upon the thing. They keep on getting tougher, Modhri mused to himself. Not good. Sooner or later, Haggar will come up with something that Voltron will not be able to defeat.

That was a worrying thought, and he knew that Shiro, at least, would also be thinking it. They would have to take the fight to the Emperor's witch before then, and the sooner, the better. Modhri bared his teeth and opened fire at one of the lesser Robeasts as it streaked past them. He would have a word with Kolivan later, assuming that he survived this battle. He knew very well just how much Quintessence went into the construction of these monsters, and a good way to curtail the construction of more of them was to cut off the source of their power. That meant turning their attention to the Empire's supply dumps, and if anyone could find out where those were, it was the Blade of Marmora.

A blistering oath distracted him from his thoughts, and he glanced over at his wife. Her face was a rictus of fury, eyes blazing, fangs bared, power crackling through her fur. “My family,” she said in a savage whisper, too angry now to speak any louder. “My uncles, my cousins. That big one was my great-aunt.”

Her fist slammed down on the control board, and Modhri winced to hear her toe-claws grating over the deckplates; from the sound of it, she was leaving scores in the tough metal. “They used my kin to make those... those...”

Her howl of feral rage raised every hair on Modhri's body and echoed around the control decks of every ship and comm center in the Kerogan system, and no few of those who heard it fled from their posts in terror. Modhri, who did not want to have to deal with a killing-mad warrior-witch in the copilot's seat next to him, reacted instantly. She'd be angry with him later, he knew, but at least there would be a later to be angry in.

There were too many of them.

Voltron had faced multiple foes before—dozens, even hundreds of warships at a time. They had faced a full force of thirty Ghamparva fighters and survived, which was more than one might reasonably expect from a battle system as ancient as Voltron was. They had fought mixed foes; yea, even unto the presence of a Robeast among the lesser craft, but in none of those previous battles had the Robeast worked in concert with their other enemies. These things worked together like a seasoned hunting party, and Voltron was having serious trouble holding together in the face of their teamwork. The things just never let up, crowding in too close to use the Sword properly, pummeling the shield with constant barrages of ion bolts, darting away only when the main unit came screaming in from odd angles to slam at Voltron's joints in an effort to break the great battle machine apart. It wouldn't have been so bad if the main unit hadn't been so tough—the Sword could only barely make an impression on the thing, and what cuts it did leave healed almost instantly. Worse, every time that Voltron landed a blow on the thing, it reflected the force of the impact back on the red Lion, and each strike was like getting hit by a bullet train. Even with the crash harnesses, the Paladins were taking damage from each bruising hit, ruining their focus and fouling their aim. The Castle did its best to disrupt the Robeasts' formation with its own cannon fire, but the creatures simply weren't interested in the big support ship, being wholly focused upon Voltron itself. The Robeasts seemed determined to pound them all to jelly and were well on their way to doing so when the Paladins got an unexpected reprieve.

Screaming over their comm system like a wood rasp on raw flesh came a cry of unhuman wrath, the sort of fury that burns whole nations to cinders in less than a minute and then compresses the ashes into diamonds. It made them all gasp in instinctive terror and cringe in their seats, and after an endless, ghastly moment, the sound stopped sharply. So did the pounding, thankfully.

“Holy crow!” Lance said, ears ringing from that long, terrible cry, which had startled him badly for all that it had cut off short. He wasn't the only one—even the Robeasts had heard it, and were just distracted enough to allow Voltron room to boost away, and he and Hunk did so without delay. “What the heck was that, a Tasmanian devil with a toothache?”

“A borbrun with colic, maybe?” Coran asked.

“T-rex with PMS?” Keith suggested.

There was a faint, pained grunt from their comms. “That was Lizenne, actually,” Modhri said unhappily. “She was able to discover who those Robeasts were. Her family. The big one was Inzera, once. The others were her uncles and cousins, and possibly a brother or two. Understandably, she's upset about that.”

There was an explosive curse from Zaianne. “You've taken steps?”

“Alas, yes,” Modhri replied. “I had no choice, and she'll be out for some time. Lizenne is not going to wake up in a good mood, I'm afraid, but even she will agree that our best course of action would be to end these things as quickly as possible.”

Allura drew in a shuddering breath, her heart aching for Lizenne's sudden, terrible loss. “If we could rescue even one of them, as we did Shiro--”

“That's not going to happen, Allura,” Shiro said grimly, cutting her off. “Not this time. There are too many of them, we can't break their shielding, and we have nowhere to put them even if we could. Haggar's been learning from every fight we've won against her creations. All we can do now is end their suffering.”

“Assuming that we can,” Zaianne said darkly.

The largest Robeast had recovered from its surprise and let out a shrieking roar that nearly shorted out their comms; its lesser units whirled around it like a swarm of hornets, and the whole group blasted forward. Not at Voltron, but at the Chimera; there was apparently just enough of Inzera left in the thing to recognize the presence of her great-niece.

“What,” Zarkon demanded angrily, “are they doing? The Witch is not important. Turn them back, Haggar.”

Haggar frowned, a sphere of spitting purple-black energies already in her hands. “Inzera was a strong witch and capable of great focus, and of great vindictiveness when she was thwarted. There is a reason why I do not usually use Galra females in the creation of Robeasts.”

Zarkon grunted sourly, never taking his eyes from the screen. Using Inzera for the main unit had seemed like a good idea at the time, since kin-groups naturally followed their Matriarch's commands without question. Unfortunately, powerful women weren't easily reprogrammed. “That does not matter. The Paladins must die. I will have the Lions.”

Shadows glittered foully at him from all sides, and he bared sharp teeth at them. “They must die,” he repeated acidly, barely able to contain his revulsion and not knowing precisely why.

Haggar hummed low under her breath, issuing commands of her own through the sphere of dark energy she held. The Robeasts did not want to listen to her; they wanted the blood of the one who had betrayed their pack, desiring revenge with every atom of their beings. Haggar tightened her control over them—they had no choice but to obey, but they fought her nonetheless. The creature that had once been Inzera threw back its cranium and screamed in fury and defiance, clawing at the void in impotent rage, its secondary units whirling around it in confusion. In that instance, Voltron boosted clear, joining up with the great pale hulk of the Castle and the blue-green Hanifor ship to blast at the suddenly disorganized foe with beams of bright energy.

Haggar growled at her creation's intransigence and sent a spike of pain through her connection, the better to get the beast's attention and recall it to its primary duty. The main unit howled again and charged the battle robot, its secondary units compromising by attacking everything in sight.

Zarkon rumbled in satisfaction as Voltron and the two support ships were forced back by this onslaught, but hissed when only a minute or so later, they turned and fled. Not through a wormhole, which would have made some sense, but toward the Nebula. That was dangerous. Not to the Lions, hantalurium was proof against very nearly everything, but to... something else. Something important. Something very important, but he did not know what that was.

“Stop them!” he barked, but it was already too late. The Paladins and their allies already had too great a lead, and the Robeasts were still fighting Haggar's controls on them. Only the fact that the Hanifor ship was fleeing as well kept them on the trail. The battle robot and the two ships plunged into the clouds of gas and dust and were gone. The Robeasts plummeted into the morass after them, and were also gone. Haggar's control-sphere pulsed sharply a few times, and then exploded with a bang that echoed painfully around the transformation chamber, and she flung her hands out in frustration.

“Haggar--” Zarkon snarled, but she cut him off with a hot yellow glare.

“I cannot follow them in there,” she said angrily, “nor can I call them back. It's too dangerous. My controls on those creatures form a direct aetheric link back to me. The forces raging inside that Nebula are too great, and if they should find an outlet here, they would vaporize the entire Center, and us along with it.”

Zarkon heaved a long breath. “It is enough. Those same forces will tear the Paladins apart, and their allies as well. We will retrieve the Lions at our leisure, once the Nebula becomes quiescent again. I can wait. I've waited before.”

He swayed slightly and rubbed at his shoulder, glanced sharply off to one side at something that wasn't there, and growled faintly under his breath. “As long as it takes.”

Haggar felt much the same way, and moved to a nearby terminal. The main Robeast unit had a powerful, completely non-aetheric tracking device embedded in it, and she would need to know its precise location if the Lions were to be fetched out of there. She had no illusions about whether her creations might or might not survive in that cosmic mess; their shielding was strong enough to withstand the effects of the Thresonol Nebula when it was quiescent and even when it was active, but not when it was stirred up this badly. She glanced over at the main screen, which showed that region of space in livid spirals of violent colors. When the Nebula was this bad, all bets were off.

Shadows glinted at the corners of her eyes, shining and unreal, and she could not help but shudder.

“What is wrong with these things?” Keith demanded, slashing at a screaming Robeast as it hurtled past them. “First they're after us, then they want the Chimera, and now they're going crazy?”

“Think about it,” Allura replied, moving Voltron up past the Castle's particle barrier, “Lizenne has made it very clear in the past that she and her Matriarch did not get along. Inzera must hate her above all things for her theft of Modhri's kin, to say nothing of having been turned into a Robeast. Lance, the long gun if you would, please.”

“They're being controlled, too,” Pidge reported over the sharp sounds of Lance's fire. “I just saw a big pulse of bad energy, guys. Haggar doesn't want them wasting time on smashing the Chimera. It's Voltron she wants, remember.”

The main unit uttered a bone-cracking howl of pain and wrath, and the lesser units exploded away from it, mindless in their fury, intent on the destruction of all three parties now. The Chimera retreated, ducking around the sheltering bulk of the Castle to bolster the ancient royal ship's shields with its own, and to provide covering fire.

“We can't take much more of this,” Erantha said from the Castle's bridge. “The particle barrier is threatening to fail on us, and if it does, we die.”

“Our shields are in a similar condition,” Modhri panted. “Here they come again. Team, is there any way we can fight these things effectively?”

“I don't know,” Allura said unhappily, turning Voltron so that the long gun had a better angle. “There are simply too many of them, and our own reserves are growing thin as well. I don't know if we can win this battle.”

“We will have to, or die trying,” Erantha said sharply, backing the Castle up to maintain what distance she could between the ancient ship and the Robeasts. “No one aboard the Castle can open a wormhole, Princess. That talent is no more common among Galra than it was among Alteans.”

“We have no alternative, then,” Modhri said heavily. “I will have to wake Lizenne up.”

Shiro, sitting behind Keith in the red Lion, shivered at a premonition that glinted through his mind like glare ice. There was a way out of this situation; it just wasn't a very good way. Unfortunately, it was the only one available that might leave Voltron, the ships, and Keroga more or less intact. “Head into the Nebula.”

“What?” Hunk demanded. “Shiro, it's solid bad juju for lightyears all around in there! We'll get blown up, or crunched up, or turned into big green clockwork bunnies or something! Or disintegrated. I really don't want to get disintegrated right now, we haven't finished building the Baba Yaga yet!”

Voltron shuddered as an ion beam got past the shield, impacting heavily against his shoulder and spinning him around. “Hunk, we don't have a choice,” Shiro grated. “If we're lucky, the Robeasts won't be able to handle what's in there either, and we can use them as ablative armor until we find a clear space or something. Move, Allura! It's certain death if we stay out here!”

“Yes, but it's uncertain death if we go in!” she protested, heaving at the control beams. Voltron responded, but sluggishly; he was starting to wear out, and this foe was simply too big to fight.

Erantha snorted. “Uncertainty implies that we might just get lucky. Modhri?”

“Lead, and I will follow,” Modhri replied. “The dragons really don't want to be here.”

“Crud,” Lance groaned. “Allura, just get us out of here. That big Robeast really doesn't like the long gun, and wants to bite it off.”

Allura moaned, but turned Voltron away, pointing him at the glowing morass of the Thresonol Nebula. Hunk and Lance boosted away at the best speed that the Lions could muster, the Castle and the Chimera close behind them. This seemed to surprise the Robeasts somewhat, and they hesitated for a few precious seconds before following. Fast as they were, Voltron and the others were faster, and within minutes they had reached the outer layers of the Nebula.

Their shields hissed and crackled under the sudden storm of dense particulate matter, charged with unnatural energies as it was, and the deeper they went into it, the worse it got. Voltron and the two ships jerked and shuddered as gravitational anomalies yanked them this way and that, and were forced to take evasive action as huge chunks of space trash came flying at them from random directions. Vast discharges of energy, far greater than any ion bolt that the Empire had yet to throw at them, sheeted and roared around them like lightning in the eyewall of a hurricane, and it wasn't long before they could no longer maintain full control of their flight paths.

“Shiro, we're not gonna make it!” Hunk yelled, panic rising in his voice.

“Keep going!” Shiro roared back, his eyes full of dark brilliance again, tasting sharp spices and hard effort in the back of his mind.

Behind them, one of the lesser Robeasts exploded. Space twisted around them, and sudden gravitational waves hurled them all away in the vague direction of the galactic southeast in a violent heave that made the Paladins very glad for their crash harnesses. Voltron was starting to vibrate around them, pulsing in a rhythm that thundered in their blood and made their ears sweat. Erantha and Modhri apparently were feeling it too, to judge by Erantha's bad language and Modhri's grunts of protest. Somewhere in there Neline was screeching in fury, barely audible above the vibrations of the ship around her.

“We aren't going to be able to hold together much longer,” Pidge panted. “Shiro, Shechethra can't see any clear spaces. She can't see much of anything at all, it's too weird in here! We're flying blind, and if we hit another of those gravity bombs, we're going to come apart!”

The inspiration came in a flash, and hung like a crystal in Shiro's mind. “You're right. We can't see where we're going. This is an aetheric storm, more than it is a physical one. Link up, people. Let's try a circle-session, and maybe we can get a clearer vision of what's going on.”

“What?” Allura blurted, even as another Robeast abruptly imploded. “Shiro, we can't possibly! The forces in here are tremendous, and they'll only get worse the further we go in!”

Something huge and unseen slammed into them from the side with bone-breaking force, and they heard alarms screaming from not only Voltron's systems, but the Castle's and the Chimera's as well. “We don't have a choice,” Shiro replied. “Team?”

Lance groaned. “Oh, all right! But if my head pops, pal, I'm gonna come back and haunt you to death.”

“The Pack,” Shiro said rustily, “is as one.”

It astonished him, sometimes, how easily that simple command phrase could shift their perceptions. Their mundane surroundings vanished, leaving only the glowing colors of the Lion-bond. The moment that they laid hold of that, however, the raging interior of the Nebula became painfully clear. Now they could see the previously invisible forces as something along the lines of an erupting volcano, if a volcano could be a raging cyclone at the same time, or perhaps one of the great storms that rampaged through the atmosphere of Jupiter back home. Brightness warred with darkness, and matter with void, and dreadful sound with an even more terrible silence. They could feel the Robeasts behind them, burning with all-consuming hatred; their two support ships strobed with terror and strain. Behind them, something that might or might not have been a conscious entity ripped a claw as big as a skyscraper through another Robeast, which shattered like a glass Christmas ornament that had been hit with a baseball bat.

Shiro was shouting now, barely aware of what he was saying, trying to describe the path ahead to Erantha and Modhri as more of those destroyer claws stabbed out of the roils around them. Voltron heard him too, and flung himself this way and that to avoid being sliced to pieces, even as the two support ships made wrenching evasive maneuvers. Briefly, the way ahead of them cleared, allowing them a view of what was causing it all, and the Paladins were forced to look away. None of them could describe the battle being fought in the heart of the Nebula, only that it was greater and more terrible than anything that any of them could ever imagine, and it was almost a relief when the Nebula twisted again, forcing them away from that monstrous combat in the center.

They could still hear it, though. It was the source of the roaring and the silences, and this close to them the roaring had the unmistakable cadences of speech. Something was speaking a long string of Words over and over, in a language that reality itself found impossible to ignore.

It was an interesting fact, the Paladins would learn later, that every intelligent race in the known universe possessed tales of persons or entities who could do mighty deeds by speaking Words of great power. All words had some power, if only to impart information to another intelligence, and they had heard Lizenne muttering spells that did everything from cooling an overwrought temper to shooting lightning out of thin air. These were far greater, Words that could reorder time and space themselves, or make a patchwork quilt out of reality if the speaker so chose.

Something was wrong, though. Something about the Words wasn't quite right—an accent, perhaps, or a mispronounced syllable, or maybe a missing diphthong. This realization was followed by an overwhelming sense of urgency that the Words be spoken correctly. It was imperative that the speaker get them right, it must happen, the whole universe would unravel like a cheap sweater if the correct sequence did not come together properly! Every misspoken phrase caused further disruption of the cosmic strata around them, and the residual harmonics had to be quieted soon or the whole thing would blast the dimensional barrier open even wider, allowing the entry of--

None of them could fully fathom the horror of what awaited on the other side of that weakened barrier. Only that it was dark and cold and hungry, and they had all felt its presence before. Shiro heard himself shouting again, trying to find the right sounds that would complete the correct sequence of Words. Dimly, he heard the others doing the same thing, trying to force sound forms out of throats that simply weren't designed to produce them. A shock went through him as the combined tones of Allura and Hunk locked together into the right shape; another when Keith, Pidge, and himself found the right fricatives. Lance found a sliding tone that worked, for all that it nearly sprained his vocal cords. The Lions roared, each in a different tone, adding the necessary gutturals, and, blinded by a brightness of focused power like nothing they'd ever felt before, they sang out all together in full chorus with the great deep voice the final, closing Word.

There was a feeling of immense pressure, and a tremendous sound as of stone slabs weighing billions of tons being slammed together with enough force to smash planets, and a burst of light that seared them inside and out. Voltron and ships alike had no choice but to throw the last of their power into their shields, forcing them to shut down their engines. Blinded by the glare, the Robeasts surged past them, only to take the full force of the blast directly in the face. They came apart like watermelons in a chipper-shredder, the largest of them lasting just long enough to let out one last howl of furious despair before being torn to atoms.

There was a long, long, brilliant moment, and then the pressure eased off. The light dimmed and flickered out. Silence reigned, almost shocking after the deafening noise that had gone on before. Gasping painfully on a throat that felt like he'd tried to swallow a nutmeg grater, Shiro tried to make sense of what had just happened. He was almost too exhausted to feel pain, although his body was doing its best to make it known that he'd broken some things along the way. Keith let out a shaking groan, and Shiro forced his head up, staring out of blurring eyes over Keith's sagging shoulders to see something incredible. Here in the heart of the Nebula, there was nothing. Just a big bubble of empty space, sheeted in the distance with nebula colors, pocked here and there with distant stars. They'd made it to a clear, quiet spot, and the enemy was gone. Shiro coughed, tasted blood, and slumped back into his seat. He was done, and knew that he was done, and that he and the others had done something utterly and absolutely necessary. If they'd done nothing else in life, then this was enough.

Somewhere, he heard familiar voices demanding to know if he was all right, but the world went away before he could answer.

Zarkon was on his knees, hands braced against the floorplates and gasping, mind reeling, and shaking in what might have been either fear or fury. He was not sure, and had the uncomfortable feeling that it might be both. Something within him had blazed, blinding him momentarily, and then had slammed shut with an impact that had shaken him like a leaf in a high wind, and he felt cold and empty and faintly ill. He needed Quintessence, and soon. There had been battles, long ago, that had left him this drained, and he did not like remembering them even now. He heaved himself slowly to his feet—and painfully; the scars on his shoulder and thigh were aching again, and there was a watery feeling in the joints that he did not like. The one improvement was that the shining shadows were gone, at least. The darkness here held no danger in it anymore.

A little distance away, Haggar was hauling herself up as well, cursing in a steady undertone as she forced her trembling knees to hold her up. They had both lost something, and more than just internally. Flashing red lights on her terminal told him that their Robeasts were gone. Zarkon bared his teeth and reached for the bond he still held with the black Lion. Thin and thready though that connection had become, it was still there, just strong enough to tell him that the Lion was intact and recharging, and not in any distress.

“The Paladins still live,” he said in a low voice.

Haggar let out her breath in an angry huff, and one slim hand rose to form a small ball of purple-black light. Zarkon watched it burn between her fingers for a moment before she crushed it with a tired grunt. “Not for long. I have agents aboard the Castle, and they now know what they must do. Very shortly, the Paladins will cease to be a problem.”

“That is good,” Zarkon murmured, suddenly very tired.

Wordlessly, the pair of them went to recharge themselves, leaving the empty chamber behind them.

On the Castle's flight deck, Athren and Marox looked up from their work in surprise at the man running as fast as he could down the rows of landers, yelling something about needing five towing craft right now. They were currently helping their cousins here to check over the landers for damage—it had been a very rough trip through the Nebula, and the Deck Foreman would not put up with any damage to the pretty little Altean pod shuttles. As they watched, five of the larger freight pods lifted off and zoomed away, returning a little time later with the Lions. Marox and Athren couldn't help but stare at those great robot cats. After all, a large part of their adult lives had been spent in searching for those very machines. They were inactive now, their lights darkened, showing no inclination to move on their own and looking, for want of a better word, exhausted.

By the time that the drones had gotten them situated safely, a medical team had arrived, and so had a shuttle from the Hanifor ship. That craft had brought not only Modhri, but his wife, who was looking a little worse for wear. Both Athren and Marox had to stop and stare at the quite impressive black eye she was sporting—who would have dared to strike her, and into how many pieces had she torn him? That question was moot, anyway, for the dragons disembarked practically on their heels, gronking anxiously as they approached the Lions.

One by one, the Lions opened their huge jaws, revealing their pilots and passengers. Athren caught his breath at that sight; the red Paladin's mother and the Princess's seneschal were mobile, if battered, but the Paladins themselves weren't so lucky. He saw blood on their armor, shockingly red against the white plating, and they lay limply in the arms of those lifting them out. The medics loaded them onto hovercots and trotted their unconscious charges away in triple-time, the Witch, her man, and her dragons following along.

“That's bad, isn't it?” Marox asked in a low voice.

Athren's lips twisted into something that wasn't really a smile. “Depends on who you ask. Well, maybe they can make friends with Shethar. He's been lonely in the recovery ward. Pass me that scanner, will you?”

“Here,” Marox said, handing him the tool. “And cool it with the ambivalent attitude, all right? Aunt Lelannis is happy to have us back, but she won't put up with ingratitude to our hosts.”

Athren winced and scanned the pod's starboard thruster, finding nothing wrong. “Sorry. My commanders were all about capturing those Lions for the Emperor, and for more years than we've all been alive. That much indoctrination tends to stick here and there, you know. Plus... well, I lost some friends in that battle over Keroga. I may never see the survivors again, either.”

Marox nodded sympathetically and popped open a service panel. “You're not alone there. The Aithron's captain was three separate and distinct kinds of bastard, but his Lieutenant was... ah...”

His voice trailed off, but Athren barely heard him. Something had switched on within him, something cold and uncaring and powerful, and all other considerations faded away under the force of its will. Gone were his mixed feelings about the Paladins, his joy at being reunited with his kin, even his relief at having survived a battle that had reduced his ship to a heap of scrap. No fear, no doubts, no emotions troubled his new consciousness at all. They had all gone, leaving only a cold, calm determination to see his mission through. Nothing else mattered now, save the necessity of acting normally so that the others would not suspect. Not until he was in the clear would he act; by his calculations, his nearest window of opportunity would be a mere few hours from now. The Agent who had up until now been Athren Khorex'Var glanced up at his fellow operative; they shared the single, knowing glance that identified them to each other as colleagues and resumed their inconsequential conversation, letting the topic drift into sports. Nobody ever suspected trouble from a pair of maintenance techs arguing over sports.

They finished their job and headed back to the staff kitchen for dinner, then visited their fellow Agent in the clinic's recovery room. He had recovered enough to do the job, although only barely. Not that this signified; all that mattered was the mission. If they died in the attempt, then so be it. Victory or death—there was no other way.

They spent some time in the main lounge, playing card games to pass the time. Finally, they rose, stretched, made comments upon the wisdom of going to bed, and left the room. They did go to their rooms, but reemerged a little time later, taking the emergency stairs to those places where they had been before, the better to see the job done.

There would be no reward for their service, other than the pride of having served the Emperor, but that was enough. Always and forever, it was enough. And yet...

...and yet, the one tiny part of the Agent that was still Athren screamed in horror at what had been done to him, and of what the monster in his body was about to do. Completely without his willing it, his traitor feet took him to a particular place on the engine deck, and to a device that was a complete mystery to him. The Agent knew precisely what it was, and used his hands to activate a service screen that filled up with peculiar Altean symbols. Athren couldn't make heads or tails of the shapes, but the Agent could, and did, and typed in commands that even in his ignorance of the language Athren knew to be bad. The device, which had been humming quietly to itself, deactivated with a faint, descending whine. Seeing this, the Agent walked him onward to one of the main power junctions and began to work on that as well. Not to break it permanently, Athren observed even in his terror, just to shut it down. The Emperor would no doubt have uses for this fine old ship, and wished to take it intact if he could.

By then of course, Athren thought despairingly, everyone aboard would be dead, including him.

If they were lucky.

Chapter Text

Chapter 8: Something In The Walls Is Blooping

Shiro woke feeling chilly and faintly ill at ease, with a residual ache in his side and a slightly dry throat. Medipod, he thought, taking an unsteady step forward, and then sat down before he fell over. He glanced at his right hand—that was habit, just checking to make sure that it was still real and not a mechanical fake. The ache in his left side was more worrying. He'd taken a bad hit when Keroga's native soil had gone crazy, and worse during their mad rush through the Nebula, but he'd been so soaked in adrenaline at the time that he'd barely noticed. He glanced up thoughtfully at the medipod's controls and tapped a few buttons, calling up a damage report.

It wasn't a short list, somewhat to his dismay. What he'd thought had been a cracked rib had actually been two cracked and three broken ones, partially healed by Lance, and then damaged again by their rough journey. There had also been sprains, tears, bone bruises, and contusions that he hadn't known about until now, and he shuddered to think of what would have happened if he hadn't been wearing his armor. Well, it was over, and he seemed to have survived it, so that would have to do.

So thinking, he heaved himself to his feet and looked around. The rest of the team had been podded up, too, although he didn't see Coran or Zaianne here. Nobody was here, in fact, other than himself and his team, and the room was strangely quiet. Shiro's nerves tingled. Something was wrong.

There was a puff and a hiss of cold air, and Pidge stumbled blearily out of her pod. “Bleah,” she said muzzily. “Wow, but that was a bad one. Hey, Shiro, we made it.”

“Looks like it,” he replied, steadying her when she nearly fell over; the pods always left them a little uncoordinated at first.

There was another puff and hiss, and Hunk tumbled out onto the floor, not even bothering to try to stay upright. “Hlurglargle,” he said, or something to that effect. “Crud. That was bad. I really don't want to do that again.”

“No argument there, Hunk,” Shiro said.

Keith lurched out of his pod a moment later with a Galra swearword, wobbled badly, and fell over on top of Hunk. “Urgh,” he said, and that seemed to be sufficient.

Allura came out next, staggered, and added her own person to the pile. “Oh, dear,” she said a little rustily, and swallowed on a dry throat. “That could have gone better, couldn't it?”

“I think that it went as well as it could go,” Pidge said, clinging to Shiro's arm. “I know that it could've gone a whole lot worse. Hey, Lance.”

Lance stumbled out of his pod, eyed the pile of teammates thoughtfully, and then flopped down beside them, perhaps out of a sense of solidarity. “No more Robeasts,” he said grumpily. “I quit. I am not gonna fight anything like that again, that was super bad. Who wants to invade the Center and smash up Haggar's lab again, only this time without stealing any more people parts?”

Shiro snorted a faint laugh. “Speaking as the person who was rebuilt from those people parts, I'll pass. We'll figure something out. Are you all okay?”

“Could be better,” Hunk grunted. “Wow. Even the Lions are worn out. Teccrakshaah's asleep, and so are the others, and I want a snack and a nap. Cookies. I want cookies. No, I want muffins. Avaris was going to teach me how to make the Galra version of blueberry muffins, but Keroga happened.” he paused a moment, and sniffed. “Huh. What time is it?”

Allura blinked and reached up to tap at the control panel of a nearby medipod. “Nearly breakfast-time, I think.”

Hunk growled. “Thought so. Something's off, guys. Around mealtimes, you can smell the kitchens from three decks away. I'm not smelling anything.”

Keith, who happened to love blueberry muffins, found that worrying as well. He pushed himself upright and headed over to the doorway, peering into the shadowy hall beyond. “You're right. All the lights are out, too. There might be something wrong with the power core.”

Allura frowned and stood up. “I'll go and check on that if you'll go up to the control deck. See if you can find Coran and Erantha and get them to tell you what happened after we blacked out. Ah... but first, we should really get dressed.”

There was a faint snicker from Lance. Someone had shucked them out of their armor, and their only garments now were the medbay's standard white bodysuits. Fortunately, some kind person had left a change of clothes for them on a table by the door, and they were quick to make use of them.

Lance humphed, pulling on his jacket. “If the power's off, how come this room's still running?”

Allura flicked him an exasperated glance. “All Altean medical facilities have their own backup systems, Lance. Power, ventilation, gravity, and several others. It doesn't do to let the patients die just because the rest of the ship has failed. Coran's father and grandfather often had occasion to need a pod, and were absolutely adamant about making sure that the Castle's would keep working, no matter what.”

“Makes sense to me,” Keith said, straightening his shirt. “It kept you and Coran alive for those ten thousand years on Arus. Figuring Voltron out would have been a lot harder without you.”

Allura smiled briefly and poked at her wrist-comp. “Coran? Are you there?”

There was a peculiar rustling sound, a little like something brushing through dry grass. “Princess?”

“I'm here,” she replied. “We're all out of the medipods and much recovered. Where are we, and what is going on?”

“We're still in the Nebula, more's the pity,” Coran replied, sounding worried. “Voltron found us a nice bit of comparatively normal space to rest in, but it's not all that large, and the generalized chaos outside is starting to eat away at the edges of it. Rather more quickly than I'd like, to tell you the truth.”

“We'll need to leave soon, then,” Shiro said.

“Too true, Number One,” Coran said, and there was another bristly sound. “Unfortunately, there's a problem with that. The power core's down and I can't get it restarted from here, which tells me that at least one of the major power junctions has been physically detached from its connections. We've still got emergency power to the life-support systems, lifts, and the gravity generators, but... ah... oh, dear.”

There was a noise like a straw broom scratching against the decking. “It seems that the main unreality dampers have failed, too. The medbay's got one of its own on an independent system, but the rest of us are out of luck. Space is rather badly bent out there, believe you me, and we're experiencing... ah... leakage. Nothing immediately fatal, just unsettling, but if we don't fix the system and bring up the power again soon, we're in a lot of trouble.”

Allura frowned. “Why haven't our engineers repaired it already?”

“Not sure,” there was another scratchy sound, louder this time. “Lelannis... well, I think it was Lelannis, she sounded a little odd, said that under no circumstances were the men going to do absolutely anything for the time being except lie down flat in their rooms with their eyes closed. Don't know why. Well, I've got a sneaking suspicion, but—whoops!”

There was another burst of scratching and a faint, “quiznek!” before the connection was cut off.

Allura and the others looked at each other in perplexity; he hadn't sounded frightened, just annoyed. Allura frowned. “I'll check the main power core. Pidge, Hunk, can you see where the problem is?”

Their two mad scientists concentrated for a moment, and then broke it off with grunts of discomfort. “Nope,” Hunk said, rubbing at his forehead. “Castle's just as confused as the rest of us right now, and the Mindscape is seriously messed up.”

“Ever heard the theory that there are millions and millions of parallel universes sitting right next to our own, like the pages of a book?” Pidge asked. “Well, that book is being used as a kinetoscope right now, and our side's been worn so thin that things from a bunch of others are leaking through, including laws of physics that just don't exist here. We're going to have to act fast, and be really careful. No big magic at all, okay? Any little thing could tear it wide open, and we could wind up in a universe where everything is made out of chickens.”

“Right,” Shiro said. “We don't have any time to waste, then. We'll get up to the bridge and see if we can't pinpoint the problem areas. Allura, we'll contact you when we've found them, and direct you as necessary.”

It was good to have a plan, even one so simple as this, and they hurried to follow it. Without the constant hustle and bustle of Modhri's family and their cadre of Blades in the halls, the Castle seemed eerily empty, much like it had been when the blue Lion had first brought them here. It was far too quiet, far too still, but with a charged feeling in the air that made their nerves prickle uncomfortably. They were about halfway to the lifts when they got their first inkling of how much trouble they were in. It came drifting through the ceiling, tumbling gently down as if in free-fall, as insubstantial as a dream.

It was fuzzy, about two feet long, lizardish, green with black spots on its back and sporting a yellow belly, along with paddle-like limbs, bulging eyes, and a huge, genial, alligator grin. “Hi!” it said cheerfully before drifting through the floor.

Hunk stared at that spot of inoffensive decking for a long moment, and then started forward again, skirting that side of the passage as widely as he could. “Guys, we need to fix this, like, now. That was the Winslow.”

Allura stared at him as though he'd grown a second head. “The what?”

“I'll explain later,” Hunk said as they came out into the lift's annex. “Let's just say that there are some universes that are a lot stranger than this one, okay? Pidge, we're going to have to be super careful about keeping the surveillance camera data clean, and we might want to look in on the Lions.”

“No argument there, Hunk,” Keith said, hitting the call button. “We might also give Lelannis a call and see if we can get her to give us some more details, or maybe check up on how Neline and her family are doing.”

Lance winced. “Yeah. If anything happens to her, Kevaah will go ballistic. And vice versa. Is he still bunking on the red couch?”

“He doesn't like walls around him when he sleeps,” Keith replied, stepping into the lift with the others right behind him. “He doesn't like to talk about it, but he's basically been kept in cages for most of his life. Being a lab animal sucks.”

Shiro snorted, selecting floor levels. “Tell me about it.”

The lift took them down first, to let Allura out into the darkened cavern of the main engine deck, then rose the rest of the way to drop them off on the command deck of the Castle. The bridge's doors were open, thankfully, and they could hear Coran muttering irritably from where they stood. The screens were blank for the moment, and the Balmeran crystal above the pilot's dais glinted in the bluish light of the emergency dims. Shiro couldn't see the man from the entrance, but as he headed into the room he saw a crumpled figure lying on the floor by the console. Other than that, the bridge was empty, and that wasn't good.

“Coran?” Shiro called.

The shape on the floor twitched. “Aha! There you are, Shiro. Just give me a hand here, will you? I seem to be in a spot of difficulty.”

Shiro hurried over and reached for what he thought might be Coran's shoulder, but jerked his hand away when he saw what his friend had become. “Coran! You're...”

“Yes, yes, I know, it's the elevated unreality levels,” the thing on the floor grouched. “Same dratted thing happened last time a damper popped, although not quite this badly, I'll freely admit. Last time, I at least still had hands. Do be a good fellow and prop me up somewhere, I can't move.”

At that moment, a horrified shriek rang out right over his head, making Shiro jump; Lance had come over to see what was wrong, and he didn't like what he saw. “Aaaaaagh! My nightmares are all coming true! Keep it away from me!”

“You've got nightmares about giant mustaches, Lance?” Hunk asked. “Wow, that is a big one, isn't it?”

Lance shuddered. “Don't laugh. Being chased through the Castle by big, dirty, orange mustaches is scarier than you think.”

“How dare you!” Coran protested angrily, the thick strands of long orange hair that made up his substance bristling with temper. “I'll have you know that I shampoo my facial hair twice daily, you insufferable brat, and it's common knowledge that a well-groomed mustache is an absolute must on more planets than I care to count at this time. Why, on Larolor, for example, proper facial-hair styling was a societal imperative! They had a caste system, you see, and identified their status in society by the use of strict hairstyling guidelines. There were dozens of caste-mandated styles with hundreds of variations, all specific to each grade and rank, and more for ceremonial occasions. Every caste guarded their own secret recipes for styling wax jealously and with vigor! Father used to tell me tales of old Kenard'ip'ip thak-Mudwhai, who would spend hours primping his mustache before every public appearance, and would chase everybody out of an entire level of the Castle when he felt the need to make a fresh batch of mustache wax. Not that anybody really wanted to stay to watch; the wax itself was lovely stuff, but the process of making it smelled dreadful. One time, he nearly drove everybody out of the Castle entirely when he was required to make an extra-large batch for a royal delegation from his homeworld. Not that they ever got to use it; the Castle was attacked by a very large hairy thing just before they arrived, and he had to expend every bit of his wax on making the beast look too stylish to want to do anything but stare lovingly into a mirror. Won several awards for his skill, too.”

Pidge snorted a laugh. “Yeah, that's Coran all right. Where is everybody? Shouldn't Zaianne be here, at least?”

Coran humphed sourly at Lance, but replied as they got him propped up in one of the defense-drone stations, “Just before the dampers went down, Erantha needed to answer a call of nature, and Zaianne and Kevaah decided to get a snack. Haven't seen nor heard from any of them since—can't reach the comm like this, you know, much less operate it. I think that Lizenne and Modhri and the dragons may be aboard, too, but I'm not sure.”

Shiro frowned. “Why not?”

The giant mustache tried to shrug. “Things got a bit hectic. Erantha managed to get the Castle here in one piece, but not without taking some damage. You were even worse off, unsurprisingly; Lizenne said that you'd all just about stripped your aetheric gearing clearing the way for us. This patch of empty space wasn't empty, up until maybe a tick or two before you did whatever you did to hollow it out, and she had to do some repairs of her own on you before you went into the medipods. That pretty much wiped her out, so Modhri had to take her somewhere else to rest, and I kind of lost track of them in the flurry of system repairs we were having to perform at the time. The dragons, too, come to think of it; they were grickling and gronking and rushing from place to place with no regard for the engineering staff, and everybody was frantic to fix what had rattled loose, including me. Keeping the Lions' towers from dropping off is a tad important, you know.”

Shiro sighed, but nodded; he'd certainly felt like a stripped transmission before he'd passed out. “No argument there. Pidge, Hunk, see if you can get ahold of Allura. I'm going to see if I can find Zaianne and Erantha.”

With that, he hurried away. Hunk watched him go, then approached the console. The long, curving holoboard was strobing slowly, he noticed, and in colors that weren't the usual pale blue. Some of the controls already looked wrong, and he eased a little of his power into the board in an attempt to persuade it to stay as normal as possible. Unsurprisingly, it didn't really want to. One of the more seductive qualities of chaos was its flexibility; you had so much more freedom when the normal rules no longer applied.

“Crud, this is messed up,” Hunk muttered, trying to convince a large part of the communications system not to become an instant-muffin generator. “Pidge, gonna need your help here, the Castle's starting to have identity crises. I think it wants to be a space bakery. Pidge?”

“Um...” Pidge said, but from an unexpected direction.

“What the heck?” Keith asked, sounding startled.

Hunk turned, and had to look up. “Wow!”

It was only a mercy that her clothes had come along for the ride, otherwise they would never have survived the transformation. Pidge hadn't changed shape, but she had changed size, and was now eight feet tall. She was also grinning from ear to ear.

“This is so cool!” she said happily. “Now I'm the tallest person around. I can see everything! Guys, isn't this great? Check it out, I'm tall!”

“Yes, yes, that's quite common,” Coran commented from behind them. “Size is usually the first thing to go when reality's a bit thin, which can actually be quite useful at times. One shouldn't get too used to it, since it can change without warning—whoops! And there goes Keith.”

There was a yell of protest, rising in pitch even as it descended in height; Pidge turned and stared at a teammate who was now no bigger than about seven or eight inches tall.

Lance let out a hoot of delighted laughter and picked Keith up in both hands. “Oh, holy crow, Keith, you're so cute like this! I shall call you... Mini-Mullet.”

Keith said something in a tiny, high-pitched squeak that was probably obscene. Lance would have retorted in kind, but for the burst of bagpipe music that erupted unexpectedly from the comm system.

“Hunk, what the heck?” Lance asked.

“You tell me,” Hunk replied, poking suspiciously at a dial. “I'm trying to get the engine deck, but instead I got the Highland Fling.”

Lance made a face. “Sounds more like the Lowland Hurl. Wow, is he ever off-key.”

Hunk shrugged. “Maybe. It could be a reel or a march, but I could be wrong. Bagpipes are tricky.”

“Sounds dangerous,” Coran observed. “That's an instrument that I wouldn't approach without protective clothing, if you ask me.”

Pidge puffed a laugh. “Yeah, there are jokes about that. They were being used as weapons of war something like two thousand years ago by the Scots and the Irish, and they used to scare their enemies so badly that bagpipes have been outlawed twice. Modern ones can even shoot fire, but only in Portland. Let's see if we can find out where that's coming from.”

Coran made an interested noise, stiff hairs scratching at his seat. “Fire-breathing musical instruments! Now that takes me back. Back in the day, Melenor would often preside over special events, some of which were the mid-term holidays for the various establishments of higher education. Her particular favorites were the musical academies, specifically the instrument-building departments, which held regular competitions in reinventing the traditional instruments. Some were absolutely lovely, of course, while others were eccentric at best, culminating—in my opinion—in Miraldi Birsam-Flanchett's Glorious Elemental Organ. Wonderful contraption, it really was. Ten feet tall, twenty feet long, eight feet deep, had more pipes, pumps, junctions, splitters, and regulators than a plumber's exposition, and could only be played outside in a vacant lot because it tended to destroy any other sort of venue. Took four people in full environmental armor to play it, two more to stoke the boilers, one very nervous man up on top to balance the pressures, and an audience that didn't mind experiencing natural disasters up close and personal. Melenor thought it was absolutely grand, and commissioned a smaller model for the Lesser Ballroom.”

“So, that's what that monster is,” Hunk said. “Tenric and his guys won't even go near it.”

Lance shrugged and transferred Keith to his shoulder. “Alteans. Hardcore.”

“Got that right,” Hunk said absently. “Okay, I think we've got a trace on our bagpiper. Sort of. Looks like... huh. Somewhere in the residential blocks?”

Pidge frowned at the controls, half of which had gone bright pink and were trying to turn into beetles. “Hard to tell. Level thirty-four, I think, but the screens aren't cooperating. Allura's signal is doing some weird things, too, and something under this thing's housing smells like fermenting cedar mulch. Bleah. Can you tell what's going on?”

“No,” Hunk grumped, frowning at the console and forcing it through sheer willpower to bring up a reasonably clear view of one of the Castle's many largely featureless corridors. “I don't know what's happening in there, and neither does the Castle. I could really use some of the mice right now, but--”

“Gweek!” something said from ankle level. “Gweek!”

“Tilla?” Lance blurted, sounding very surprised.

Tilla, alas, had not escaped the growing levels of unreality, and had suffered the same affliction as Keith. She was no bigger than a housecat at the moment, and was obviously very upset about it. “Gweek!”

Pidge had other opinions, and grinned hugely as she grabbed for Tilla with arms that were a good deal longer than normal, rendering the dragon's scramble for freedom useless. “Oh wow, tiny dragon is too cute!” she gushed, tucking Tilla belly-up into the crook of her elbow and cuddling her like a kitten. “Tilla, you're adorable!”

“Gweeeeek!” Tilla protested, waggling her legs.

“Who's adorable?” Shiro asked.

Shiro's voice had come from the general direction of the doors, but there was something wrong with it. It was definitely him, but perhaps a little deeper, a little rougher, and slightly slurred, as though he was having trouble with his teeth. A large, dark figure paused on the threshold, turning to face something behind it, and they heard: “Oh, come on, it's just us, and it's nothing to be ashamed of. I do it all the time.”

“You weren't something very different a few minutes ago,” another voice said, strangely familiar, but none of them had ever heard that one before. “Have you any idea of what I've lost?”

Shiro snorted. “I saw what Kevaah had gained, so yes. Pidge looks like she's got some of it, too, and remember what I said about Coran.”

“Nothing incriminating, I should hope,” Coran called out. “Shiro, is that you?”

“Arguably,” Shiro said, coming into the room, the light from the screen illuminating a man much changed; for starters, he was a good deal taller, a lot furrier, a lot more purple, and his shirt and trousers strained pornographically tight over a torso that was rather more muscular than it had been. Right behind him was a young Galra man with silver-streaked blue-purple fur, and a shimmer in the air that was vaguely person-shaped. “Have you made contact with Allura yet?”

“Shiro, you're a Galra,” Lance said in a flat voice, and then took a closer look. “It looks good on you, Chief. I like the Palabekan look, and the furry tail is perfect.”

Shiro rolled his eyes, which were now a rich topaz. “Not really. Zaianne had to cut a hole in my pants to make space for it, and it keeps pulling me off balance. Plus, I've got the worst wedgie right now. What's wrong, Pidge?”

“Dammit, Shiro!” Pidge grouched. “You're still three inches taller than me!”

The stranger behind him threw her an irritated glare. “That's the least of our problems.”

“Erantha?” Hunk asked. “You're a guy!”

“I know,” she—he—said darkly, “and I don't like it. Every Galra aboard ship except for Shiro and possibly Zaianne have switched genders—that means that we have nearly four hundred untrained, uncontrolled adult witches right now, and all of them are on the verge of panic. We would have returned here sooner, except that we had to sedate Kevaah.”

All of them winced at that. Keith squeaked something in Lance's ear, and Lance grimaced in dismay. “That must have taken some work. Keith says that Kevaah sees auras and magic all the time, and he's immune to just about every sedative there is.”

“Also something we're well aware of,” the shimmering patch of air said in Zaianne's voice. “We had to sacrifice every drop of lithro in our kits to knock him cold before he disintegrated any more of the main lounge's furniture. He'll be out for hours, hopefully, and we had better solve this problem before he wakes up. Being a woman is not at all something that he's comfortable with.”

“Quite right!” Coran said cheerfully. “Gender swapping and spontaneous invisibility, along with physical changes pertaining to the resemblance of closely-related species. Just be glad that you didn't turn into one of those 'ape' things, Number One. Pidge, stop taking images of Shiro's admittedly shapely behind and contact the Princess, will you? The next stage of transformations should occur fairly soon, given the weakness of the dimensional barrier, and will be rather more pronounced.”

Shiro lifted his eyes heavenward, beseeching whatever might be listening for patience. “Pidge...”

“I'd say sorry, but I'd be lying,” Pidge replied, snapping one more pic of that hot purple body. “Daaang, Shiro, and don't look now, but everyone else is checking you out, too. All right, all right, calling Allura now. Hunk, give me a hand with this?”

Shiro glanced around at the other members of their group, and saw that Pidge had spoken only truth. Grasping once again at the shreds of his patience, he asked, “Coran, this situation is serious, right? Why aren't we taking it seriously?”

The giant mustache in the defense-drone station rustled apologetically. “Another common side effect, I'm afraid,” he said. “The worse the situation, the less liable anyone is to react sensibly, even if the only sensible reaction is blind panic. Most four-dimensional peoples just aren't equipped mentally to handle situations where seventeen and a half other dimensions are making themselves felt, so their minds reject them in favor of trivialities. Right now, for example, I should be frantic—howling my head off, for all that I don't have one at the moment, but I just can't get up the enthusiasm.”

“Great,” muttered Shiro, trying to adjust his trousers, and then having to glare at his audience when he heard a faint wolf whistle. Oh, god, even Erantha was looking interested. Fortunately, Pidge let out an exclamation of triumph before anyone could say anything unfortunate.

“Got it! Allura, can you hear me?” Pidge asked.

“Ah... um, yes,” Allura replied, sounding worried. “I'm here, Pidge... rather more here than I should be, in fact. The main unreality dampers have been shut down—they didn't fail, someone deliberately shut them off. The three main power junctions have also been disconnected, and I can't do anything about it. I'm going to need help.”

“Why's that?” Hunk asked, slapping the side of the console as it tried to grow scales.

“Because I'm too big,” she replied. “I seem to be about eighty feet tall at the moment, and I can't leave the main chamber.”

“Dammit, Allura!” Pidge said angrily, jostling Tilla, who gweeked in protest.

“What?”

Hunk gave Pidge an exasperated look. “Just ignore that, Pidge was the tallest person on the bridge for, like, a minute or two, and both you and Shiro are still taller. He's a Galra right now, by the way.”

There was a thoughtful “Hmm,” from the engine deck. “Did you get pictures?”

Pidge grinned. “Oh, yeah.”

Shiro rolled his eyes again.

Hunk echoed his eyeroll. “Can the mice help out down there?”

“I don't think so. My mental link with Platt and the others is... not precisely cut off, but I'm not getting anything comprehensible. When I listen at the vents, all I can hear is 'bloop'.”

“Bloop?” Lance asked.

“Yes, and I really don't want to see why.”

“Crud,” Pidge grumbled. “All right, fine. We need to get the dampers restarted and the junctions connected again. Can you send us the locations?”

“I can, but getting to them isn't going to be easy,” Allura warned them. “The halls are doing some very strange things, and I doubt that the lifts are trustworthy. Also, the saboteurs may still be somewhere down here, and there are some very peculiar things wandering around. In fact--”

Lance let out a sudden yell and collapsed to the floor as his knees vanished. Denim tore loudly from groin to ankle, and a pair of pops heralded his shoes flying off.

“What just happened?” Allura demanded.

“Oh, cool!” Lance said happily, patting his neck. “Gills! I've got actual gills, and fins, and a tail—I'm a merman. I'm an actual merman! This is awesome! Somebody get me to the pool!”

Hunk shook his head. “Not gonna happen, Lance. Hold on, I think I can bring up an image. Nope, no good. The water's gone somewhere else, and what's in the pool now is... uggh.”

They stared. The upside-down pool was indeed full, but definitely not of water. They weren't sure what it was, but it wasn't nice.

Allura snorted. “Well, if I were a lot of water, I wouldn't have wanted to share space with something that unpleasant, either. Oh, dear, and there it goes. The water's still aboard, Hunk, but it's stalking the halls along with... a spotted fliroquar? And a very small thunderstorm, and I can hear some sort of... well, I think it might be music. Ah... and something in Storeroom #45 is yodeling.”

“It's getting worse,” Zaianne muttered darkly. “Allura, please send us the locations of the compromised systems, and we'll organize a repair run. Quickly, now!”

Even Allura's very understandable confusion couldn't stand against the note of command in Zaianne's voice, and she transmitted the locations forthwith. Hunk managed to bring up images of those locations after a brief mental arm-wrestling match with the console, which hadn't really wanted to cooperate to judge by the dirty looks he was getting from the row of neon-green eyes that had sprouted along the top of the control board.

“Tricky,” Erantha said, glaring right back. “The way to the two main damper systems seem to be clear for the moment, but see—Allura is correct. Life signs there, there, and there. There are three people down there, and we cannot assume that they are friendly.”

Shiro frowned and indicated one of the indistinct figures. “That one looks injured. He's not moving, and it's possible that he might have tried pulling the wrong wire. The other two, and they're all probably Galra, will be more of a problem. If they're women at the moment, we'll have to expect uncontrolled magic attacks.”

“Not good,” Hunk said. “I was helping with the catering for one of the girls' magic classes a week or two ago, and this one girl, well, some dummy had been teasing her, and she lost her temper. I've never seen someone go kaboom like that before, and her aim was terrible. We had to pour a bucket of cold water over her head, just to snap her out of her mad before she could blow someone to pieces.”

“And that was a child who had already learned the basics,” Zaianne added. “Hmm. We will also have to deal with unexpected manifestations. There goes that furry lizard thing that Shiro mentioned.”

“What, again?” Hunk asked.

“Yes, and it looks like it's gotten into the glitter paint that Lance left on the children's craft table in the lounge. It's leaving sparkling smears all over the walls when it drifts through them.”

There was a snort from Coran. “Small stuff. Why, if you'd seen what was smeared all over the walls the last time this happened--”

“Focus, people!” Shiro snapped. “We need to get down there, and as quickly as possible. Hunk, I'll want you here to... now, what is that?”

Something very strange had come around a corner on one secondary screen. It was more or less man-sized and man-shaped, but it shifted alarmingly in and out of focus whenever it moved too quickly. It was extremely colorful, snappily-dressed, and appeared to be dancing. Lance stared, and Keith squeaked something that sounded worried.

“It's a plaid ninja,” Lance said. “Buchanan plaid, I think, and has the kilt and hat and everything. I'll bet that that's your bagpiper, Hunk.”

Coran choked in horror. “Quiznek! That's not a ninja, that's an unnatural disaster looking for someone to happen to! Team, you must get this problem resolved, and as quickly as possible—we've attracted a Transdimentional Trickster, and those are far more dangerous than most. The last time that a manifestation was recorded, a team of Eplinroth researchers tried to isolate and study the entity, and they all vanished for over a movement. When they returned, not a one of them did so unchanged, and some of the changes were--” the giant talking mustache shuddered. “--extreme.”

“It's doing Irish stepdancing,” Pidge said, squinting at the peculiar figure. “With a really small supercell thunderstorm. And I think that the walls are growing luminous tentacles. Pink ones. Hunk, we'd better... Hunk?”

Hunk was no longer paying attention, due mostly to the fact that he'd turned into a statue. Sandstone, Shiro thought, which was only appropriate. What wasn't appropriate was Lance's blurted, “My boyfriend is a handsome plinth!”

Shiro growled, which he was particularly well-suited to doing at the moment. It was a sound with fangs in it, which instantly got everybody's attention. “Right, that's enough. Pidge, you'll have to stay up here and guide us. Zaianne, Erantha, you'll come with me and see about getting those dampers restarted and the power junctions reconnected.”

“That's going to be tricky, Shiro,” Pidge said. “See here? The water from the pool's blocked off this whole section. That's where the second damper is, and the emergency blast doors have engaged. That's an automatic system, and I can't turn it off from here.”

“I can get to it,” Lance said with a grin, slapping his dolphin-like tail on the floor. “Gills, right?”

Pidge flashed him an exasperated glance. “Can you swim through an opening that's maybe three inches high? The damper is on the other side of this wall, here. It's in an air pocket, but the only way to get there from our side is through one of the mouseholes. Keith could do it, but there's no way he could swim that far underwater.”

“Sure there is!” Coran disagreed. “Just use one of the bubble-field generators, there are a few of them in that wall compartment over there, and Lance should be able to ferry him to the right spot with no trouble at all. The mice use 'em for checking for clogs in the plumbing.”

They looked at the cabinet thus indicated, which was glowing a sort of indigo-purple and was flashing on and off. Erantha strode over to it and gave it a knock with the hilt of his knife that shocked it back into reality for just long enough to remove a few small items. “Got it, and what looks to be Platt's battle armor,” he said, displaying the tiny suit. “Pidge, does the communicator in the helmet still work?”

Pidge poked a button, and the mouse helmet emitted a faint beep. “Yup. That's good, 'cause he's going to need it. I can read Altean pretty well now, but Keith's been skipping his language lessons.”

Shiro ventured over and retrieved the tiny helmet, which had mouse ears, and had to squelch a sudden and absurd urge to giggle insanely about that. Instead, he handed the helmet to Keith, who was indeed small enough to wear it. “Think you can handle the mission?”

Keith frowned disapprovingly at the mouse ears even as Lance snickered, but gave Shiro a very small thumbs-up.

“Good,” Shiro said, handing him the bubble-field generator, which had been designed as a sort of backpack-like arrangement. It didn't fit Keith very well, but it did produce a very respectable force-globe around him. “We'll need to get this done as fast as we can.”

“Got that right,” Zaianne said. “That little thunderstorm has finished its dance lesson and is heading for the kitchen. Ah... and it's generating at least a dozen little tornadoes.”

Pidge's fist thumped on the console. “Oh, crud, and Hunk was halfway through sorting his spice cabinet before that last visit to Keroga. Hunk, did you remember to put all of them away, or... Hunk? What the heck?”

Hunk had vanished from the room, but was visible on the screen, standing solidly before the kitchen door. All of them stared in astonishment as the little thunderstorm approached him and paused, seemingly daunted by his stony expression, and then turned around and went away from there.

Lance shuddered. “Okay, so he can move, but only when nobody's looking. Holy crow, my boyfriend is a Weeping Angel. Nobody blink.”

There was a snort of amusement from the invisible Zaianne, but Erantha gave him a suspicious look. “What?”

“Never mind,” Lance said, getting a grip on Keith's force-globe. “Just get me and the hamster-ball here down to the flooded place, will you? We've got to stop this before it gets any worse.”

Keith had never visited Disney World, nor had he ever wanted to.

Even when very young, the House of Mouse had not impressed him, nor had the classic cartoon characters, nor had its collection of doe-eyed princesses; in fact, he'd admired the villains more than the heroines. When shown pictures of the iconic white castle with its pretty towers and turrets, his first impulse had always been a desire to storm its battlements and turn it into his very own evil lair, with lots of black knights and minions and monsters and things. He had desired a dragon, found Maleficent's trolls to be charming, had been terribly disappointed that his father had refused to grow him a man-eating thorn hedge around their cabin, and had put “skeleton army” at the top of his Christmas list for three years running.

Therefore, he felt, he was entitled to feel a little stupid to be wearing a space helmet with mouse ears on it while Lance—Little Mermaid Lance, no less—swam him to his destination. At least he didn't have to listen to Lance talk at the moment. Gills were nice, but Human speech required lungs, and those were serving Lance as a buoyancy chamber right now. Keith smirked a bit at that. Fantasy was nice, but biology was biology, and gills only worked when water was moving over them. That meant that Lance was having to breathe like a shark right now, which looked natural in fish, but it made him look like a particularly malformed trout. At least it was quiet. Lance had cheerfully chattered on about mouse ears and hamster balls all the way down to the engine deck.

That had been a weird trip. Whole sections of corridor were starting to change now, from simple color shifts to things growing out of the walls to strange apparitions floating in and out of focus. At least one of the conference rooms they'd passed had become a Sylvan Wood complete with unicorns and bewildered elves, and that furry lizard thing had drifted by again, this time wearing fluffy bunny ears. A wall of water blocking off the corridor had been a relief by comparison, into which Lance had dove in without hesitation. And a few false starts. Even baby dolphins had to learn how to swim, after all, and Lance had needed a few minutes to figure out his new flukes.

“How is he doing, Keith?” Pidge asked in his ear.

“Pretty well,” Keith replied. “We've reached Section #3 already, and nothing weird has tried to eat us yet. That pool holds a lot of water, doesn't it?”

“Yeah. That's why they call it 'king-sized',” Pidge said. “Kings always get the biggest stuff. Anyway, you're nearly there. Once you're through the mousehole, keep talking to me—the control board here gets bored easy right now, and if we can't keep it interested, it might decide to break off our contact. It's already done that with Lance's earpiece, since he can't talk right now. Besides, I really want to know why the mice are going 'bloop' in there.”

“Gotcha,” Keith replied, observing that the pool's water wasn't exactly unoccupied. He wasn't sure what those black things with the glowing yellow spots were, but there were suddenly a lot of them. “Want me to check on Allura, too?”

“I don't think you're going to be able to do that,” Pidge said. “The water's shifted position again—it's almost a doughnut shape around the room with the damper in it now, and the one way out is on the wrong side. You'll have to be really careful, too. One of the saboteurs is sitting right by the door, and... well, if he was a Galra, I'm not sure what he is now.”

“He probably isn't either,” Keith pointed out. “Okay, we're here. I'm going in, Pidge.”

The mousehole was one of those narrow little openings in the base of a much larger apparatus, this one being in some sort of backup terminal or something. Plachu or Chuchule would have been able to stroll through this tiny space with no trouble at all, but Keith had to go in on his hands and knees. He glanced back as he did so, seeing Lance holding his force-bubble steady while he eased his way in, and glooped something that was probably “good luck” in fish person-speak. Keith waved and pushed himself through.

“Okay, I'm in,” Keith said, standing up when he was past the outer plating and having a look around. Strange shapes loomed at him out of the shadows cast by the light from his force-globe, but that was nothing new to him; Altean machine guts were no less peculiar-looking than Earthly ones, and were often more so. “It's not flooded in here, but I'm keeping the globe up.”

“Good idea,” Pidge told him. “The air quality could change at any minute, and you'll need the extra protection if something else decides to shift. Okay, you'll want to go left. There's a sort of condenser thing there that looks like a smokestack with ridges, and it shouldn't be too hard to climb. See the holes up above that? You want to take the middle one.”

“Gotcha, Pidge,” Keith said, making his way through the machine and watching his bubble change shape to fit the available space as he passed the various structures by. “This globe thing is amazing.”

Pidge made an affirmative sound. “Yeah, they are. Coran says that they were designed specifically for this kind of tight-space work, but that it only functions properly for mouse-sized users. Any bigger, and the field thins out too much to be effective. If they boost the power, the bubble goes rigid, and then you get stuck. No good.”

Keith found the condenser and clambered up it, heading into the correct hole. Once again, he was forced to go through on all fours for several minutes, but the space widened out again after a few twists and turns. “All right, I'm through,” he reported. “Looks like I'm in the wall somewhere.”

“About halfway up,” Pidge clarified. “You'll need to get around to the right, now, so head that way. There should be some platforms going up when you get around the corner. Don't touch the black lines, those are power conduits. They're off right now, but they might have enough of a residual charge to pop your bubble.”

“Thanks for the warning,” Keith said, and headed for the corner at a cautious jog, careful to avoid the black lines wherever they turned up.

The Castle really had been built with mice in mind, he thought as he climbed over a cluster of pipes. Half-hidden in the darkness above him were numerous mousewalks and pathways, level after level of them, and dozens of tunnels that no doubt allowed them into every possible corner and cranny of the ancient ship. He had turned the corner and was nearly up to where the ceiling might have been when he heard something strange. It echoed faintly off of the metal walls, but it was an unmistakably liquid sort of sound, thick and glutinous and vaguely unsettling. Bloop, it went, bloop... bloop... bloop...

“Something in the walls is blooping,” he informed Pidge. “Probably the mice.”

“Keep going,” Pidge replied, “you'll hit a level stretch soon. You'll follow that for two meters, and then it'll switchback down towards the floor. Then you'll... dammit, stop that!”

There was a crinkly sound in his helmet-comm, and a yelp that didn't sound Human. A faint, irritable “Gweek!” echoed in his ears. “Pidge, you okay over there?”

“Yeah, sorry. The base of the console grew a hand and grabbed my ankle, and Tilla had to bite it. This thing really does not want to do as it's told right now. Oh, god, she's growling at it. Squeaky dragon growling is even cuter than baby Galra growling... sorry, Tilla. Just get to that switchback, okay?”

Keith made his way upward a little further, then along a narrow ledge, and then found the series of platforms that led downward. Fighting down the notion that he was stuck in a Mario game, he reported in. “Found the switchback, Pidge.”

“Good. Head down three flights. There should be two holes there... no, five... no, seven... Stop that! I mean it, you ugly heap of used tinfoil. You behave yourself, pal, or I'm going to take you down to separate components and use them to make abstract garden statuary. Cubist garden gnomes, you kinkerbogle, I really mean it. That's better, but any more silly tricks and I'll get that Million-Use Mallet out of the armory, you hear me? I'll break you down and stitch you up at the same time. Three holes, Keith. Take the center one, and it should take you right into the room.”

“Right,” Keith said, and lost no time in getting down.

Unfortunately, it also let him see what was making the blooping noises. Keith couldn't help but stop and stare. It was furry and definitely alive, rather terrifyingly so, but it wasn't a mouse anymore. From the look of it, it had actually been several mice. Whatever they were now had encrusted a large patch of wall off to the right, a massive, pulsating patch of something resembling a fuzzy and aggressive form of lichen. With each pulsation, large areas ballooned up with their signature sound, deflating a second later to allow other patches to bloop. Keith swallowed hard and interrupted Pidge's muttered diatribe against mutating machinery, describing the phenomenon as well as he could without losing his lunch.

“Yuck,” Pidge said.

“Yeah,” Keith agreed. “They're not oozing or anything and they don't look like they're in pain, but I'm going to want to make this fast. Heading through the middle hole now, Pidge. Looks like a straight shot, too.”

“It should be. You'll actually be in the guts of the damper itself, but the control panel and screen are on the upper surface. I've seen the thing before, when Coran had me and Modhri helping to run maintenance on it once, and it's got a sort of mouse-ladder on both sides. You should be able to climb up from there. Oh, and look out—there's a major power conduit running right under the damper.”

“I see it,” Keith said, “Somebody's built a nice little bridge over it, too. Okay, let's just have a look outside.”

Keith made his way very carefully over the makeshift bridge, which had been constructed out of bits of junk from one of the storerooms. It was stable enough for creatures that might weigh a few ounces, but anything bigger would go right through it. Outside, conditions were little better. Just as Pidge had said, the saboteur was still out there, and apparently taking a nap.

“Oh, boy,” Keith said, observing the—to him—enormous hairy thing lying curled on the floor.

“What's wrong?” Pidge asked.

“Well, you know how Coran said that Shiro was lucky that he didn't turn into an ape?”

“Yeah?”

“This guy wasn't lucky.”

Lizenne had once mentioned that the ancestral creature that had given rise to the Galran race had been more like Earth's canines than anything else, and she was not wrong. It was shaggy, as befit a creature that lived in subarctic forests, the thick fur mottled in dark and light purple, with huge, heavy claws and tusklike canines. The hands were more like paws, the features thick and heavy, mouth and nose extending out into a broad, blunt muzzle, the eyes deep-set under a thick brow ridge. The legs were short, the arms long, the torso muscular and supple, and a short, tufted tail twitched restlessly as it dreamed. Its shoulders were very broad, too, and Keith recognized it as a powerful and dangerous predator.

Pidge sighed. “Well, do what you can. If we can get that damper back up, he'll turn into a Galra and you'll turn into a Paladin, and then you can punch him in the nose or something. Hurry up, Keith, Tilla's growing a mustache and it looks terrible on her. Shut up, Coran, yes it does.”

“Gweek!” Tilla said, sounding upset, and then sneezed.

Keith couldn't help but snort a laugh at that, and crawled cautiously out of the mousehole, making his way around to the side of the large and sinister-looking machine as quietly as he could, keeping a sharp eye on the sleeping proto-Galra as he began to climb the mouse-ladder.

Predators were often light sleepers, unfortunately, and this one was no different; a long, mobile ear flicked in the mane of longer hair that framed the face, and turned in his direction, quivering slightly with every step he took. The creature growled faintly, stretched out in a long sprawl that took up most of the floor, and yawned in such a way that showed off rather more big sharp teeth than Keith felt to be strictly necessary. Yellow eyes opened, nostrils flared as it sniffed at the air, and it uttered a soft, questioning rumble deep in its chest. It rolled upright into a four-legged stance with a single, supple movement of its long back and looked around curiously for intruders. It looked, Keith thought as he hurried up the side of the damper's housing, more like a lion than anything else. Sort of a cross between a lion and a werewolf, actually--

It turned its head and spotted him, its large, pointed ears pricked in his direction. The proto-Galra turned and approached him curiously, sniffing deeply as it did so, and Keith saw something more than animal intelligence in those golden eyes. Two somethings. One was a manlike mind, full of potential for greater things. The other was a spark of stinking, purple-black malevolence, one that Keith knew all too well, and that knew him in turn. It flared, and the beast hosting it shrieked in sudden rage that did not belong to it and lunged forward with jaws wide open.

Keith had no time to react, and cried out as the creature's jaws snapped closed on the force-bubble. Fortunately, whoever had designed the thing had been aware that the universe was full of creatures that would consider a mouse to be a tasty snack, and had planned accordingly. The force-bubble squirted out from between those sharp fangs like a bar of wet soap, bouncing free across the room. Keith landed easily, the bubble cushioning his fall, and made a dash back toward the mousehole with the monster in hot pursuit. Keith jinked right; a paw slammed down, narrowly missing him, and he jinked left, just barely avoiding another attempt to bite. A second later, the creature's paw slapped against the bubble, sending Keith bouncing off of a wall; sliding along the bubble's inner surface, he spread his arms and legs, throwing his weight to one side in an attempt to alter his trajectory. It worked—the bubble glanced off of the creature's left hind leg, bounced again off of the doorframe, and sent him spinning back toward the mousehole at high speed. Not quite accurately; the ball pinged off of the damper's housing, forcing him to turn it off before he could ricochet around the room again, and he threw himself under the machine just before the creature collided heavily against the device.

There was a bellow of fury, and one huge hairy arm forced its way through the mousehole after him, feeling around for its tiny prey. The groping claws knocked the mouse bridge aside, and Keith covered his eyes as the stubby fingers came down right across the power conduit.

There was a brilliant flash and a shriek of anguish as the conduit gave up its residual charge, and the hairy arm was gone. So was the monster, Keith saw when he looked outside, and there was a heap of scorched purple fur crumpled against the door. Even Haggar's power couldn't force someone to ignore a shock like that, Keith thought, and hurried to climb back up to the damper's control board.

“Okay, Pidge,” he panted. “How do I get this thing running again?”

“Big green button on the right,” Pidge replied, sounding a little distracted. “Push that twice to bring up the screen, and—stop that! Don't you dare do that again, I wasn't kidding about getting that Mallet! I swear, Castle, if you lick me again, I'm going to--”

Keith found the button and pressed it twice, but the machine didn't respond. Frowning, he tried again, and got nothing. “Pidge, it isn't working. There's no power.”

“Crud! Were any of the components knocked loose, or maybe turned into something stupid?”

“No, I checked. There just isn't any power.”

Pidge spat an alien expletive, followed by the sound of her fist hitting expensive machinery. “Stay there. I'm going to try to get in touch with Shiro and the others, and see if they can't get the power junctions reconnected.”

Keith glanced over at the proto-Galra, who was still breathing. “Tell them to hurry.”

Chapter Text

Chapter 9: Wrestling With Reality... Or Something Like That

“Well?” Shiro asked.

“He's alive, but other than that, I can't say,” Erantha said, standing up and gazing in perplexity at the peculiar growth before them.

The saboteur, whatever he'd been before, was now something like a lilac bush; just finding a pulse under the bark had been difficult. He'd collapsed right in front of the second unreality damper, as if the sudden rush of chaos had been too much for him. Shiro glanced around for Zaianne, and found her already trying to work the machine's controls.

Well, sort of. They'd had to knot Shiro's trousers across her torso to give them some idea of where she was. His already compromised pants had given up the ghost entirely when a section of flooring had come apart into a rockslide directly under their feet when they'd passed the training deck, and it had only been by the grace of good fortune that one of the Palabekan Blades had left a spare pair of trousers in the shower room. He'd had to shake a family of small birdish things out of them and one leg kept switching to dark red alligator leather whenever it pleased, but that hardly mattered at the moment. Zaianne wasn't having any luck in activating the damper.

“No good,” she said grimly. “We need to get the power back up before we can get anything else done. Pidge, do you hear me?”

There was a spitting noise from their comms and a burst of brilliant white sparks; as if in answer, a lone bagpipe began to play in the distance. Shiro had heard more menacing noises in his life, but not many. Erantha bared his teeth at the noise.

“If Coran wasn't just telling silly stories again, we do not want to meet with that one,” he said. “I know where one of the main junctions is, and I think that we can get there from here. Follow me.”

He took off at a sprint with Shiro and Zaianne following. In many ways, the path they took reminded Shiro strongly of that last, desperate run toward the center of the Nebula, for the fabric of the Castle itself was starting to twist around them. Doorways opened in blank walls as they passed by, revealing strange scenes out of the minds of drugged dreamers, some horrible and some sublime. Shiro kept his eyes firmly on Erantha's back, even when they passed through the cavernous core chamber where Allura was still trapped. He heard her call after them, but Erantha did not stop; up ahead and over his surging shoulders, he saw the disconnected junction—and also a flash of motion out of the corner of one eye that made him leap to one side.

With a banshee shriek of insane rage, an unfamiliar Galra woman barreled out of a side passage to slam Erantha off of her feet, and Shiro nearly choked when he caught the tell-tale stink of Haggar's influence. Indeed, the woman burned with it, an aura of violet flames roaring around her as though she were ablaze in truth. Her eyes burned a searing yellow, her teeth flashed white, and she tore viciously at Erantha with long claws.

Zaianne whirled and removed the raging woman from Erantha with an impact that shuddered through the air and sent his attacker flying into a wall; Shiro dove forward to seize her arms before she could lash out again, but the woman had the strength of madness and tossed him aside easily. Fireballs burst from her aura, forcing Zaianne and Erantha to leap away, but Shiro couldn't dodge in time, and gasped as a fireball struck his unprotected chest...

...and popped like a soap bubble.

He wasn't sure who was more surprised, himself or his attacker, and Erantha was actually gaping in shock. Shiro pushed it aside and pressed his advantage, leaping forward to grapple again. Their attacker uttered another scream of rage and tried again, this time with a blast of black lightning that flowed over Shiro's fur and spattered away like rainwater, leaving him untouched. Daunted by his immunity, she teleported away, leaving Shiro and the others breathing hard where they stood.

“How...?” Erantha asked.

Shiro flashed him an apologetic smile. “Something Keith did for me, just after my resurrection. I'm immune to hexes. So's Kelezar.”

Zaianne snorted a brief laugh, possibly at Erantha's expression. “My sons have talent. Erantha, you get that junction repaired. Shiro, you and I will find that bitra before she breaks anything else. At the earliest opportunity, we ask Allura where the other two junctions are.”

“Right,” he said, and ran with her.

Pidge was struggling with the console, which was in open revolt against anything at all like good order. She'd heard Zaianne's attempt to contact her, but the miserable thing refused to let her answer, and was vigorously resisting her efforts to prevent it from turning into a swarm of turtles. Or something like that. Right now, she couldn't be sure what it was trying to turn into, because it had completely stopped making sense.

“Come on,” she gasped, trying to force the mechanism back into its original configuration and not having much luck. “Crud! Coran, Tilla, I need help!”

“Gweek!” Tilla replied unhappily, and Pidge knew that she was in no shape to help out right now.

The little dragon was more mustache than anything else at the moment, and when she glanced back toward the defense-drone station, she saw that Coran had changed again, this time into some sort of spiderish thing that was too busy knitting green socks to pay attention to anything else. Half in despair, she turned her attention back to the console again, which was already sprouting clusters of what looked to be old-fashioned steel toasters. They had little flappy pigeon wings, which failed to amuse her. Her concentration was so great that she never heard the bridge doors open, and only noticed that she had company when a pair of unfamiliar hands came to rest upon the increasingly shiny surface, and a stranger's voice said, “All right, repeat after me: eradh maat, tahe moq, betla sadri iridmar...”

The console jerked under Pidge's hands, but the two voices chanting helped, and it shifted, slowly and grudgingly back into something like normal. The housing seemed to be made of strips of truck tire now, but if it worked, she didn't care. “Thanks,” she said, wiping sweat out of her eyes. “How did you... uh. Lizenne? Modhri? Is that you?”

Standing next to her were a pair of entirely Human-looking people, dark-skinned with tawny eyes and flowing dark hair. The man gave her Lizenne's smirk, however, and the woman had the same bewildered expression that Modhri got whenever he was out of his depth. Both of them were wearing the flowing garments that those two Galra preferred, which were sadly oversized on their much smaller Human bodies.

“Unfortunately, yes,” the man said, dragging his trousers back up on his slim hips. “We were still asleep when this situation started, and let's just say that waking up came as a shock.”

The woman—Modhri—rubbed at her eyes and leaned against the console. “Bad enough to wake up next to a stranger, but finding one's self to be another stranger at the same time? I've had better mornings.” She sighed. “Our children are going to be remarkable. Thank the gods that we'll have the dragons to help.”

Pidge gave her a blank look. “Huh?”

Lizenne tied a knot in his waistband to keep his pants where they belonged. “Modhri's family has a high incidence of powerful witches, for all that they've had to hide it for generations. If he'd been born a girl, his aetheric talent would have been awe-inspiring. Galra men are the latent carriers of a large portion of the gene-set that determines aetheric power, and his share is mighty. I didn't remove his ward, Pidge. He's still got it, and all it seems to be doing is controlling any random expression of magic. Speaking of randomness, just what the hell is going on?”

Pidge turned back to the console, her fingers dancing over the controls. “Some jerks shut down the Castle's unreality dampers and pulled the plug on the main power junctions. We're still smack in the middle of the Nebula right now, and it's ten times as weird in here than the Szaracan Cluster was. Said jerks are still down there, too, and you can bet anything that they're going to be trouble. The others are already on the engine deck trying to fix the situation, but that's not as easy as it sounds, and everything just keeps getting stranger. Okay, where is everybody?”

Windows popped up on the screens, showing various views of the Castle's interior, some more informative than others. “Well, there's Hunk, I think,” Modhri said, pointing out one figure. “Or a statue of him, at least. What is he doing in the staff kitchen?”

Pidge shrugged. “Got me. He was in ours, earlier. Um. There's that little thunderstorm again, only it's in Hydroponics right now, so that's fine. Uh. Is that Bessie?”

They examined the cow thoughtfully. “Possibly,” Lizenne allowed, “I've seen something like that in that snapshot of your Internet that I took; it was an ancestral bovine called 'aurochs', I think, although the animal had one head, not three.”

“We'll deal with it later,” Pidge said, pressing a few more buttons. “Okay, there's Lance, swimming with the fishes and living the dream. Yeah, and there's Hunk again... how did he get down to the engine deck? And there's Soluk... uh. That's not good, is it?”

Soluk was fast asleep in the dragon's den, and appeared to be snoring. The fact that he shrank dramatically with every exhale and expanded just as dramatically at every inhale was more than a little alarming. Lizenne frowned. “We wouldn't do him any good by waking him. Aha, and there's Allura. My goodness, rather a lot of Allura.”

“I know, right?” Pidge said, focusing in hard on another window. “There's Keith, who's a lot less of himself than he should be, and... what is that?”

Modhri squinted at the screen. “A galmoret, which are more or less analogous to your chimpanzees. They are the modern descendants of the common ancestor of all Galranoid peoples, and are native to the subarctic forest regions. I believe that there are still a few packs living in the Old Forest as well, but they're an endangered species these days. That poor beast looks like it's been injured.”

“It tried to eat Keith,” Pidge pointed out.

Modhri nodded. “That would do it. Ah, and there are... now, who are they?”

“The one wrestling with the power junction is Erantha,” Pidge informed her. “Those two are Shiro and Zaianne, only you can't see Zaianne real well 'cause she's invisible right now. Yes, Shiro's a Galra, and it makes him look super hot.”

“It certainly does,” Lizenne said admiringly, and then frowned when they were attacked from behind by a furious witch. “Oh, dear. Lelannis is going to be livid.”

Pidge blinked down at him. “Lelannis?”

Lizenne reached over and tapped the controls, zooming in on that particular window. “Oh, yes. Look at the build, the hair, and the facial features. That's a member of the Khorex'Var Lineage, and from the Line Direct as well. She's probably one of Modhri's brothers or close cousins, and it is extremely bad form for such a member of one House to attack the Hekabar-Harcho of another, particularly if they are allies.”

Modhri made a worried noise in the back of her throat. “Athren. Lizenne, the dragons never got a chance to inspect him, or the other two we recovered from that fleet. It was just too busy, and now this!”

Lizenne nodded, glancing down at Tilla, who gweeked contritely. “We're going to have to be more careful about that in the future.”

“Haggar got to them,” Pidge pointed out the witch's burning purple-black aura. “That's her stink on that lady if I've ever seen it.”

Modhri narrowed her eyes at the image, wincing when the witch attempted to take Shiro's head off with a blade of dark energy. She missed, of course, Shiro wasn't black Paladin for nothing, but the intent had very clearly been to kill. “Yes. Hopefully, they'll be able to take her alive. I want to know exactly what that monster did to my brother.”

“As do I,” Lizenne said grimly, and then smiled when the invisible Zaianne sent the raging witch flying with a well-aimed punch. “Well done, my sister.”

“Space ninja for the win,” Pidge agreed, and then whooped in triumph as the lights came back on. “Great! Erantha got the first junction reconnected. Shiro, do you hear me?”

“A little busy here, Pidge,” Shiro said breathlessly, looking around for any more sneak attacks. “Damn it, she's gone again. Pidge, we need to know where the other two junctions and the second damper are. Oh, and where is the third saboteur? Number two is a bush right now.”

“Number three is a purple werewolf, and he's out cold for the moment,” Pidge replied, glancing at the appropriate screen. “He's in the room with the second damper, and Keith's ready to start it up as soon as there's power going to that area. Keith, are you powered up yet?”

“Not yet,” Keith replied, “and the purple werewolf over there won't be asleep forever. Get a move on, okay?”

“Gotcha,” Pidge said, hitting another button. “Allura? Just where are those junctions?”

“There you are!” Allura exclaimed. “I was starting to worry. I see that Erantha has reconnected Junction Two, which has restored power to the bridge and our defenses; if necessary, we can now fly and fight. Let's see if I can send everybody a map...”

A little time later, Allura banged her hands together, squashing yet another airborne manifestation. This one had resembled a helba, a hive-dwelling stinging insect that had often made her mother's garden parties more hazardous than they needed to be. This creature had been at least a hundred times larger than those long-vanished pests, bright blue, and its mother had rather obviously been making iniquitous visits to medical waste dumps. It had come buzzing directly at her face, needle-like proboscis aimed squarely at her left eye, and she had reacted accordingly.

Whatever it was, it burst between her palms into a cloud of powder that smelled vaguely of something unpleasantly sweet, which was actually something of a relief—the last two had been dreadfully sticky, and the one before those had dissolved into a double handful of glass bubbles. She shifted her cramped legs and listened to the noise in the hallways surrounding the power core chamber. She could hear her friends running this way and that, and the sounds of brief skirmishes, and noises that had no home in the reality she knew. Other than that, all she could do right now was to keep an eye on the pulsing ball of light that was the core itself, and watch the walls do peculiar things as the effects of the Nebula's unreality got worse.

A large section of the domed ceiling had turned dark green and was beating like a heart, while something that looked like a long strip of shag carpeting was creeping in slow sine waves along a section of wall, glimmering with tiny biolights with each sinuous ripple. Every so often the Winslow, whatever that was all about, drifted by with its vapid smile and mindless greeting, and she would occasionally hear that strange music wafting from odd corners.

Eventually, a series of sharp movements on the far side of the core chamber's central pit caught Allura's attention, and she saw Shiro flying out of a side door. He landed rolling and came to his feet, furry tail lashing agitatedly and breathing hard through bared fangs. After him came a Galra woman whom she did not recognize, wroth beyond all rational thought and burning with dark fire.

“Shiro!” Allura shouted, “over here!”

He glanced up, spotted her past the glowing core, and nodded once, briefly, before dashing out of the room again through a door that hadn't been there a moment before. The woman followed, howling. Allura could only wait anxiously until they reappeared again, this time when one wall bulged inward alarmingly toward her, spitting the pair of them out onto the floor just within arm's reach. Allura wasted no time and lunged out with one arm, her hand closing hard over the witch's torso and lifting her away. Allura had to grit her teeth against the pressure of that dark aura—Haggar's work, she was sure of it, and without even thinking she drew off the foul stuff, purified it, and then expelled the evil in a thunderous sneeze. The plume of dark vapor hit the carpet thing, which immediately burst into masses of bright orange flowers.

“Thanks,” she heard Shiro say, sounding hoarse and weary.

He wasn't the only one. The witch had gone limp. Not dead, but certainly exhausted, and Shiro looked only marginally better. “Are you all right?” Allura asked.

He heaved a long breath and rolled a sore shoulder. “I'm starting to tire out, is all. That woman has a lot of power, and she was being pushed to the limit. Just keep a grip on her, all right? Erantha's working on the next power junction and Zaianne's gone back to the damper, just in case it goes live when the power comes back on.”

Allura transferred the witch to her other hand and laid fond fingers on Shiro's slumping shoulders, passing him some of the purified energy that was singing along her nerves. He heaved a long sigh of relief and straightened up, giving her a tolerant look when she gave into temptation and stroked his fur a little.

“Sorry, Shiro,” she giggled, “but you're all soft and fluffy. I couldn't resist.”

He snorted and backed away. “Save it for Keith. Ah--!”

There was a rising hum as the lights came back on, and Shiro grabbed for his comm. “Pidge, did that do it?”

“Sort of,” Pidge replied, sounding annoyed about something. “That lit the residential sections of the Castle back up, but—what was that, Keith? That's great! Green button twice, and then you input this code...”

Keith found himself admiring the agility of the mice as he danced across the keyboard; he was far too small to be able to get the keys to register his hands, and it took a good stomp to get the right symbols to appear on the screen. Still and all, he progressed with both speed and caution; the hairy purple beast by the door was starting to twitch and moan. Proto-Galra were tough, he thought. The charge the beast had taken would have sent anyone else to the infirmary. Fortunately, he was able to complete the last code sequence before it woke up all the way, and he let out a whoop of triumph as it hummed into life.

Then he fell off of the control board because he wasn't eight inches tall anymore, the tiny mouse helmet popping off of his head like a champagne cork and clattering away into a corner.

There was a yelp from the doorway, and Keith looked up to see that his adversary had stopped being prehistoric as well. He recognized the man as Marox, one of the three soldiers they'd rescued after the battle for Keroga; the poor fellow was still dazed from the shock he'd taken, and was further bewildered at finding himself to be stark naked—proto-Galra, naturally, did not wear clothing.

Keith's first impulse at that point was to get the man as far away from the damper as he could, and so he lunged into a run directly for the door, leaping over the prone Galra and heading down the hall at a sprint. Just as he had hoped, the man let out a bellow of outrage and followed. As he ran, he heard a massive sloshing not too far away as the water from the pool went somewhere else in a hurry. Lance, he thought, but had no time to wonder if his teammate was okay—Marox was fast, and Keith did not want to face off with him until he had room to maneuver.

Erantha checked his map, reasonably sure that it was accurate for the time being. He'd felt it when the first of the unreality dampers had come back online and was glad of it, but its influence had not extended to turning him back into a woman. Honestly, being male was so damned awkward. The center of balance was completely different in a male body, as were certain important arrangements in the joints, and being bigger and heavier was not the advantage that it could have been. Also, his clothing didn't fit right, and that was both annoying and a potential problem. Still and all, it did not matter; one of the prime tenets of the Order's training was absolute focus upon one's mission. Nothing else mattered, not even this.

So thinking, he dodged a floating apparition, turned yet another corner—Alteans couldn't build a simple, sensible, navigable grid to save their lives—ducked under a cluster of unnameable things that had affixed themselves to the ceiling, and carried on toward the final power junction. Then, oh, then, he would wreak his wrath upon the fools who had caused this mess.

Two minutes later, he was forced to stop. The final junction was in a room by itself with other bits of vital machinery spaced around it to give it consequence, but something very strange had happened in there. The room was full of a pale, sourceless light that looked almost like cloudy water; the colors were muted, and every surface had drifted out of focus. Transparent echoes, like double exposures, sifted into and out of view, and he knew instinctively that rushing headlong into this sort of anomaly was an excellent way to drop out through the bottom of the universe and never return again.

Something moved in the cloudy brilliance, and Erantha backed away warily as a shape coalesced before him. It was no more solid than anything else in the room, but nevertheless it took on form and color, and a long, harsh, droning note thrummed portentously out of the air. It was a manlike figure, tall and trim and muscled like a dancer, possibly male, possibly female, possibly both or neither. Eyes of indeterminate color flashed, and it adopted a warding posture: torso at three-quarters, feet planted, arms crossed. Not threatening, not yet... but not about to let him pass any time soon.

“Trickster,” Erantha whispered, backing a few more steps away.

It shifted slightly, almost a nod of acknowledgment, and waited. Strange music droned around it, grating and alien to Erantha's sensitive ears, but that was all. What was it waiting for, he wondered, or who?

The Trickster flickered again, as if catching his thought out of the air. Erantha's skin prickled as a strange sensation ran over him, almost like a medical scanner, and he gasped and staggered back against a wall as a series of emanations thundered across his mind:

...(cycle/wait) <*> (cycle/action) <*> {(choice/choice) >>> (branch) yes/no/maybe—POWERS ~ positive/negative/neutral ~ action (?) >< action (!) >>>(!!!){five = FIVE/SIX (elder/younger = focusfocusfocus/same-not same) versus basal force (fragment = self/not self)--past/cycle/present-- (!!!action!!!) <<< {incomplete} >>> FOCUS<<< (??) >>{*Implement (!) here/now/there/then = almost (!!!) ~ chance = yes/no/maybe...

(waiting <*> who) = yes (!)(??)(!)

And that was just the very small part of it that Erantha could understand. There was more to it, much more, and for the first time during this mad escapade, he was glad that he was a man. If he'd still had a woman's expanded perceptions, just that brief experience might have scrambled his brain entirely. Even so, he ached—a bright wire of pain that ran from nose to nape; four-dimensional minds could not communicate safely with an entity that existed in not just those four planes, but all the rest as well.

“Erantha, are you all right?” Shiro said, coming up next to her. “Allura's got the witch restrained and Zaianne's waiting by the second damper. What... oh.”

Erantha looked up to see the Paladin and the Trickster watching each other, Shiro with commendable wariness, the Trickster with curiosity. The air hummed again as the entity scanned him; this time it did not try to speak, but extended what was arguably an arm toward him. The hand, if it was a hand, sifted into sharper focus, as if coming up out of a pool of turbulent water into the air, and made a gesture that Erantha recognized immediately. So did Shiro, and he saw the man's gaze become suddenly intent.

The Trickster was offering to arm-wrestle.

Arm-wrestling was a major sport on more worlds than Erantha cared to count, and it was one that Shiro participated enthusiastically in whenever he got the chance. Perhaps it was a way for him to reaffirm that Haggar had not won, Erantha thought, that the arm had been returned unsmirched by the witch's evil, but Shiro never missed the informal matches that the Castle's Blade cadre liked to hold every now and again. He had a very good average, too, and Erantha suspected him of training up for eventually challenging Kolivan himself.

“Shiro, no,” Erantha rasped. “It's too dangerous—Shiro!”

Too late—Shiro never turned down a challenge.

Lance struggled for equilibrium and took an experimental breath. His gills were working again, which was something of a relief—he'd felt it when the first damper came back up, and unfortunately, both he and the water had been in a position to get hit with the full force of reality. Not a bad thing in theory, but it meant that the water was inclined to act like water generally did under normal gravity, and he'd stopped being a merman. Fortunately, he had enough air in his lungs to hold him while the resulting gush had carried him away, but it had been a near thing; right now, he seemed to be in a part of the deck that was still unreal enough to stop the flow and turn him back into his half-cetacean configuration. The fact that he was bright yellow-orange with blue stripes and wearing a tube top under his jacket—which was now a hot pink leather goth jacket, chains, spikes, and all—didn't do much more than annoy his aesthetic senses.

At least the water wasn't going anywhere at the moment, he thought, trying to figure out where he was. By and large, Lance preferred to avoid the engine deck and wasn't at all familiar with the floor plan. Somewhere near the core chamber, because he was able to see the doorway into it from here, and even caught a glimpse of a vastly oversized Allura through it. He also spotted Hunk at the far end of another hall, still apparently made of stone, although when he looked back a moment later, his friend was gone again. He also saw that Winslow thing again, floating by wearing goggles and a snorkel, but that probably didn't count. Frustrated, he thrust himself around another corner and saw something that lifted his spirits considerably—Keith racing past, and at his full and proper size.

It was a bit more of a surprise to see a naked Galra man chasing after him a second or two later, but since Lance had had the occasional impulse to do just that as well, he did his best to follow along. He just had to see what all of that was about.

It was mostly a running fight, as far as he could tell. Naked Guy, as Lance had mentally labeled him, seemed to be determined to pop Keith's head off, and Keith had no intention of letting him do so. Unfortunately for the both of them, the water thought this was amusing, and wouldn't let either of them escape—Lance could feel its hilarity as a constant vibration against his skin that reminded him, oddly enough, of the canned laughter in the old '80's sitcoms. Sort of tinny, often inappropriate, and about as real as a paper-mache ham.

Not funny, dude, that's a life-or-death struggle over there, he thought at the aqueous medium around him, but if it could hear him, it didn't care. With a glurp of annoyance, he did his best to keep up with Keith and Naked Guy, noticing as he did so that the Galra wasn't moving right. This man had been an ordinary soldier, not a secret agent or anything like that, but the last time he'd seen moves like the ones the Galra was performing now, it had been in the Ghamparva station. Lance also happened to know from sparring with the Blades that most people couldn't do those fancy moves real well when they were in a blind rage, which Naked Guy was certainly in right now. He thought of the killbots, and the nasty little devices that he'd spent so much time and effort removing from the Ghamparva's victims, and clenched his teeth in anger. If that poor guy was another victim, Lance thought, he would personally hunt down the cross-eyed creep who had implanted Modhri's cousin and then give said creep to the nearest Hoshinthra as a birthday present. There were just some things that were not forgivable.

In the meantime, though, he needed to find a way to break this chase up, and in that, at least, the water was actually helping. It was constantly throwing up obstacles, cutting off and opening up passages and rooms, and piling debris in odd spots all the way, to say nothing of making all surfaces as slick as a sheen of moisture could make them. Lance didn't dare to try to freeze any of it—after all, that might give it ideas. The water itself might decide to cube up around him, and he knew all too well that ice was a killer. Conversely, it might decide to boil, and that would be worse.

What am I gonna do, Lance wondered anxiously as he barreled around another corner, following the flow as best he could. Whatever it was, he was going to have to do it soon. Keith and Naked Guy had both been hit with a heavy dose of reality from being so close to the damper when it came back up, but that was starting to wear off. Naked Guy's fur had turned a distressing shade of neon green and Keith now had feathers. Both of them were probably only a minute or two away from growing a third leg or something.

The current sped up, and Lance suddenly had to concentrate on keeping himself from being swept into the various piles of debris that had been scattered around, although he wasn't entirely successful. Things were growing out of the walls, floors, and ceiling that defied description, and once he was certain that he saw Hunk in a thicket of glowing blue eyestalks. All he knew for certain, as he was forced to nearly sprain his back to avoid a tangled heap of tubing and old fuel pods, was that sentient pool water was a pain in the ass.

Keith was very much of the same mind at the moment. He needed room—whatever Haggar had planted in Marox had pushed him beyond sanity, and had given him ninja moves as well. Worse, Keith did not want to hurt Marox. The man was a victim, not a villain, and while he had been trained in ways to drop a man without doing real damage, they required space to move in, and the big blob of living water that was plaguing him now had managed to trap him and Marox in a series of cramped little side halls that were completely unsuitable for the purpose.

Marox uttered a wrathful scream behind him, and Keith heard an echo of Haggar in that sound. He bit off a curse as half of the intersection up ahead filled up with water; on the other hand, the passage to the right had emptied out, and he dove around the corner as fast as he could go. Unfortunately, the decking was still wet and his feet went out from under him, forcing him to tuck and roll. Marox went right over his head, skidded, fell, and slid down the wet hall like an overexcited preteen on a new Slip 'n' Slide, howling all the way. A shimmer at the corner of Keith's eye made him glance up at the wall of water next to him, which was rippling briskly. Keith blinked at it, and then scowled; the water was laughing at him, but he didn't have time to yell at it. Marox had gotten his feet under him and was rushing him again, fangs bared, clawed hands reaching and eyes blazing with madness. Keith knew that he should stand his ground and call forth his power to cleanse Marox of the hexes infesting him, but all of his instincts were telling him that this was a very bad idea right now.

That in and of itself was unusual for Keith, and he couldn't help but wonder why... until he noticed that he'd changed again. This time, long russet-colored feathers were growing out of his hands as his arms attempted to turn into wings, and a prickling sensation over his skin told him that it was a full-body fledging. Keith ground teeth that felt strange in his mouth all of a sudden; he was growing a beak at the moment, and the sensation was bizarre. He'd glimpsed Lance in the water, trying to keep up with them, and he just knew that the jerk was bound to call him a chicken. Unfortunately, Lance would be technically correct. A shriek of outrage from behind him told Keith that he wasn't alone in his irritation; a glance back over his shoulder showed him that Marox had turned the damnedest shade of neon green he'd ever seen, a color that he knew from personal experience was actually painful to the Galran eye. Marox was flying blind at the moment, eyes clamped shut against the searing color of his own fur, but unable to stop.

Stifling an urge to flap and squawk, Keith scrambled away again, fighting legs that were trying to develop extra joints. He staggered, stumbled, bounced off of a wall and fell again, which was fortunate—Marox went right past him in a high-speed blare of godawful green. Keith shoved himself to his feet, or tried to. His legs resembled old-fashioned wooden folding rulers right now, and he didn't know how to use them. He managed to scramble past the intersection again, stealing a glance back as he did so. Marox had realized that he'd overshot again, and was turning around for another rush. Keith kept going, struggling with hands that no longer had enough fingers to push himself along, breath hissing past jaws that were the wrong shape against the effort of moving. He could hear Marox's feet thudding, picking up speed, heard the roar of a Galra about to seize its prey... and then something behind him went clonk, and there was a frantic scrabble of claws on decking as Marox was forced to slow down in a hurry.

Keith blinked. That was not the sort of noise that he'd been expecting at all. He looked up, turning his head on a neck that was a good deal longer all of a sudden, and saw Hunk standing in the narrow hall behind him. Marox snarled in frustration, trying to get past, but Hunk had positioned himself as standing with arms and legs spread, hands braced against the walls, and was entirely impassable. Marox stepped back a pace or two, trying to figure out where this sudden impediment had come from, when Lance burst out of the wall of water that had been blocking the other half of the intersection in a magnificent flying leap. He turned as majestically as a sounding whale, slamming his heavy lower body directly into Marox's back, crushing the Galra man against the opposite wall. Marox went down hard and stayed there, with Lance draped damply over his torso.

“That was great!” Lance exulted a moment later. “Check it out, two hundred pounds of half-dolphin, half awesome for the win! Thank you, thank you, no need to applaud, it's all me.”

Keith couldn't have applauded if he had wanted to, and in any case, something was wrong with the walls and floor around them. They were glowing, very faintly, with a sort of cloudy transparency that looked a little like diluted milk, and everything was starting to slide in and out of focus.

“Hey, Keith, are you okay?” he heard Lance call out to him. “I mean, you look okay for an archaeopteryx, but how are you feeling?”

“Awk!” Keith managed, and then squawked in earnest—the entire fabric of time and space shifted around them somehow. He could feel the probabilities turning like gears under his feathers, and a faint echo of a laugh. There was a fractal feeling, dizzying in its simplicity, and a faint whiff of cheese crackers. After that, a minute or two of confused silence passed before suddenly everything was normal again.

Keith had just enough time to register that Hunk wasn't a rock anymore and Lance had no pants on before the pool water collapsed in a vast gush, sweeping them all away.

...because...

Shiro reached out and took the hand of the Trickster.

He felt a thrill in his blood and a fizzing in his nerves, and in the back of his mind the Oracle's Lens began to turn. Not to See ahead, he thought as the bagpipe music skirled around them, but to let him See truly into the present for the first time in his life. He blinked and looked around, discovering himself to be in the Mindscape again, or somewhere much like it. Like layered transparencies, all other places and times were here as well, just the thickness of a reflection away. All the other universes, he knew, separated from the here and now until the inevitable choices were made.

Not the right choices, or the wrong choices. Right and wrong were only a matter of opinion. The important thing was that those choices were made.

He turned his gaze back to the entity holding his hand and couldn't help but stare. The hand, in constant flux though it was, was still a manipulatory member, strong and real. The rest of the Trickster was, to his limited perceptions, a kaleidoscope of shapes and colors, sounds and smells, textures and temperatures, and a thousand other things that he wasn't equipped to experience. There was something of Humanity in there, and something of Galra, and of Altean and Elikonian and Halidexan, and millions, billions more. It gave him a wry, humorous look out of an infinite number of eyes and communicated:

...(chance/chance) <*> (!) {change >>(??)<< (constant ~ yes/no/maybe) <*> (all life)} = (!)me/yes...

The Lens spun, working out a reasonable translation. This was a chaos entity—not an oblivion monster like the one that had set its hooks so deeply into Zarkon, but a manifestation from the other side of the coin. A creature that was all chance, all change, and a part of every possible universe where time meant anything at all. The trick, as he had learned from Tzairona and Zerod, was to follow the branches of possibility and to steer one's home reality into the universes that you wanted. Slav had known that, but hadn't been able to explain it in a way that Shiro could understand. Here and now, holding the ever-changing hand of Chance, he could see it all.

...(positive/negative/neutral)... the Trickster told him, ...{chance (choice/chance) >*< life/death (?)(!!!)} = dance/choice...

“Dance?” Shiro asked, surprised.

...(!!)dance(??) = (!!)change(??)...

The Trickster paused, as if trying to find the right words, although mere words weren't quite adequate for this subject.

...(choice/dance) = >>focus<< (!!!) change <*> {strength (!)(?) = (movement/direction) ~ give (!)(?) = (here/now/then/there)} = (!!!)change(!!!)...

Shiro drew in a long, careful breath. “This is a challenge. You want to see if I can... use my abilities... to move my timeline into a universe where we'll survive this, right?”

...>>>FOCUS<<< (chance/change)(!) >> dance/challenge (me) = yes...

“Why?”

The Trickster seemed to sizzle with its whole substance, and there was a vague feeling of impatience; Shiro had the impression that this entity had heard that question a very great many times before. It shifted, bringing a pair of glowing eyes level with his.

...(me/not me) <<<OBLIVION>>> present(!!!) here/now/there/then <*> {not me (world death/star death/space death/time death) = OBLIVION(all) = (!!!!!)no chances...

Shiro nodded slowly. “I think I see. If this universe dies—if oblivion swallows it—it'll take a piece of you with it, but you can't just arrange things, can you? You've got rules that you have to follow as well.”

...>>>RULES<<< = yes <*> (balance/balance) ~ wallkeepers(!!!) balance/watchfulness/balance = presence(yes) <*> >>>POWERS<<< (change/balance) ~ (force/motion/intent) {five = (FIVE/SIX) (???)Implement(!!!)} = (chance/change) not OBLIVION...

Shiro understood only parts of that, but the Trickster seemed to think it was very important, and keeping the universe from collapsing into a smoking hole was always a good idea. “All right, then, let's do this,” he said, getting a good grip on its hand. “How will I be able to tell when I'm on the right track?”

...>>>FOCUS<<<...

Shiro puffed a laugh. “Right.”

The music flowed up in tangled harmonies, and Shiro took a few steps, listening closely, observing his strange partner as it moved with him, and all around them the multiverse danced along. He became aware of a pressure being exerted on his arm as he moved, influencing his direction, and he remembered that this was a challenge. Frowning, he pushed back, accepting the resistance and imposing his own will upon the dance. Change happened, and he felt as though he had seen something like this before. It was almost like--

He pushed harder, and a flash of clarity flicked past his vision—for just a fraction of a second, the hand holding his had been a true one. This was a little like one of those three-dimensional perspective puzzles, where you had to turn a lot of seemingly random points on three or more different axes until those points formed a picture. It was more than that, of course, but it was an analogy that he could understand. The points were there, if one knew where to look. The member that held his hand was of no single shape, but the pressure of that member and the strength in it remained constant. The music that skirled around them was being played on an infinite variety of instruments and the tune itself was nearly random, but the time and tempo were the same. Colors, scents, shapes, vibrations, flavors, everything that every sense he had could detect, all of them had constants hidden within. There was a purpose to the madness, right notes amidst the wrong, and all he had to do was find them and fit them into place.

Patience yields focus, he thought, and felt it resonate throughout his entire substance when one of those points slammed home. The hand that clasped his own was now a true hand, and a very Humanlike one at that. Eyes of every color and shape winked playfully at him; heartened, he continued. Another point came into focus, but it felt wrong, like biting into a wax apple, and he passed it by. False fruit, he thought, and the Lens supplied a Vision. Just a glimpse, but as true a prediction as any: a tempting target, an easy victory, but disaster, death, and probably worse lay in wait just past that pretty facade. Another swung into focus, its aspect strange but true; the Lens told him that it concerned that same situation, but with certain differences that promised a better outcome. A difficult entry, a battle both outward and inward and the possibility of serious injury... but a mighty prize might be won and a dangerous enemy might very well be sent yelping away with its tail between its legs. Smiling, Shiro focused on that point and the future snapped into place; the Trickster came a little further into focus, this time reliably upright and bipedal, and he was certain that he heard it laugh when he rejected a point that... well, he wasn't sure, but it seemed to involve a great deal of wobbling.

The Trickster tried to tip his hand, to force him off balance and away from the points he wanted; he pushed back, determined to win. Point after point was achieved as they strove against each other, traveling in directions that had no name in Shiro's reality, and with each point won the universe came back into focus. The Mindscape simplified, faded, and once again became the white-paneled hall of an Altean royal ship. The Trickster's shape became clearer, more manlike, its colors flickering through the spectrum to settle upon those familiar to him, and the eyes, the expression...

...the smile...

He was holding the hand of something very like a classic Harlequin, their elbows braced atop one of the room's lesser machines, and he had pressed his opponent's hand firmly to the surface. Starlike eyes glinted with approval in a two-toned face, one half as red as blood, the other as black as space. Space, he recalled, that was full of light, if only you had the way of seeing it. It grinned at him, showing bright, fierce teeth, tossing its narrow-featured head and brandishing a pair of curling ram's horns that were not a part of anything so impermanent as a cap. Satisfied with his surprise, it stepped away, releasing him gently and with decorum, and then bowed to him as gracefully as a unicorn and vanished in a shower of tiny, fragrant orange objects.

Shiro swallowed on a dry throat, suddenly very tired. He barely noticed it when Erantha hurried past him, and knelt instead to gather up what the Trickster had left behind. He knew these things of old, and his hands shook at the memories they summoned even as he swept them into a neat pile before scooping them up and pouring them into a pocket. His prize for winning might have been the fact of winning, but these were a welcome bonus.

He heard a click and a rising hum, and saw his shadow as the room brightened around him. A minute or two later the second damper came back online, and when he stood up, he was Human again. And wearing pants that were far too large for him. In the distance he heard a loud gushing, as if the largest toilet in the world had just been flushed, followed by a lot of shouting.

“We should probably go and check that out,” he said, hauling his trousers back up and retying the drawstring.

“Yes,” Erantha replied, properly female once more, and gave him a look of concern. “Shiro, what happened just now? What did you do?”

He rubbed at his head, reaching for memories that, dreamlike, were already starting to fade. “I took my chances, and I think I won. Come on, that sounds like Hunk trying to talk Lance and Keith out of having an argument.”

Erantha cocked her head in the direction of the noise, and smiled. “With Allura yelling at them to shut up and help her with something. Indeed, we should go.”

Chapter Text

Chapter 10: Side Trip

A little time later, Shiro and Erantha found themselves in good, if damp company; the entire pool had washed through here, leaving the decking treacherously slick. Lance, at least, didn't seem to care.

“No, you should've seen it, it was great,” Lance said, grinning broadly at Shiro and Erantha as he tied his jacket around his waist to serve as a temporary loincloth; despite being as soggy as Keith, Hunk, and Marox, he seemed perfectly chipper. “Keith was running all over the place with Naked Guy there chasing him as if he had the only pair of pants left in the cosmos--”

“His name is Marox, Lance,” Keith interjected testily.

“Yeah, whatever,” Lance said, not paying attention, “--and I was swimming after them 'cause the water had pretty much filled up all of the halls around them. And then boom, Hunk shows up when nobody was looking, blocking him from getting Keith, who I think was some sort of bird-lizard at the time, and the only other way around him was where I was, so I did a totally perfect Flipper body-slam. Wham! I've always wanted to do that.”

Shiro looked down at the stunned Galra, who was definitely looking the worse for wear. Erantha had secured his arms and legs to keep him from running off again, although that hardly seemed necessary. “That would have been when Zaianne got the damper working, right?”

“Yeah,” Hunk said, wringing out his shirt. “All of a sudden, he's not a mermaid, I'm not a statue, Keith's not a dinosaur, and the water stops wanting to stay put. That was a lot of water, Chief. And then I get flashed by two guys and cussed out by another 'cause I landed on him, and Allura nearly drops her guy down the pit in the core chamber 'cause she's not big enough to hold him in one hand anymore. It's okay, Zaianne heard her yelling and is helping her with that right now.”

Shiro glanced at Keith, who was soaked, cranky, slightly squashed, and generally fed up with everything around him. Interestingly, the rush of water had carried his teammates almost directly to the core chamber door, and through it he could see Zaianne and Allura approaching, each with their own captive saboteurs. Shiro frowned slightly, seeing that Zaianne was carrying hers, and that Allura's was stumbling along as if nearly too exhausted to stand. That was Athren, Modhri's elder brother, and Shiro recognized him further as the witch who had tried so hard to kill him only a little time ago. The man was thinner than he remembered, almost bony, and he realized with a shudder just how much energy the man had been forced to spend.

Shiro keyed his communicator, calling the bridge. “Pidge, are you there?”

“Yeah,” she responded. “Good work, by the way, everything's back to normal and the Castle tests clean. What the heck were you doing, anyway? I had Lizenne and Modhri up here helping me keep the controls sort of normal, but you went into that room and then everything got really fuzzy for a few minutes there. No, really—the whole bridge was suddenly as blurry and cloudy as a Japanese hot spring.”

Shiro snorted a brief laugh. “It's complicated. We won, though. Would you warm up the infirmary for us? The good news is that the saboteurs have been captured alive, but they're pretty badly banged up. The bad news is that they're all Modhri's relatives—the ones we picked up from the battle earlier, and Haggar's gotten to them.”

Pidge made an angry growling sound. “Yeah, we know. Lizenne's gone to tell Lelannis. We'll want to get those hexes out as fast as we can. Haggar's really piling up the offenses, isn't she?”

“Yes,” Shiro replied; Zaianne was close enough that he could see that the man she was carrying was the one who'd already been recovering from serious injuries, and should not have been out of the infirmary at all. “After that, we can concentrate on getting out of the Nebula.”

“The sooner, the better,” Pidge said fervently. “Coran says we've got some time to work on that in, but we've all just about had enough of this.”

Shiro smiled wryly and rubbed at his left side, which ached. The ribs on that side had been broken only a little time ago, he recalled, and he welcomed the pain as a sign of normality. “Too true. Where is Coran, anyway?”

“Taking a shower. Don't tell Lance, but he turned into some sort of big hairy spider thing with a knitting kick about ten minutes ago, and he says that being covered in bristles left him all itchy.”

“Ew,” Lance said with a shudder.

“Quite,” Zaianne agreed, walking up with her prisoner cradled carefully in her arms, Allura behind her with Athren, who had been blindfolded and was on the verge of collapse. “We'll all want to clean up, but seeing to these gentlemen is far more important. Shethar here needs medical attention, and now. Lance?”

Lance's hand was already on the injured man's chest, and he frowned at what he felt there. “Ooh, yeah, not good. I can feel the hex in there, guys, and it's killing him.”

“Let's get them to the infirmary, then,” Allura said firmly. “I will not permit any portion of Haggar's influence aboard this ship!”

Dealing with Haggar's sleeper agents was mercifully brief, if a bit crowded. The whole team of Paladins had assembled there in the infirmary's recovery room, along with Lizenne, Lelannis, and several of her House's best witches, all of whom wanted to have a look at an example of Haggar's work. Lelannis in particular was furious at this misuse of her kin, and furious at herself for missing what had been done to them.

“Don't be too hard on yourself,” Lizenne told her, stroking Athren's face gently; he and Marox had been dosed with something that was keeping them quiet for the time being, and he barely registered her touch. “We missed it, too. Even the dragons were too busy to check them over, and Tilla is very embarrassed about that. Moreover, this is very subtle work, and ordinarily it would be impossible to remove without killing them. Do you see it, everybody?”

The Paladins nodded, having long been sensitized to Haggar's power, but the Khorex'Var witches were having more trouble, now that the hexes were quiescent. “I can't,” one of them admitted. “I can smell something, just a tiny whiff of something foul, but these two were working on the flight deck and some of those lubricants and things smell terrible.”

“They do, don't they?” Hunk said with a smile. “I keep telling Coran that we should switch to wixxel grease for some of those parts, it works just as well and doesn't smell like burning sneakers, but he says that synthetic burmop oil is traditional. Plus, the Castle's systems can make it for free, and wixxel grease is pricey. But Haggar's got a stink all her own, and it's worse. Think we can give them a better look, guys?”

“Yes, but carefully,” Allura said. “Coran says that the dampers are doing their best, but we shouldn't put too much of a strain on them. It really is still very bad out there, and we will need to leave as soon as we can.”

“Then let's do this,” Keith said firmly.

That was good enough for everybody, and they slipped their awareness into the Mindscape with the ease of long practice. Keith led the way this time, his skill with hexes lending him this authority, and he nodded in satisfaction to see the Galra witches shining like torches right next to his own team. Before them lay their three patients, their own lights shining dimly on this plane. Keith could see the sparks of purple-black hidden deep in their substance very plainly, and was surprised that the Khorex'Var ladies couldn't.

Lack of practice, one of the older ones said with a wry smile. We could never get as much time out here as we should have; Inzera's own daughters and nieces were very sensitive to that sort of thing, and we did not dare let them see us. Show us the way of it, Paladin.

Right, Keith said, focusing in on Marox's hex, which had been embedded in his brain. This one is really small, but it's dense, and it's in a bad place. Guys, I don't think that Haggar intended for these three to survive this.

I am gonna mess her up so bad, Pidge growled. Look at that! That looks like a seriously bad piece of malware to me, Keith, and it was aimed right at us.

Shiro scowled darkly at them. We picked them up from three separate ships, too. That couldn't have been a coincidence. Zarkon threw away that whole fleet, just so that we could “rescue” their sleeper agents.

I knew it! That battle was way too easy, Lance hissed, ignoring Keith's exaggerated eye roll. What do you want to bet that they held off on sending out the Robeasts, just to give these poor guys enough time to find out where the dampers were?

Clever, Allura mused, evil, but clever. Oh. Oh, Ancients, the Robeasts! Lizenne, were they really--

Just for a moment, Lizenne's fury burned white-hot, causing ripples in the starry plane around them before she got it under control again. Oh, yes, Lizenne said in a flat, dangerous tone. They were. My great-aunt, several of my uncles, some of my cousins, and even a few of my brothers. I will not speculate at this time on what has become of the rest of my Lineage, but I will find out. I was warned that this might happen and I was not fond of most of them, but they were my blood kin. Haggar will pay dearly for this, and we will start by taking these tools from her. I can't remove these without doing considerable damage to these men. How would you go about it, Keith?

Keith stared down at those angry, black-amethyst sparks, and cocked an interested look at the one in Athren's brain. It was much dimmer than the other two, and already starting to lose its grip on its host. Allura, you pulled most of the power out of this one, didn't you?

Yes, and I nearly sneezed my nose off, she replied. It seemed to work fairly well. I feel that if I can do that with the other two, you'll be able to burn them out without risking too much damage.

Right, Keith said, warming to the subject; this was action, and an action that he could perform well. Pidge, you make sure that I don't leave anything behind. Lance, you know more about brains than I do, can you keep me from scorching anybody?

Sure, Lance said. Galra brains aren't all that different from ours. Hunk, you're on backup if we need extra power, or—ooh! Or if the hex tries to blow up, can you make a really tiny containment ring? That worked great on that nasty flashback that Shiro had, and there's no reason why it shouldn't work on hexes, too.

Good point, Hunk said thoughtfully. Lizenne, be ready to back me up on that if it tries to bolt. Shiro, you just keep an eye on things, okay? All right, let's do this.

And that was the way they did it. The Galra witches watched in awe—and pride, in Lizenne's case—as Athren's and Marox's hexes were depleted, burned away, and the damage healed up practically before it happened. The two men uttered faint grunts of discomfort, but that was all. Shethar's hex was more difficult. The compulsions had been strong, but his body had not been able to respond to them for longer than it had taken to disconnect the power conduits and shut down the damper; consequently, the hex still had most of its energy and it was not willing to cooperate, which threatened Shethar's weakened systems. The team reacted accordingly, with Shiro, Pidge, and Lance lending Keith strength, Hunk snapping a ring around the offending hex, and Allura drawing its energies off with ruthless efficiency. Her sneeze might have thundered through both the aetheric and physical planes, but that didn't matter. Keith lanced the ugly knot of Haggar's malice as cleanly as one could wish, leaving Shethar free, but still more damaged than Lance could conveniently heal. Not that this was much of a problem; they came back out into the material plane, picked the man up, and hustled him out of the room and into the nearest medi-pod at their best speed.

“And that, ladies,” Lizenne said with a fond smile as she watched them go, “is how a true Tahe Moq coven works. Each practitioner works in concert with one another, according to individual strengths and perceptions, solving problems that would be impossible for a single witch. The Pack is as one.”

“And has saved the lives of my son and nephews,” Lelannis murmured, stroking Marox's hair. “You have promised to teach the daughters of my House, Lizenne.”

“I have,” Lizenne said, watching her carefully.

“You will teach me as well,” Lelannis said, her eyes full of tears. “I love all of my sons, and I could not detect a thing that would have taken one of them from me. I will not let this happen again.”

Lizenne nodded sympathetically. It was rare for one Matriarch to ask such a thing of another, but it did happen if there was a pressing enough need. “Tilla and Soluk would appreciate having someone to share that responsibility with. We'll begin immediately, if you would like. Let me just tell the Paladins to take some time to refresh themselves first. They often forget.”

Lelannis smiled wanly. “I could use a cup of tea myself.”

“How are we doing, Coran?” Shiro asked, scratching at the back of his head; even after a hot shower and a quick snack, two transformations in as many hours had made him a little itchy in spots.

“Better,” the Altean replied, stroking his mustache as if to reassure himself that it was back to its usual proportions. “But not for long. The unreality dampers are all back online, but there's only so much they can handle. That clear space that Voltron opened up for us is pretty good, yeah, but there's a lot of anomalous energy built up in the Nebula, and it's starting to close in on us again. The Castle's sensors are having real trouble trying to make sense of it all.”

Shiro frowned at the drifting fields of strange matter just a little distance away. “And the Chimera?”

“They're no better off.” Coran shrugged. “Hanifor craft are good ships, but their hyperdrives are just a tad sloppy. All I can say for sure is that we'd better be extremely careful about opening a wormhole in the middle of all of this. This current bit of space is very fragile right now, and the least little thing could destabilize the whole region.”

“But if we stay here, we're in trouble,” Shiro mused. “I'll call the team up here. Voltron got us into this position, and maybe he can get us back out again.”

Coran sighed. “It isn't really his fault. You didn't have much choice in that, now did you? That was an unusually nasty bunch of Robeasts, you know. Even old Alfor and his lads would've had a great deal of trouble dealing with those things.”

“I know,” Shiro agreed, rubbing at ribs that had recently been broken. “Haggar's monsters just keep on getting harder to deal with. We're going to have to do something about that, and soon.”

A little time later the rest of the team had assembled, and were watching the Nebula's slow but steady encroachment on their bubble of reasonably clear space, and Coran had opened a line of communication to the Chimera. Lizenne looked tired and slightly irritable, but otherwise fine, and Modhri seemed to be intact as well. At the moment, Pidge and Hunk were trying to calculate a way out of this situation, and not having much luck.

“It would be easier if we knew just what we did to get here in the first place,” Pidge admitted. “I mean, that wasn't normal aetherics, that was... well, sorcery, and we were all too messed up already to really know what we were doing. Allura, you and Shiro were right up front for that. Did you see anything?”

Allura sighed; her memories of that wrenching effort were just as spotty as those of the others. “I'm not sure, Pidge. It was as if someone was saying a command phrase over and over, but not getting it quite right. There was more to it than that, but I can't describe any of it.”

Shiro nodded. “The pronunciation was a little off, I think, and it took all of us and the Lions to fill in the right sounds. The words... turned a key, somehow. That's not right, but I can't come any closer, either. Then we passed out and woke up in the infirmary. Lizenne, did you see anything... oh, right.”

Lizenne snorted and shot a sharp look at Modhri. “No, and that's for the best. If even half of what I've been told about our journey into the Nebula is accurate, then even a glimpse of what was really going on might have blinded me, perhaps permanently. Were there any injuries among Modhri's family?”

“Nothing serious,” Coran said. “I'm told that every one of the Ladies had the simple good sense to set up every ward they could think of and hunkered down the moment that those Robeasts arrived. Seems to have worked, and being male for a little while didn't hurt. The men all have headaches, but nothing worse.”

“Small mercies,” Modhri murmured. “Nevertheless, we need to leave. The dragons don't like our current position, and Tilla's still angry about having been so small.”

Hunk grinned. “Yeah, but she was awfully cute, and listening to her trying to gronk was hilarious, and Lance was living the dream.”

“Got that right, and it came in handy, too,” Lance stretched out his shoulders and gazed thoughtfully at the dust fields. “So, how are we going to get out of here? Being a merman was fun, but it's going to make piloting Choluurush a little awkward.”

Allura ran her fingers over the Castle's controls, running sensor scans and frowning at the results. “I don't know. The very fabric of reality has been worn very thin in here—it's extremely delicate, in fact, and opening a wormhole might tear it asunder. We could easily cause a cascade that could destabilize this entire sector of space. The Chimera's more conventional drive would certainly do that, or worse.”

“Not good,” Keith observed, and then his sharp eyes picked out something unusual in the lower right screens. “Hey, what's that down there?”

Coran obligingly changed the view, and what they saw inspired awed exclamations from all of them. Sitting on a large asteroid was a familiar figure, and one that most of them had seen only recently. Starlight gleamed off of pale planes and angles, and disappeared into the dark areas as if into a void. Three points of light—two pale, one fearsome orange-red—glinted deep in their settings.

Hunk gulped. “That's... that's one of those Panct-Narap'Hrralka things,” he said nervously. “How'd it get here, and... whoa.”

“It's huge!” Keith said. “That one's gotta be twice as big as the Castle.”

“Yeah, but this one's different,” Lance said, squinting at the image. “See? The wings are folded up, and it's got its big claw propped point-down like a cane, and its chin on its wrists like it's taking a nap or something. How long has it been there?”

Coran frowned at the drifting object. “Pretty much since we arrived, actually. Spotted the thing about a varga or two after we came to rest, figured that there was nothing we could do about it, and we've been carefully ignoring it ever since. It hasn't made any trouble, and I'm not about to start anything.”

“That was very wise of you, Coran,” Lizenne said in an oddly flat voice. “That one isn't a statue.”

“Wait, what?” Hunk blurted, and then grabbed at his hip pouch; something in there had let out a pulse of power that surprised him very much. It wasn't unfamiliar, though—he'd felt a little of it before, back in the Temple in the Old Forest, when the god had gazed upon him and found him good.

For now, though, there were other things to worry about. The huge skeletal creature on that asteroid seemed to have felt that pulse as well, and the team gasped as the massive skull tilted slightly, starlike eyes peering up at the Castle in what might have been mild curiosity, as if it could sense their awareness of it.

“A Hrralka,” Coran said hoarsely. “A real one. Last confirmed sighting of one of those fellows was... well, something like a hundred and forty decaphebes before Alfor was born. Ancients, he's a big lad, isn't he?”

The Hrralka seemed to have come to a decision and was spreading its wings. This took some time, for they were far larger than even a creature of its size should have had, and the membranes between the bones were so black that they looked like holes in space. The long tail uncoiled, the dark tuft at the tail-tip glittering strangely, and areas of the wings began to flash like mirrors.

“What's that all about?” Shiro asked. “Is it trying to communicate?”

The Hrralka seemed to lift gently off of its rock, not in a leap but an easy rise, more like a kite than anything else. The huge wings shifted their angles slightly, bright areas flashing in complex patterns over dark. Pidge blinked, did some rapid mental calculations, and hissed between her teeth. “Solar sails!”

Lance gave her a puzzled look. “We aren't anywhere near a star right now, it's just all cosmic dustbunnies out there.”

Pidge blew him a raspberry. “Space is full of light. It just looks black because our eyes aren't equipped to see it unless it's reflecting off of something. Ever shine a flashlight around at night? You don't see the beam unless there's a lot of stuff in the air, and we only see a tiny part of the spectrum, anyway. No, really, guys, look at his wings! The dark sections absorb light, but the shiny ones reflect it, and he's shifting them around so that the solar wind off of those distant stars and things are giving him a boost, and he's figured out how to modulate the effect in the same way that big hawks back home use thermal updrafts!”

Hunk whistled in admiration. “Yeah, I see it! And it's, like, super efficient for moving around inside a solar system, especially if he's using the energy he's absorbing to push himself along, too, or to top up his own batteries... organs... big fireball in ribcage... whatever. But he's basically evolved to not need planets at all anymore. Those big wings would collapse under their own weight in a gravity well anyway, and unless his bones are made out of something really strong, anything but freefall would be fatal. Huh. But he's still got those big claws and teeth. I wonder what he eats, or what he's been fighting out here.”

“I don't know, but here he comes,” Lance said nervously.

All of them drew in wary breaths and backed away when one enormous eye socket drew level with the bridge. The eye, they could not help but notice, was not a mere gem, but a yellow dwarf star, and the larger one in the ribcage, just visible at the bottom of the screen, was a captured red-orange giant. They could even see sunspots and prominences moving over the surfaces of those captive solar orbs, and when it made contact with them, even that faint brush of awareness was an almost physical weight on their minds.

There were no words, just emanations of mood and emotion. The Hrralka was weary from its recent battle, but successful in its labors, and now it was curious as to the nature of those that had helped it to find the correct temporospacial... there were no words in their comparatively young languages to describe the qualities that had been necessary to finish the job. Nevertheless, the Hrralka was appreciative of their aid.

Allura blinked and swallowed hard on a dry throat. “You're welcome,” she said faintly.

There was a faint emanation of amusement, and a mild query as to just why they had come. This was no good place for the younger peoples.

Lance swayed slightly. “Well, we didn't really have much of a choice. See, there was this Robeast, well, a lot of Robeasts--”

He broke off abruptly, for the Hrralka's interest had sharpened. There was something about the concept of Robeasts that it didn't like. The team was forced to stand still with their minds open while the immense intelligence flipped through their memories as though they were graphic novels, seeking specific images and themes. When the great one found them, they felt its anger and revulsion—only a shadow of those emotions, but the sheer force of its dislike nearly had them on their knees.

Coran had to steady himself on the console. “I take it that you're not too fond of Zarkon and Haggar, either. Care to tell us why?”

There was a gust of... something. Distaste, maybe, or exasperated determination, and an image of something that could not be described except in that it was dark, cold, possessed of a bottomless hunger, and so inimical to all known forms of life that even the memory of it sapped their strength. They'd felt that sensation thrice before; once on the approach to Keroga, again during the bout of wyrd-weather, and originally on their way through the Szaracan Cluster.

The Hrralka was surprised at that third point of recognition, surprising them in turn. WHERE, the great one demanded, spurring Coran into checking the Castle's travel log.

“There,” he replied, coming to the appropriate entry.

The Hrralka assimilated that data, and their minds reeled as the vast intelligence ran the math, translating the conventional coordinates into something that it could use. Follow, it said, grateful enough for this vital information to see them away into safer places.

The Paladins shuddered. The Hrralka's mind had shifted its focus into that of the perfect hunter, only the prey was far greater and more terrible than any mere beast of flesh. Vast wings lifted, their variable surfaces alternately reflecting and absorbing starlight, swinging that great bony frame around so that the Castle and the Chimera were behind and on either side in a classic V-formation. The Hrralka Spoke, a thin, twisting curl of potent Words that slid out into the still-resonating space before them. Delicately, even tenderly, they opened a gateway that was similar to the Castle's Teludav system in much the same way as those same wormholes resembled a rabbit burrow. Light flared from the Hrralka's wings, and they followed the great Elder through that incredible hole in space and into the garden of the gods.

The team could not help but exclaim in wonder as they passed through. This was no mere wormhole, nor was it the Mindscape. They could see those two planes, sort of, off to one side in a direction that simply didn't exist in their home four-dimensional space. This was a realm of glorious light and shape, as if each and every star had bloomed into fantastic flowers of sculpted brilliance in a million blazing colors, clouds of pollen forming glittering nebulae between infinitely complex spirals of incomparable crystalline beauty. They could recognize shapes analogous to peonies and daisies, roses and waterlilies, zinnias and cosmos and hundreds of others, and blooms that had no Earthly echo at all. Just visible among those incredible blossoms were flights of Hrralka, all of them intent upon their own business.

“My goodness,” Lizenne said breathlessly. “The last time that I saw anything even remotely like this, it was when I visited the Uthrongapor Solar Trellis. This is far more complex.”

“Holy crud, yeah,” Pidge said, eyes gleaming as she tried to take it all in. “Those are fractal flowers. I mean, where we come from, a lot of flowers are fractal all by themselves, but nothing on this scale. This is incredible!”

“Got that right,” Hunk said. “I don't even want to think of what the laws of physics are like here. See that thing over there, like a huge red dahlia? I'll bet you dollars to doughnuts that each of the outer petals are lightyears long, and there are hundreds of them in just that one cluster. And check out the ones like columbines over there, and—hey! Is that what I think it is?”

Far off in the distance, in the exact center of a ring of what in another universe might have been clover, was a bubble of normal space. There was a perfectly ordinary yellow-orange star there, orbited by seven rocky planets and two respectable gas giants. One of those rocky spheres showed the tell-tale signs of a living world, weather patterns, oceans, mountains, and all. Three moons orbited that planet, shining like jewels in the light of the sun.

Allura drew in a long, shaking breath. “Coran, you said that nobody had ever discovered their homeworld. I expect the reason for that is that they brought it here for safekeeping.”

Coran coughed faintly and tugged on his mustache. “Looks like it. Good place to hide that sort of thing, I'll admit that. They brought the rest of the solar system along, too, even the asteroid belts.”

“Well, you kind of get used to having them around,” Lance said uncertainly. “I mean, astronomers would get all lonesome without their old friends, right?”

“That's amazing,” Keith breathed. “Moving mountains, okay, I can see how to do that, sort of. But whole solar systems? That must have been one heck of a wormhole, and an even bigger stardrive.”

There was a thoughtful sound from Modhri. “The drive isn't really necessary. The entire universe is in constant motion, with everything orbiting something else. If you can plot the angle and direction that a given object is moving in, all you need to do is open a door in the right place, and at the right time. It's theoretically possible with our own existing technology to take an entire planet down a wormhole; indeed, you did something similar when you moved the Center that one time, years ago. Positioning, now... getting it into just the right orbit around a new star, that's the tricky part. Moving it into a whole new plane of reality, where the laws of physics are different, that takes real skill and is well beyond our current ability.”

“Theirs, too, almost,” Shiro murmured, gazing at the crystalline fractal formations just outside of that cosmic clover ring. “They have to keep it in a bubble of our kind of space, or who knows what would happen to it?”

None of them could answer that question, but the local laws of physics were certainly having a distinct effect upon their guide. Something like light was now fleshing out that massive skeleton, and they gazed in wonder at the Hrralka's true form. It had a sleek, silky-looking, silver-gray hide like that of a seal's, and a tight and compact musculature beneath it that made the hide ripple with biolights with every movement. The wings were still batlike, the absolute-black webs threaded with streaks of silver speckles. The barrel chest was even more massive than before, the solar heart within shining through that gleaming musculature in a rosy flush; the great fighting claw was one long arc of sheet lightning, carried neatly along the keelbone. The tail was enormously long and whiplike, tufted with pale fire at the tip, the length of it moving in subtle sine waves to counterbalance the rest of the body. The face... Coran had to swing the Castle a little wide to get a look at that, and then back at a stern glance from the yellow-star eyes. The features were sharp, streamlined, somewhere between bird and troll, with a heavy brow, a great beaky nose, and a pair of sharply-pointed ears poking up through a mane of solar flares. Here in this strange place on the far side of the reality they knew, the pressure of the solar wind was different; now those huge wings angled and flapped like those of a titanic bird, and every wingbeat sent feather-soft shockwaves through the very substance of the ships that followed it.

Brief though each stroke of those mighty wings were, they traveled faster than any stardrive that any of them had ever known or heard of. Chains and fields of stellar flora swept by swiftly with every wingbeat, slowing only when the Hrralka encountered shining updrafts that allowed it to soar gracefully in their glowing currents. Caught up in its wake, the Castle and the Chimera followed it for a time through that indefinable landscape until they came to a clear space between two great fractal gardens, and heard it Speak again—a voice of ocean-deep power, murmured sparingly and gently, and another one of those gates opened before them. Shiro felt an emanation of farewell touched with thanks, and it was with great relief that they passed through that opening and back into their home universe. The realm of the Hrralka had been beautiful, but alien beyond understanding, and was no place for them.

They coasted in silence through blessedly normal space for a time, in a stable orbit around a blessedly ordinary yellow-green star, glad just to be out in a realm that they were familiar with again. Eventually, Hunk felt moved to speak.

“So, that was a higher plane of existence, huh?” he asked.

“More or less,” Lizenne replied, sounding subdued.

“Wow.”

Shiro heaved a long sigh and looked at the constellations around them. “More to the point, where are we? The stars look familiar, but I can't be sure. We're nowhere near Keroga.”

“Got that right,” Coran said sadly, and Shiro heard Allura catch her breath in a faint, pained gasp; looking up, he saw tears in their eyes. “This is where Altea used to be.”

His hands moved over the controls and the Castle responded, sliding out into a slightly wider orbit, where an asteroid belt was orbiting the star in dense, uneven, chunky clusters. “I haven't been here since Zarkon blew it up, for obvious reasons. Ancients, what a shame that was. Looks like we've had a Weblum or two by since then, although the orbits of the other planets haven't shifted all that much. Ten thousand decaphebes isn't a terribly long time, cosmically speaking.”

Lance gave him a blank look. “The planets are shifting?”

Pidge rolled her eyes. “Lance, did you sleep through all of your astronomy classes? A solar system relies on the gravitational relationships of the planets to stay stable. If even one small planet gets blown up it can destabilize the whole thing, and the rest start pinging around like a multiball in a pinball game. And, of course, you've got the asteroid debris and all of the energy from the explosion flying around like shrapnel, bombarding every other planet in the area, which only makes things worse. It takes a long time by our standards, but it happens. Now, if you were to blow up a Jupiter-sized gas giant--”

“I get it,” Lance said gloomily, watching a chunk of what might have been planetary crust tumble lazily by. There were formations on one side of it that he hoped weren't the ruins of a major city. “It's kind of a shame that we can't just move Quolothis out here. Actually, could we? Modhri said that it was sort of possible. Would that help stabilize things?”

Pidge made a rude noise, but Coran shrugged and gave him an arch look. “It might, if you could shove a decent-sized planetary mass through time and space without ripping its atmosphere off, dropping it into exactly the right orbit, on precisely the right trajectory, at a velocity identical to the original's, while cleaning up the debris field at the same time so it doesn't get pelted with landscape-destroying space trash. Good trick, that. What'll you do for a finale, I ask, and will it involve fireworks and free candy for the kiddies?”

Shiro glanced over at Pidge and Hunk, who were looking very thoughtful; this was always a dangerous sign in those two, and he had a horrible vision—not a prophetic one, thankfully—of them sending planets whizzing around the galaxy like billiard balls on a pool table. “It might. Let's see if we can contact the Fleet, Coran. Haggar needs Quintessence and specialized materials to make Robeasts. We can't handle the finished products any more, so we need to talk to Yantilee and the rest about cutting off the raw supplies at their sources.”

“Quite right,” Coran agreed.

It took them some searching to find anyone within range of their communications system. It seemed that the Altean home System had been abandoned by all for nearly the entire ten millennia since the planet had been destroyed, save for the odd Weblum or smuggler, but those last were very few. The entire System felt haunted, much like the Pride of Altanis back on Mouse World had, and for much the same reason.

Coran was eventually able to make contact with a Marmoran scout ship that was only just barely within range, which had badly surprised its pilot.

“You're where?” he demanded, “Keroga isn't even in the same galaxy, and I only received notice that you'd disappeared into the Nebula a few minutes ago! How did you do that? Such a trip would take us days—weeks! Months, even, in some of the older ships!”

Coran smiled. “We caught a ride from an excellent fellow who knew of a unique shortcut. It involved flowers and was very pretty. Speaking of Keroga, how are they doing over there? We did sink a city—already ruined, that one wasn't our fault—and stirred up the Nebula a bit during that fight. The Robeasts are no longer a problem, by the way, but Lizenne's a tad miffed.”

There was a faint whimper from the Blade; all of that Order's members had at least heard of the Rogue Witch, and rightfully feared her temper. “As well she should be,” he replied. “Give me a moment to report in and request that information, please.”

“Certainly,” Coran told him cheerfully, “take your time, I don't doubt that Kolivan's in a bit of a snit. Events have been more than a little metaphysical on our end of things lately, and that sort of situation makes the dear fellow itch. He's not alone in that, of course. Why, in the early days of Alfor's career, his Ministerial Council used to pitch a screaming blue fit whenever he tripped over something that couldn't be described by conventional science, although Melenor didn't mind so much. Terribly stuffy, those gentlemen were, and she felt that the exercise was good for them. Sometimes, Alfor would even take her along for the ride for some real first-contact, mortal-to-supernatural diplomatic action, and she did love that! Especially those adventures where Alfor and the others wound up in somebody's harem—eek!”

“Thank you, Erantha,” Allura said. “In your own time, Sir Blade.”

As if heartened by the courtesy, there was a faint snort from the Blade, and his voice was calmer when he replied, “Just a minute or two, Princess.”

The Blade was as good as his word, and was able to relay instructions shortly. “Keroga seems to be intact, Paladins, if a bit unnerved,” he said carefully. “After you entered the Nebula, there was a great deal of churning and glare from that region, and then it stopped suddenly. Aside from a few isolated showers of what appears to be rolls of sanitary tissue, nothing strange has happened on the planet. This, I am told, is extremely strange all by itself, but not unheard of; the lack of odd events is being ascribed to the actions of their Gods and it's standing room only in the Temple Square right now.

“Aside from that, Kolivan and Yantilee respectfully request that you come back to Halidex for a planning session. Both of them want very much to hear exactly what happened in that Nebula, and to discuss the Coalition's next move. Paladins... we do not expect the Emperor or his witch to take this defeat well.”

“We're aware,” Allura replied. “And we are in full agreement. The Castle and the Chimera will set out immediately. Coran, how long will it be before we arrive?”

Coran hummed as he pulled up the starcharts. “Some time, I'm afraid, even if we pull out all of the stops. At least four quintents, probably more than that if we have to tiptoe around the Blevit of Barascombe—terrible gravity well, that, it's bent space around itself in an awful tangle. Somewhere between four quintents and a movement, depending on traffic.”

“They'll be waiting for you,” the Blade said in a relieved tone. “Signing off.”

Captain Vardok was a worried man. As a Captain of the Courier Elite, he was used to ferrying top-secret items and personnel to top-secret locations whenever it became necessary, but necessity had been very pressing of late. His ship's drive had barely had enough time to cool between missions, and just scheduling routine maintenance for the Bevrok Hai had been a struggle. She needed it, too—the last set of trips had put a great deal of strain on the warp coils, and the chief engine tech had told him that he'd never seen so much oxidation on a drive that hadn't been in storage for at least five hundred years. They'd had to polish it off with distilled lithro, which had required them to use drones and heavy-duty air purifiers for the safety of the deck crew.

And that had just been the engines. Several other systems were undergoing checks and recalibrations and the crew were enjoying some much-needed leave time, and Vardok himself was now relaxing in the Officer's commissary with a hot meal, glad that he wasn't transporting yet another clutch of High House members right now. Ghurap'Han's abrupt eradication had terrified those pampered aristocrats, and the ships of the Courier Elite were the only places where they felt safe enough to plot together.

If only they knew, he thought to himself, and then banished that thought. General Pendrash wanted them to keep thinking that, because it made listening in ever so much easier. He rubbed reflexively at the back of his neck, feeling the weight of the collar he'd once been forced to wear as he always did when he was stressed. He'd never shaken the experience off fully, since that day when everything had changed.

He breathed a faint sigh of relief when Kerraz put his meal tray down next to his, thumping down into the chair with a weary grunt. The younger man looked as tired as Vardok felt, and started in on his food with a dogged determination that Vardok knew very well, and could respect. They ate together in silence for a time before something hidden up Kerraz's sleeve went tweet.

“Well?” Vardok muttered.

“Clean,” Kerraz murmured back, so used to such surreptitious signals that he didn't even bother to look at his bug detector. “Your ship, too. The Ghamparva have problems of their own, and the Houses are too busy covering their own asses to bother with yours.”

Vardok sighed again, also in relief. The last sweep for surveillance devices had required the ship techs to remove half of the Bevrok Hai's interior plating to root them all out. Still... “None at all? Not even Ghamparva?”

Kerraz puffed a faint breath and nibbled a bit of baked ravvi. “Nothing. We looked. The Ghamparva have taken some bad hits lately—Lotor's theft of thirty fighters, that station that they lost, and they're being hunted by the Hoshinthra as well. Zarkon's got them keeping an eye on the Houses for more treasonous activity, too, and there's a cadre out somewhere near Lonoko that's been charged with finding out more about the Chashmarans. There aren't really all that many of them, comparatively speaking, and they've got their own survival to think of.”

Vardok's eyebrows shot up. “Someone's threatening them? I wouldn't think that anyone would dare.”

“No obvious threats yet, other than the Paladins and the Hoshinthra,” Kerraz said, “but they're worried. The High Houses don't like having an organization around that can wipe an entire Lineage out in a single night, and... ah, Gods. Zarkon's getting worse.”

“Worse?” Vardok whispered, his blood running cold. “Kerraz, he's already hearing voices—acting erratically, and those episodes of sudden rage...”

Kerraz nodded. “It's only a matter of time now, and all of them know it. They might have to remove him themselves, if it goes too far. He's lost the trust of the High, and the Ghamparva are starting to gather up the more able Princes. Forcibly, where necessary. They removed Princes Hurkash and Thontar from the keeping of House Ishnak'Vor just two days ago, and nobody's seen them since. Both the Ghamparva and the High Houses will need royal puppets in the future if they want to keep their primacy, but the two they really need to worry about are Kelezar and Lotor. Lotor is the acknowledged Crown Prince and Heir to the Empire and still lives, for all that he's the Kraalsi's captive for the time being. Kelezar's another story; he's still within known space, and actually has some aptitude for the office. And he looks a great deal like his grandfather.”

So very much like his grandfather had once been, Vardok knew. He'd seen images of the Emperor when that man had been young, and aside from the difference in height and a few scars, the two were damned near identical. Kelezar was out of reach now, firmly in the clutches of the Coalition and being trained as a Blade of Marmora, whose knives had thirsted for Zarkon's blood since time out of mind. Lotor was perhaps an even worse target, due to his being held captive by a mysterious personage of terrible power, one that might do anything to the young royal.

“They're going to try to reclaim Lotor, aren't they?” Vardok asked gloomily. “That could easily start a war, Kerraz, and with a whole other interstellar civilization that we know next to nothing about, except that they can paralyze a whole armada in one shot. We can't afford that right now, not with half of the Empire in open revolt, and the supply of Quintessence has been short lately with Haggar's Robeasts taking up so much of it. That last project of hers, well, I've only heard rumors, but it's said that she used enough to keep the entire Core Worlds Navy running for a hundred years!”

“Try six hundred,” Kerraz grumbled. “Twenty-one Robeasts, each of them more powerful than the last one. All of them gone, vanished into the Thresonol Nebula without a trace, along with Voltron and its support ships. Want to bet on which group we'll see again?”

Vardok choked in shock at the waste. “No. Even if both are gone for good, the Empire is in serious trouble.”

Kerraz nodded. “The General is aware of that, and is working to stave off the worst of it. All we can do is trust in him.”

Vardok let out a gusty sigh. “And will he become Emperor?”

Kerraz let out a rusty laugh. “Don't even suggest that to him! He wouldn't survive the job for more than a day or two, even if he could magically turn the Ghamparva into his personal guardsmen. No. The Empire might be reduced, but the next Emperor will most likely be of the Bloodline, assuming that they aren't all wiped out by the ambitious. Exactly which of that Line will get the Throne is the question, and how long he will survive on it.”

Vardok had studied the early history of his people in school, and certain of those old lessons emerged from the depths of his memory. “Just like old times. Damn. Even the sons of Modhri the Wise had to prove that they were worthy.”

“And most of Zarkon's sons aren't,” Kerraz added bleakly. “The General says that the next several years are going to be... very interesting.”

Vardok scowled at the remains of his meal, knowing the old curse to be true. “Gods.”

Kerraz patted his shoulder sympathetically, and they finished their meal in silence.

Chapter Text

Chapter 11: Story Time

It had been a very long week, Shiro thought, and he looked upon the days of transit time with anticipation and relief. God, had it only been a week since they'd left Valenth? No, it had been more than that, but he'd been asleep for a lot of it, and so many strange things had happened during that time. Well, he had at least four whole days where he could relax a little, and he knew just what to do with some of that time. It was a guilty pleasure that he felt was best experienced in good company, so he gathered up the appropriate item and went to find his favorite partner.

It had taken only a very short time for the Castle's daily routine to return to normal; after all, the engineering corps had to make sure that the Castle's systems hadn't taken any serious damage and the children needed to be exercised and fed. The adults all looked stressed and wary and Shiro couldn't blame them for that, but the kids seemed to have bounced back from the bizarre events of this particular morning with no trouble at all. Not too surprising, he mused; both Human and Galran children's tales were full of magic and monsters, and they accepted such things a good deal more easily than adults did.

He found Keith in the Lounge, sprawled on a sofa with Pezzam stretched out on his belly, stroking the sleeping cub's fur while he napped. Shiro had to pause and take that scene in. It was just a touch bittersweet in that it was almost unbearably cute, but also that Pezzam was very likely an orphan now. He had no real idea of House Ghurap'Han's losses to Haggar's labs—it might have been restricted to the twenty-one adults that had become Robeasts, but he privately doubted that. From what he could infer from the talk he'd heard from Modhri's relatives, Lizenne's Lineage had been ducking their responsibilities and cheating the Emperor for centuries, and Zarkon tended to come down hard on people who got up to that sort of thing. It was possible that the entire family had met with his wrath.

Not that this seemed to be bothering Pezzam much; after all, before his nanny had taken him aboard the Castle, his mother had been absent and his father hadn't wanted him. The family that he was a part of now had adopted him seamlessly, and he was happy in it. The two older Ghurap'Han girls might see things differently, but that was up to them, and there was no choice but to adapt and carry on. It was Lizenne whom he was really worried about and doubtless she would have her revenge; it was just that he wasn't sure he wanted to be present for it, was all. Just the fallout was going to be epic.

Pushing these uneasy thoughts out of his head, he leaned on the back of the couch with a smile for the drowsy young man reclining upon it. “I was going to go downstairs for a little light reading,” he said. “Care to join me?”

Keith, who had been staring meditatively into space, suddenly became very intent. It had been a long time since they'd last had a private moment. “Sounds good to me,” he said casually, and stretched. The cub sprawled on his front didn't so much as twitch. “Just help me with Pezzam first—he's really out cold and won't notice anything.”

The cub was indeed as limp as a rag, and they were able to get him nestled down in Keith's warm spot without waking him, and with a fuzzy blanket to keep him company.

“That cub's gotten really attached to you,” Shiro observed as they headed to the kitchen for some popcorn and snacks.

Keith gave him a faintly embarrassed smile. “I'm a big brother, and an uncle. I'd be lying if I said I wasn't enjoying the heck out of it. Dad did his best, but he never really understood, and if anyone had ever found out...”

Shiro draped an arm over his shoulders, knowing full well what would have happened, and what might yet happen when Galra and Humanity met formally for the first time. “Yeah.”

They found the kitchen unoccupied aside from a large bowl of rising bread dough; tanrook, to judge by the creamy, pale-orange color of it. Smiling in anticipation, Shiro opened the cabinets to search around for the various crispy nibbles that Hunk liked to make when he was bored, and pulled out a bag of mixed snacks. The tell-tale scent of hot butter—real butter—told him that Keith had scored a big bucket of popped sylth kernels, and a clinking sound heralded the addition of several bottles of the fizzy nerral juice that they both liked. Then it was back down the hall to the lifts where they descended to the training deck in peace and quiet; their cadre of Blades had been hit hard by the gender-swap that most of the Castle's personnel had suffered, and were taking the evening off. The dragon's den was likewise empty, Tilla and Soluk having gone back aboard the Chimera with Lizenne and Modhri.

“So, what'd you bring?” Keith asked, setting his bucket of popcorn and the drinks down before flopping over on one of the purloined mattresses.

Shiro smiled and produced a data chip. “Burphops Dacnee, which is a collection of short romantic stories by various authors. It's one of the book-chips I picked up on Thek-Audha, and some of the stories are hilarious.”

Keith grinned. “Cool. I'll take the first turn, or do you want to?”

“You go first,” Shiro said, sitting down and opening his bag of snacks. “Read the fourth story, The Gwattifan of the Snirbok, and ham it up. I need a good laugh and so do you.”

“Too true,” Keith said, activating the chip and scrolling through the contents, which were all in Galran Standard Script. “Okay, but you get to help me with some of the words. Pidge was right—I have been skipping language class. Here goes. 'It was a dark and stormy night...' sheesh, really? '...and the morgexes howled upon the crags, their cries in mournful counterpoint to the moaning wind...”

“Aaaiiiieeep!” Neline declared angrily, as well she might.

The fierce little cub had not been having a good time lately. It had started normally enough, with a good breakfast and an exercise session with her brothers that had concluded gracefully in a comfortable nap. After that, she had gone to the Seeing-Outside Place to sit with her Best Brother, he of the wonderfully plush black fur and the beautiful orange-gold eyes, to keep a sharp eye on the Bad-Colors Thing. A very bad thing, that was, and it needed watching. Then another Bad Thing had appeared, which soon became Many Bad Things, and there had been a fight. A very bad fight; the Bad Things did not go away when Sharp Eyes Lady did the fingers-dancing thing on the high board, and the Five-Colors Man flew up in the Outside, but couldn't make the Bad Things go away either.

Then they all had gone right into the Bad-Colors Thing, and that had been even worse! All of Second Home had bounced and hummed madly around her, and the Seeing-Outside Walls had been full of terrible colors and shapes, the air full of bad sounds and smells and feelings, and then there had been a terrible, searing brightness that had forced her to bury her face in her Best Brother's fur.

Even when the bouncing had stopped, the insults had continued. Mother had come to fetch her despite her protests, taking her back to the Family Place, where she was made to lie on the bed with her brothers. They were frightened, squeaking piteously, and her innate sense of responsibility had forced Neline to stay there to protect them. In truth, she had needed the rest; so many bad things had happened Outside that she was worn out just from watching them, and she had fallen asleep for a long time. Still, she worried for her Best Brother, and eventually rose from the huddle to go and find him again.

Alas, Mother wouldn't allow it. Mother had been very upset about something, and that meant that Neline had been confined to the bedroom. Breakfast had been dry snacks and water, neither of which had pleased her, and when she'd tried to bite her father to relieve her feelings, she'd gotten a swat across the nose that had made her eyes water. As if that hadn't been bad enough, her ears had started fizzing, and then things happened. The floor went all stripy in terrible colors. The air tasted sticky. The whole room felt like the Bad-Colors Thing. Peculiar things popped up out of nowhere, and she wasn't allowed to chase them away. Worst of all, she had stopped being a girl. Her brothers and her father had all turned into girls instead, which was absolutely infuriating. She had known all of her short life that she was special, and to not be so special anymore was awful. It had lasted only a little time, thankfully, but the memory remained, and when she had gone to put on her beautiful glittery wings to console herself, one of them had broken in half, ripping the fine fabric and leaving it hanging by a thread.

That had been the last straw. She'd bitten her mother sharply on the ankle, jimmied open the door, and went looking for restitution. She had found her Best Brother on the red couch in the Big Playroom, where he had clucked over her broken wing and listened gravely to her litany of complaints. He had then allowed her to climb to her rightful place on his shoulders and let her steer him to the Place of Treasures where her wings had been made.

As was only proper, Sparkle Man was there, along with Smells-Sweet Lady, and it was to them that Neline rightfully expressed her demands. “Aaaaaiiieeeep!” she said again, just to get her point across, and waited for her Best Brother to relay her commands.

Hearing the cub's shrieks, Lance and Allura looked up from a design for a new set of formal wear that they'd been discussing and saw Kevaah standing there with a brat on his shoulders, looking tired but amused. “My sister,” he said quietly, “has not had a good day and wishes a new set of wings.”

Lance took in the sight of the rumpled, angry cub with one wing broken and flapping loose, and smiled ruefully. “Good thing I got a bunch of frames made up in advance. Today's brat-level crafting class was going to be fuzz-fairy wings anyway.”

“Would you like to make a set for yourself, Kevaah?” Allura inquired politely.

Kevaah set his baby sister down on the table, giving them one of those puckish smiles that reminded them that he wasn't much older than Neline was. “Of course. I said that I would earlier, did I not? We shall both shine like starfields. Karchad will not approve, but he is not my Commander.”

Allura couldn't help but giggle about that. Karchad, who led their Blade cadre, had wisely abandoned all hope of holding any real authority over the lab-grown warrior and had remanded Kevaah to Lizenne's and Neline's care. It wasn't exactly regulation procedure, but everyone was happier this way.

“Everyone should sparkle occasionally,” Allura stated. “Lance, do we have any adult-sized wing frames made up?”

Lance saved their progress on his holoboard and put it away. “No, but they're easy and quick—I got the fabricator to run me up a bending board, so it only takes a few minutes. Hold on, I'll get it out. Allura, the kid's frames are hung up over there, and the stretch gauze is in the third bolt-rack from the right on the back wall, fourth shelf from the bottom. Let's get Neline started on shapes and colors while I get Kevaah's frame bent, okay?”

Allura spent a very pleasant interlude helping Neline pick a frame and a color, stretching the gauze to fit, and then helping her decorate. Nearby, Kevaah constructed and painted his own pair of wings in a surprisingly graceful design in purples, blues, and golds, accented tastefully with rhinestones where appropriate. Neline, of course, just had to color-coordinate, and while her own wings weren't quite as ornate as the first pair had been, they looked very good in the mirror when they were done. There was just one little detail missing, though.

“Hold on,” Allura said with a smile. “I'll be right back.”

She made a quick trip to her room, returning with a gift she'd received some time ago, the glittery little tiara and wand that the Hoshinthra had brought back from the “Terra” shop when they had brought Bessie to the Castle. Neline squeaked eagerly at the mere sight of them, accepted the wand with pleasure, and held still in a pose of regal graciousness while Lance crowned her.

“Queen of the fuzz-fairies,” Lance said admiringly as Kevaah, who was already wearing his own pair of wings, lifted her up onto his shoulders. “That looks awesome. I'm going to run these two past Morand and Amatok, just to plump out their portfolios a little, okay? We can get back to your new ballgown later.”

“That's fine, Lance,” Allura replied, admiring Neline, who was waving her wand around just to see it twinkle; there were tiny lights embedded in the star-shaped tip, and they flashed and glittered in a most satisfactory way. “I need to find Shiro in any case. We never got around to discussing exactly what we did in the Nebula, and Erantha tells me that he did something very strange with that Trickster. Coran says that such entities are extremely dangerous, and I'd like some details.”

“Yeah, good luck with that,” Lance said, rolling his eyes. “Shiro doesn't much like talking about things that don't make sense, and nothing about this morning made much sense. Holy crow, was it just this morning? It feels like it was days ago already.”

Allura nodded. “Coran says that it's a common reaction to high levels of unreality. Our subconscious minds aren't equipped to deal with it, they don't like it when it happens, and will often reject the memories attached to it entirely. That we remember as much as we do about this morning's events is remarkable all by itself. Nevertheless, it's over, and I've asked Tenric to put up extra security measures around both the dampers and the power junctions. I really don't want to experience that sort of thing again.”

“Thank you,” Kevaah said.

“Ditto,” Lance said, taking Kevaah by the arm. “Now come on, I've just gotta show you two off.”

“Eeeep!” Neline agreed, thumping her heels on Kevaah's collarbones to get him moving.

Allura watched them fondly as they left, and then checked the Lion-bond to see where the others were. Pidge and Hunk were in the lab, which was only natural, considering the strangeness that had occurred only a little time ago. Keith and Shiro were... were together, as a matter of fact, down in the dragon's den. Possibly watching a movie, she thought, to judge by the mild enjoyment they were feeling. Well, she thought, she could do with a bit of harmless entertainment as well.

A few minutes later, she had to pause outside of the door to the dragon's den, listening in amazement at what she was hearing. She'd never heard Keith use that tone of voice before, nor had she ever considered him as a candidate for love-poetry readings. Nevertheless, there he was, head pillowed on Shiro's stomach, and reading romantically from a book-chip.

“Vulgar tongue transform me,” he said in a voluptuous tone that brought a startled blush to Allura's cheeks, “thy moist touch, so soft, words without sound, speaking the silent spell of sensual powers that slip so smoothly into the cracks in that stone mask that is my soul, transmuting the base earth of cold flesh to—uh. Oh, hi, Allura.”

He was blushing. So was she, and Shiro was desperately trying not to laugh. Allura smiled, doing her best to regain her composure, and said, “That was lovely, Keith. Whatever are you doing?”

Shiro dissolved into helpless chortles. Keith blushed even harder.

“It's a sort of game we've got,” Keith admitted. “We find a bad, steamy romance novel and take turns reading chapters to each other. I was, well, sort of a problem kid back home. Uncle Jake was always being sent off on missions, no one else wanted to look after me, so they dumped me on Shiro. I... really didn't take that too well, and we got into an argument over homework, and he dared me to read a really bad romance that had been floating around the Officer's breakroom for years. I dared him right back, and it turned out to be more fun than either of us expected.”

“We used to keep a scoreboard,” Shiro gasped, grinning at her. “Anachronisms, anatomical mistakes, how many times the word 'dastardly' was used, whether or not somebody was called 'odious' by the eighty-third page, wardrobe mistakes—the zipper didn't exist before 1851, you know, and it took something like half an hour to get a Regency Period noblewoman undressed. It often required the help of three specially-trained maids, as a matter of fact, assuming her ravisher didn't have a knife and a bolt cutter handy.”

Allura giggled. “That sounds like great fun. I used to collect romances as well, and read them late at night where Mother couldn't see. She didn't approve of them because they often weren't accurate.”

Keith smirked. “I'll bet. Those are the fun ones, too.”

Shiro snorted. “Mostly. Some are just porn. Care to join us, Allura? Keith's almost done with that one, and you can do the next one if you want to.”

For a moment, duty warred with temptation in her mind. They really did need to discuss the rapid sequence of very peculiar events that they'd weathered over the past movement or more, but they looked so comfortable, and it really had been a very long time since she'd read in the company of loved ones...

“I would like that very much,” she said, plopping down next to Keith and peering at the book-chip's screen. “Now, where were you?”

Elsewhere, Hunk carefully aligned a pair of struts and cold-welded them into place, his hands doing the work while his mind busied itself with higher matters. “It's still really tricky, Pidge,” he said, pulling an actuator out of a nearby bin. “The problem is that the stars aren't identical. Coran says that the planet's been terraformed into a sort of carbon copy of the original, but you can't do that with stars. That's going to affect positioning no matter what, and we've never been there. Any records that the Castle has are going to be ten thousand years out of date, too.”

There was a clank from above. Pidge was tweaking the gyros again, to better balance the Baba Yaga on its long chicken legs. “We have been there, sort of. Remember? We sent that probe to Quolothis way back in the beginning, and it took a whole bunch of readings automatically. I'm pretty sure that we've still got that data somewhere. It's still a cool thought experiment, Hunk. Think of it! If we could solve this, we could open up all sorts of opportunities, like maybe moving Venus out far enough from the sun to cool it down a little, maybe add a moon or two, and dump in a load of comets and make some oceans. And bring Mars in a little, so it's warmer, and add some comets there, too. It used to be a living world, after all, and there's no reason not to bring it back to life. There are ways to give it a proper magnetic field, too.”

Hunk grunted, screwing the actuator into place. “Fine, I get that, but how are you going to deal with the wreckage of Altea? It took just one six-mile space rock to really mess up Earth that one time, and I saw Altean space rocks that were, like, ten times that big. Bad company, Pidge, you've got to move all that junk out before you can install the new one.”

Pidge scowled at him over the edge of the cabin. “I've been thinking about that, and you know what, if the wormhole's sort of doubled up like a figure-eight, or maybe two portals back-to-back, the planet can come through going one way while the junk passes through the other way, so whoever's at the starting point will think that the planet's blown up. Like a decoy, right?”

“Not a bad idea,” Hunk admitted. “So, how are you going to tweak the Teludav system to do that, and can you do it without leaving the atmosphere behind?”

“Quolothis has got a shield,” Pidge replied. “Remember? A really big force-shield that can keep whole space fleets from just pushing their way in. If we can find out where that thing's generator system is based and take it along for the ride, that'll protect the planet and keep the atmosphere where it's supposed to be.”

“Maybe,” Hunk said slowly. “Assuming that it'll hold up during transit. They aren't really designed for that sort of thing, you know.”

Pidge snorted. “If we can get our hands on it, it soon will be.”

“Bet your butt it's Quintessence-powered,” Hunk contended.

“Bet your butt we can fix that,” Pidge rebutted. “Jasca's power core is hot stuff, and Clarence's drive still gets the Coalition scientists all excited. Okay, I think that I've got this thing fine-tuned. Did you get the leg attached?”

“Just a few more connections, Pidge,” Hunk said, busying himself with the torque wrench. “This is the good stuff from Thek-Audha, isn't it? Neat place, we should really go back there sometime. Hey, maybe we could take Antler Guy along, he'd love it. Okay, all tightened down, fire it up!”

Pidge busied herself briefly inside the cabin, and there was a whoop of triumph as the Baba Yaga came alive with a rising hum and a glitter of running lights. It rose majestically on sturdy bird's legs, and even managed a few steps before it crashed to its knees. There was a burst of pirate profanity from inside the cabin.

“You okay in there, Pidge?” Hunk called to her.

“Yeah, I was wearing my seat belt,” Pidge replied, sounding very annoyed. “I think that the problem's in the horizontal stabilizer. I knew that the thing didn't really have enough power! Hey, maybe if I hooked two of them together...”

Hunk snorted a laugh. “And figuring that out is gonna take you all night. Fine. Look, I've got to go put the buns in to bake, and then I need to find Allura and ask her if we've still got that fresh data on Altea's and Quolothis's stars, and maybe see if I can dig up anything on large-scale force-shield systems. I'll make us up some mac 'n' cheese for dinner. Fast, easy, and delicious.”

“Sounds awesome,” Pidge replied. “Make up some of that salad with the sliced biffa in it, and I will love you forever.”

Hunk grinned, putting his tools away. “You'll love me forever anyway. Lion-bond, right? And you did tell everybody that we were a thing.”

“Yeah, but I'll love you forever even more if you make salad,” Pidge said distractedly as something in the cabin went boing. “Go do your thing, Hunk.”

“Gotcha. See you later.”

The nice thing about tanrook buns, he thought a little later, was that they finished up quick. The dough took just long enough to rise that you could get other things done without worrying about the timing, and they took hardly any time at all in the oven to come out golden-brown, plump, and bacon-scented. A single batch was also big enough to feed the Red Army, which was good because he just happened to have a purple one. There were already cubs standing in the doorway and sniffing hopefully while he placed a portion of buns in a basket, and they descended like locusts when he put the big pans on a low table for them. That was the deal—the buns in the basket were for Hunk and his immediate family. All of the rest were up for grabs. Lots of grabbing, he thought, easing around the growing crowd and checking his Lion-bond for Allura's signature. Down on the training deck, he thought, with Keith and Shiro. They'd probably want some fresh, hot buns, too, he reasoned, and took the basket with him when he left.

He didn't find them in the exercise rooms, which was a little surprising, but that was nowhere near as surprising as finding them in the dragon's den, where Allura was most definitely not acting her usual prim-and-proper self. She had draped herself bonelessly over both Shiro and Keith, and was reading passionately from a small holoscreen while the fingers of her free hand caressed Shiro's cheek:

“'Brelpavo's tentacles tingled, thrilling to the unseen presence of his/her lovers. He/she could not see them yet, but knew their presence by the rich scent of the waters, and how the currents through the openings in the coral reef changed as he/she made his/her way across the fine sand of the Courtship Arena. Soon, they would make their move, shooting out of the polished corals to weave their strong, slick tentacles with his/hers, the gentle sucker-clusters pulsing, throbbing, stimulating each other's...' bacon? Why do I smell bacon?”

Hunk couldn't help but laugh, and neither could Keith or Shiro. “Because of these,” he said, holding up the basket with a grin. “Hot buns, anyone?”

Allura's yes, please was nearly lost under Shiro's whoop of mirth, and Hunk kicked off his shoes and waded into the morass of bedding to feed his team. “Sounds like a steamy one,” Hunk said conversationally, handing out fragrant buns. “Mom had a whole secret collection of romance novels that she never let the rest of us see, and one time I got into them, but I was too young to understand why she bothered. They didn't have pictures or giant robots or monsters or anything. Huge disappointment. It wasn't until Lance and I were thirteen or fourteen that we got our hands on a beat-up old Hentai manga, and... wow. Boy, did we ever get some weird ideas from that. Tentacle sex was only the start. Then Carlos stole it, and Maria-Dolores caught him with it, and then she had an epic freakout. Took two priests, a Father Superior, and a bucket of holy water to calm her down.”

Allura giggled. “Growing up with Lance's family must have been interesting.”

“Never a dull moment,” Hunk agreed, “and it's probably why I've got only one sibling.”

There was a faint snerk from Shiro. “Did you need something, Hunk?”

Hunk sat down, putting the basket aside. “Well, I was going to ask Allura if we still had the data from that probe we sent to Quolothis, but this looks like more fun. So, do those tentacle guys get it on, and can I read the next chapter?”

Keith studied the screen. “Yes to both. Pull up a pillow, Hunk.”

Hunk grinned and did just that. “Cool.”

The emporium was packed and very sparkly at the moment, and that was just the way that Lance liked it best. Not only had Neline, Queen of the fuzz-fairies, caused a sensation among her age group, but a surprising number of the older kids and even a few adults had been interested in learning how to make wings. As a result, Lance was going to have to do a total restocking of his crafting supplies after this. All of his glitter paints and glues were in use; all of his beads, bells, lace, charms, feathers, and sequins; all of the ribbons and spangles, and the beadazzler was fast running out of gems and settings. He had no more flexi-rod, he was flat out of stretch gauze, and he'd already had to break up a fight over the last bag of tassels. There were only a few rolls of fringe left, and only because nobody liked the color.

None of it worried Lance in the slightest, because everybody was having an absolute blast. Neline herself was presiding over the busy mob, sitting on an empty supplies bin on one end of the table and waving her wand in gracious benedictions while Kevaah helped to keep the peace. Not for the first time, Lance reflected that the little girl was going to be trouble when she grew up. So far, she had plenty of career choices lining up for her: warship captain, Tahe Moq sorceress, elite Blade warrior, first-class fashionista, and, if her folks moved to Zampedri with the rest of their House, she could become a coven leader or a professional huntress.

Lance glanced over at Kevaah again, who was helping a group of cubs sort out his last box of prism beads. Kevaah was a much calmer, happier person now that he'd joined the family, but Lance remembered full well the kind of carnage he could get up to when cornered. Erantha was definitely considering him as a romantic interest for all that she was taking her own sweet time about it, and if a grown-up Neline should decide to pick a mate from among his sons...

Wow, he thought, just... wow. But then again, Lizenne had said that her people had been losing aetheric strength over the centuries, probably because Haggar had been killing or Druidizing every strong witch she could find. A witch of the “old strength” was literally one in a billion these days, although Lizenne came pretty close at times. And the dragons wanted her and Modhri, and the Blades, and Modhri's family... and that included Kevaah, and didn't Kevaah still have a few brothers?

Holy crow, he thought; the dragons were going to breed themselves up a clan of super-witches and super-smart and capable men, and that was going to cause a sea change in the entire race after a while. Even if the worst happened and the Coalition couldn't stop the other peoples from taking revenge on a broken Empire, they'd be able to collect a reserve population to start over with. It was entirely possible that he was looking at the future Matriarch of a clan of people who were loaded for genius-grade, saber-toothed, magical, were-leviathan.

As yet unaware of her possible futures, Neline adjusted her tiara, chirped happily, and waved her twinkly wand again.

A hand gripped his shoulder gently, and Lance turned to see Neline's mother smiling down at him. “Strange thoughts, young man?” she asked.

“Yeah, some,” he admitted. “Neline's something special.”

There was an amused snort from her mother. “And doesn't the little monster just know it? But this is perfect, Lance, and I thank you for it. We don't realize how valuable normality is until we lose it.”

Lance looked down at his legs, which only a few hours ago had been a dolphin's tail and flukes. Come to think of it, he would have to make himself a new pair of pants soon—the pair he'd lost up on the bridge weren't good for anything now but making patchwork noisy toys for the little cubs.

“Truth,” he replied. “Me and the team need to discuss ways of avoiding those weird spots. That was really bad, and Zaianne says that there are places that are even worse.”

Neline's mother nodded grimly. “I made a study of such anomalies once, as a school project when I was much younger. At the time, I was fascinated by them. Think of it! A thin spot in reality, where anything might happen, and—this was the important part—where any wish might come true. My childhood was not as happy a one as it could have been.”

Lance's eyebrows pinched in sympathy. “Sorry, but we couldn't get out here any sooner.”

The woman chuckled and patted his shoulder. “That's all right. We're free now, and Neline and her brothers will never have to fear the threats that their father and I faced. Indeed, great things await them, and I am eager to see what they are. Hopefully, they won't involve too many more tears in the fabric of time and space.”

Lance shrugged. “Yeah. I really should go and find the guys so we can discuss that, but...”

An argument over the last bottle of red glitter paint erupted on the far side of the table. Kevaah intervened smoothly, picking up the bottle and apportioning out the contents into a series of small cups. Neline's mother smiled benevolently upon her adoptive son and turned a thoughtful eye upon Lance. “I'll take over for you here, if you want to go and find your team. Between Kevaah and myself, we should be able to maintain order.”

“Thanks,” Lance said, and handed her a notescreen. “I've got a list going of things that I'm going to have to refill or replace. If you'll just keep adding things as they run out--”

There was a thud over by the shelves, and a burst of triumphant shouts—they'd found his reserve pom-pom stash, and already many greedy hands were snatching up the fuzzy balls in big fistfuls. “Like so,” Lance continued, jerking a thumb at the rapidly-emptying bin.

Neline's mother nodded, noting down this most recent item as her daughter hopped down to claim her share of the bounty. “Indeed. Go on, then, while you still can.”

Lance saluted her and made his escape.

It was blessedly quiet on the training deck for once, which was where his more interesting senses were telling him his teammates mostly were. Well, they weren't in the invisible-maze room, or in any of the smaller sparring rooms, but peculiar noises from off toward the meditation rooms caught his attention. From the dragon's den, as a matter of fact, and it sounded like... singing? Maybe they'd skipped the discussion on weird space and were watching a movie instead.

The answer, Lance found out a minute or two later, was even stranger than he'd guessed. Hunk was still there, but somebody had persuaded him to take his shirt off, and he'd draped a sheet around his admittedly excellent torso in a sort of toga-like arrangement. He was also dancing in a way that Lance had only seen him do once before, and had never hoped to see it again. One of Lance's cousins had built herself a career in Middle-Eastern dance, disappointing her father but delighting a large and growing fan base, and years ago at a family reunion she and Hunk had found a quiet corner to practice together. Hunk had still been a pudgy and uncoordinated preteen at the time, and hadn't been particularly graceful. Lance, who had been as unformed a human larva as they came, had not approved of the pastime; Hunk, who hadn't cared what Lance had thought, had improved significantly since then.

Today, though, as Hunk gyrated proudly among the pillows, Allura singing a sprightly song full of cheerful nonsense words and the others clapping along to the beat, Lance had little choice but to stand there and stare in dry-throated astonishment... and no little admiration.

Hunk finished up with a series of pelvic thrusts that made a great deal of him jiggle in fascinating ways, glanced at something he was holding in one hand, grinned, and said, “...And then Scaminkadoo showed up to water the bimpskee garden and just about had a heart attack.”

The others fell apart laughing. Hunk plopped down on a pile of cushions and examined the object in his hand—a book-chip, Lance realized, and continued, “Okay, and after a lot of flailing and making funny noises—no, I'm not gonna do this one either, once was enough—he says: 'Oh, Blemonophee, Slamordix, Porboroblap, how couldst thee? To so rudely plight thy troth amongst the maiden blooms under the triple Eye of the suns! To defile the borp-grasses and embarrass the tender flirps, that their virginal golden hues blush green! The abkelsa vines close their sand-colored eyes in horror; the hulba-freens curl their fronds in disgust, the slender illibitrin tree sheds her niblets in dismay! My bimpskee! My poor, innocent bimpskee! Hast thou no shame? Hast thou no decency? I wither and grow moist to see untrimmed nackleflits on such blatant display, to see thy coonat-thrilks so engorged! And, may all of the Gods not be watching, how canst thou be so shameless as to cover thine opsprills! Far better that thou might'st flung thyselves into sin in the public street, to frighten the ugilplaths, old persons, egglets, and the timid—far better that thou shouldst indulge thy perversions upon the Palace roofs, to amuse the Damp Ones of the Heights! What hast thou to say for thineselves? Deviants! Dastards! Oopmafrads! What sayest thou?

Hunk smirked as Shiro marked a tick on what appeared to be a list of words on a noteboard. “'Quoth Porboroblap, smugly: 'It was great fun. Care to join us for the next round?'”

“Does he?” Keith asked, chortling.

Hunk studied the book-chip again, flipping forward a few pages. “Nah, too uptight. Scaminkadoo winds up in a remote all-male commune and wins prizes for his skill at bimpskee gardening. Blemonophee, Slamordix, and Porboroblap open another prizewinner, a Cave of Delights that's the talk of the whole archipelago for, like, thirty cycles, and they have a zillion egglets together. Dophinoblee winds up outcast with a serious fungal infection, which serves the jerk right, and the urpnax shelter is saved from bankruptcy. Huzzah, and there was much rejoicing. Hey, Lance, why the blush?”

Lance's cheeks were indeed a bit warmer than they should have been, and he grinned sheepishly. “I just got to see you do belly-dancing, and you're better at it than I thought. What are you guys up to?”

“Bad prose night,” Hunk said happily. “Shiro picked up a book of intergalactic romance stories, and it's got our Harlequin romances beat all hollow. Want to do the next one? It involves... let's see... oh, cool. A love triangle, a gullible heir to a huge fortune, a busload of pirates, and a traveling holy woman who's having serious doubts about her life choices. Rated eight point two out of ten for Generalized Naughtiness, five out of five for Suggestive Language, three bonus points for Egregious Multiple-Entendres, and another three points for Historical Inaccuracy in Sartorial Matters.”

Lance looked at the happy, relaxed sprawl of his teammates, and couldn't think of anything he wanted to do more. “Deal me in,” he said, wading over and flopping down on a handy mattress; Hunk passed him the book-chip, and he examined the screen with interest. “Okay... 'The Adventures of Marinat-nitz-ack-Yunderflang, by Suzaboot Vond-Swalk. Chapter One: A Priestess Would A-Wondering Go...”

The Baba Yaga roared and took a step, its mechanical foot hitting the decking with a satisfying boom. Pidge urged it forward cautiously, and another step was taken, only slightly jerkily this time. The cabin rocked gently from side to side as her latest mechanical abomination of science did a slow circuit of the lab, and Pidge's face split into a huge, mad-scientist grin as her creation showed no signs of popping a gasket. It would need more testing in a larger area, of course, and an obstacle course, and a speed course, and maybe they could stop in an asteroid belt somewhere—or better yet, a moon. For the time being, though, she'd settle for the flight deck.

So thinking, she put the Baba Yaga in “park” and shut it down, and went to make a call.

Unfortunately, she was disappointed.

“Not now,” the Deck Foreman told her, sounding harried. “All of that bouncing around that we got in the Nebula did more damage than we'd thought, and there's some sort of fuzzy lizard thing holed up in one of the storerooms. It looks and sounds harmless, but after this morning we're taking no chances. See if you can talk to your aunt about removing such things, please, Girosk doesn't like the way it grins at him.”

“Okay, but I'll want to do a full test run later,” Pidge warned him, and then tried to contact the Chimera.

She had no better luck there, alas. Modhri shook his head sadly when Pidge asked if Lizenne was available and replied, “Not just now. My wife has just spent the past several hours teaching my mother and several of my aunts and cousins how to detect and remove the sort of hex that Haggar had planted in Athren and the others, and it was no easy task.”

Pidge frowned. “It wasn't hard for us. Haggar's work really stands out, if only because it smells like a burning landfill.”

“For you,” Modhri sighed and rubbed at his eyes, and then smiled fondly at her. “It is by no means so easy for anyone else. Lizenne has mentioned frequently within my hearing that you and your team master difficult techniques as easily as breathing, and I am becoming convinced that your dynamic has been shaped, specifically, to combat Haggar and all of her works. Lizenne didn't do that, by the way. You did it, all together, in the process of combating everything that Zarkon's mad witch has thrown at you.”

“Does that happen?” Pidge asked.

“There are tales,” Modhri said, “of ancient feuds between equally ancient packs, where entire generations of young witches would find themselves becoming sensitized to the powers of their enemies. It was said of the Great Witch Ezenneki that she could smell her chief rival on the wind if she was within fifty miles of her, and could tell if she'd been that close in the past year.”

Pidge nodded slowly. “I get it. It's like a survival trait. You really, really want to be able to sense the monster who wants to eat you. Did Ezenneki win?”

Modhri chuckled. “I should say so, since Lizenne is privileged to count herself among that great Lady's descendants. House Ghurap'Han has always been very proud of its pedigree... ah.”

His brows pinched worriedly, and Pidge couldn't help but feel sympathy for him. “Are there any of them left? I mean, would Haggar have stopped at just those Robeasts? How's Lizenne taking that?”

“I have asked the Blade to look into it,” Modhri said, looking troubled. “If nothing else, there are two girls and a young boy of her Lineage on the Castle, and the older girl is already pregnant. Lizenne has been holding hard to that, in case the worst has happened. If nothing else, teaching my relatives her techniques has kept her mind off of the matter, and has tired herself out enough to sleep soundly.”

Pidge winced. She'd worked herself to exhaustion too, numerous times, after her brother and father had vanished into the cold depths of space, and knew how it felt. Anything to get her mind to stop coming up with terrible possibilities, and anything to keep the nightmares away. “Well, let her know when she wakes up that we should talk, all right? We've had a lot of strange stuff happen lately, and some of it is still down in the engine deck grinning at people.”

Modhri puffed a faint, dry laugh. “I'll tell her. Until then, please check up on my injured kin for me. Athren is one of my favorite brothers, and Marox and Shethar did not deserve what happened to them.”

“All right,” Pidge replied. “See you later.”

“Good night, Pidge,” Modhri said, and signed off.

Pidge checked the timepiece reflexively, and found that Modhri had been entirely correct. They'd synchronized their shipboard schedules ages ago, and it was getting close to dinnertime right now. Her belly rumbled at this realization, reminding her that it had been a long time since lunch, and Hunk had promised them all tanrook buns. Come to think of it, there was a beguiling hint of bacon on her tongue, and when she checked the Lion-bond, she discovered that all of the others were in the dragon's den, eating buns and having a good time. Pouting a little at having been left out of the fun, she headed out of the lab to get her share of the bounty. On her way, she contacted the infirmary for a status report, because Modhri had asked nicely.

“They're doing as well as can be expected,” the man on duty there replied calmly, “Athren and Marox are sleeping comfortably, and Shethar will be out of the medi-pod sometime tomorrow. Tell Modhri that they'll be fine, given enough care and rest. Athren wants to apologize to him, and to you, for the trouble he and the other two caused.”

Pidge sighed, passing through to the training deck. “It's not their fault. We've seen enough of Haggar's work to know that. Shiro says that she's got ways of messing with a person's mind until they aren't people anymore, and she doesn't care much when they get broken. And yes, I'm really going to mess her up the next time she tries something.”

There was a chuckle from the medic. “Go with my blessing, and bash her one in the face for me.”

“You betcha,” Pidge said with a grin, and signed off.

The siren scent of tanrook buns drew her down the halls to the dragon's den, although she had to stop on the threshold and stare. Lance was standing atop a tangled heap of blankets with another one slung over his shoulders like a cape, and Shiro was reclining at his feet, the back of one hand laid dramatically across his forehead, the other pressed to his heart. The others were huddled together on a mattress, grinning and munching snacks while Lance waved a pillow admonishingly at Shiro, and read from what appeared to be a book-chip.

“'Confess, Bumtarda, confess!'” Lance said in his most dramatic voice, throbbing with passion. “'Truly it is said that a mogimpsla cannot change its nagget-flepts. You are as faithless as a nirget, as feckless as a forplat, and have all the firm moral principles of a rutting oshrid! Not two days after we swore the Oath, you were seen with six other alpha-females, all of them showing the blue of recent intercourse. How could you, after we had pledged so fondly?'”

He then passed the book-chip to Shiro, who scanned the page, smirked, and then declaimed in a sulky, sultry tone that Pidge hadn't even known he could pull off, “'Because you paid for the tableau, of course, and of course it seemed sincere. Silly young wench, am I not the greatest of the Thidrata? You were required to fill out the questionnaire along with all the rest, and on none of the preference fields had you stipulated monogamy. Your charge of faithlessness is bald slander, for I am faithful to all of my lovers. Fecklessness is a job requirement, and rutting is what a Thidrat does best. It was you who had the unrealistic expectations, fool priestess, for everyone knows that Thidrata love often and lightly. I am pretty, but not exclusive. Seek your Sacred Love elsewhere.'”

The book-chip was passed back. “'But I love you!'” Lance gushed, posturing dramatically, dropping the chip.

Shiro caught it expertly. “'And I, you, but not only you. Either learn to share your delight with many, or...' uh. Hi, Pidge.”

Pidge had burst into whoops of hysterical laughter, and could barely stay standing. She'd never thought of Shiro as a languid demimonde before, and seeing him act the part was amazingly funny. When she was finally able to straighten up and wipe the tears of mirth from her eyes, she had the interesting experience of seeing blushes in five different rosy colors. Allura tittered nervously, or perhaps it was Hunk. She couldn't tell, but honestly didn't mind. “Hey, don't let me stop you,” she said with a huge grin. “I didn't know you were into alien romance LARPing.”

Keith's blush deepened. “We're not! It's just... well, it's fun to read bad smut at each other. Sometimes.”

“You should have seen the Drama Club in my High School,” Pidge said, kicking her shoes off and wading over to have a look at the book-chip. “It was pretty much the same as this, only with more stabbings and flailing around in despair. And vampires. So. Many. Sexy. Vampires. So, how many people have lost their pants so far in this one?”

“At least seventeen,” Allura said with a smile. “Ceranians generally prefer to cross-pollinate in large groups, although some cultures prefer pairings or small, exclusive clusters. Several of the main characters have mislaid their garments a number of times already.”

Hunk smirked. “So far, Bumtarda's in the lead, being a professional and all, but Pirate Leader Porbzut-urp-Dwang's catching up fast. Berpnard the clueless heir tries harder, though. The funny thing is that nobody's getting any real action—somebody always shows up to poop the party.”

“Like just now,” Lance said, sitting down with a thump. “Bumtarda was just about to put on a command performance with a whole bunch of his clients when Marinat showed up. She's a bit uptight and lives in her own little world, and she reminds me a lot of some of my cousins. So, want to join in? Shiro says that the next story is right up your alley.”

“No kidding?” Pidge asked.

Shiro smiled. “It's a post-apocalyptic. In the story, there was a big war about fifty or sixty local years prior, and the main character's a self-taught genius mechanic who builds battle-'bots out of old military wreckage for the illegal robot-fighting arenas. One day, he finds an intact military AI, loads her into a battle-'bot, and they fall in love. It gets pretty... technical... in spots.”

Pidge's eyes gleamed. “Tell me more.”

Girosk took a bite from the tanrook bun they were sharing and passed it back to Zaianne, who finished it off with an appreciative hum. He was looking better now, Zaianne noticed; he was gaining weight and had lost the hollowness around the cheekbones that Inzera's hex had caused in him, and his movements were easy and his eyes were bright. His appetite had definitely improved, and he'd proved it by moving instantly to snatch up their shared tanrook bun. It had been the last bun left on the pans by the time they'd gotten to the upper kitchen, and due to the lack of the Paladins in the area, had been the only fresh-made food available. They'd dined upon leftovers, which was no bad thing, although Girosk did wonder what the team was up to.

“Well, we did have a very busy morning,” Zaianne said, in response to that query. “I wouldn't be at all surprised if they went to bed early.”

“Without supper?” Girosk asked, twining his fingers with hers, and she was pleased to feel the renewed strength in his hand. “You've told me that Hunk will cook in his sleep if he's missed a meal, and no one's been in the upstairs kitchen since lunchtime. The people in the staff kitchen haven't seen them either.”

“Point,” Zaianne said, frowning.

They were taking an evening stroll through Hydroponics to admire the flowers, the fruits, and the cow; such noble and useful beasts would cause a sensation on Namtura, she felt, and made a mental note to see if she could import a herd of them later on. There were numerous varieties according to Lizenne's Internet snapshot, and she was particularly interested in the dark brown, wooly-coated wild bison of the American West. Bessie was a good girl, but very much a domestic breed, and Namturan Galra preferred a challenge. Perhaps she would demand a herd of yaks as well, since they were more self-sufficient than the standard dairy cattle, and some horses, too. Riding animals were rare in the Core Worlds, and none of them had the unique beauty of Earthly equines.

Bessie, at least, was a friendly beast, and she lumbered over and presented her nose for a pat as they passed through her pasture. Girosk indulged her, stroking the short, sleek hair on her queenly face and giving her regal ears a good scratching, a worthy task that Bessie felt the clawed Galra hands to be superior to Human ones for performing. Zaianne patted the beast's shoulder, judging by the sheen of the silvery-tan coat that someone had groomed her recently, and smiled at the happy grunts the cow was making in response to Girosk's caresses.

“It's possible that they might have gone down to the dragon's den,” Zaianne observed after a moment's thought. “They do that when they're too fatigued to sleep, and the bun-basket was missing from the kitchen.”

“Oh?” Girosk asked.

She nodded. “Light entertainment, snacks, and what we might call a cub-huddle together, basking in each others' company and relaxing. Perhaps watching a vid or listening to music, or just taking a nap. We could go and have a look.”

“We could,” Girosk said, running one hand gently over Bessie's long neck; he had developed a great fondness for buttered sweet-cream biscuits, and therefore had something of an attachment to the source of the vital ingredients. “If you think it wouldn't offend them.”

“They're more likely to invite us to join them, if they aren't already asleep.” Zaianne glanced down at Bessie's udder, noted that someone had had the good sense to give the cow her evening milking, and turned away. “Let's go and find out.”

Their sensitive ears confirmed the Paladins' location well before they reached the dragon's den. Pidge was shouting in an impassioned tone, something about circuitry and pistons, followed by Shiro's equally fervent reply. Judging by the burst of laughter from the rest of the team, pistons were only the half of it. Girosk listened in surprise to the next few lines, and smiled. “Scrapyard Lovers, by Tharimand Yibrek'Kor,” he said happily. “Although he was writing under the pseudonym of Bashtad Umbrex'Lai at the time. That was one of my favorite short stories when I was a teenager.”

Zaianne chuckled. “I preferred his later work, more so now that I know that AI's like his Ionarth and our Jasca did truly exist, and still do.”

Girosk nodded. “Have they gotten any closer to finding her siblings?”

“Kolivan's still searching,” Zaianne replied with a sigh. “The Dyrchoram AI's were among that Order's greatest treasures, and they hid them very well when Zarkon turned on them. The clues that were left with Jasca would have led an authorized recovery agent right to them... ten thousand years ago. Things have drifted a bit since then.”

“We need them,” Girosk murmured. “Creating such true machine intelligences has become a lost art, not only in our sciences but in those of other peoples. What does Zarkon have against such things, anyway?”

Zaianne bared her teeth in a grimace. “He doesn't like machines that talk back, according to Jasca. Apparently, the Golrazi royal family were required to travel on a Dyrchoram craft once, and Zarkon got into an argument with the ship. Jasca tells me that Zarkon thought that machines should obey their operators immediately and without question; after all, they are things, and things that had been made for a specific purpose. The ship's AI wasn't at all impressed with his attitude, and didn't hesitate to say so—loudly, and with gusto; if Jasca's temperament is any indicator, her sibling must have given him quite a scolding. How Black managed to put up with that man for twenty-seven years is beyond me.”

Girosk vented a puff of wry humor. “I expect that they had a job to do, and up to a point, they did it. Personal matters aren't important when it comes to stopping an interstellar war.”

Zaianne frowned and shook her head. “Not where it comes to Voltron, it isn't. That thing runs on close personal relationships, both between pilot and Lion, and between the pilots themselves. Ah—and there's the proof.”

They had come to the doorway of the dragon's den, and thus had an excellent view of a rare tableaux. Shiro was on his knees and facing Pidge, his arms wrapped around her waist in a fervent embrace, teeth bared in a fearsome grin. Pidge was standing facing him, the front of his shirt clutched in her fists, an echoing grin upon her face.

“What you're proposing is illegal—no, more than that,” Shiro said, eyes flashing, “forbidden. But if we can make it work--”

“It will work,” Pidge said passionately. “These sciences were forbidden because they failed. They failed because they were the children of hatred. Ours will succeed, for they are based in love, and they will carry our love into eternity. Join with me now, beloved, and we will take the future back from those who have stolen it from us, and reshape this ruined world into something better, if we but dare.”

“I dare,” Shiro whispered, holding her closer.

“We dare,” Pidge whispered, and kissed him.

Zaianne smiled at the applause and whistling from their audience; that kiss was no little peck on the lips, and by all appearances, it was quite sincere. In fact, it was just as well that they were both barefoot at that moment, or they might have knocked each other's socks off. Girosk applauded enthusiastically, causing the pair to look around in surprise, blushing hotly.

“A beautiful performance,” he said with a smile. “As I recall, Branthix and Ionarth went on to code many clutches of independent intelligences, which rather upset the ruling Houses. If you like, I have the other two books in the trilogy and can lend them to you, along with a collection of the author's other works.”

Pidge's eyes glinted. “Gimmie.”

“Please,” Shiro added, giving Pidge an admonitory look for her bad manners before letting her go, “and thank you. It's good stuff. Is it based on anything real?”

Girosk waggled a hand. “Sort of. The Old Wars tended to leave terrible messes behind them, and some of the results are still with us. Cyborgs, for example, are fairly common and have been so for many centuries, but self-aware, fully independent artificial intelligences have been strictly illegal ever since Zarkon took the throne. They weren't popular before then, either; as a people, we have strong cultural taboos about things that might be considered... well, unnatural. Machines that think for themselves count as such among the conservatives.”

Hunk rolled his eyes. “You guys also don't like hybrids or people with disabilities. Oh, who am I kidding? Humans have that problem, too. Xenophobia sucks. Did you guys need anything?”

“Nothing immediate, although the events of the past several days will want discussing, and soon,” Zaianne said. “Other than that, we're just checking up on you. Shall we leave you to continue?”

“After your boyfriend brings me those books,” Pidge said, having used the last few moments to study the body language between the two adults... and a quick glance at Keith. Keith had a look on his face and a glint in his eye that told her that he still wasn't entirely on board with his mother starting to date again. Pidge stifled an eyeroll with an effort; Zaianne needed a little love in her life, and on the whole, she could have done a lot worse.

“He is your boyfriend, right?” she asked with a sharp glance in Keith's direction; he winced, and flicked an apologetic look in his mother's direction. Pidge grinned and continued. “Nice choice. Girosk's really good with his hands, and is a super skilled technician.”

Girosk, of course, had caught the whole unspoken exchange. For all that a faint blush bloomed beneath his fur at Pidge's endorsement and tacit support, Girosk retained his dignity. “A proper mechanic should always be proficient with every tool in his possession, and must be conversant with all of the user's manuals. If my Lady will allow me a little time, I will fetch the requested tutorials.”

A certain amount of smothered laughter from the others followed his graceful exit. “Smooth, Pidge,” Lance said with a grin. “Zaianne, I really like your taste in men. He's a keeper.”

“Isn't he, though?” Zaianne replied lightly with a challenging look at her son. “Still and all, Lizenne will want that talk with you tomorrow, and as early as she can rouse you. Some very important things happened after we left Valenth, and we'll be very busy once we arrive at Halidex. She will not be sidetracked again.”

Allura heaved a long sigh and cast a thoughtful glance at Hunk, who was looking worried. “Indeed. Visions and demigods and extradimensional Elder Races... oh, dear. And Lizenne does hate it when she's left out of the loop!”

“Tomorrow,” Keith said in a slightly subdued voice, knowing when he was beaten. “We'll clear all that up tomorrow. For now, I want to see how Branthix and Ionarth are going to mess up that Consortium.”

Zaianne chuckled wickedly, knowing that she'd won this round. “I've read the trilogy. It's going to be very noisy.”

Shiro waggled a finger at her. “No spoilers. Did they ever adapt those books into movies?”

“Yes, actually,” Zaianne replied. “The whole trilogy. They're quite good, since the author insisted on the right to hit the scriptwriters, actors, and the director with a stick if they deviated from the original story in any way. They were an instant hit in the Core Worlds and are still considered to be classics. I'll see about finding you a copy.”

“Thanks, Mom,” Keith said. “Movie night is going to be awesome.”

“I'll make all the popcorn,” Hunk said, digging the last few fluffy kernels out of the bottom of the bucket.

Chapter Text

Chapter 12: A Talk With Friends

Their meeting with Lizenne the following morning was postponed for a little time, but not without need. Their three saboteurs wished to speak with them, and for many reasons, that wish took precedence. They were looking better, Shiro observed. Athren was alert and eager to speak, for all that he looked as though he'd been on a three-week starvation diet. Marox was still a little dazed from his ordeal; the dual shock of hitting a power line and suffering Haggar's controls would have left a weaker man brain-damaged or dead, and being slammed into a wall by a ballistic mer-Lance had left him with with large and ugly bruises despite his time in a medi-pod. Shethar seemed content to simply lie there in his cot, wrapped warmly and watching them all with weary but intent eyes.

That Lelannis was already there didn't surprise Shiro at all; the wary look she gave him did, however, and he was careful to keep his expression neutral as he filed in after the others. This was something cultural, he thought, and he didn't know enough about the culture to make judgments yet. He did catch the approving glance that Modhri sent his way, though. Lizenne was too busy being the Matriarch to pay attention to anyone but Lelannis at the moment. His teammates seemed to be oblivious to the whole silent exchange, at least, ignoring everything but the condition of the three men in the recovery cots.

Lizenne gave them a moment to fuss over their patients before asking in a neutral tone, “You wished to speak with us, gentlemen?”

Athren nodded and heaved himself a little more upright with his mother's help. “Yes, Matriarch. First and foremost, to you and the Hekabar-Harcho, a profound apology—if we'd had any choice at all, we would not have done what we did. We should not have damaged the ship's systems, and by no means should we have attacked the Paladins. I... I will confess that I, myself, am not at ease here. Twenty years of propaganda and losing several friends in that last battle... well.”

Shiro sighed at this honesty. Keeping one eye on the increasingly truculent-looking Lelannis, he nodded to the gaunt-faced man and replied, “I don't blame you, and I'm sorry about your friends. The sabotage wasn't your fault, though. I've both fought Haggar's victims and have been one myself. It takes more than many people have in them to resist her controls.”

“And you do?” Lelannis asked sharply.

Shiro smiled ruefully at her. “No, actually. I go all to pieces if she gets too close, even in my Visions. It was Pidge who was able to bite back, not me, and Allura is perhaps the one person in the Universe whom Haggar can't control at all. I'm not going to lay blame where it's not necessary, Lelannis. These men weren't in control of themselves, and there simply isn't any point in punishing them for something that they weren't responsible for.”

“We are far more interested in hearing exactly what happened to them,” Allura added, catching the flicker of relief that crossed Lelannis's face. “Haggar is our true enemy in this, and the more we know about her methods and techniques, the better. I have already lost my family, my world, and my people to that woman, and the more ways we have to lessen her power, the better.”

“We are going to mess her up so bad, you have no idea,” Pidge growled. “We've already got an oath of kheshveg rolling, and if Lizenne doesn't get to her first, I'm not gonna save her any leftovers.”

There was a faint snort of amusement from Modhri, and Lizenne smirked at the green Paladin. “Greedy. At least leave me a little, or what did I make that spear for?”

“Poking Zarkon,” Lance replied with a grin and jerked a thumb at Allura. “Allura got him twice with it. I want it next, okay? I'm owed a stab or two as well, and Keith's kind of owed too, for when Zarkon just about cleaned his clock that first time—hey!”

“He did not clean my clock,” Keith said, elbowing Lance sharply in the ribs.

“No, but he was working real hard on it,” Hunk said, separating them. “Face it, you just didn't have the experience at that time. We still don't. We're getting better, but it's gonna be a while before Voltron's going to be able to punch him in his Imperial everything and get away with it.”

“'Imperial everything'?” Pidge asked.

Hunk nodded firmly. “Yeah. I know how big Voltron's hands are, and a fist that big just doesn't stop at noses. So, how'd Haggar get her claws on you guys, and what happened after that?”

“I'm not sure,” Marox muttered dimly, rubbing at his bruised face with a hand that trembled slightly. “I was due for a health check. I was serving aboard the Aithron... no, that can't be right. The Aithron was all the way out at Keroga, and I'm sure that I was still crewing... yes. I was aboard the Dinrak Aza. Home Fleet, guarding the Center. Captain Ashkoth was very, very proud of our posting, and never let the rest of us forget what an honor it was to be among the Emperor's Home Guard. I was due for a routine health check, but something was wrong in the med-bay. Diagnostic equipment failure or something, so I had to go get my checks done in the Center. I can remember heading to the Level #67 med center, and checking in, and even the medical technician. I checked out fine, but needed a new immunization—some sort of new virus variant or other.”

Pidge rolled her eyes. “Cue the anti-vaxxer bleating in five... four... three...”

Marox gave her a puzzled look, but continued. “The tech gave me the injection, and then... nothing. I dozed off. The tech told me that such a thing wasn't uncommon, the vaccine took some people like that, but Sergeant Otalk yelled at me for getting back late. Just ten or fifteen minutes late, but the man worships tight schedules. Two days later, I and a group of other troops were transferred to the Aithron along with a load of supplies. We weren't given a reason and didn't really expect one. Command doesn't share much information with the grunts, and Command doesn't question the orders they get, either.”

“Those that do tend not to survive it,” Modhri said grimly and raised an eyebrow at his wife, who nodded. “That little nap would have been Haggar's influence, I expect, or perhaps a Druid's. You have no memory at all of that lost quarter-hour?”

“No,” Marox said. “I had the injection, and then I woke up with a slight headache and a sore shoulder. Aside from the blackout, it wasn't any worse than any of the others. Better, actually. The one I had to take for pogalp pox left me sore all over and cranky for three days.”

“Better than dying of it,” Athren said darkly. “My story's not much different. I'm mechanic staff myself, specializing in ground vehicles and drone fighters. I'd been angling for a position on-planet for years, or even a space station because I was fed up with starships. A Core Worlds posting would've been best, since I hadn't seen my family in ages, but there was always someone else with more seniority around to snap those up.”

“Been there,” Shiro said with a wry smile. “You applied at the Center, didn't you?”

Athren made a face. “I had to have sent my application and record file to every single station and garrison in that whole region of space eight times over. My ship, the General Agraoka, stopped at the Center to get some upgrades done to the starboard cannon array, so I decided to spend some of my off-shift on one of the tourist levels. Stopped at a public comm center to broadcast my application again, then wound up in a bar to celebrate the ninth round of rejection letters in advance.”

Lance smirked. “Lithro?”

Athren gave him a dirty look. “Don't be stupid. My Sergeant was well-known for calling the troops in for inspection at all sorts of odd times, to test our ability to respond to emergencies. Woe betide the man who showed up late, and woe betide him even more if he showed up drunk or hungover. I had a zerrish liddy, which tastes nice without screwing up your reaction time.”

“I know, right?” Pidge said happily. “I don't like jurda, but if you substitute morlaberry syrup, you get the buzz and can still hold your own in a bar fight.”

Athren considered that. “A little sweet for my taste, but that does sound good. Anyway, I had to use the restroom, and then everything went blank. It was the Sergeant's signal on my comm that brought me back, still sitting on the sanitary unit. I thought that I was just overtired, since the previous two weeks had been spent chasing Beronite rebels. A week later, I got a message saying that there was a posting open on the Sorchak, which was part of the Kerogan Garrison. By that time, I was so tired of being yelled at by the Sergeant that any other post would do, so I took it. It's sort of odd, actually—I really wanted to stay close to home, but the Kerogan job just seemed... well, right. I'd already hit the 'accept' button before I was done reading the message, and never really thought about it afterward.”

“I very much doubt that you would have been able to,” Lizenne murmured. “Your stop at the comm center would have alerted Haggar's agents immediately, and that would have been too good an opportunity to pass up.”

“Probably,” Athren sighed. “I just wish that I could remember what happened.”

“I remember everything,” Shethar said in an angry whisper. “Everything.”

“Shethar?” Lelannis blurted in surprise, and Lizenne snapped around to face him, eyes suddenly very intent.

The wounded man drew in a long breath and continued in a rusty voice. “I can't forget anything. Ever. Photographic memory. Magic doesn't work on it. I can be prohibited from telling people things, but that's all. That's what got me sold to the Military in the first place. Inzera's daughter Zildrian, remember her? High Society party girl by day, big name in the black market by night. Saw her clinching a deal with an arms smuggler. She couldn't erase it from my memory, so she had a word with the Matriarch...”

There was a growl from Lelannis. “I'd always wondered about that, and I hope that vicious vathrek bar zacha was among that group of Robeasts—ah... sorry, Lizenne.”

“No need,” Lizenne said calmly, although she lifted an eyebrow at Lelannis's vehemence. “I did not like that particular aunt. Far too many of my friends disappeared after they came under her eye, and her man and her children were frightened of her. Her man I liked well enough and my cousins were a great deal of fun, but only when she wasn't around. Has the Blade gotten back to you yet, Modhri?”

Modhri shook his head. “They're having to be very careful, and they know that you'll want absolute proof. Give them time, Lizenne, the Core Worlds and especially the Homeworld have never been safe for them.”

There was a surly puff from Shethar. “Safe for nobody. High Houses are in a panic. Middle Houses are panicking because the High are panicking. Common Houses... they're worried, 'cause they know they'll bear the brunt if something goes boom. Rumor says that Ghurap'Han's gone, wiped out by assassins. Ghamparva, maybe. Nobody knows for sure right now. Half the Kerogan Garrison was full of High and Mid-House cousins frantic to get home, so they transferred out, and a load of common-family nobodies were transferred in. Like everybody aboard the Hakrist, filthy old scow that it was. Hundreds and hundreds of us, pulled out of our old posts, funneled through the Center like livestock at market and sent off to our new owners.”

Lizenne drew in a deep breath and let it out in a slow hiss. Lance and Keith, who were standing closest to her, edged away carefully; she smelled like an electrical storm to their more unusual senses, and lightning storms didn't care what they zapped. “I assume that you were taken aside for a special screening,” she murmured in a dangerously level tone.

The blankets moved in a shrug. “Navigation tech,” he muttered wearily. “Damn good one, too. Lot of other techies were called to one side for testing... happens to bridge crew all the time. Every ship's got to have at least one person who can parse the math if the nav-comp's spat its main processing drives across the room. Happens more often than you'd think. Had to be like forty or fifty others in the room with me, waiting for testing, then there's this shadow-thing in the doorway, and everyone goes quiet. Quiet and still like statues, and there's fog in my brain. The shadow-thing comes in and takes me away, and I can't stop it.”

Allura frowned. “Long, dark, hooded robe and a white mask with five eyes?” she asked, and at Shethar's nod, bared her teeth in loathing. “Druid. What happened after that?”

Another shrug. “It took me to a room somewhere else, and it strapped me to a table. There isn't any fighting one of those, is there? I was like a puppet, and it was pulling the strings. The Emperor's witch came in and put her hand on my head, and the other on my chest. I felt the hexes sink in, like hot embers. She knew I wouldn't forget it, and made sure that I couldn't speak of it or do anything about it. Been carrying her burning stones in me for weeks. Only thing that made it sort of worth it was when Athren and Marox turned out to be there, too. I'd die, maybe, but at least there'd be some family around.”

Keith winced. “And then I cut the Hakrist's drive. Sorry about that.”

Shethar grunted dismissively. “It's war. I shouldn't have been in that end of the ship, but the Commander wanted a hitch in the Sentries' control system ironed out, and I was the only tech available who had the skills. Hah. We were bait, Paladin, bait and trap all in one, just in case Haggar's pet monsters couldn't take you. Haggar knew who we were, and what we'd mean to your closest allies. She knew you'd take us in, no questions asked.”

A thin hand lifted out of the blankets and waggled a finger at all of them. “You remember this, all right? You're too trusting. Next time you rescue someone like us, who's already been in Empire hands, you think. What connections does your man have, and how can the enemy use them? What might they be carrying? How can you use them? I'm grateful for the rescue, and more so for you getting those hexes out of me—Gods, I'll follow you to the end of everything for that alone! But I've got parents here, uncles, aunts, brothers and sisters, cousins, nieces and nephews. Haggar nearly made me kill them all. Don't you forget to make sure of your guests next time.”

“We won't,” Shiro said firmly. “We're usually more careful than this, but we got distracted by the Kerogans. I only wish that we hadn't slipped up this time, and it's only due to chance that we survived it. Believe me, we won't be repeating that mistake.”

Allura nodded, every inch the princess. “Once was more than enough. Rest now, gentlemen, and concentrate on healing up. Is there anything more that you feel the need to tell us?”

Athren sighed and settled back against his cushions. “Not really, Miss. Shethar's pretty much said it all.”

“Very good,” Allura replied, and cocked an eyebrow at Lelannis. “Are we in accord?”

Lelannis gave her a thin smile, but gestured an affirmative. “Quite. I will stay here for a time with my kinsmen, since I believe that Lizenne wished to speak privately with you.”

“I did,” Lizenne murmured, and dipped her head in a nod that was almost, but not quite a bow. “We have a very great deal to discuss, and have been putting it off for rather too long. Paladins?”

Hunk jerked a thumb at the door. “There's a conference room just down the hall that's not being used for anything right now. It's comfortable, it's got a table and chairs, and has a door that locks.”

Lizenne chuckled. “And a comm that turns off, I should hope?”

“If it doesn't, it will soon,” Pidge replied, wiggling her fingers to indicate her magic touch with machinery. “Come on, let's get this over with. Hunk said that he got to meet a real demigoddess, and I want to hear more about that.”

It was later. A lot later, but they'd finally caught each other up on the events since Shiro's mental difficulties on Inityani. The fact that they'd be taking on Shomakti Station again was small stuff; all of them had sort of known that they'd be making another attempt on that fortress sooner or later. The fact that Haggar might or might not be waiting for them there was far more important. After what she'd done lately, all of them wanted a piece of her.

The Vision they'd shared only a short time afterward, where two Deities had charted ten thousand years of destiny from a timeless plane of congruent reality was considerably more worrying, and not just because of what had already happened. It was what it meant for their future, and the future of Humanity, and for the rest of the known Universe as well. Compared to that, Yozori's appearance, Hunk's little side trip to Galran Prime, and the friendship he'd struck up with none other than Old Granny Kashtmehtz was small change. Their subsequent encounter with a genuine Hrralka—who seemed to have been actively been hunting the sort of magic black holes that frequented Elder Race battlegrounds only added to their worries, but it was the other extraplanar entity that had really upset their aunt.

Lizenne had to sit at the table for a little while with her face in her hands, muttering imprecations in some obscure dialect when Shiro had finished describing his arm-wrestling match with the Trickster.

“I'm very sorry,” Shiro said contritely, “but it was the only way to get to the last power junction.”

Modhri let out a long sigh. He'd listened to their tales with an expression of bewildered wonder that indicated that he wouldn't have believed any of it if he hadn't been in it up to his neck. “Shiro, even I know that the Trickster is fantastically dangerous. The fact that it knew who you were and what your team is attempting to do is extremely uncharacteristic of all known interactions with that entity. It even tried to speak with you, and made itself at least partially understood; it should not have been intelligible at all.”

Lance blinked at him in puzzlement. “It was? Um, I know that Shiro tried to tell us what it told him, but it didn't make any sense to me. All that stuff about chance and change and focusing and powers... that sounds like gibberish to me, Chief.”

Shiro frowned, trying to recall the sense of the entity's communications, rather than the words. “Our languages just don't have the right common terms, is all. Or even the right concepts, since we Humans don't exist in enough dimensions for that. It mentioned something like five equaling five or six more than once, and seemed to feel that the extra was important. It was worried about oblivion, too, come to think of it. The Trickster was waiting for me, specifically.”

“Why's that?” Keith asked.

Shiro tapped his forehead. “Tzairona's Lens. I'm still four-dimensional, but I can see into a few more than that, now and again. The Trickster couldn't just shape things to suit itself. It's got... rules... that it has to follow. We already know that whatever's got its hooks into Zarkon and Haggar wants to eat the Universe. We... somehow, we've got to stop them. Stop what's behind them, whatever that thing is. The Trickster would lose some of itself forever if we fail, so it had to get me into a position to change our chances a little. I'm pretty sure that I managed to do that. Don't ask me how, because I'm not exactly sure of what I did.”

Lizenne made a faint growling sound and looked up at him with a flat, level gaze. “There are times, young man, where I want very badly to tie you down and to go through your mind with a fine-toothed comb. I can't, of course. Even if your team wouldn't reduce me to a greasy smear on the decking, your Lion certainly would. That we have all become the agents of forces well beyond our understanding or control is blindingly obvious. The Trickster even felt moved to try to explain some of it to you, which is unheard of. On those rare occasions where it has taken an interest in someone on this plane, it doesn't always speak. When it does, it's so abstruse that even the very best dimensional physicists can't make heads or tails of it. They only study such things, after all. The Tricksters, assuming that it isn't a single entity, actually live it.”

“Have they ever tried it with a really strong Oracle?” Pidge asked.

“Yes,” Lizenne said with a wry quirk of her lips. “Roughly forty years ago, when a privately-funded research team decided to poke around the edges of a time-space anomaly out near the Churns of Niorolac. They had a very good Turimanlian Peripatetic Seer with them, and the poor creature was laid flat for nearly a month when the Trickster manifested right in the middle of his Seed Ceremony. It spoke, all right, but nobody could derive anything of use from it, and the Seer started to froth at the spircules whenever they asked him for an interpretation. For you, though, it made an effort, and you're even still sane and in one piece.”

Shiro shrugged. “It was important. Something important is going to happen soon. The Trickster could see it coming, and helped me tweak things so that we would have a better chance of success.”

“Any more hints than that?” Hunk asked.

He shook his head. “Just that we'd better be very careful when we make our next strike at Shomakti Station. It's a tough target even without Lotor hiding in the asteroid field, and I don't doubt that the place is going to be packed with Sentries, soldiers, and probably Druids, too. Karchad promised to get us some info on the place, but we can't hope for a fully-detailed floor plan and directions to the bathrooms.”

“Aw,” Lance said in mock disappointment.

“We'll make do with whatever they might bring us,” Modhri said calmly. “They still have the stockpile key, and that will have to be enough. It will be a challenge, but we have added some very great talents to our crew since then. If nothing else, it will be—oh.”

Something in his pocket had gone ping. Frowning, he pulled out a small communicator and studied the message on its little holoscreen. Whatever it told him did not seem to please him much, for his expression was worried when he put it away and looked up at the rest of the people in the room.

“We will have a visitor when we arrive at Halidex,” he said gravely. “The Blade had an agent on the Homeworld who was stationed close enough to the Ghurap'Han properties to do a reconnaissance run. Kolivan feels the need for that agent to make his report in person, Lizenne. Apparently, he knows that you will want the tale from someone who was there.”

“Never let it be said that Kolivan is ignorant of his allies' preferences,” she said distantly, but they could hear the tension beneath the level tone, and Modhri laid a comforting hand on her shoulder. “I will want everything.”

“They know that,” Allura said gently, worried for her adoptive aunt. “For now, though, we must make ready. Coran says that we'll reach Halidex in perhaps two or three more quintents, and they'll want to know what we've been up to.”

Keith made a rude noise and jerked a thumb at Hunk. “They're not going to believe most of it.”

Lizenne gave him a thin smile. “Both the Chimera and the Castle got quite good recordings of the recent events, as did the Lions. They will not have a choice.”

“Yeah, but they're not going to like it,” Hunk sighed. “The people in charge never do.”

They arrived at the Halidexan System three days later, and weren't surprised to find the orbits around the eponymous planet crowded with ships. Fleet ships, of course, a grouping that included the mighty Osric's Quandary, several Blade craft, numerous pirates, the stolen and repurposed Empire warships, and a large and welcome number of independent trade ships. Allura had to smile at that last—already, their efforts were starting to pay off.

“So, where are they holding the meeting?” Keith asked.

“On the Quandary,” Coran said, tugging thoughtfully at his mustache. “Best place for it, really. Yantilee's got all the necessary furniture on hand, catering's in-house, and if some silly twit tries to interrupt the conference they can tell the intruder to go away without blowing holes in the landscape. By the by, Number Five, they'll want you down on the planet soon enough anyway—that nifty force-dome defense arrangement of yours needs a bit of maintenance, and there are quite a few of their best mechanics who'd like to know how to build more.”

Pidge grinned. “Sure. We didn't get around to checking on the system the last time we were here, and I've got some ideas for making it better. Will Ronok be at the meeting?”

Zaianne smiled at her from a defense-drone station. “It's Midterm Exam time at his school, and he believes in on-the-job experiences for his students. What do you think?”

Pidge's fist shot triumphantly into the air. “Yesss!”

“You really love that old guy, huh?” Lance asked.

She gave him a dirty look. “Lance, he was practically my whole family for those six months when I couldn't remember if I'd ever had another one. He kept Plosser and his ugly pet away from me when he could, he worried about my health all the time, and did his best to keep me safe and alive when we had Lotor chasing us around. He is my uncle, and I really, really want to introduce him to Dad and Mom and Matt someday. Mom would get a kick out of him, I know that much. And probably his recipe for onypt dumplings. Mom loves dumplings, and those were really good. Maybe I can bring Tamzet along, too. He and Matt would get along just fine.”

Keith vented a cynical snort. “Assuming that we can get any of them past the Garrison. Military command tends to get all worked up about potential threats, and they kind of forget that 'potential' doesn't mean 'certain'. By now, anything furry and purple is going to be on their shoot-first-and-ask-questions-later list.”

Hunk humphed. “Please. If they even look cross-eyed at Ronok, they'll be up against worse than just one old guy. A lot worse. All of us, all of the Marmorans, everybody on the Quandary, everybody in Uzenna-Sa'ar... heck, even King Trosimon and his folks. Keith, Ronok's got better bodyguards than Zarkon's got, and Zarkon's got the biggest army in the known Universe. I'm more worried about what'll happen when we introduce them to Lizenne. She doesn't like it when people point weapons at her.”

They thought about that for a long moment; she'd joined them for their morning workout, and had rather obviously been using the sparring match to work off some of her own stress. It was going to take the Castle's cleaning drones hours to get the scorch marks off of the walls, and it had been half an hour before Allura had stopped glowing.

Shiro shuddered and hoped like hell that Kolivan would have some good news to tell her.

It took them only a little time to get the Castle and the Chimera safely parked, and less to transfer over to the gigantic Sikkhoran Grand Freighter, and as always Shiro was mildly awed at the sheer size of the thing. If nothing else, the Osric's Quandary could easily be repurposed into an orbital trade station when all of this was over, and the crew was certainly diverse enough to make such a transition almost seamless. Pidge was firmly in her element here, though, shouting and returning shouts of greeting from various crew members and leading them unerringly to the room where the conference was to be held. It was large, of course—Sikkhorans didn't like small spaces, and Yantilee was already there, talking with several people that Shiro himself could recognize. The bronze-scaled and antelope-horned Tchak, of course. Ketzewan, at his broccoloid best in a brand-new dress jacket. Tepechwa, surprisingly, reptilian, six-armed, and businesslike. Zorjesca, dark chitin freshly-polished. Dablinnit, doglike and comfortable in a shirt that had several large holes in it. Tilwass, Dhak, and Kherig were present as well, along with the wary-looking Phrane, shooting uneasy glances at the Hoshinthra standing on the far side of the table. Antler Guy looked well, Shiro thought; scales glittering, antennae flickering, posture alert and confident.

Interestingly, Shiro did not see a representative from the Blade of Marmora present, and wondered briefly if their agent was hiding somewhere in the ship. Lizenne and Modhri were outwardly calm, but he could feel the tension radiating off of them both. It wouldn't take much to set Lizenne off again, and he still got chills when he remembered the cry of absolute fury she'd uttered during the last Robeast battle. A nervous movement out of the corner of his eye drew his attention; Zaianne had brought Girosk along to represent Modhri's family, and the man was staring around in awe.

“Never seen a Grand Freighter before?” he murmured to the graying gentleman.

Girosk gave him a slightly embarrassed smile. “Not in person, no. The Quandary is a legend, and as a man who has spent most of his life building ships, I am honored to be aboard this one. I've always wanted to talk with a Sikkhoran shipwright, you know. They were artists!”

Shiro didn't have time to reply, for Yantilee had spotted them. “Paladins,” the dragonish Elikonian said by way of greeting and flicking a hand at the table. “Glad you're here. Make yourselves comfortable, the rest should be here any time now. Everyone wants to know just what the hell happened above Keroga, and how you wound up a galaxy or two away in hardly any time at all. Strange days, First Mate.”

Pidge rolled her eyes. “You have no idea.”

As before, the seating arrangements were extremely varied, and it took some doing before they found chairs that were designed for their kind of rump; Shiro had just gotten himself settled on what looked for all the world like a stolen bar stool when he found that he had company.

“Paladin,” Tilwass said, straddling the shortened pommel horse next to him only slightly awkwardly.

“Call me Shiro, Tilwass,” Shiro replied with a wry smile. “How have you been doing?”

Tilwass sighed. “Could be better. Could've been a lot worse. We're getting some hissing and dirty looks from the locals, but most of 'em are pleased enough that we're working to clean up our mess. Military Galra don't do that, you know. We make other people clean up our messes. Usually at gunpoint.”

“I'm aware,” Shiro said, watching as a few more Fleet captains filed in, followed by the King of Halidex and his wife. Trailing after them came Vennex, surprisingly enough, along with another pair of familiar figures. One of them was Kolivan, but the other made Shiro's eyebrows rise. “That's Drathann Pranvax'Lor, from Arcobi. What's he doing here?”

Tilwass snorted in wry amusement. “Catching up with the Blades' own Commander, as well as helping to coordinate the new trade routes. The Halidexan trade clans've had it all their own way in this end of space for ages and they'd been doing their best to bully Vennex into giving 'em prime status, and the Old Man there wasn't having any of it. You should hear that old fellow roar! He treats Kolivan like he's still a youngster, too.”

Shiro smirked; while Modhri's uncles and great-uncles preferred to keep to their own company most of the time, anyone younger was liable to get bossed around if they got too close. “It's a Pack thing. Drathann used to be a Blade himself before he retired, and a very senior one. He's a Patriarch now, and lets nobody forget it.”

Tilwass gave him an interested look, as if he hadn't expected Shiro to know this. “Truth. Hah. But he still has to walk carefully around a Matriarch.”

Lizenne had turned her gimlet gaze upon Kolivan, who had retreated to the far side of the table, and Drathann had dared to frown at her. In return, he received a burning glare that nearly took his head off, and he flinched and backed away with an apologetic expression.

Shiro sighed. “Everyone's walking carefully around her right now. Those Robeasts at Keroga? Haggar used her relatives to make them. We still don't know if Haggar took just them or the entire family. Kolivan sent a man to check, but he won't tell her until after this meeting.”

Tilwass hissed through his teeth. “Tajvek. The man likes to live dangerously, doesn't he? Probably wants to get this session out of the way before she explodes; I don't know anything past sergeant's gossip, but the gossip hasn't been good.” He paused a moment, and said hopefully, “I'd heard that she didn't like her folks much.”

Shiro shrugged. “Not many of them, no... but they were hers. Lizenne's instincts run deep.”

Tilwass shivered. “My grandma was like that. She and her sisters would play dominance games all the time, but if someone from outside the Lineage took a swipe at any of us, the poor bastard would be lucky to get away with just losing the arm. Our rivals might not like us, but, by damn, they respect us.”

Shiro hummed thoughtfully. “Where are you from?”

“Ashkenzar,” Tilwass replied, sounding slightly homesick. “Fringe colony, way out by the Horfoln Triad. Remote, rocky, rough, and produces a bunch of things that are better smuggled than traded openly. A little like Thek-Audha, only with more Galra and less killbots.”

Shiro smiled. “Sounds nice.”

“We like it. Our Governors tend not to, but they're not local boys.” Tilwass cast his eyes around the table, where the chairs were being filled up at a steady rate. “Looks like we'll be starting soon. Ah—and there's an old friend of yours, from the looks of it.”

Shiro followed his pointed finger and saw with some relief that Lantich had survived the Wyrd-Storm back on Keroga. He seemed unhurt, and when Pidge had finished giving him a huge hug, he saw that Lantich was wearing a large and ornate brooch on one shoulder. “Looks like he's been promoted.”

“Special Liaison, I think,” Tilwass agreed. “Probably an Emissary or something like that. He's really going to want to know what happened after you people ducked into the Nebula.”

Shiro rubbed his eyes, recalling that chaotic episode—god, had it only been a few days ago? “So would I.”

“What?” Tilwass asked. “You were in there yourself!”

“Let's just say that it was really strange in there.” Shiro scowled into the middle distance, trying to remember exactly what he'd seen, but most of it had been light, noise, and a terrible effort. “Has there been any word from the Chashmarans, Tilwass?”

Tilwass sighed and climbed down from the pommel horse, trading that awkward seat to a Fleet Captain who was actually suited to it in exchange for a backless stool much like Shiro's. “The Queen's been talking to them, but not to me,” he said, thumping down on his seat. “She'll probably enlighten us on Lotor's progress shortly, but I wouldn't expect him to have made all that much. That boy has no brakes when he's angry, and no sense when he's thwarted. I'm a little surprised that you're worrying about him, given the amount of trouble we gave you.”

“We're going to need him later,” Shiro said gravely. “Someone has to administer the Galra worlds, and trying to move a stranger in won't work. Kelezar's already known and liked in the outer worlds, but the Core Worlds probably won't accept him. I'm not enjoying our current war enough to start another.”

Tilwass grunted a faint laugh. “You're going to have to come down hard on the General Staff, then. That's been their whole business for ten thousand years, and they won't like being put out of work.”

“If they're anything like Sendak was, we'll be dealing with them anyway,” Shiro countered easily.

He would have asked about what General Pendrash might do, but Yantilee was rapping his knuckles on the table to get everybody's attention. “Everybody comfortable?” the Elikonian asked without preamble, and nodded when he received no complaints. “Good. We've a lot to cover this time, and we might as well get right to it. First things first—Paladins, what in the name of Bazrit's Beccles did you get up to after you left Inityani? Three or four days for rest and recuperation, you said, and then vanished for over a standard week. Kolivan still won't tell me exactly why.”

Everybody looked at Kolivan, who gave Yantilee a disgusted glare.

Pidge snickered.

“My fault,” Hunk said, rescuing the dour Blade from having to embarrass himself in front of everybody. “This is going to sound really weird, guys, but it's totally true. We were doing some flight drills in a cometary field, and our sensors picked up an anomaly by an ice planet, so we went to check that out. We were expecting another wormhole or maybe an Elder Race artifact or something, but it turned out to be a wooden sailing ship. The Ekuliar Kvai Granch.”

Hunk wasn't as good a storyteller as Zaianne was, but his uncomplicated and matter-of-fact delivery of that bizarre encounter did the job just as well. It was interesting to watch the reactions of the Galra in the audience. Those who had been aboard the Castle to meet the illustrious Sea-Witch listened with a sort of exasperated amusement; everyone else was stunned and astonished. Well, not everyone. Kolivan's expression just got stonier as the tale wound to its inevitable end.

“I swear, I am not making that up,” Hunk said finally. “Any of it. I brought along the recordings we got as proof, if you want to see them. My Lion got some really good images of Old Granny, too.”

“Show me,” Kherig said in a steely tone that brooked no argument.

That took some time, since Kherig insisted on replaying some of the sequences several times, and examined each image minutely. They were authentic, though, and unmistakable as such, and every non-Galra at the table was struck by the wistful, yearning look in his eyes. It wasn't just him, either; Tilwass looked thunderstruck, tears were trickling openly down Vennex's and Phrane's faces. Drathann's aura of grandfatherly authority had gone, leaving something much younger and more vulnerable behind.

The old man cleared his throat roughly and said in a soft, shaking voice, “Boy, if you could only know the lonely hours I spent as a lad, night after night on the cold shores of Lake Athra waiting for that ship to come... what has kept her from her home for so long, now that I know that she is real?”

“Haggar,” Hunk replied heavily. “Yozori said that Haggar killed off too many planets near the Core Worlds, and that messed up the... the currents or whatever, and if she ever tried to come home anyway, Haggar would be after her like a shot. My money would be on the Captain in a fair fight, but Haggar doesn't play fair. Old Granny never said anything about it, but I think she's been lying low, too. She's been a part of Galran Prime since practically the beginning, and doesn't really want to attract Haggar's attention either.”

“Haggar will suffer for this!” Drathann exploded, banging a fist furiously on the table. “How dare she? Yozori bears a portion of a God's power, and Kashtmehtz is Kaizerosk's own First Daughter! They are sacred!”

“Haggar does not care,” Allura said sharply enough to make him stare at her. “Haggar is not Galra. She is an Altean, a fact that disgusts me as much as it does you, sir, or more so! I'm not sure if she can be counted as one of my people anymore in any case, given how deeply she's been corrupted. We have been getting some very broad hints that both she and Zarkon are nothing more than the tools of something far greater and more terrible than any mortal being.”

“Gods' game,” Lantich said grimly, waggling a thick finger at Allura. “This ain't the first time that this sort of thing's happened, and not just to us Kerogans. At least we could see ours coming with the Nebula right there, spawning or summoning monsters, and the Lions coming in time and time again to hunt 'em. Sometimes it was big ones, beasts five hundred cora tall and all over fangs and feelers and things. Sometimes it was little ones, hiding behind the eyes of ordinary people, and those were worse. You're the first to go after the source, though. Just what was in that Nebula, anyway? Every time we've sent a probe up to have a look, we're lucky if it just blows up.”

“A Shadow of Oblivion,” Zaianne said with distaste, “and the Hrralka who was fighting to dispel it.”

That caused an uproar from the crowd around the table. Rare though both phenomena were, they were still long-standing elements of spacer's lore, and most of the people present knew about them; those that didn't were soon told. Yantilee let them continue for a minute or two before knocking a fist on the table to get their attention.

“That's enough. Calm down, you lot. The Castle and the Chimera survived it, and so did everyone else. So, that's what's been making Keroga such an odd spot?”

“Yeah,” Hunk said. “Yozori told me that a couple of Elder Races had a fight there millions of years ago, and took it right down to the planet, screwing up reality and sort of... well, poking a hole in the Universe itself. That's what those Shadows are, by the way. We actually felt it when we were coming in.”

“That's right!” Lance said. “We were in our Lions on the way in, so that we could come out of the wormhole fighting, and Shiro was trying to have a Vision, and that magic black-hole thing was keeping it from getting through! And then... well, then the Hrralka—I think it was the Hrralka—made it stop doing that, and we busted up that Imperial fleet, and then we were too busy with the Kerogans to pay attention to much else.”

Keith scowled. “Yeah. And we missed the ringers that Zarkon and Haggar slipped us because of it.”

“Ringers?” Trosimon asked, frowning at the unfamiliar idiom.

“Dirty tricks,” Pidge replied, making a face. “People with special qualities slipped into the team illegally to ensure a win. You see, Modhri's got relatives...”

It took some considerable time to get through that adventure, and a good deal of shouting, hand-waving, stopping Keith from bopping Lance in the snoot again, and Allura managed to finish it off with a succinct, “...and then we returned here. We have recordings of those events as well, if anyone wants further proof of our actions.”

“Maybe later,” Yantilee said, spines rattling faintly as he shuddered. “I'd thought the Hrralka to be an old myth, and those Tricksters to be more so. Nevertheless, we've got more to worry about than bits of odd metaphysics. It's the Robeasts that fret me the most. You're sure that you couldn't have handled that last batch?”

“Positive,” Shiro said grimly. “We were able to destroy one by forcing it into the statue's web, and the rest came apart in the Nebula itself. We couldn't make much of a dent in them, and what hits we did get in healed almost instantly. That's the second time we've had to rely on course hazards to get rid of Haggar's monsters, and we can't count on there being a handy space anomaly next time. The only good thing about what happened at Keroga is that you won't have to worry about further Imperial attacks.”

Everyone's eyes rested briefly on the holographic starchart that hovered over the table. Some smart person had contacted the nearest authority a day or three ago and had sent them a warning, and now the Galran Standard Symbol for “Avoid This Place” hung superimposed over the entire Kerogan System.

Trosimon sat back with a sigh. “Well, that's something,” he said, gazing pensively at the rather unpleasant-looking pictograph. “We'll still be able to get the raw materials for the resonance cannons, right?”

Lantich gestured an affirmative; Gantarash tended to ignore Imperial Proscriptions. “Sure. Even legally, if we bring it to you instead of you coming to get it. Frankly, we've got too much right now. Whatever Varda and her team did in there, it had the Nebula spewing all sorts of odd stuff into our orbits, and that's a big problem for satellite maintenance.”

Trosimon smiled, noting the avaricious expressions among the Fleet Captains and the trade representatives; those rare elements had other uses than making Gantar-splatting guns. “I think that we can make the cleanup effort worth your while. More importantly, Paladins, what are you going to do about future Robeasts? My excellent wife has been working closely with the Blade, and we cannot help but notice that those things increase in sophistication with every new model. I shudder to think of what the next one will be like.”

“So do we,” Shiro admitted. “So far, they've been focused on attacking us, but the Fleet's starting to become a real threat to the Empire, and it won't be long before those things will be turned loose on the liberated worlds instead. Frankly, if the next one's as bad as the last group, we may not be able to stop them from destroying whole solar systems.”

Hunk shrugged. “Voltron's great, but he's old, and Haggar's not about to let us get enough time to learn how to power him up more than he has been already.”

One of the Captains rattled his dorsal scales uneasily. “Couldn't you just...?”

“No,” Allura said sharply. “Voltron is not like any other fighting craft. The Lions hold many mysteries, even for their own pilots, and they are shared only when the Lion deems the pilot to be ready. The bond between Paladin and Lion is more spiritual than anything else, and increases in strength only with time and shared experience. We have done very well to come so far in so short a time, and we would love to have the opportunity to advance our knowledge and skills further--”

“--But things keep coming up,” Keith finished for her. “There is always someone out there who needs help now, and there is only one Voltron.”

“The Empire can threaten more worlds all at once than we can rescue,” Lance said with uncharacteristic gravity. “Look, as amazingly heroic as we are, there are limits, and I'm pretty sure that we hit a big one at Keroga. That's why we've got you guys to pick up the small stuff so that we can deal with the big stuff. It's just that twenty-one Robeasts are definitely too big.”

“We can't argue with that,” Yantilee agreed, although he had to shoot a stern glance at someone who wanted to. “We had thirteen big ships and thirty smaller ones out there holding Kerogan space when those things blew in, and the only reason they survived was that they got the hell out of the way. If those things had been sent to crush the planet, I don't think that anybody would've been able to stop them. Just one at a time has been plenty for Voltron to handle so far, but it took the worst patch of broken space in three Sectors to deal with that last lot.” Yantilee leaned back in his chair and ran a searching look around the room. “Ideas?”

Shiro smiled faintly, reflecting that Earth's governments would do very well to employ Elikonian tiebreakers. “We've discussed this, actually, on our way back here from Altean space. Haggar's escalated past what we can handle at this time—I can't See far enough into the future to know what she'll do next, but it won't be good. On the other hand, building Robeasts uses up a tremendous amount of materials, supplies, and energy. We might not be able to fight the finished product, but we can steal or destroy the raw goods. Lizenne, you've been studying the Robeasts whenever you've had the opportunity. What goes into making those things?”

Lizenne had been sitting quietly, her elbows on the table and her golden eyes watching Kolivan over steepled fingers with a particular intensity that Shiro knew from personal experience to be acutely uncomfortable after a while. The Blade Commander had been trying to ignore her, but with limited success. She shifted, straightened, and gave the assembled captains a thin smile.

“A long list of rare metals and alloys,” she said, “particularly thrasonage, kelip ura, several transuranic elements, soribrant, yolingding precipitate-enhanced throdillo, and keglorap. A number of what looks to be neo- and ultra-ceramics. At least three high-quality grades of superconducting foams and nanocrystalline matrixes. Roughly half a planet's worth of Quintessence, minimum, a great deal of the most foul varieties of sorcery, and the soul of a living victim. Mind you, this shopping list is based off of my study of a chunk of a single Robeast, recovered after a battle some time ago; the Robeasts since that one have been rather more advanced. The one confirmed common element shared between those monstrosities and the conventional warships is Quintessence. With the exception of the sorcery and the Quintessence, perhaps, disrupting the production of Haggar's most dangerous weapons...” she smiled fondly at the Fleet captains, “...is pirates' work.”

There was a low, anticipatory ripple of amusement from those worthies. Tepechwa grinned broadly and cast a triumphant look at Yantilee, who waved a conciliatory hand at him in return. “My own home planet and its colonies mine and produce many of those sweet, rare things,” Tepechwa said, “and the Empire gobbles 'em up whether or not that witch gets to them first, and every world in Hepplan space has Quintessence extraction plants on 'em. Varda, you and your crew'll free our worlds, right? And we'll give you a proper look at the siphons, and you'll show us how to turn 'em off safely. Once we know, we can spread that knowledge, and you'll go after what's already been taken. I've heard about the siphon on Poboio, and I've also heard tell that you struck at a stockpile once, but that big, juicy ulvitta bit you and got away...?”

Pidge thumped a fist on the table. “Shomakti station. It didn't just bite us, it chewed us up and spat us out. I want to steal it, empty it out, hide it somewhere, and then put in an AI that we can be friends with. Besides, Shiro's Visions say that we're going to be tackling it soon anyway.”

Kolivan brightened up a little at that, or at least his scowl grew less pronounced. “Another live-station would be a tremendous asset,” he allowed. “We are getting closer to finding that hidden cache of Jasca's siblings, and will need proper housings for them.”

Hunk snickered. “Sure. Why not? It saves our guys from having to make everything from scratch. Ooh! Ooh! Hey, Pidge, what if we sneak into an Imperial Shipyard and tweak their standard AI templates into something better, and then they can pass us info and things. It's hard to catch the spy in the house when the spy is the house. And then the bad guys can order them to go and blow someplace up, and the ships are like, 'Nope! Got better things to do, 'kay-thanks-bye', and switch over to our side. You won't even have to break the shielding if your work's already inside it, and geared so that it can eat Haggar's shields and burp out her evil all over someone who deserves it.”

Pidge's mad-scientist laughter made Yantilee smile, Trosimon flinch, the pirates grin greedily, and the more timid of the trade representatives hide under the table.

Allura smiled primly. “An interesting possibility, I will freely admit. We will handle the Quintessence stockpiles when and as they are discovered, and continue to respond to emergencies; you will wish to concentrate on factories, mining operations, supply lines, and those planets that supply the most basic of the Military's needs. Father used to complain bitterly that Generals rarely pay attention to farmers and weavers until they themselves have missed a few meals and their own trousers have disintegrated. I suggest that we make use of that, redirecting those supplies to our own cause wherever possible and disrupting them where we can't.”

Trosimon smiled grimly. “And the Fringe Worlds will be glad to take up that load—and those goods. That sounds sensible.”

“Yes,” Trosimon's wife, Queen Abritta, said thoughtfully. “But a thought for the future—if we are not going to be using Quintessence as a power source, then what will we use in its place?”

“We've got options,” Lance replied with a wary look in the direction of their two resident mad geniuses. “Pidge and Hunk have been working on a bunch of them in their spare time. Broadcast solar looks pretty good, and fusion's got possibilities. Modhri says that Quintessence harvesting can be done sustainably, so long as the machinery's super-efficient and nobody paves over the planet. And then there's that big steampunk-looking engine you built into Clarence, Hunk. What the heck did you do in there, anyway?”

Hunk smiled nostalgically, recalling the day that he'd stolen an entire starbase. “Whatever felt right. It's a really good first try, but it gets loose magic all over the engine deck after a big fight.”

Kolivan flicked dismissive fingers. “We consider that to be a welcome feature. Some of our more powerful witches have found ways to capture and store that extra energy in a way that their less-powerful sisters may make use of. It has saved many lives already.”

Keith smirked. “And I'll bet that your ghosts like it, too.”

Kolivan nodded gravely. “Yes, which has also proven useful on occasion. The Ghamparva have tried to take Clarence and Jasca from us several times; Zerod, Zandrus, and Tzairona consider those enemy agents to be a great deal of fun.”

Keith's eyebrows rose. “I'm going to want to hear more about that, but later. Have you found any more of those Quintessence stockpiles?”

“Thus far, three more,” Kolivan said, touching the holograph's controls to bring up three extra sections of space. “We have not as yet obtained the keys for their storage vaults, but at this point we may not need them. You are intent on taking Shomakti first?”

Shiro thought about that, and wasn't particularly surprised when he replied, “Yes,” almost without his conscious bidding. “It's important, Kolivan. I wish that I could tell you why. Is the Station still in the Basimere system? If so, how are we going to move it, and do we have a safe place ready to hide it in while we unload its stock and make our own alterations?”

Pleased to be able to leave metaphysics behind, Kolivan informed them that Shomakti hadn't been moved, although whether that was due to arrogance on the Military's part or if it had been left there as a trap for overambitious rebels, he wasn't sure. Shiro observed that the rest of his team didn't really care—even if the Quintessence had already been moved out, the station itself was still there and would be a valuable acquisition in its own right. Assuming, of course, that they'd be able to find and defuse all of the booby traps that would doubtless have been set into its systems.

Shiro paused at that thought, glanced at Pidge, and told himself that he was being silly. Telling Pidge to hunt booby traps was like telling a sugar-crazed six-year-old to hunt Easter eggs, and Hunk could tell if something wasn't right just by leaning against a wall.

Yantilee nodded in satisfaction. “Good. It's about time we changed tactics anyway, and cracking Hepplan space loose will clear the path to other worlds. Shutting down Quintessence siphons will put a dent in the Military overall—you can't move those big ships, nor fire their guns if there's no juice in their tanks. Let's coordinate, then. Pull up the charts for Hepplonir and its colonies, and we'll see who's best for the job. Mind you, some of this is going to have to wait. Even with that armada we stole from Lotor, we're still stretched a little thin, and will be until our own Shipyards can churn out more ships to bolster our forces with. By the way, Modhri, Girosk, your kin are having all kinds of fun with our own engineering corps. Tell your Matriarch thanks from the rest of us, all right?”

Chapter Text

Chapter 13: Vital Information

It was a good planning session, and better than many that Shiro himself had attended back home on Earth. Yantilee had kept the discussion clear and to the point, had refused to allow ego-disputes between his captains, and had kept Phrane very busy with taking notes. In the end, most of the assembled members had filed out of the room in high spirits, leaving only a small group behind. Yantilee still sat at the table, chin propped on one fist while he pondered the future. Shiro and Keith had stayed to keep him company while the others had gone with Pidge to visit Ronok, and they'd taken Trosimon, Tilwass, Vennex, and Drathann with them. Zaianne and Girosk had followed after them to make sure that they didn't do anything too dangerous down in the kitchen, leaving Kherig, Phrane, and Abritta behind to speak privately with each other. Kolivan and Modhri had stayed as well, and Lizenne, who wasn't about to let Kolivan out from under her eye until she had what she wanted from him.

In the weary silence that often occurs after an intense conclave, Phrane laid his noteboard down carefully on the table as if afraid it might explode if he handled it incautiously, and looked over at his superior. “Will we be telling Pendrash about this, sir?”

Kherig glanced at Kolivan and gestured a negative. “No. We won't have to. Pendrash is probably already aware of the details of the battle over Keroga and will be able to extrapolate from there, although I'm sure our colleague here will drop whatever crumbs he deems necessary.”

“Pendrash is managing well enough,” Kolivan said levelly, “and he is an intelligent man. We cannot contact him often without risking both his survival and ours, but certain aspects of the upcoming raids will be best served if he knows about them beforehand.”

Queen Abritta, who had stayed for a chance at Kolivan herself, looked sharply at him. “You might also want to tell him that there has been an increase in Ghamparva activity near the Pilsaster-Chashmaran border. We've found an Ortakan ship floating dead in Pilsaster's outer orbits, with its cargo holds emptied, its drive and bridge gutted, and some of its crew tortured to death in their signature style. The ship's command and engineering staff are missing, and there have been sightings of one of those Ghamparva mobile bases in the area. They might well make an attempt to retrieve the Prince from the Kraalsi's keeping.”

Kolivan scowled. “We will tell the Hoshinthra. Is there anything else you are willing to share?”

Abritta nodded. “We have arranged for a diplomatic visit to Chashmara itself, to speak with the Kraalsi, and there is room for you to add a few representatives to the team. Lizenne, you mentioned that you might have something to send along with them?”

“I have,” she murmured, standing up and stretching out her shoulders, her spine emitting audible crackles before she thumped down again. “Just this morning, I was able to finish formulating the medicine that the Kraalsi requested, and there is enough in that batch to treat the patient, supply a sample for the Chashmaran medics to study, with enough left over for the Blade's own research teams to pore over, just as promised. Your team will want to talk to the Kraalsi about sharing medical science and technology, your Majesty. If they can synthesize that particular elixir in large quantities, it will make treating a large number of very serious conditions a good deal easier. Speaking of promises, Kolivan...?”

Kolivan winced, and Shiro felt a moment's sympathy for the man; he knew that tone of voice, and also knew that the Blade risked serious injury if he didn't call his scout in right now. “A moment, my Lady,” the Blade murmured, and stepped away to murmur into a communicator.

A few minutes later, a tall, lean Namturan Blade stepped cautiously into the room, looked around at the occupants, and dipped a respectful bow in Lizenne's direction. Scout to Matriarch, Shiro thought; he'd been developing an eye for gestures of respect among the Galra lately, and a glance at Keith told him that the younger man had been doing the same. It was an interesting line of study, too; for instance, that Blade had offered the courtesy as one of the same Lineage would... which was only proper, actually. Lizenne had made their alliance formal by taking them hunting in the envirodeck, and that meant that they were part of the family, too.

“Scout,” Lizenne said neutrally, “report.”

The Blade took refuge behind a stiff, straight posture and an expression as blank as a fresh sheet of paper. “Matriarch,” he replied tonelessly. “I was up until recently stationed in the Banabuk Domain, posing as a transient worker for the Edral'Vok shipping line until Kolivan summoned me to duty. At his command, I transferred myself to the northwestern branch, that being the one that passes the closest to the main Ghurap'Han properties and Lineage-House. There is a station at the point where the high-speed ground line and Ghurap'Han lie closest together; prior records note that the Family occasionally sends and receives special shipments from there.”

Lizenne nodded. “An old smuggler's rendezvous point. It's been in the family for generations.”

“Indeed, Matriarch,” the Blade said politely, and continued. “There was an outgoing packet waiting to be picked up, and it caused me no difficulty to debark from the freight line there. I had memorized the topography of the area and was able to make my way through the woodlands between House and rail line with all speed. I arrived just after dawn.”

Only now did his carefully bland delivery show cracks, and anguish showed in his eyes. “Matriarch, your House is no more. A classic Ghamparva hit. The Lineage-House and all of its outbuildings have been burned, all within were killed, and the Thiasha tree felled and burned as well. The attack had occurred at least two weeks, perhaps three weeks prior. Possibly more. I was not able to establish an exact time of death.”

Lizenne closed her eyes and a faint shudder ran through her body; Modhri gasped faintly, but when he spoke, his voice was deadly quiet. “All of them?”

The Blade swallowed hard. “Not quite all. I had the most recent Census report and did a headcount. They'd dragged the bodies out into the main courtyard before burning them. All the cubs. Most of the men. All of the adult women had been taken elsewhere, leaving only the old and the very young. Thirteen of the adult men had been taken as well. We assume that... that the Emperor had uses for them. I have a contact in the Center, who keeps an eye on both the Arena and the supplicants to the Throne; Inzera had brought seven of her closest followers with her when she forced an audience with the Emperor. None of them went to the Arena, and I can only assume that a use was found for all of them.”

Shiro heard Keith hiss, and knew that he was thinking of the twenty-one monsters that had disintegrated at Keroga.

The Blade shifted uneasily at her silence. “As for the women... my contact reports a significant increase in the number of Druids. How many, he doesn't know; they're all but identical, and he does not dare to get too close to a grouping of them.”

“My kin who were in the other properties,” Lizenne said in a faint voice. “The villa on the moon.”

“Those were hit as well,” the scout said apologetically, and dug one hand into the pouch he wore at his belt. “I checked all of Ghurap'Han's properties and habitations personally. I am sorry, but these are the only things left intact.”

He brought out two small, silk-wrapped items, which when unwrapped were revealed to be a single whorled nut and a venadra flower; Shiro recognized the nut as having come from a Thiasha tree—his storybook had a very nice illustration of them—but the flower could only have been the one that had belonged to Lizenne's mother. While the petals still glittered with the true diamond clarity of those rare Zampedran flowers, the soot trapped between them spoke of having been pulled from the ashes of a childhood home. Lizenne's hands shook slightly as she accepted them from the Blade.

Lizenne's breath hitched. “My Aunt Korial and her family. She left long ago, subsuming herself into her husband's household. And my brothers... Three of them have spent most of their lives getting as far away from home as they could.”

The Blade gave her a thin smile. “We had better luck there. We found Korial and her man and children on Sedira only an hour or two before the Ghamparva arrived, and were able to plant drone decoys in their place. The Ghamparva agents gassed the house with salpite, Matriarch, and then burned it right down into the foundations. Your three far-flung brothers were harder for the enemy to locate.”

“Azand,” Lizenne said.

“An undervalued employee of a Mid-World firm, working on improving their designs for asteroid-mining drone ships,” the scout said. “A very hands-on sort, which meant that he wasn't on the station when our enemies arrived. We were able to spirit him away with little trouble.”

Lizenne gave him a brittle little smile. “Pashtar.”

“A minor partner in a large conglomerate,” the scout said helpfully, “pushing for promotion and getting nowhere. We got him out right before the Ghamparva burned his office.”

“Grenzat?” she asked.

The scout nodded. “And his husband, out imaging dramatic panoramas on the rocky moonlets of Irsogon Delta. The Ghamparva never even came close. All of them are very upset, I'm sorry to say, and we are currently holding them in a safe location. Korial insists that they join you here as soon as may be.”

Lizenne glanced at Kolivan, who was impersonating a marble statue on the far side of the room. “Is Uzenna-Sa'ar—or the Castle, for that matter—any less safe than your hideout?”

The Blade glanced at his commander as well, and received a barely perceptible nod. “Not appreciably, Matriarch. Possibly safer, given that the Castle moves almost constantly, and Queen Abritta knows how to spot Ghamparva among the general population.”

“True,” Abritta said with only a touch of smugness, “and I've drilled all of my agents extensively in the art.”

Keith raised a hand. “We can smell them now, too, after having to clean up that load of rescuees that Lance and Hunk brought home, and there are Hoshinthra all over the place.”

“Then bring them,” Lizenne said, eyes glinting, and Shiro realized that she was controlling herself with a supreme effort; Modhri bent down to whisper something in her ear, which seemed, if not to calm her, then to focus her inner fury. “Bring them all here, as carefully and quickly as you can. Kolivan, be it known that at the end of this, I will see every last Ghamparva dead at my feet along with the Emperor and his witch. You are invited most cordially to help with this project.”

Kolivan gave her one of his rare smiles, touched though it was with relief, and bowed as well. “We will do our utmost to help you achieve this aim, my Lady.”

“For which you have our sincere thanks,” Modhri murmured, resting his hands comfortingly upon his wife's shoulders. I remember Korial and the others as good, intelligent people. They will doubtless have something to contribute to the effort as well. If you will excuse us, gentlebeings, my wife and I require a moment's privacy.”

Yantilee, who had watched the whole thing in stonelike stillness and silence, flicked a finger at a side door. “Three levels down, fifth door on the right is an old small-arms range. Sound- and blast-proofed. A good spot to relieve your feelings in, I've used it myself a few times when Plosser was being really unpleasant.”

“Thank you,” Modhri said politely, and drew his wife gently away.

There was silence for a little time, and then Kherig drew in a shaking breath. “Gods,” he choked out as Phrane sagged in relief. “Ghurap'Han is... was... not a small House. Over a thousand members, I think.”

Phrane shuddered. “Sir, I did some research. When the Emperor tells the Ghamparva to erase a House, that's what they do. Nine times out of ten, the losses are total. Saving even one or two out of hundreds is a win.”

“Yes,” Kolivan said darkly. “It is. You and your team did very well, Ethrok.”

Ethrok nodded. “They were warned, sir. Someone had alerted every Ghurap'Han out there that the Ghamparva were coming, and those we were able to find alive gave us no trouble when we came to their rescue. The others... I have no idea if they heeded it or not, but it was too late for most of them.”

“Pendrash, at a guess,” Abritta said. “It would have been the only thing he could have done under the circumstances, and he needs to stay on our good side.”

“Yeah,” Keith said with a sidelong look at Shiro. “Shiro, I think that this was what Loliqua meant—that Lizenne had to stay with us because if she ran off alone to do something else, she'd die and so would pretty much every other Galra out there. We told you about that, remember? This is the only thing that I can think of that would make her mad enough to abandon us. She's going to be doing something really important later, isn't she? Something that we're going to need, and so will everyone else.”

Shiro blinked, frowning into the middle distance. “I don't know. I haven't gotten any—uh!”

The Vision sandbagged him in the back of his brain hard enough to double him over, and his senses were suddenly overloaded with impressions of events that hadn't happened yet. There was light—ion beams and ship's drives and whirling stars in the distance. There was darkness—black space and stark shadows and a terrible presence that he had felt thrice before. There was sound—roaring engines and anxious shouting, the creaks and groans of metal under terrible strain, and alarms whooping and jangling on all sides. There were sensations—the rush of forward movement, the lurches from side to side as Voltron engaged in evasive maneuvers, the smell of his own fear-sweat on a dry throat; the tremendous impacts that would shatter the sword and shield, fear...

...A moment of strange peace, a blaze of light, and a length of opalescent effulgence that had come at long last to finish a great task...

...and Shiro dropped with a thud back onto his stool, gasping for breath and feeling as though someone had picked him up and wrung him dry.

Keith was supporting him, and this was good, because he would have toppled to the floor otherwise.

“Big one,” Yantilee observed. “I take it that he's just had his suspicions confirmed?”

“Maybe,” Shiro rasped hoarsely, gritting his teeth against the painfully empty feeling in his belly. “Probably. I'm not sure. Something big is going to happen, and that's all I can say for certain.”

“Good enough,” Yantilee said and rose to his feet. “Let's get down to the dining hall, people—the Oracle needs feeding and so do I.”

“You know, I've heard rumors,” Tilwass said, stirring sweetener into a cup of hot miska, “but I didn't think they were true.”

Shiro puffed a laugh and scooped up the last spoonful of his dessert. Outside in the hall, Pidge ran past the doors hooting with glee; a moment later, at least two hundred pirates, four other Paladins, a large flock of Nantileeri, Antler Guy, Phrane, and Tamzet stampeded past, hot on her heels.

“It's traditional,” he said, savoring the last bite of his morlaberry cobbler. “Pidge can't visit the Quandary without getting chased around half the ship. It's good exercise, a great way to test whether the booby traps work, and it keeps morale up. Plus, it tires her out enough to hold still for her doctor's appointment. You should try it sometime.”

Tilwass chuckled and lifted a hand to rub the brow ridges of the Nantileer chick sitting on his shoulder; the little creature seemed to have formed a fondness for the man, and leaned into the caress. “That sort of thing doesn't fly on Galra ships. It's hard to find a guy who's willing to be chased around like that, and young soldiers can get nasty when their blood's up. Some captains'll allow the crew to chase prisoners sometimes, but that always causes more of a mess than it's worth. This, though, this'll be good for poor Phrane. He's been having trouble with his loyalties since Kherig decided that siding with the Coalition was a better bet, and this should ease some of the worst of it. At least he'll be able to tell himself that he's still trying to catch a Paladin.”

Shiro hummed and considered licking the plate; Ronok made a kickass cobbler. “And you?”

Tilwass sipped at his drink and reached out with a long arm, dragging the dessert platter over to where Shiro could reach it. “I got my fill on Thek-Audha. Us Ashkenzari Galra don't have much use for the Emperor's obsessions, anyway.”

Whooping, Pidge and her entourage stampeded past in the opposite direction.

Shiro scooped another modest portion of cobbler onto his plate. “And if the Coalition was to offer them a membership?”

Tilwass sighed and picked up a bit of crust, nibbling it thoughtfully. “They'd join up like a shot, so long as the Coalition's willing to overlook a fair amount of—heh—duty-free trade.”

Shiro shrugged. “Introduce them to the Unilu, the Hepplans, and Kolivan's people. Especially the Hepplans. They really know how to run a gray market.”

“True, that. I'll have to insist that they keep the Ghamparva out, though. Can't have Rogue Witches blowing up the black-flag districts whenever they visit. I'm pretty sure she can do that.”

“And we'll help,” Shiro said firmly, reaching for a dish of something that was very like whipped cream. “We don't like them any more than she does.”

The horde stampeded past again, this time coming through the nearest doorway, passing within an arm's reach of their table, and then heading out through the far doors in a noisy scramble. Not before Shiro had seen something that couldn't be unseen, however.

“Something wrong?” Tilwass asked, passing a juicy morlaberry to his shoulder-sitter.

“That was Nasty! Pidge's knife instructor and our villainy teacher, I mean,” Shiro stared after the crowd vanishing down the hall at a dead run. “Wearing a tartan kilt? With a sporran and everything!”

“Not words I know,” Tilwass said indifferently.

“And it would take too long to explain,” Shiro said, leaning back in his chair and rubbing at his eyes.

“'Tartan' and 'sporran' are items of traditional dress in certain regions of his homeworld,” a familiar if weary voice said, and Shiro looked up to see Modhri sink down into the chair across from him. “Not to our people's taste, perhaps, but quite dashing to others. I see that Pidge is at it again.”

Shiro nodded and pushed the dessert tray in his direction. “How's Lizenne?”

“Better,” Modhri said, taking a bit of cobbler for himself. “The small-arms range may never be the same, however. She was... very upset. I've taken her back to the Castle for the time being; she needs to spend time with Pezzam, Dreya, and Adriar. The dragons will keep an eye on all of them.”

Shiro frowned. Pezzam he knew very well, from that cub's habit of clinging to Keith like a cockleburr whenever he got the chance. The other two were among the many that he hadn't been formally introduced to. Modhri spotted his confusion, and explained.

“Dreya's about six years old now, and came along with my family because she is kenasha-moq besth—two bodies, one blood—with the daughter of one of my cousins. She would not let her chosen-sister leave her behind. It's rare to see that in unrelated individuals, but it happens, and she's been absorbed into the family with no trouble.”

“Like Pezzam,” Shiro observed.

Modhri nodded. “Very much so, and with some pride; Dreya is a very bright young lady, and is already showing signs that she might possess considerable power when she grows up. Adriar is one of Lizenne's cousins, and she fell in love with one of mine. She's pregnant by him, and came with him because she knew very well what Inzera would have done to her, her cubs, and her man.”

Tilwass vented a whistle, his expression pained. “Balsh-pabakh?”

Modhri nodded. “Or worse. Before you ask, Shiro, that term translates more or less as 'culling mongrels', and is exactly as horrible as it sounds. Yes, it is illegal. No, Inzera would not have cared, even though Adriar was her own granddaughter and a very promising young witch.”

Shiro grunted sourly and laid aside his spoon. “Inzera didn't need any help to become a monster, did she?”

“No,” Modhri said in a flat tone. “Thanks to the efforts of Kolivan's men, there will be enough of Lizenne's Lineage to carry on with, and some of the best of them at that. She has asked me to pass on a request to you, though: when next you encounter Druids, kill them as quickly and as thoroughly as possible. As one who nearly became one of those creatures, she says that it is the kindest thing you can do.”

Shiro thought of his own experiences with Druids, and couldn't help but to agree. “Fine. I'll tell the others--” the pirate stampede thundered by again, “--when they're done. Whatever keeps her from running off and going on a murder-rampage in the Center.”

Modhri snorted, a soft noise nearly drowned out by a distant shout of “Varda Toss!”

“Not alone, she won't. I'm owed my share of that station, as are the Blades, as are every other people in the known Universe. Something wrong, Tilwass?”

Tilwass had stood up and ventured over to the door, where he was staring at the ups and downs of an airborne, loudly cussing Paladin. The Nantileer chick on his shoulder was bouncing up and down and uttering high-pitched squeaks of excitement. “I'd heard about this, too, and didn't believe it. Don't you people get enough excitement in your lives?”

Shiro grinned ruefully. “Actually, and this is weird even to us, we can get addicted to it. For some Humans, life loses all of its color if they don't run around screaming on a regular basis.”

Tilwass followed a particularly high toss with interest, picking at his teeth with a thumb claw before draining his mug. “Well, you're in the right line of work for that, at least. Does she know what even half of those words mean?”

“She keeps a special file, and adds to it regularly,” Modhri said solemnly, and then smiled. “So does my wife. Tracking the history of a people through their epithets is fascinating, and pirates collect and preserve the most astonishing vocabularies from hundreds of different civilizations.” He paused, and then murmured, “Ronok. Good evening.”

Shiro looked up to see the pale figure of the master cook. Despite his age, the old man moved almost silently, and with a grace and sureness that spoke of confidence and good health.

“Just thought I'd check in,” he said, smiling at the happy crowd down the hall; somebody had laid hold of Keith as well, and he was getting an unexpected flight lesson. From the tone of his yelling, somebody was going to face his wrath soon. “All of my students will be glad enough to see the back of me for a few minutes, anyway. Warned 'em, I did—feeding a party of nearly five hundred people, and such a diverse crowd at that, is no joke.”

“They did a great job,” Shiro said.

“Damn right, they did,” Ronok said with satisfaction. “I spent nearly fifty years making do with Military-standard prepackaged nutrient gels and base rations, plus whatever I could scrounge from the markets whenever we came close enough to a civilized planet. Coming to work on a pirate ship was a step up in the world, believe you me, and nothing will turn a ship's crew sour like bad or sparse rations. Even Plosser knew that.”

Tilwass nodded. “You should have seen the fights that broke out during budget meetings on my old ship, before Pendrash reassigned me to babysit the Prince. Fringe garrisons don't get the kind of funding that the Core Worlds Corps does—we're expected to support ourselves by preying on any subject races out there, and the Fringe is mighty thin on industrialized civilizations in spots. The artillery crew and ship techs used to get into screaming brawls with the commissary crew over who got what, and I've had captains who've nearly gotten themselves spaced for stealing half the loot for their own private use.”

Shiro scowled. “We've had to deal with a case of that. There was one large warship that was going around stripping marginal worlds of their resources, and they very nearly caused the extinction of a whole race. Their planet's crust was peeling off, and the Galra had crippled their one colony ship. We had a hell of a time getting it off the ground before the place came apart.”

Tilwass had the grace to look ashamed at his colleague's behavior. “I'd heard about that. It ain't uncommon, unfortunately. Officers who fail to impress the Emperor often get reassigned out here to keep them from becoming an embarrassment, and they'll do anything to buy themselves a ticket home. That usually means stealing a cargo-hold full of treasure from folks who can't fight back and using it to bribe some staffer somewhere into letting them go back to the Core Worlds. The Fleet's got a better system set up already, and it's going to put a big dent in the Imperial supply lines soon. I'm surprised that you aren't cuddled up with the trade reps right now, Ronok.”

Ronok smirked. “That's because we got it done early, with Yantilee and Maozuh listening in on a remote comm. Ah—that's done it. The red Paladin's got Anudap-Palga by the ears and the others have run off to the clinic with Varda. The rest of the crowd'll disperse soon enough.”

Shiro stood up and peered through the doorframe. Sure enough, Keith had a firm grip on the long, floppy ears of a rotund, candy-striped person who was a great deal larger than he was. Anudap-Palga was, in fact, a rather alarming figure in pink, white, light yellow, and pale blue, wearing what looked to be dark-green bib overalls. Shiro watched the pair dance around in circles for a long moment, and rubbed at his face with a tired chuckle. “He looks like an elf battling the Easter Bunny for supremacy. Why is there a race of people who look like giant Easter bunnies?”

“Why not?” Modhri shrugged and smiled as Keith gave his foe's ears a yank that had the rabbit-like alien flat on his face on the floor. “Bogathars aren't any stranger than anybody else aboard the Quandary. They're mammals, mostly vegetarian, have three genders, and are very strong and love to laugh. That one over there will have his fellows howling with mirth over that little tussle in the coming days, and he'll be able to trade the tale for his dinner on his homeworld for the rest of his life.”

Ronok grinned. “Just that? Oh, no, this one'll be added to the Burrow Archives, and his whole clan will treasure it forever. The Paladins are respected where he comes from. Whoops, and that'll just make it better.”

Keith had tried straddling the Bogathar's shoulders in an attempt to keep the giant pseudo-rabbit down, but the big fellow had pushed himself to his feet and was now charging down the hall with Keith clinging to his back. It was quite an experience to watch them, with Keith yelling at the top of his lungs as he rode a pastel-patterned bunny the size of a Volkswagen minibus past the doors and off in the general direction of the fighter bay.

“Never a dull moment,” Shiro observed as a crowd of interested pirates ran by in pursuit.

“Best kind,” Tilwass agreed, the Nantileer chick on his shoulder chirping in cheerful accord.

Pidge and most of the others returned about twenty minutes later, although Keith was still elsewhere. Pidge was looking in the pink of health, and so was Nasty, who strode along beside her resplendent in a formal pleated kilt in gray, olive-green, and searing bright red.

“Where have you lot been?” Shiro asked.

Pidge bounced over to give Ronok a quick hug. “The clinic. Doc wanted a look at Hunk, Lance, and Allura, and he called the flight deck and had that big bunny guy bring Keith up, too. Keith's still up there getting checked over, but Doc wants to see you too, Shiro. We've been through a lot of weird stuff lately, and he wants to make sure that none of it stuck. Hey, Tilwass, you've made a friend.”

Tilwass tickled his velociraptor, who giggled. “Yeah, they're cute when they're little. I'd ask to adopt him, but we've got no bugs aboard my ship. I wouldn't mind moving in some big terrariums and things so that we could grow our own like these guys do, but my techs would scalp me if I started up a nest of bockles. I'll just have to visit now and again. Speaking of pests, your Unilu looks stylish.”

Lance grinned. “Yeah, doesn't he? Tartans look really good on Unilu, don't ask me why.”

“It's our natural flair, grace, and superior skin tone,” the goblinish alien said smugly, twirling around to let them get the full effect and adding a little butt-waggle to show off the knife-sharp pleating. “The fashion circles back home are going wild for this stuff, and for a whole lot of other things. That's a really nice planet you've got there, Shiro, and we're going to make sure that it stays that way.”

Modhri chuckled. “Good. I see that you've regained your citizenship on your own world. Have you been to Earth yourself?”

Nasty grinned broadly and jerked a thumb at the Paladins. “Are you kidding? I'm the only Unilu in the wider Universe who's got any real experience at dealing with these balding monkeys. I was on the first diplomatic ship sent out there, and it was great. We've got our own Embassy there now, and they're bringing all of their best used-car salesmen to dicker with us 'cause their usual diplomatic corps are useless. Some good haggling there, and we've already got an arrangement going for regular shipments of haggis. Did you know that they've got a bunch of different recipes and preparations, and they're all really good? And they even showed us the source of it. Sheep! Lawsy, but we love those sheep! They're cute and fluffy and have their own enticing natural perfume, and the wool makes this really nice cloth—no, seriously, it's great, the scratchiness takes care of all sorts of itches all by itself, and check out my sporran! Why did my people never invent sporrans? They're so stylish, useful and handy, and they hold all sorts of stuff like card decks and spare change and other people's teeth--”

“Other people's teeth?” Shiro asked, trying not to laugh at Nasty's enthusiasm.

Nasty grinned. “Some of the older pubs can host really good barfights. But sheep are the best.”

“They taste good, too,” Pidge put in.

“They sure do,” Nasty said happily. “Haggis is awesome, but there are a bunch of other applications. You Humans've got it all wrong, though. Lamb is okay, I guess, but mutton is almost as good as wuskor, and there's this amazing recipe that the British have that involves boiling it and then serving it with mint sauce...”

“Poor thing,” Hunk sighed sadly.

“...and turkeys!” Nasty burbled on. “Turkeys are adorable, especially the big wild ones, and goats are neat, too. They're like sheep, only taller and sneakier.”

Shiro smiled. “And our other goods and technologies?”

Nasty shrugged and waved a couple of hands dismissively. “Yeah, some of that's okay, too, there's a big market already for fenugreek, durian, and some of the gadgets, but the real focus right now is on ecotourism. Some of your landscapes are stunning! You've got some of the best swamps we've ever seen, and the peat bogs? Gorgeous. Watching the mist rise over a proper quagmire on a brisk autumn morning... oh, yeah. You just don't get any better lurking territory than that. And I got to meet Varda's folks, too.”

“Really?” Shiro asked. “How are they doing?”

“Just fine, even though Matt wants to know where you keep finding people like us, and why you insist on sending us to him. They'd only just gotten sort of used to the Hoshinthra, and then we showed up.” Nasty snickered evilly. “I just think you've got great taste in friends. Nah, things got off to a great start after the leader of our expedition tried to pick Varda's mother's pockets and she nearly throttled him with his own arm.”

Pidge grinned. “Mom's a lot sharper than she looks.”

“Got that right,” Nasty said admiringly. “Ambassador Norgrant won First Place in the last Lightfingers Regional Purse-Cutting Championships, too. Anyone who can catch him in the act is a person to respect. Anyway, Doc wants to see you, Shiro, and you'd better get up there before he sends Anudap-Palga to come and get you. He looks cute and fluffy, but I've seen him snap the wings off of small aircraft with his bare hands.”

Shiro was familiar enough with the Quandary's interior layout to make his way up to the clinic without getting too badly lost, although he did have to stop to ask for directions a couple of times. It was a large clinic, as befit one that had been originally constructed for a much larger race; it was as clean and as well-appointed as one could hope, but it possessed one very unusual feature. All along the back wall was a bank of shelving, upon which were dozens of bottles, some very strangely-shaped, all of them empty. House rules, he thought, if not ship's regulations. The chief medic might drink, but the Captain insisted that the empties be neatly stacked.

Keith was sitting on one of the examination tables with the omniscanner pointing directly at him while Doc, a young Galra dressed in the traditional light blue clinician's scrubs, and a very large rabbit-like alien studied the readout in apparent fascination.

“--Definitely related,” the multiply-eyed Ophlica was telling the other two. “There are numerous sections where the genetics are identical or nearly so, so it should be no surprise at all that the bloodlines should cross so gracefully.”

“Huh,” Anudap-Palga rumbled in a wholly appropriate gravelly basso. “Ain't their world be's, like, a galaxy or two away? Past the Fringe, like? Long jaunt to jump, just to find romance.”

“Lizenne said that it was some Elder Race's idea of a joke,” Keith informed them. “She can't tell which one it was, or which of us evolved first.”

The Galra straightened up and scratched his ear thoughtfully, and Shiro recognized the man as Arax, whom Hunk and Lance had brought back with them along with Sergeant Brock from the Ghamparva base. “Well, any Galra scholar will insist that we were the original, no matter where the evidence points. There are a few other spinoff races like yours out there, but none of them are this close to being us. Getting romantic with them is a bad idea anyway. A lot of crossbreeds wind up being sterile.”

“And with a number of physical and psychological problems, poor things,” Doc added with distaste. “I've had the privilege of working both on and with a few of them, and so I know the signs. Whoever twiddled with your distant ancestry, young man, was rather more skilled than the ones who created the others.”

Anudap-Palga vented a most un-rabbitlike growl. “My lot, too. We's descended from summat the Uruplinti genned up as sport animals. Uruplints liked huntin' smart prey, and after they was run off by they's enemies, we jus' got smarter. Y'ain't got no legends, like, 'bout things'd hunt your kind, sir?”

Keith shrugged. “Tons. We didn't get to the top of the food web until maybe a few thousand years ago, and the sharks and crocodiles and other big predators still think that we're food, and a lot of our legendary monsters are really nasty. If anybody was coming to Earth for safari trips, they were bringing all of their friends.”

Anudap-Palga's long ears slatted flat back against his neck. “Yeah. Yeah, they did that. They's did that a lot, like. Made they's own hunting-beasts, each worse than all the rest, and some had Powers. Thought Galra was just more 'o' the same when they showed up. Turns out those wanted somethin' other than hunts.”

“And what the Emperor wants is arguably worse,” Shiro added, stepping forward and nodding at the medical professionals. “You wanted to see me?”

Doc canted a long eyestalk in his direction, the somewhat insectile compound eye glinting in the clinic's lights. “Yes, actually. I'm told that parts of you haven't had a proper medical exam in roughly four years. Let me just finish up with your teammate and I'll be right with you.”

Keith rubbed self-consciously at the streak of lighter purple above his right ear. “Can you tell me how much more I'm going to change?”

“No,” Doc replied simply. “While I do know enough about Galra and about Humans to treat illness and injury, I am not a dedicated geneticist. For that, apply to your remarkable aunt, who is. You are also the first documented Human-Galra hybrid in history, and while you are a surprisingly healthy and viable specimen, I cannot predict further development as you mature. I can say that Galra have longer adolescences than Humans do; you are not done growing yet and will not be fully mature until you are half-past your twenties at the soonest. Stop; do not protest, young man. Yes, you have undergone puberty and are currently capable of siring offspring, but I have noticed a tendency in mammaloids for young persons to mature sexually well before they are adults mentally. Useful, perhaps, if one hasn't invented civilization yet and the life-expectencies are low, but it's a wretched nuisance once one starts building cities and living past the equivalent age of forty-five on a regular basis.”

There was a faint snerk of amusement from Anudap-Palga, but Arax gave Keith a wry smile. “That's part of the reason why my parents sold me to the Military.”

Keith gave him a sympathetic look. “Neighbor's girl?”

“Rich neighbor's girl, and Dad had debts coming due to her father,” Arax said with a rueful grimace. “Two birds, one stone, and suddenly I'm six solar systems away and getting yelled at by a drill sergeant. Oh, well. Anyway, you're healthy enough to give Zarkon real problems, and that's all you really need right now.”

Doc humphed. “One wonders what might appear on the screen if the Emperor were to present himself. Certainly nothing normal. Nevertheless, Shiro, kindly take Keith's place upon the table and hold still. Your particular aetheric talent is, according to my medical literature, not amenable to voluntary control and is rather more erratic than those talents exhibited by your teammates. I am told that the larger manifestations are very hard on your system.”

Keith skootched off the table and let Shiro take his place. “They are,” Shiro said, settling himself on the padded surface; his nerves twitched, and he was secretly relieved that Doc had not told him to lie down or undress. “Keith and the others have done some work already so the worst of it's under control, but every time I get a big Vision, I'm starving-hungry and tired out afterward.”

“A well-documented side effect,” Doc said, aiming the omniscanner at him. “It takes an immense amount of energy to See clearly even a little way ahead. I cannot do anything about that, but I can recommend a proper course of maintenance for your physical self. Hmm.”

Doc lapsed into thoughtful silence for a minute or two while the omniscanner deedled quietly to itself, and he wondered what was showing on the screen. Arax, Keith, and Anudap-Palga were watching it over Doc's shoulder with apparent fascination.

“Well, everything looks okay,” Arax said.

“It should,” Doc said pensively, “given that most of his body mass is less than a standard year old. A very nice job of reconstruction, withal. You said that Lizenne used Hanifor equipment?”

“Yeah,” Keith replied. “She regrew his whole body in about three weeks.”

“Probably a Yudrimonde 2775 Mark V system,” Doc mused. “A very good model, requiring only a very small sample for a full reconstruction. Gentle on the finished product, too, which most Galra manufacturers seem not to think necessary.”

Arax shrugged. “The Emperor doesn't like weaklings.”

“The Emperor,” Doc said firmly, “is a sociopath, and encourages it in others. This is not permissible in medical establishments. Well, she did a fine job, and the resilience of such fresh tissues has come in very handy. Hmm, and you are all very fortunate to have Hunk doing the cooking—aetheric work uses up micronutrients at a terrible rate, but he's been keeping you all very well supplied.”

Shiro smiled. “He's been trading recipes with Modhri's family. Avaris knows how to feed active witches, and it all tastes really good.”

“Indeed,” Doc said approvingly. “I see a few injuries that are all but fully-mended, and I do not see any lingering side effects from your recent dose of unreality. Count yourself very fortunate that this is so.”

Shiro's brows pinched in worry. “Was anyone else affected?”

“Your teammates? No, and I can only surmise that the Lions helped to mitigate the effects.” Doc tapped long fingers on the Omniscanner's housing. “I cannot say anything for the others aboard the Castle and the Chimera, but those ships are well-staffed by those who can deal with such things. Has there been any lingering effects in the ships themselves?”

“I think so,” Shiro said. “There's a sort of fuzzy lizard creature haunting the Castle's engine deck. It isn't large and it hasn't hurt anything, but we can't seem to get rid of it and nobody's willing to try.”

Anudap-Palga grunted. “Green? Spotty? Yellow belly? Big stupid grin? Says 'hi!' a lot? Yeah, we've seen that one before. Don't mess with it, and it'll probably get bored and go away by itself. Thems as tries too hard to mess with it has weird stuff happen to them. Just leave be, and don't try to worship it, neither.”

“Worship it?” Keith, Shiro, and Arax asked disbelievingly.

“Why would anyone want to worship that thing?” Keith asked.

Anudap-Palga gave him a grim smile. “Got me. It's happened, though. Those as did had their civilizations collapse, like. Like the lizard wasn't big enough for 'em, or maybe was too big. Not sure.”

Shiro grunted in disgust. “Fine. We've all got better things to do, anyway. Are we done here?”

Doc gave him a tolerant look. “Unless you can summon a Vision so that I can study the mechanism in action, yes. Can you? You have been making some fairly momentous plans for the future.”

“Sometimes,” Keith replied. “It doesn't happen often, but he can squeeze a hint out now and then. We've just got to be really careful about it. I don't know... well, we still need to return all of those cultural treasures that the Ghamparva stole. Can you pick up anything about those? Some of them are really important.”

Shiro frowned and gazed pensively at his knees as he tried to bring to mind the vast amount of alien treasure that the Hoshinthra had dumped on them. It had been a remarkably varied mix of stuff, too; quite aside from the Stone of Mists, there had been things that might have been thrones, at least sixteen objects that had been recognizable as crowns or helmets, scepters, amulets and other jewelry. Rings, gems, carved objects, garments, strings of peculiar objects, staffs, a few things that might have been ceremonial weapons, and numerous richly-decorated vessels. They'd been able to identify a fair number of those items and really would need to return some of the more significant--

Images flickered in his mind's eye like an old-fashioned film projector. Crowds cheering. Alien potentates awed and ecstatic to recover their lost treasures. Legions swearing allegiance to the cause. Allura in a crowd of other females, hugging each other and laughing...

“Gods!” Arax blurted, breaking the spell. “Did you see that?”

Shiro shivered, yearning for a shower. It hadn't been a big vision, but he was sweating, tired, and wanted a long drink and another plateful of that morlaberry cobbler.

“His whole brain lit up, just for a second, and all down the brainstem, too,” Keith said, glancing at Shiro with worried eyes. “Anything major?”

Shiro shook his head. “Just fragments, all positive. We're going to have to find time to repatriate that Ghamparva loot, though. Allura's going to be meeting up with some friends, too. It's... going to buy us a lot of help.”

“And help's what the Fleet needs most,” Anudap-Palga said. “Imperial Military's too damn big.”

“That is so,” Doc said absently, his eye-clusters not leaving the readout for a second. “Thank you for your contribution to medical xenoscience, Shiro; such examples are very rare and I will be up all night studying this one. In the meantime, you will go back down to the dining hall and replace the fluids and calories that you have just spent on this effort. Anudap-Palga, I expect that he'd be grateful for a lift—one does not overclock one's metabolism lightly.”

“Sure thing,” Anudap-Palga said agreeably and lifted Shiro up onto his shoulders with no effort at all.

Chapter Text

Chapter 14: A Trap Well Sprung

It was very late. Lizenne was exhausted, both emotionally and physically, but she very much doubted that she would be able to sleep just yet. In any case, she wasn't about to move. Pezzam was a sweet boy and was perfectly happy to nap in the arms of anybody who would hug him, and right now she needed the comfort of the boy's warmth and the reassuring scent of blood kin very much. She wasn't the only one; Adriar hadn't taken the news very well and Dreya had burst into tears when she learned that she would never see her family again. Adriar and her man had taken the little girl to her foster parents before seeking privacy in their own rooms, leaving Lizenne alone with her sole surviving true nephew. Pezzam, thankfully, wasn't much affected by the loss. His mother had been absent far too often and his father and brothers had openly despised him, and so he had been much happier to leave them behind for this better place. He was far too young to fully understand the crimes that Zarkon had committed against their Lineage, and Lizenne wasn't about to try to explain it to him now. He would be told later, when he was older, and when she had a couple of shurgha cups to show him.

For now, though, sitting quietly in one of the Castle's smaller lounges while the dragons watched over them both was enough. She heard the door hiss open and looked up to see Allura slipping in, her large blue-pink eyes worried.

“Are you going to be all right?” Allura asked softly, so as not to disturb the sleeping cub.

Wise girl, to not ask if she was 'all right' at the moment. Lizenne wasn't, that was painfully obvious.

“Eventually,” Lizenne murmured. “I was warned, and I knew that Inzera might overreact, but it doesn't make this any easier. I will apologize in advance, Allura, for loading your home with twelve more of my people.”

Allura knew very well how territorial Galra could be, and appreciated the apology. “I don't mind. They might decide to stay on Halidex, after all. It will be very interesting to meet your side of the family.”

“What's left of it,” Lizenne said, and then puffed a faint, bitter laugh. “Although I wouldn't have wanted to introduce you to the majority of my Lineage. Inzera wasn't the only monster among them, and most of the rest were indolent socialites at best. You'll like Korial, I think, and her husband is a very pleasant fellow. I used to talk with them every now and again before Hunk and Shiro showed up on my doorstep.”

“And your brothers?” Allura asked, sitting down beside her.

“I don't know,” Lizenne replied simply, stroking Pezzam's soft fur with gentle fingers. “I haven't seen or heard from them since I left home that last time. If anything, they were even more determined to put the family behind them than I was. I knew them well, over a decade ago. I don't know them at all now. They may well be very upset with me for causing this mess.”

Allura was silent for a long moment as she digested that last statement. She knew what it was to lose one's entire family—one's whole world—in one fell swoop, but it was quite another thing to know that one might be responsible for that loss. Some people would indeed blame Lizenne for that. If she hadn't stolen House Khorex'Var, if she hadn't chosen to go rogue, if she hadn't allied herself so totally with Voltron, a thousand people might still be alive today...

...And over six hundred innocent people would still be held in thrall to a vicious tyrant...

...And Pidge's father and brother would be dead, eaten alive by a Druid-twisted abomination...

...And the team would never have learned how to fight Druids...

...And Shiro would never have been resurrected...

...And three whole planets would have died...

...And Voltron would probably be in Zarkon's hands right now...

Allura slipped an arm around Lizenne's shoulders and held her close. The price of free choice was the consequences that followed; she knew that to her own sorrow. If only her father and the others had put Zarkon down when they'd had the chance, none of this would have happened. Shiro might not have chosen to pilot that expedition to Kerberos. Hunk, Lance, Keith, and Pidge might have chosen to go to bed early on that fateful night, and missed their chance to rescue him. The blue Lion might never have been found, or it might have been discovered by the wrong people. Allura knew that her own choices had made their own impacts upon her team and those around them, and some of those choices had nearly gotten them all killed. Nevertheless, they had survived, and had even made some real headway. They had done a lot of people a great deal of good, and had saved countless lives already...

Lizenne shuddered and began to weep into Pezzam's fur.

...The price had still been too high. Not just for them, but for far too many other people.

There was a rumble from Soluk and a faint, worried coo from Tilla. Allura couldn't blame her—she had never thought to see such a strong woman cry either.

Pezzam woke up and squeaked indignantly at getting dripped on by his aunt, then raised a small hand to touch her face, running little fingers curiously over the wet fur. He'd never seen the tears of an adult woman either, Allura realized.

“We still love you,” Allura said softly.

Lizenne smiled damply. “It's good to hear you say that. Oh, dear, the next few weeks are not going to be easy. I am going to have to watch my temper very strictly if my relatives arrive in a mood to scold me.”

“Which they might,” Allura said, considering the lives that had been so abruptly changed. “Well, we have places for you to work off your temper in private. Did you destroy Yantilee's small-arms range totally?”

“Just about,” Lizenne replied, her voice husking slightly. “I'll apologize to Yantilee later. I did not love my family as you loved your own kin, Allura, but they were of my Pack. There were uncles whom I was fond of, for all that they hadn't the strength of will to make their own escape. I loved my mother, even if she did try to turn me into something that I refused to become. There were many cubs who have had their lives stolen from them, and my ancestral home ground has been violated past recovery. They killed our Thiasha tree.”

“Ethrok brought you a nut,” Allura said. “You might be able to germinate it, and grow another.”

“Child of the Dead Mother,” Lizenne murmured, wiping away tears. “I will have to be very careful about where and when I plant that nut. There are legends, Allura, and not very nice ones, of young Thiasha trees who have sought vengeance when some prize fool harmed or killed their parents. It will sleep in a stasis canister for now, and I will plant it when the Hoshinthra have chained the ghost of the last Ghamparva to the heart of a Warleader. In the meantime, I will grow less volatile things. You'll want to tell Keith that it's almost time for me to decant the new creatures into the envirodeck.”

“That will be good, and for all of us,” Allura said, thinking of the possibility of yulpadi stew in the future, and Tilla made a happy little “gwirk!” of agreement. “Kevaah wants to take Neline into the envirodeck, too. Isn't she a little young for that?”

“No, and she will not thank you for trying to keep her safe,” Lizenne said, her voice a little stronger now that they were speaking of the living. “That girl is another one like me, with a wild heart and the eyes of the huntress, and anything that threatens her or her kin will soon find her teeth locked in its throat. Lelannis has great hopes for her.”

Allura gave Lizenne a sly look. “And Kevaah?”

Lizenne smiled. “I have great hopes for him. There is more to that young man than even his creators knew, and I will gather his brothers to me at the nearest opportunity. Erantha, of course, will get over herself in time, and I will make sure that they will have a place to raise their cubs when the time comes.”

Allura saw the hard glint of determination in Lizenne's eyes, and was heartened by it. Pezzam giggled and bounced in her arms, grinning up at his aunt and squealing with laughter when Tilla leaned over the back of the couch and licked his ear.

“For the future,” Allura said with an encouraging smile. “We must always consider the future.”

“We must,” Lizenne said tiredly. “Where is Modhri, Allura?”

Allura pointed at the ceiling. “He's up in the kitchen, helping Hunk make cookies. You needed time alone, he said.”

Lizenne nodded and stood up, joints creaking slightly from the strains of the day. “I did. It is customary to give the bereaved a little time to themselves, possibly to make reuniting with the living more attractive. It's effective, I'll grant the custom that much, and I could certainly do with a handful of cookies.”

“'Ookies!” Pezzam said eagerly, clinging to her shirt and looking back and forth between them. “Wan' 'ookies, pwease, Aunties!”

Allura giggled. “Then 'ookies' you shall have.”

Lizenne puffed a laugh and gave the boy a stern look. “Use proper diction, you little flirt,” she told the giggling brat. “I know how old you really are, and don't you try to pretend to be younger than that with me!”

Pezzam gazed up at her with the best pair of dewy amber eyes that Allura had ever seen and said, “May I have some cookies, please, Auntie?” with perfect pronunciation.

“That's better,” Lizenne said, hitching him a little higher into the crook of one elbow, “but don't forget that trick. The small need all the advantages they can get.”

Pezzam grinned broadly. “Like Aunt Pidge! Her bird-leg house can walk now, and it's really big!”

“Oh, dear,” Allura said, thinking of the looming hulk in the lab that Pidge had been tinkering with. “She finally got it working, then. I wonder if she'll let the rest of us drive it?”

Lizenne cast her an amused look. “Her toy, her first. In the meantime, the cookies beckon.”

They made their way up to the kitchen at a gentle amble with the dragons following along behind them, and everybody hummed in pleasure when the lift doors opened. Hunk was making thumbprint cookies, and Modhri had contributed the jams. Allura sniffed appreciatively at the fragrant air. “Blue tree fruit, quillop, trimblat, surnip, flurt, morlaberry... and something I don't recognize.”

Lizenne sniffed thoughtfully. “Early bush-pallam from the envirodeck, sweetened with bittru syrup. One of my favorites, but the bushes mature slowly. This is their first fruiting year. Ah, Modhri, how I love you.”

Modhri was in the thick of things along with the rest of the team, spooning dollops of rare preserves into the dough-ball hollows as fast as they could; the kitchen was full of his nieces and nephews and cousins, rolling balls of dough and pressing them out on pans while Hunk and Avaris manned the ovens and mixed up more cookie dough. Pans and pans of cooling cookies were set out on every flat surface, and Allura reflected that it took a very great many small pastries to keep the big jar in the main lounge full. She was not at all surprised to see little hands grabbing cooled cookies off of the pans, either.

Modhri looked up from his work and gave them both that special smile that turned the Universe into a better place. “There you are,” he said gently, wiping jam-smeared hands on an apron that had the words “worship the cook” printed on it; it was one of Hunk's aprons and a little short on his tall frame, but the message still applied. “Come and join us, there is plenty to go around. Allura, I was able to find a recipe for juniberry jelly in the Castle's files, and once the plants in Hydroponics start to fruit, I will try it out. Lizenne, the pan on the counter to your right has the bush-pallam jam cookies. Please try one soon—I've forbidden everyone else from trying them until you've had first crack.”

Allura had never seen so many pleading looks from an audience in her life. Lizenne apparently had, and she knew how to play such a crowd. She tipped her chin up haughtily, made a great show of choosing just the right one from the pan, evaded Pezzam's grab with the ease of long experience, and took a bite. Breathless silence followed as she chewed, eyes gazing reflectively into the distance.

“Magnificent,” she pronounced, put Pezzam down, and then stepped smoothly out of the way as the horde of eager youngsters flooded forward to try one for themselves. Not before she'd scooped up a double handful for herself, of course, tossing a few to the dragons hovering just outside the door.

“Welcome back,” Hunk said as she made her way around the crowd. “Feeling any better?”

Lizenne shook her head, munching another cookie and handing out the rest to the team. “Not appreciably, but I've come to terms with it. Don't bother pitying the next Ghamparva to get too close to me.”

“Are you nuts?” Lance said, giving her a quick, quillop-smeared hug. “We'll help you hunt them down. I really don't like those guys, Lizenne, and we aren't alone in that.”

Keith nodded, scraping out a bottle of bright blue jam. “The Blades have already sworn to destroy them, and they like the idea of having a witch of your caliber helping them with that.”

Shiro frowned, popping open a fresh jar of dark-purple morlaberry preserves. “The Hoshinthra are all for it as well. I've been told that they brought that mobile base where Lance and Hunk found Kevaah back to one of their colonies for study, and they really didn't like what they found in it. Hoshinthra are scary, but they aren't evil. All the Fleet has to do whenever they see a Ghamparva ship now is to call a Warleader, and they show right up and deal with it.”

Pidge scowled, licking her fingers. “I've done some studying, too. Those brain implants we took out of the rescuees? Super, super nasty. The Ghamparva have defiled science, and they will pay.”

Modhri smiled and passed his wife a sparkling jar of something lavender-pink and luscious-looking. “With such forces gathered around us, we stand a very good chance of succeeding. I know for a fact that the Ghamparva are not popular among our own people, either. The High Houses want them gone, too, Lizenne, if only because what happened to your kin could just as easily happen to them.”

Lizenne accepted the jar with the proper reverence and frowned thoughtfully. “Which is why they've been seen near Pilsaster. Once Zarkon is no longer on the Throne, they will be vulnerable. Such organizations always need the protection of the ruling party to exist. They'll need Lotor for that. They've been gathering up other princes too, haven't they?”

“Yeah,” Keith supplied. “Karchad says that they're a bunch of losers, though. Lotor and Kelezar are the only ones who've got the right stuff, and Kelezar's got the whole Order protecting him.”

“They could turn a loser into a winner,” Pidge said, waving her spoon at them warningly. “With those brain implants, it wouldn't matter if their guy was a cardboard cutout, not if they had somebody really sneaky pulling his strings.”

Avaris placed a bowl of fresh dough on the table and slashed a hand through the air in a gesture of negation. “That wouldn't work. The Heir must be battle-trained and have several years of real experience in the field to be acceptable—that's a Law that is older than Zarkon himself, and most of those young dandies wouldn't qualify. I believe that they're all scanned regularly for such implants anyway; Zarkon's sons have been augmented and turned into would-be assassins before, I'm afraid. Not one has ever even gotten close to succeeding, and the High Houses would never permit a mere government agency to put a puppet on the Throne in any case.”

Lizenne's claws rattled on the jam jar. “Not necessarily. Zarkon has been Emperor for a long, long time. If he dies or becomes unable to rule, the entire administrative system will be thrown into a panic. The Laws will not hold back the truly ambitious or the truly desperate, and it is possible that the whole structure will collapse into civil war. That's what happened last time—ten thousand years ago, when Prince Rhonorath was assassinated.”

Shiro let out a long whistle through his teeth as certain truths out of his own world's history came home to him. “And at that point the Empire splits up into a million little warring fiefdoms and petty tyrannies, and the former subject peoples revolt and tear their overlords apart—or would, if Yantilee wasn't jumping on that problem the moment someone starts talking about vengeance. We'll probably still be spending the rest of our lives cleaning that up and getting the Empire stabilized and self-sufficient again, but it won't be the generalized massacre that it might have been.”

“No mobs,” Pidge and Allura chorused, and shared a smile.

“There have been worse battle-cries,” Lizenne said, “and for that, I am eternally grateful. Well, we will continue as best we can, and do whatever it takes.”

“With cookies,” Hunk said firmly, offering her a spoon. “We'll make everything better, one cookie at a time.”

Lizenne snorted a laugh, but accepted the spoon. “And there have been far worse methods of keeping the peace. Let there be a cookie and crossbones on the Coalition's flag, then, to signify our diversity, our origins, and our purpose.”

Lance burst out laughing and promised to get working on the design right away.

Coran scowled at the tiny bright point in the distance that stood out among the duller chunks of planetary debris like a frithet beetle on a patch of bloggard lichen and ran the scans a second time. They came back in as fine a hash of conflicting signals as he'd ever seen, just like last time; mustache bristling in defiance, he silently dared that asteroid field to produce another hidden battlefleet. Just to be sure, he contacted the scouts.

“Any movement in there, lads?” he asked.

“Six light cruisers,” one scout reported, “that's the patrol squadron assigned to the station itself. One much larger ship docked up tight to the station's cargo bay. Looks like a heavy destroyer, Drozarch-Class from the look of it, and those big crobbishes are used to transport valuable cargo when they aren't shooting at people. It looks to be offloading something... yeah. Big canisters, probably Quintessence. No battlefleet in that debris field, sir, just the cruisers.”

Coran hummed distrustfully. “That's what we thought the last time, and Lotor nearly took us apart. We'll wait, I expect, for them to get those cans tucked away. No sense leaving 'em out in the open where any clumsy oaf could kick them over.”

“As you say, sir,” the scout replied. “Whatever slows down the enemy the most.”

Coran tugged at his mustache. “Good man. Can't count the times where old Alfor and his lads had to exhibit patience like this. Gyrgan never had any trouble, naturally, very stolid fellow at times, but the others would be raring to go, sometimes actually dancing around with impatience, and I don't mind telling you that Alfor was absolutely the worst. Very jumpy, your average red Paladin, always up for a fight, and liable to spring away in six directions at once when startled. There was one time where Alfor had fallen asleep during a diplomatic meeting, and the Ulomnian Delegate decided to tickle him awake—don't you dare, Madame!”

Zaianne, who had been sneaking up behind him, drew back the hand that had been about to twist his ear. “Then don't babble. If you're interested in a bit of adventure, you could go along with one of the teams.”

Coran made a dismissive gesture with one hand. “Can't. My best space armor was ruined on Poboio, remember, and I'm not finished building the new set yet. Takes time to fabricate a really good suit, and we've been more than a bit distracted lately. No, no, I'll hold the fort and see about keeping this fine old craft from being reduced to splinters by the hidden battlefleet that I'm sure will appear at any moment. This is probably a trap, you know.”

“Naturally,” Zaianne said, frowning at the space station half-hidden by its nest of drifting space junk. “There is little else that it could be, which is why we brought along backup, and why the Paladins will not be going in alone.”

Coran humphed and leaned against the console. “All right, but if we're jumped by six hundred destroyers and a Robeast, don't say that I didn't warn you.”

Zaianne stepped back up onto the pilot's dais with a puff of grim amusement. “I'm more worried about what might be inside the station. I'm told that they encountered their first Druid aboard one of these stockpiles, and that it nearly killed my son. There may well be another one here, or perhaps more than one, and I would not put it past Haggar to have stuffed the place with her experimental creatures.”

“Could be, could be,” Coran said, turning back to glare at the distant station again. “Mind you, sometimes that can work in your favor. Alfor and his team ran into a situation like that, once. They were all set for a lot of fierce fighting, level-by-level and hand-to-hand, only to find that they'd turned up a bit late—the warlord had decided not to give his beasts their breakfast, just to make sure that they were extra-fierce. Didn't work out. The team got stuck in traffic, and by the time they'd shown up, his army of monsters had gone ahead and eaten each other, and all of the regular soldiers had been forced to lock themselves in the attic. Zarkon was terribly disappointed—not a one of the remaining beasts could rouse themselves from their food comas to fight him, and when they got up to the warlord's lair, they found that his personal guard-beastie had eaten half of him and laid its eggs in the leftovers. They stayed long enough to get the soldiers out safely and to set the place on fire, but after that, they left.”

“And the monsters?” Zaianne asked.

“Donated to a local zoo. The Murpurynes were a very fair-minded bunch where it came to lab-grown abominations.”

Zaianne smirked. “They still are. In fact, all lab-grown abominations above the level of ravening freak have the right to vote now, and it has been the tradition for centuries that all district administrators must be tentacle monsters. Glowing yellow ones, usually.”

Coran gave her a suspicious glare. “You're making that up.”

“I wish that I was, Coran,” Zaianne said, catching sight of a glint on the screens that was neither station nor warship. “Roughly a year and a half before I met Hunk and Khaeth in that Weblum, I was groped by one, and had to knot seven of his tentacles around a chandelier. I see you, scout. Is everyone in position?”

“Yes, Ma'am,” the scout replied. “The big ship's done unloading and is getting ready to leave. All teams in position, all hostiles located and mapped. Still no hidden fleet in the debris field, we've checked. Lions ready to go, Fleet ships standing by. Ah... hold on, one's missing. Blade team #3's not at ready. What's the holdup?”

Zaianne frowned. “We'll check.”

“Blade Team Three,” Coran said, fingers tapping on the controls. “Isn't that Kevaah and Erantha? Right, I'll just ask them. Hello there, you two, you're late. Getting cold feet are we?”

The bridge doors hissed open a moment later, and the two Blades strode in, fully suited and ready to go, except for one thing. Coran had to stifle a snort of laughter and Zaianne's lips twitched as she firmly squelched a smile; clinging immovably to Kevaah's ears was Neline, decked out in her full Queen Fuzz-Fairy regalia and determined not to miss out on the fun this time. Erantha's expression was almost as disgruntled as Neline's was.

“We would have been out there half an hour ago, if we could get her off of him without hurting her,” Erantha said sourly. “Not even her mother could dislodge her.”

Kevaah smiled wryly. “She is the fiercest of warrior-women and demands the right to join the hunt.”

“Not at her age, she won't,” Zaianne said firmly. “She may sit over there in the defense-drone station, but I'm not sending her into enemy territory. Let's just--”

“Allow me, Madame,” Coran said gallantly, tugging his gloves more firmly into place and approaching the growling cub. “Allura used to be like this when she was Neline's age, and hated it when her father ran off to have grand adventures without her. To tell you the truth, we should have gotten the hint back then that the girl was destined for the Lion, but her mother was determined that she choose a safer calling. So much for that idea, eh? Come now, lovey, you can't go around trashing half the Universe until you've at least learned proper table manners.”

Neline screamed in fury when he reached for her and sank her fangs into the back of his hand, right across the tendons. Surprisingly, Coran didn't so much as flinch, and worked the slender tips of his fingers into her clenched fists, forcing them open. Kevaah stared at him in amazement as he lifted the screeching, kicking brat from his shoulders and held her at arm's length.

“How'd you do that,” Kevaah asked, “and... table manners?”

Coran smirked, watching Neline gnaw unsuccessfully on his wrist. “Armored gloves. Allura had a nasty bite on her as well, when she was little. Could go right through boot leather, as a matter of fact, and after a while, I just got used to wearing 'em. As for table manners, well, proper etiquette at table is an absolute must! You can be the greatest of all conquering warlords, young man, but if the sorry remnants of the subjugated ruling party see you eating like a feral borbrun, they'll lose all respect for you. Seen it myself, so I have, when Alfor and the others had gone along with a diplomatic team to try to sweet-talk one such fellow, and the man had no refinement at all. Sauce everywhere, chucked the bones from his meal at the musicians just to see 'em jump, wiped his face and hands on the tablecloth, made gross eructations from all three ends whenever he pleased, and flossed his teeth with his nearest neighbor's quills. Dreadful fellow. Never asked people to pass him things, neither, just grabbed, and since he was a bit nearsighted he often landed his hands splat in the middle of the platters, too. Didn't last more than a movement in office, and while the person who took over when the inevitable happened wasn't quite so fierce a fighter, he was far more polite, and that made all the difference in the end.”

Neline gave him a glare that bid fair to ignite his mustache.

Erantha rolled her eyes and took Kevaah by the elbow. “Thank you, Coran. Kevaah, we are late.”

“Yes,” he said, following her back toward the doors, “but we are much better-informed. I wonder if the Matriarch would teach me proper table manners?”

Erantha's exasperated reply was cut off when the doors hissed closed again.

“Flirt,” Zaianne muttered, and observed the growling cub still attempting to gnaw Coran's hand off and not having much luck. “Do detach her, Coran, and be ready for battlestations.”

“Just a tick,” Coran said, fishing a stylus out of his pocket and ambling over to the nearest station. With the ease of long practice, he slid the blunt end of the narrow tool between Neline's teeth, pressing it up against the roof of her mouth. The cub went cross-eyed in consternation, squawked angrily, and landed on her bejeweled behind in the seat.

“There,” Coran said, waggling a bite-proof finger at her. “Sit tight and watch for trouble, Neline, you're good at that. Can't have someone sneaking in and spoiling the party.”

Neline blew him a furious raspberry, but stayed put.

In the meantime, Kevaah and Erantha made their way down to the flight deck and boarded their own sleek little scout craft, a ship of Blade design that had been specifically made for traversing dense asteroid fields, and it was with some relief that Erantha sent it out into space. Erantha had done her best, but her solitary nature had made putting up with the crowding aboard the Castle very difficult for her. Her fellow Blades were more restful company than the peripatetic hordes of cubs that pattered up and down the halls at any given time, but even they were in the process of being assimilated into the household. No few of the unattached Khorex'Var ladies had been eyeing the Blade men with interest, and she herself had been the target of numerous hopeful if shy overtures from the young men.

Very attractive young men. The fact that she wanted the man sitting next to her, who by law wasn't a person at all, annoyed her.

Artificial or not, he was all business now that they were actively on assignment, orange-gold eyes flicking between the screens and the sensor data, fingers moving over the controls with speed and precision. Six enemy ships patrolled the area, huge and impressive and arrogant in their power, while Shomakti sat silent in its little bubble of clear space. It was huge, as such stations tended to be, a massive sphere the size of a moonlet in the center, held in a sleek, sharply-angled curve of armor plate and cannon emplacements. On the whole, it looked as though someone had bent a triangular steel rod most of the way around a cannonball and then sharpened the ends to points. Even from here, she could see the weapons ports; at the least little sign of trouble, the thing would start spewing immense amounts of ion fire.

Kevaah's fingers touched the communicator, and it came live with Paladins' voices.

“--think you can crack it this time, Pidge?” That was Lance, sounding nervous. As well he might be, considering what had happened previous time they'd been here.

“Yeah. Wow, that stinks.” Pidge humphed faintly. “They haven't changed it any.”

“What?” That was Hunk.

“The aetheric shield that Haggar put on the place, remember? That's what messed me up the last time, but nobody's been back here to upgrade it. I'm pretty sure that they know that we've improved since then.”

There was a growl from Keith. “This is a trap.”

“We know that, Keith,” Shiro said grimly. “Allura, can you see if they left us any new surprises?”

“Not immediately, Shiro,” Allura replied, sounding annoyed about something. “That shield really is vile, isn't it? We'll want to be ready in case they kill the AI after Pidge takes it over.”

Pidge muttered something impolite. “Jerks. I'll be able to hold it long enough for Hunk to force all the doors open, and that's all that matters. All we need to do is distract everybody aboard so that Team Five can get to the command center and take that over, and then we can steal the whole thing. And deal with whatever that Vision was about, but that shouldn't take too long. Think you can graft a stardrive onto this thing, Hunk?”

There was a chortle from the yellow Lion. “Oh, hey, yeah. If some nice person can bring me the raw materials, I can put together a sweet system for it. I've got some ideas for improving on the one I put into Clarence—you know, sort of bottling the aetheric exhaust before it can spill all over the place, 'cause I got to thinking about when Shiro was in that Bucket, and I figure that if we could keep an actual living soul in one of those for three weeks running, just the loose stuff should be easy. Maybe pipe some of it into Medical or Hydroponics if they've got one, or run a shunt back into the engine core, like a supercharger--”

“Hunk, we want it to be an orbital fort, not win races,” Lance said in an exasperated tone.

“Lance, if things get too hot even for big starbases, I want it to be able to get out of there in a hurry,” Hunk retorted. “Ever watch the vids taken of naval battles back in World War II? If those big carriers had been able to boogie on out of there faster, maybe the deep-ocean environmental cleanup crews wouldn't have had such a big job to do. Anyway, that thing over there has a lot of potential, and I want to explore all of it. Karchad says that they're getting closer to finding Jasca's sibs, too.”

Pidge snickered. “That's going to be fun. I really like Jasca, and she promised to let me have a closer look at her programming if we could get more of her kind activated. Live ships are the best!”

Kevaah smiled as they slipped into their assigned position. “Optimism,” he murmured. “Isn't it strange? They always look to the future, rather than worry about what might be in that station in the present.”

Erantha snorted disapprovingly. “I would rather worry about the here and now; victory is never a given. What do you see, Kevaah?”

Kevaah's smile vanished, and he grunted in distaste. “A very large orbital structure with a powerful and dangerous shield. I cannot see past it. I know from my studies what defensive capabilities it has, and from our orders what entrance we are to make for when the Paladins open the doors for us. The Paladins are to draw the majority of the enemy's attention—indeed, how can they not? And while they do that, we and the other teams are to secure the command, engine, and weapons decks. It will not be easy. Our knowledge of the interior is incomplete.”

Erantha knew all of this too, but did not begrudge the repetition, particularly because he was taking it seriously. She was fond of the Paladins, but their habit of making light of large operations annoyed her. Particularly given the nature of Shiro's Visions pertaining to this place. Something momentous would happen in there, and she had no idea of what that could be.

“There will be Druids,” she said.

“Yes,” Kevaah replied.

Both of them had been given intensive training in how to fight Druids, both from Blade instructors and from Lizenne herself. Even so, Lizenne had warned them that fighting a real Druid would be very different; neither Blade nor Lizenne herself would use the corrupt, Quintessence-boosted energies that Haggar's creatures would. Erantha knew this, having fought them before, and was eager to try out the new techniques she had been taught.

Kevaah shifted, tensed when he heard Coran's warning that the party was about to start, expression eager in a way that she had not seen before, not even on his series-brothers.

“Okay, Pidge,” she heard Keith say, sounding just as tense as she felt. “I've got the weak spot. See it?”

“Oh, yeah,” Pidge replied, and there was a terrible anticipation in her voice; this time, she would not fail. “Bringing up the Spike... now!”

“Ah!” Kevaah breathed, baring sharp teeth in a fierce grin, and Erantha couldn't blame him; even out here, her own senses twanged in response to the pulse of finely-controlled power from the red and green Lions.

Shomakti Station seemed to flinch, glimmering briefly as its aetheric shield fragmented, and then space was full—twelve of the most agile Fleet ships as well as the Castle and the Chimera had appeared out of seeming-nowhere and were firing on the patrol fleet. Erantha sent her craft forward as fast as it would go, streaking toward the station itself even as its running lights faltered and its bay doors gaped wide. She saw the glints of her fellow Blade teams, and the larger, multicolored gleams of the Lions, all sweeping in together.

The station had many doors; the main one, of course, for accepting deliveries, but there were numerous bays for drone fighters, escape pods, and small executive craft. All of them were hanging open for the moment, although a furious expostulation from Pidge told them that this was temporary at best.

“Move! Move! Move!” she shouted as the Lions surged ahead. “They had a backup program waiting behind the first, and it's fighting me! Hunk--”

“I've got it,” Hunk said, sounding as though he were lifting something heavy. “Oof—strong one. No, you are not going to slam the door on us, you ugly pile of parts. Pidge, you're gonna want to do hostile takeover-ups when we're done with this. Either start expecting a whole stack of backups, or just nuke the whole system in one go.”

“I really don't want to do that,” Pidge replied. “Kolivan says that the guy who designs these things has an 'if I can't have it, you can't either' mentality. If you take out the whole CPU, it automatically starts up a self-destruct sequence that goes from tick to boom in about six seconds. We'll just have to peel this thing like an onion.”

Erantha dodged around a tumbling asteroid, of which there were many; the embattled station was trying to activate the defensive asteroid screen, but with limited success. Perhaps only a quarter of the loaded space rocks were firing, and all of them chaotically. Erantha, who was an excellent pilot and well-trained in this sort of obstacle course, won through to the vast flank of the station, slipping neatly into one of the drone bays. She and Kevaah were out of their ship and running the moment she shut the drive down, blades drawn.

“We're in!” they heard Shiro shout through their suit-comms. “All teams confirm!”

“Team Three in,” Erantha replied calmly, “heading toward our objective now.”

“Team One in,” the others answered, “engaging Sentries.” “Team Four in, all clear.” “Team Two in, location questionable. Sentries approaching.” “Team Five in, enemy encountered—that's not a Sentry. 'Ware cyborgs!”

The warning was timely. Kevaah and Erantha caught sight of something large and strange down the hall for them, and leaped aside in time to dodge the segmented, armor-plated monster before it could tear them apart. It whirled, keening a challenge, its many clawed arms spread wide, and in the dim light they saw that it had once been a Kithraxen.

“Tricky,” Kevaah commented, and then they were both too busy to say anything more.

Hunk's scattergun chattered noisily, mowing down row after row of Sentries as he forged ahead with Lance right behind him, taking out floating drones with precision and speed. Behind them came Keith, Allura, and Shiro with Pidge in the center, covering her while she kept the Station's AI from killing everybody all at once. She'd loaned Shiro her bayard for the time being and he was making the best use of it he could, although it felt awkward in his hand, somehow. It was a weapon and it was a good one, but it wasn't his; the bayard wasn't used to being a sword and didn't much like it. Still, he persevered, persuading it to lengthen out into a double-bladed weapon of about the right length, and the fact that it electrified its foes was an added bonus. They fell before him in droves, but still they came in an endless stream until he wondered whether there had been any room at all in the station for live personnel.

They managed to fight their way past that room and the next, pausing for a breather when Hunk cleared what was probably a meeting room and slammed the door on the enemy. Pidge let out a triumphant shout a minute or two later, and the lights flickered. There was a great deal of clonking from the other side of the door as the Sentries collapsed.

“Shut down the AI?” Lance panted.

“Yup,” she replied, retrieving her bayard from Shiro. “Fried some of the circuitry too. Believe it or not, there actually are some live people aboard this place, and it's going to take them a while to start up the next AI. Keith, you said you were bringing a spare for Shiro?”

Keith nodded and tossed something long and dangerous at Shiro, who caught it easily. “Sorry, I didn't have a chance to give it to you earlier. Lizenne says that it's appropriate for you to use it, since she used it to get your parts back, but you're not allowed to lose it.”

Shiro smiled and slid the tambok-fang knife out of its sheath. It glimmered with a faint pearly sheen in the dim lighting, and the air seemed to burn clean around it. This blade was brother to the one that tipped her bone spear, and he could feel an echo of the spear's power in it. He swung it a few times to get a feel for the knife, and found the heft and balance much to his liking.

“I'll have to thank her later,” he said, folding the sheath into his lunchbox. “I wonder if there's a way to make a sixth bayard?”

Allura shrugged. “We would need another piece of hantalurium for that, and it's terribly hard to come by. Come on, we had better get moving. We've only got a few doboshes before they slot in that new AI. We must take what advantages we can. Are you sure that you don't want the bayard, Shiro?”

He shook his head, feeling the heavy fang in his hand practically hug his palm. “This'll be fine. I've always done best with short swords, and this is a good one. Just how big are tamboks, anyway?”

Keith smiled. “Big. Big enough to snack on dragons, Lizenne says, and that one came from the biggest old bruiser that she could find. She says that they're something like tyrannosaurs, only more.”

“More what?” Lance asked.

“More everything,” Keith said and looked around sharply when something banged on the door. “Showtime, people.”

They took up positions on either side of the door, and Keith tapped the release; the door hissed open and something very large and spiky charged into the room. Just as quickly, the team exited and shut the door, Hunk locking it with a touch and fusing the mechanism into the bargain.

“Cyborg,” Hunk said in disgust. “Man, I hate those things.”

There was a furious howl from inside the room, and the thing banged hard enough on the door to dent it.

“I don't think that it likes you much, either,” Lance said, turning to head onward. “The Quintessence stockpile was this way, right, Pidge?”

“To the left,” she said, hurrying after him as the cyborg slammed angrily against the door. “Through those big doors over there, up one level, and hang a right when we get to a big, sort of open square area. That spot is like a sort of big crossroads, by the way, and it leads to the only entry into the central globe of this place, and that's the whole point of the operation. Unless they've cleaned it out and are using it for something else.”

“It could be a movie room,” Hunk said, grinning at her as he stepped over a fallen Sentry. “I mean, you could fit a really good IMAX theater in there. Maybe two.”

“Not now, Hunk,” Shiro sighed. “In a few minutes, all of these Sentries are going to stand up again and give us trouble. Would you mind?”

“Oh, right,” Hunk said, raising his bayard again. “Sure.”

It was a good idea on principle, but the sound of Hunk's weapon infuriated the monster in the locked room, and a scream of tearing metal and a loud crash warned them that it had gotten loose. Once again they dodged aside as it came charging at them, a triple-jawed, multiply-eyed, double-tailed atrocity that stank of Haggar's influence. It scrambled to a halt, claws scrabbling awkwardly over the decking, trying to see them all at once.

Pidge growled. “Oh, I am going to mess her up so bad...”

At the sound of her voice, the monster screeched and charged.

Pidge flowed out of its way, the others moving with her. They'd fought things very like this one on numerous occasions; in some ways, it was similar to the Robeasts they'd fought, and the previous cyborgs on Queghomm and even on the Center. More advanced in some ways, Shiro thought as he dodged the lashing tails, but no smarter. Haggar did not want her creations to be able to think above a certain level, or outside of a very narrow set of parameters, and above all she wanted obedience. And therein lay the problem, he thought, and the reason why she would never be able to create anything like Voltron. The Lions placed no limits upon their Paladins' minds, and encouraged innovation and independent thought because they were not just weapons. Yes, they fought, and they did a lot of fighting, but that wasn't all that they were for.

This poor creature had been turned into an engine of destruction, and had no other purpose. Bringing it down, at least, was a simple matter. Allura drew off the worst of Haggar's motivating energies, purifying them and distributing them among the team; Keith and Pidge used that power to blow away its aetheric shielding, while Hunk and Lance disabled it, allowing Shiro to dart in and put it out of its misery. The tambok-fang knife bit deep into its power core, and he felt it drink in Haggar's influence—somewhere out in space where the Chimera Rising was helping the Fleet to keep the station's guardians busy, the spear received that dose and demanded more.

Yes, he thought, pulling the long knife out of the heap of dead metal and perverted flesh, we will give you all that we can.

“Good work,” he told the others. “Keep it up.”

“Can do, Chief, but it makes me sad,” Hunk said, patting the dead cyborg on what had once been its head. “We've gotta find a way of separating out the good stuff from the bad, like we did for you.”

“Save it for when everything isn't trying to kill us,” Allura suggested, looking up sharply as the lights flickered again. “Pidge, I think that they're trying to bring up a spare AI, and—look out, I think that may be another cyborg at the end of the hall.”

“Work, work, work,” Lance groused, but turned to face the foe anyway.

Chapter Text

Chapter 15: A Sprung Trap, Forced Open

Elsewhere, Team Three was having similar problems, although the result was much the same.

“I do not like these creatures,” Kevaah said sourly, pulling his knife out of the thing that had once been a Kithraxen. “They have no skill and are made of pain.”

Erantha gave him a narrow look. “You don't feel pain.”

“Physical pain, no. Mental and emotional distress, yes.” Orange-gold eyes glinted enigmatically at her. “Physical pain either goes away or it doesn't, since it is the body's problem. Wounds of the mind and heart are hungry wounds, and if they are left unaddressed will eat and eat away at a person until there is only a howling hatred left behind. This thing was that sort of pain given a shape.”

Erantha blinked curiously at him. “And Robeasts?”

“Bigger, hungrier, more hateful, and kept on a leash. These are like ameeths, tormented and then set loose to spread the torment wider.”

His expression hardened with that observation, and Erantha had the feeling that he'd felt the fury of those small but dangerous animals himself. “We have an objective to complete,” she said, perhaps more sharply than she should have.

“Yes,” he said calmly, and followed her lead without hesitation.

Their objective was the port-side weapons command, the better to keep the Station from shooting someone it shouldn't. Comm chatter in their ears told them of a fierce battle outside, with the six patrol ships having been upgraded past their usual abilities and determined to fend off the attackers at any cost. Inside, the other teams were fighting just as hard. Team One, which had been assigned to taking over the drone fighter systems, was having some difficulty with a cyborg. Team Two had reached the starboard-side weapons command and were in the process of taking control of the systems. Team Four had run afoul of a booby trap on their way to the power core and had just climbed up out of the pit. Team Five was making its way steadily toward central command, since the Paladins were doing such a good job of drawing attention to themselves. Erantha listened to the Paladins' chatter with interest, and not for their conversation, which was mostly banter. It was the silences that fascinated her, because when they went quiet, whatever they were fighting had stopped being a problem by the time that they started talking again.

“Think she was mad about something when she made this one?” Keith puffed after one such silence.

“Mad scientist,” Lance panted, “who's also a mad witch, in a madhouse, with a mad Emperor, surrounded by mad henchmen... what do you think?”

“You'd think they'd get tired of it, Hunk replied, sounding no less breathless. “I just wish that she wouldn't take it out on others like this. I mean, can't she join an anger-management program or something?”

“She's got one,” Pidge quipped. “Only she calls them Druids and they—wait a minute. Smell that?”

There was a chorus of sniffs, and a gagging noise.

“At least three,” Allura said tensely, “possibly more, and they've been here—right where we're standing—in the last half-quintent. Ancients, if they're Lizenne's--”

“We'll deal with it, and so will she,” Shiro cut in grimly. “Once the transformation's complete, there's no saving them. I asked.”

“That's gonna suck,” Lance moaned. “Well, let's get this over with... oh, great, the Sentries are waking up.”

They certainly were; Erantha and Kevaah heard the clonks and rattles of the reactivating enemy nearby, and ran faster.

“Aaaaaiieeeeeeeep!” Neline shrieked furiously, waving her wand threateningly at the screens.

Coran winced, even as he moved the Castle out of the direct line of fire again; denied her rightful perch on Kevaah's shoulders, she'd shinnied straight up Coran's back and was now clutching his left ear in a surprisingly iron-fisted grip. Indeed, he was envying Kevaah's inability to feel pain at the moment; someone had forgotten to trim Neline's fingernails.

“Yes, I know, you little brat!” he said, working the controls for all they were worth while trying to disentangle his ear at the same time and having no luck with that. “Zaianne, that fellow on the upper left--”

“Aaaaaiiieeeep! Grrgrrrgrrr!”

“--yes, I see him, Neline. And the one below us look to be ganging up on Voan Lenna.”

Zaianne's hands flickered over her own bank of controls, and the particle barrier let loose a volley of seeker pulses that gave those two enemy ships something other to think about than the old corsair. Second thoughts, perhaps, but not much damage, and Zaianne frowned as they turned to engage the Castle.

“Someone anticipated another attempt, all right,” she said. “Those ships have been upgraded with Ghamparva tech, particularly in the shielding and insystem drives. They're far too tough and maneuverable to be standard craft.”

“Might want to call your gentleman friend up here, then, see if he's got any tips for us,” Coran said, pulling his ear free of Neline's grip, only to have her latch onto his hair. “Ouch! You little... whoops, they've sped up the drones, too.”

The Castle lurched to one side to avoid a volley of ion beams from a swarm of fighters, causing Neline to shriek loudly in Coran's ears, and then he had his arms full as the little girl did her best to clamber down over his shoulder and onto the control board. Zaianne's hands moved over her own holoboard, sending a waterfall of white fire to thin out the drones a bit while Coran wrestled with the angry cub, sparing a moment to tap her own personal comm.

“Girosk?” she said sharply.

The reply was immediate. “Yes, Zaianne?”

“Come to the bridge, please. We need your advice and a second pair of hands.”

It took only a minute or so for him to arrive, being sensible enough not to ask silly questions during a space battle, and he promptly won Coran's everlasting friendship by pulling Neline off of the Altean's head and transferring her to his own shoulders. Girosk's eyes were on the screens, though, and he frowned at what he saw. “Someone,” he said disapprovingly, “has been stealing trade secrets.”

“Do tell,” Coran said, hands dancing on the controls. “They're faster than they should be, the shields are stronger, and so are their weapons. They dodge pretty well too, for ships of that size.”

“Yes,” Girosk said, scanning the Castle's controls briefly before returning to his study of the enemy. “I designed the improved force-shields for the Vishta-Class Ghamparva heavy fighters myself, and I was part of the design team that came up with the improvements to the steering system.”

“And the weapons?” Zaianne asked.

Girosk sneered. “I left the guns to the Journeyman-grade design teams. Weapons are easy. It's just a question of how to get a lot of energy from Point One to Point Two without overloading the mechanism or frying your allies. Shields, armor, and the legs to move them are a worthier challenge. Those look like old Meksant's work—he's the Master Engineer at the Center itself, and he's not above reverse-engineering anything that might look interesting, although how he got his hands on a Vishta is beyond me. The Ghamparva do not share even the wreckage of their ships.”

Coran flicked him a tight grin. “Lotor's not so careful. He lost a fair few of his purloined fighters up in the Nanthral Dwarf Cluster, just before we had that little dance party on Queghomm, and apparently didn't bother to pick up the pieces.”

Girosk nodded, absently patting the growling cub. “That would do it. I see that he didn't have time to install any improvements of his own, which makes this easier.”

“Speak,” Zaianne said shortly, adjusting the particle barrier to deflect another broadside.

“Altean particle barriers are superior to the force-shields used by the Empire in that they are remarkably adjustable. That ship over there is lining up for a shot at us with its main cannon; kindly make these adjustments--”

He then proceeded to rattle off a series of commands that Zaianne and Coran fed into the system simultaneously; there was a blue-white flash a moment later, and then the enemy ship's gun deck erupted in orange flame.

Coran stared. “What just happened?”

Girosk smiled. “Pidge and I had a talk a few nights ago about her dome-defense system on Halidex, which kept a whole city from being destroyed, and the possibilities it had for using the enemy's weapons against them. I was going to show her the math, but then things happened. Basically, the one problem with Vishta fighters is that the enhanced guns draw power away from the shields, but since the ships move so quickly, dodge so well, and fire so strongly, they make very bad targets. If you tweak an Altean particle barrier so that it's strongest right at the point of impact in time to reflect their own fire back at them, with the proper compensations for vector and velocity...”

“Kaboom,” Zaianne said, bestowing a fond look upon him. “And will you tell our allies about this?”

Girosk waved a hand depreciatingly. “It only works for Altean systems—it was a thought experiment I did for fun. Now, if you could persuade the Castle to share the blueprints for those systems, perhaps we could work something out. My nephew Kashinth is working with a joint Olkari-Beronite team, and they would relish such a project.”

“Is that so?” Coran asked, returning fire on a swarm of drone fighters.

Neline bounced and squeaked triumphantly as the drones exploded in a stream of incarnadine flame. Girosk smiled up at her. “Yes, and if our pirate friends can raid a few of the Empire's Balmeran-crystal stockpiles, we'll even be able to retrofit the Fleet ships to use such a system. Shouldn't take long. Balmeran crystal systems are wonderfully simple to set up. We'll probably be able to improve on the standard design, too.”

Neline shrieked in sudden outrage, waving her twinkly wand; one of the destroyers had landed a hit on an ally. Zaianne sent the Castle surging ahead, placing it between their stricken friend and the enemy. Coran's fingers danced again, followed by another blue-white flash as the Galra ship tried to fire on them. A few seconds later, the destroyer was regretting that rash action.

Coran chuckled and glanced back at Zaianne. “Madame, at the nearest opportunity, I want you to formally lay claim to, propose to, and then wed this man. Can't let him get away now, not with that much skill, technical acumen, and simple good sense in him, and we'll want a large clutch of very smart little cubs to follow.”

Zaianne smirked at Girosk, who had gone very pink beneath his fur. “That can be arranged.”

“Perhaps later, Madame,” Girosk said politely, pointing at the screens, where a large group of Galra ships had appeared. “Someone called for help, and was heard.”

Coran sighed, angling the Castle to face the new foe. “Ah, and what did I tell you? There's the armada, right on time. We really do need a few more comm-hubs like Jasca, you know. T'would save us a good deal of trouble.”

Zaianne nodded, narrowing her eyes at the oncoming foe. “The Order is working on it.”

Neline let out another battle-shriek, daring the enemy to do their worst.

“Team One: objective achieved,” Shiro heard through his helmet-comm as the Blade teams checked in. “The drone fighter bay is ours.”

“Team Two: standing by; portside weapons command disabled. Attempting takeover.”

“Team Four: in progress. We've encountered another cyborg. Proceeding with caution.”

“Team Five: Alternate route necessary—two cyborgs. They do not want us reaching Central Command.”

Shiro frowned. “Team Three, report.”

There was a crackle in his comm, and the sound of something very large thrashing around wildly for a long moment, followed by someone panting for breath. “Team... Three,” Erantha replied, sounding breathless and annoyed. “In progress. Another cyborg down, and we're catching whiffs of Druid. All teams, be on your guard—there are worse than cyborgs here.”

“I see it,” Kevaah's voice added tensely. “It has fed recently... yes. Three soldiers. Possibly the strongest that the base's cohort had to offer.”

“Where?” Erantha demanded.

“Not here. Over there...”

Keith gave Shiro a worried look. “Think we should go and help them?”

Shiro opened his mouth to speak, but something forestalled him. Not a Vision, but a powerful hunch instead. He could practically taste the destiny crystallizing out of the air.

“No,” he said grimly, grimacing at the taste of fate in his mouth; it was bitter, like burnt coffee dregs that had been left to sit in the carafe overnight. “They'll do just fine. We're needed right where we're going, at that central place just outside of the stockpile itself. I don't think that we'll be allowed to go anywhere else.”

“That bad, huh?” Hunk asked. “Right. I'll just get one of those aetheric shieldwalls ready, just in case. I wouldn't put it past them to... oh, yech.”

All of them shuddered and hurried through that patch of hallway. Druids, especially ones that had powered up recently, left traces of their aura wherever they went. One had been this way very recently, and its signature burned hot and foul on the decking.

Lance grunted in disgust and muttered, “They should be filing environmental impact statements every time they scratch their butts. Yuck. How far are we from the stockpile, Pidge?”

Pidge pointed off to their right. “Not far. It's just down that hall over there, and there's a big open space right in front of it where the Quintessence cans are hauled in before they're packed away in the central section. It's also the spot where all four of the main outer quadrants meet, and technically we could've just gone straight there from the front door, but we got sidetracked by those cyborgs. It's also where the real party is going to happen. You okay with that, Shiro?”

Shiro shrugged uneasily and got a better grip on his knife. “I don't have much of a choice. Just be on your guard, everyone. I don't have any real idea of what's waiting for us there.”

“Then we will go and find out,” Allura said firmly, remembering what she had seen in Shiro's memory. “There will be Druids, and Haggar herself will respond to what will happen there. It is how we will respond to them that matters. We must remember what we have been taught, and use it to our best advantage. Remember that none of them know what we've been learning, or what we have taught ourselves to do.”

Pidge's eyes gleamed dangerously. “If she gets too close, I'm gonna show her what we can do. All of it. I'll do a whole science fair on her ass, complete with potato clock and baking-soda volcano.”

Hunk grinned. “Ooh, ooh, and I get to do the hand-cranked generator made out of an old pencil sharpener, right? And the interactive Mohs testing station.”

Pidge bestowed upon him a generous smile. “I'll even let you do the one on what vinegar does to eggshells and chicken bones, Hunk.”

“Eee!” Hunk squeaked delightedly.

Allura gave them one of the blank looks that she got when they started trading Earthianisms that they hadn't explained to her yet, but Lance just smiled. “You two are so cute. Okay, let's go and do this. Oh, and Pidge? Dibs on the one where you build a bridge out of popsicle sticks.”

“What?” Allura asked Shiro as the team moved forward.

Shiro smiled. “Grade-school basic science projects. I'll explain later.”

All humor was abandoned as they made their way toward the stockpile, however; lying forlorn and empty by one doorway was a suit of Galra armor, its internal systems dead and its inner surface coated with a thin layer of black dust. Aetherically, the suit was a shriek of terror and despair—whoever had been wearing it had wound up as a Druid's lunch. Lance shuddered, and Keith rested a hand on his shoulder for a moment before they headed onward, and quickly. They couldn't see any enemies at this point, but they could hear them; the sound of metal feet and armored boots echoed in these halls, and the presence of the Druids was an unwelcome pressure on their minds. Shiro's heart was starting to thud in his chest, and his nerves were twitching. Sweat was running down his spine in a cold trickle. At the end of this hall would be a battle, he'd been shown that clearly enough, and he could taste the foul reek of the arena in the back of his throat. Something in the back of his mind caught and held the panic as it tried to rise, holding it back much as sea anchors held ships steady in the face of the storm, leaving him hyper-alert but clear-headed despite the images and sounds in the far side of his id that clamored for his attention. It was working; whatever his team had done within his mind was working, and he was profoundly grateful for that. Bending his focus to the far end of the hall, he led his team forward.

The door there was wide open, and the cavernous room beyond was suspiciously empty, with not so much as a surveillance drone to stir the air. Dimly visible at the far end of the room was a small annex with pair of massive doors patterned with a peculiar array of pale-purple lights inset into the surface, surrounding a socket with a familiar shape. They'd seen that shape very recently, no more than an hour or two ago when they had received the key that Kolanth had stolen over a year ago. Allura had it now, and presumably it would still be able to open those doors, enabling the salvation and revival of hundreds of worlds.

Unfortunately, getting to those doors wasn't going to be easy.

“Too quiet,” Hunk muttered, and all of them agreed.

“No other way in,” Pidge said grimly. “Let's get this over with.”

“Team Five, in strategic retreat,” Erantha and Kevaah heard. “Requesting assistance.”

Kevaah frowned. In keeping to their assigned target, they'd lost the Druid's trail. They had nearly achieved their goal, but this might be more important. “Report.”

There was a pained grunt from someone on the other end. “Entrenched cyborgs guarding Central Command, and there's a Druid here—a strong one. We can't get any further.”

Erantha and Kevaah shared a glance, and looked back at the wreckage of their most recent adversary. While they were not quite as proficient as the Paladins at taking down cyborgs, they were very skilled, and their aetheric skills were suited to fighting other practitioners.

“Roster change,” Erantha said firmly. “Team Five, take over for us here, we've cleared the way for you. Coordinates following. Team Three will take Central Command.”

“Acknowledged,” Team Five's spokesman said, and they heard the relief in his voice. “Withdrawing from current position. Transmitting station map; utilize extreme caution—conditions may have changed.”

“Acknowledged,” Kevaah replied calmly, checking the path, which was predictably twisty and difficult. Well, he was used to that, and did not hesitate to follow Erantha as she led the way back down the passage. “Heading out now.”

She led him truly, and they wended their way through obscure passages and service ducts, avoiding a large mixed party of troops, cyborgs, and Sentries as they did so. They were forced to hide, as a matter of fact, belly down in a ventilation shaft while at least two hundred of the enemy trotted by in a hurry on their way to somewhere else. Erantha checked her map and calculated the troops' course, and the extrapolation did not please her.

“Paladins,” she said quietly, “a large group of the enemy is approaching the central court, most likely from the starboard side. Be ready.”

“Thank you, Erantha, we're expecting them,” Shiro replied, his voice tense. “Carry on.”

“Acknowledged,” she replied, waiting until the platoon had passed and the hall was clear again before moving forward, and a thought occurred to her. “Team Five, define 'entrenched'. How are those cyborgs situated?”

There was a sick sound from her communicator, as if the very thought nauseated her colleague. “They've been grafted into the walls themselves. They're stationary, but they can see—and shoot—anything coming toward them. There are no usable service ducts on any side, and Command has only one entrance. The Druid is there, sensing what its creatures cannot, and it's directing them. Whether Command's crew is still present, we don't know. We took down several armored monsters, but for all we know, they might have been the crew.”

“Tricky,” Kevaah admitted, his mind already formulating methods of dealing with this situation. He had, after all, certain advantages that his colleagues did not.

Erantha knew this as well. “What do you see, Kevaah?” she asked when they arrived at the final stretch of hall that led up to the station's command center.

Kevaah blinked slowly, focusing on his more unusual abilities. “It's there. Oh, it's there, and it is angry. I see its emplacements: forty paces down that hall, there are four built into the walls on right and left; two more into the ceiling. One into the floor. Team Five was correct in their surmise—there are no living men left in the command center. This is a trap; the creatures do not show themselves until someone comes within killing range, and they are not vulnerable unless they show themselves.”

Erantha nodded, querying her suit's sensors. Ordinarily, she would have tossed a grenade or two to soften up an arrangement like that, but the walls were triple-thick here. Any explosive would simply blow back on whoever had thrown it without doing any real damage to the target. “Suggestions?”

Kevaah chuckled in a way that made her nerves prickle. “Get a madman to trigger them so that you can kill them while they're busy. How fortunate that we have one on hand, eh?”

“Kevaah--” Erantha protested, but his blade was already in his hand.

“This is what I and my brothers are for, Erantha,” he said grimly. “I am very, very difficult to kill, and the Coalition needs this station and much of what is in it. The Matriarch might scold me later, but it will have been worth it. Be ready.”

Her own training forced her to concede the point, and she drew her own knife, the unique metal extending the blade out into the slim shortsword that she preferred for this purpose. Kevaah advanced a few long strides, sank into a sprinter's crouch, every muscle in his body tensing for the effort. A split second later, he blasted forward; Erantha could only track that sudden movement because she'd faced it herself on the Castle's training deck. She was only a few steps behind him, ready to act when panels popped open in the corridor ahead, the freakish things within spitting pale-violet death directly at Kevaah. He jinked right, she leaped left, and two cyborgs died seconds later as two luxite blades smashed through their focusing elements.

Kevaah leaped, bright beams from another cyborg missing him by a hair's breadth, and the two built into the ceiling screamed as their weapons arrays were sliced across; Erantha moved in concert with him, jamming her knife down through the cranium of the one built into the floor. In one fluid movement, perfectly aligned with each other, they spun and lunged to either side, and the final two cyborgs died before they could aim at their attackers. They had no time to celebrate, alas, for the Druid was now among them.

It appeared behind Kevaah in a burst of reeking shadow, uttering a metallic bark of wrath and slashing at him with its venomous claws. Kevaah had sensed it coming and dropped and rolled without hesitation, evading the slash by a fraction of an inch while Erantha engaged the monster. He had avoided mage-battles before this; Blade women were better at it than he was, and the bursts and flashes of aetheric power tended to dazzle both his inner and physical sight. In this narrow passage, he could not get any distance away, nor could he leave his partner to deal with a Druid alone. Remembering what his Matriarch had taught him, he fought by feel and by instinct, to flow with the foe to find its weaknesses.

It was, unfortunately, not quite enough. The Druid had been strong to start with, and it had fed itself to fullness on several unlucky soldiers very recently. He wasn't quite fast enough, and as a result, felt its claws slash across his right shoulder and breast, cutting through suit and flesh with ease and leaving a trail of poison behind. There was no pain, of course, but he felt the weakening of the torn muscles, the loss of blood, and the burning sensation of Druid's malice in the wound. His heartbeat sped up, his breathing quickened, and his livers began to churn out strange chemicals in an attempt to neutralize the poison. His mind remained crystal-clear, though, just as his creators had designed it to do, and he returned the favor by slicing the Druid across its lower back and hip in an attempt to cripple the thing.

It shrieked, teleported away, and when it reappeared it raised its hands for a killing strike. Directly at Erantha. Time slowed; Kevaah lunged forward, knocking Erantha aside, and then gasped as he felt the churning bolt of lethal energies go right through him. He fell, feeling his body's systems shifting gears; the aetheric blast had hit him at a poor angle, which was not too bad. It had struck him low on the right side, missing his heart entirely and compromising only one lung and liver. The rest of his guts would need some time to heal, though, and he would be ravenous at the end of it. He would probably live, even with the poisoned wound on chest and shoulder, and it didn't matter. It didn't matter at all, because Erantha was still standing, and in a true fury now.

Erantha let out a howl of rage, and Kevaah watched her in awe as she placed herself between him and the Druid. She was steel aflame to his other sight, blinding-bright, and magnificent in her fury. The Druid could see that too, he did not doubt that at all, and it feared her. It was injured and had spent much of its power already, and a killing-mad warrior-witch was no small foe. Erantha gave it no time to think and drove it mercilessly, blade flashing darkly as she sought to take its life, free hand casting spells that blew craters in the blast plating of the walls. In desperation, the Druid attempted to put Kevaah between itself and her, and that was a mistake. Dreamily, almost casually, Kevaah reached out and seized its robe, catching what might have been an ankle and thrusting his own blade right through the back of its knee.

Screaming, its balance destroyed and its concentration fragmented, it could not stop Erantha's blade from piercing its heart. It exploded into a stinking mist, gone forever. Erantha staggered briefly, exhausted from her efforts, and her eyes widened when she saw what the Druid had done to him.

“Kevaah!” she gasped. “You--”

“I'll live,” he replied shortly, pushing himself to his knees and frowning at the spreading puddle he was leaving behind him. The poison was interfering with his ability to heal, but that was secondary to their purpose right now. “Complete the mission.”

She nodded, her training giving her no other choice, but her reluctance was as good as a kiss to her partner, and he held it in his mind like a jewel as she turned to open the command center's doors.

“Guys, this trope is so big and heavy, it's going to fall right through the floor. The moment Allura fits that key in the socket, everything's gonna go boom.”

“We know that, Lance,” Shiro said tensely, uncomfortably aware that his teammate was probably right. “Pidge?”

“Erantha's gotten into Central Command and the AI's gone and locked itself down in self-defense.” Pidge shook her head. “I can't try to budge it right now, not when we've got Druids in the area, and it's set all of the Sentries on 'autonomous'. She'll have to take this place over by herself.”

“She's good at that,” Keith said, his eyes warily flicking over the three ominously empty hallways leading out of this central area; four, if he counted the short, wide passage leading to the central storage area, and five if he counted the one they'd just come in through. “Kevaah is, too.”

“Then we will just have to trust in their skills,” Allura said, frowning at that one closed door. They were about halfway into the enormous room now, and she was feeling very exposed. There was no furniture here, no equipment, nothing but bare walls, ceiling, and floor. No cover, and all too likely a chance of being surrounded. Very well, then, she thought, and stepped boldly forward, her nerves prickling in concert with Shiro's.

They had gone only a few steps when they heard the metallic clatter of armored feet—a great many of them, and from all sides. In a way, it was almost a relief, and they shuffled position to best face the foe. “The Pack,” Allura whispered, feeling the Lion-bond rise between them at the sound of those words, “is as one.”

It was even easier this time than that last fight on Thek-Audha. As it should be, she thought in passing as Hunk's scattergun and Lance's more precise marksman's weapon spoke in unison, blowing Sentries to pieces as they poured through all four of the open doors at once. They had grown closer since then, much closer after the events on Inityani, and their awarenesses flowed together in a mental symphony of gemlike color. Conscious thought took a back seat to that shared experience now as she lifted her bayard and shield, protecting herself and her teammates even as she smashed her way through the oncoming robot horde. That wasn't all, of course. While her body fought with well-honed skill, she worked on another level to manage the flows of energy between them. Almost instinctively, she pulled the nervous energy rising from Shiro's PTSD and purified it, then passed it on to Keith and Pidge so that they could blow the aetheric shielding off of a squad of Sentries. She smiled at Pidge's shout of triumph as the squad tuned their guns on their fellows, lightening their own load and leaving Shiro calm and clear-headed. It was surprisingly easy as they learned to flow with the enemy's movements; Sentries were designed and built to overwhelm their victims with massed fire and inexorable force. They were not intended for precision strikes or clever tactics and required very little thought to do battle with.

Shiro, Pidge, and Keith seemed to dance as they fought, deflecting and evading enemy fire with ease, their blades striking with perfect economy. Just enough force and in just the right spots to disable the Sentries permanently, or to pause long enough to subvert another squad. Hunk was a bulwark, a position of power in his own right, facing unswervingly into the heart of the enemy, scattergun mowing down Sentries in droves. There were live soldiers too, and cyborgs, hidden back up the hallways, far less predictable and therefore more dangerous; Lance kept them back there where they couldn't do any real damage with short, perfectly-aimed bursts of bayard fire, forcing them to expend their reserves without making any progress against the team. It was beautiful in its way, and she was readying another pulse of energy for Pidge's use when a sudden shock of reeking, amaranthine darkness exploded into the room.

They had no warning—the Druids teleported in right over their heads, striking not at their bodies, but at their minds. The wheel of light that connected the Paladins shattered, darkness roaring over their shared consciousness in a tidal wave of shadow, and in it all were lost. The last thing that Allura heard as the black tide rolled over them was Shiro's cry of bone-deep terror, and she could not help him.

Erantha struggled with the AI, cursing it in a low voice as she tried to get around its safeguards. She didn't dare to throw the manual kill-switch on the control board, which somebody with more humor than sense had labeled: “In case of Green Paladin.” Flipping that switch right now would not only kill the AI, but the power core, the gravity, the atmosphere generators, and would probably blow the airlocks into the bargain. Using it was a possibility, of course, but not a good one.

This particular artifice was an advanced model, nowhere near as tricky or as clever as Jasca, but it was stubborn, and she was glad of it when Kevaah stepped up beside her. He grunted softly as he got a feel for the control board, and scowled at what the screens were telling him.

“A Model 33172-Dracha, Variation 2 with freelance modifications,” he muttered thoughtfully. “Not surprising. They're expensive, but this station warrants the expense.”

Erantha hummed and glanced at him. He was pale under his fur and a livid purple glow shone from the tears in his suit, but his eyes were clear and his face calm. The larger wound on his right side, however, was still bleeding. “Kevaah!”

“I know,” he said distantly, his hands moving over the controls. “Druid venom does that. Complete the objective first, then worry about survival. Input a third-level reset code and systems check command; if this thing's modifications work like I think they might, there may be a way in through the lesser subroutines. Station crews often program in unauthorized work-arounds to avoid tedious regulation and procedure, and most AI's will not tolerate more than a certain amount of that sort of thing. System integrity is a priority, particularly on high-security stations. If there are a sufficient number of those programs, we may be able to force it into a systemwide debug cycle, which will force the AI to accept us as administration personnel. It won't be a quick process, but it will have the desired effect and do the least damage.”

She eyed him with new respect. “You've been studying.”

He flicked her a small smile. “The Matriarch has said that the Coalition needs this Station. Kolivan agrees, and bade me study this place. I have done so, to the furthest extent that I could. Neline helped.”

Erantha snorted, feeling a flicker of envy, but inputting the codes all the same. “And how does a cub help with such studies?”

“By hitting my screen at random with her twinkly wand, highlighting equally random information, which I then research. A piecemeal way of doing things, but surprisingly useful. The waste-handling systems on this Station are also quite interesting, by the way. Very efficient.”

“I'll keep that in mind,” Erantha replied dryly, and then looked up sharply at the readout that popped up on the screen. “Aha!”

“Yes,” Kevaah said, scanning a screenful of data that he knew Shomakti's AI would not be able to ignore, even in a state of lockdown. “Let us focus upon the commissary functions first. I've never known those to go unaltered for long, particularly if the brass won't spring for a decent live cook.”

Erantha thought briefly of Pidge's vastly talented adoptive uncle, and reflected upon how rare a man Ronok was. Sure enough, the Station's commissary was entirely automated, and some tricky-fingered soldier had altered the rationing system to allow unauthorized access to better things than the standard nutrient gels. A few taps on the controls found other little discrepancies as well; trivial little things like blinding the security system to the contents of one small storeroom, which was probably the troops' illicit horath distillery; similarly, there was an illegal tap into the Imperial information network, probably for bootlegged vids and porn. Many, many little ways for the technicians to get vital parts without having to fight the Supply staff for them had been slipped in, and numerous shortcuts for dodging paperwork. There was also a skimming program that someone had worked into the ship's banking system, that creamed off a small but significant amount of gac whenever the Station's Commander got his paycheck. It was that last, she thought, that convinced the AI that an internal cleansing cycle was needed right now, and that Erantha's hand on the go-ahead was as good as any other.

“Follow the money,” Erantha murmured, authorizing the systems check and thereby becoming its master. “Idealism is nice, but it's money that makes it all work.”

“Yes,” Kevaah rasped, sinking wearily into a nearby chair, one hand clutching at the seeping wound in his side. “Erantha, I can see the poison, but I can't counteract it...?”

She was at his side in an instant, hand over the slice in his shoulder, and she winced at how deeply the Druid had cut him. “How are you still conscious?” she hissed at him, looking for the best way to uproot that monster's influence. Lizenne had shown her how to do this, but Erantha's healing skills were rudimentary in comparison. “I have seen men die of less!”

“I am very well-designed, and my body is fighting the poison,” he smiled up at her, a wry, half-bitter expression that had little humor in it. “The Ghamparva hate and fear Druids just as much as we do, and they designed me to be resistant. My sisters would have made short work of them, but... ah.”

“Sisters?” Erantha said distractedly, finding the reeking, spitting, thorny masses of malice in his chest and shoulder, and looking for a way to get them out without hurting him further. “Your dossier said nothing about sisters.”

“You didn't read the complete one, then. My sisters were a separate series,” Kevaah murmured softly, but in a tone that stated loudly that he did not want to talk about it. “They are dead. You're doing fine. Even if it's just a delaying action until the others can get here, then I will survive this.”

Erantha growled. “Why did you push me aside, then? I could have dodged that strike.”

“No. You had no time. I was ready, and at an oblique angle.” Kevaah sighed. “I knew that I would live if it hit me. You would have died. There are four of me and only one of you, you know. I'm expendable.”

“No, you aren't,” Erantha said struggling to dissolve the hex's hooks. “You are unique.”

Kevaah snorted. “You know better than that. You've been shown the records, same as I have. The Emperor and his killers and his mad witch can run up hundreds of clones from a single template any time they like, and they're all alike, made to a purpose. I'm just one of many. I can remember when I was first decanted—all thirty of me.”

Loss of blood and the bizarre chemistry of his own body was making him maudlin, Erantha thought, finally finding the right method of forcing the hexes out. There were two of them, one to inhibit his healing and the other to spread poison, and she grunted with the effort of removing the one that was trying to destroy his immune system. Any other man would be insane with the pain of it, but Kevaah only sighed when the hex burst.

“You are beautiful,” he murmured, surprising her. There was nothing passionate in his tone, nothing like the shy advances she'd received from Modhri's hopeful cousins; it was merely a clear statement of fact, delivered in a calm and level voice. “Like sunlight on the marsh in the envirodeck, like moonlight on a blade's edge. The beauty of water is in its versatility, and the beauty of an edge is that it cuts. Both may save or end a life. You have that beauty, and the clarity of mind to decide how to use it.”

“This is not the time, Kevaah,” she scolded, reaching for the second hex.

He hummed faintly and turned his head, gazing thoughtfully at the wall. “It is precisely the time. The future is not certain. I can see the Paladins in battle, Erantha, the jeweled wheel of the battle trance turning—have you seen them on the training deck, fighting as one? That division of men and Sentries we saw earlier has found them, and is no doubt regretting it.”

She blinked at him, and indeed did feel the gem-colored energies of the Lion-bond in the distance, but faintly; she was too busy saving his life to bother with other things right now. “What does that have to do with us?”

He flicked her an amused glance out of sunset eyes. “They haven't found the other Druids yet. They are strong, but Druids are dangerous, and the Matriarch is not with them this time. It could go either way, you know. Shiro has Seen it.”

Erantha hissed—the poison hex was trying to infect her, too, and it burned like acid. “So?”

“I still want an answer, while we have the time.” His hand crept up and laid itself over hers, where it rested on the torn flesh of his shoulder. “What do you want from me, Erantha? You have said 'my blood' and I have given it to you, but you are not satisfied. What else do I have to give?”

Erantha glared at him, but was spared having to make an immediate answer. Not only did the Druid's hastily-laid hex pop like an abscess under the pressure of her irritation with him, but a sudden bloom of darkness in her other sight surprised them both. Some distance away, four powerful Druids struck at once, and the Paladins' battle-trance shattered like glass.

“No!” she gasped, but Kevaah's hand gripped her own comfortingly.

“It is not over,” he murmured with a sly smile, and chuckled in a way that made her think of ambush predators with prey in sight. “They are too clever for that. Druids have no finesse. Answer my question, Erantha. What do you want from me?”

Erantha stared, not at him, but at the darkness in the distance. Somewhere within that black-amythest roiling was a golden ring, pure and shining and strong. She looked down at him, who was gazing up at her with eyes full of mysteries. Weary from her own efforts and shocked to the core by the events occurring half a station away, she could only be honest.

“I want you,” she said, “I want you to look at me the way you look at Neline, and at Lizenne, and at Modhri...”

He smiled at her, his cool gaze warming, and it was not as he smiled for the others. It was something new, unique, and just for her, and Erantha's heart thrilled to see it. “I can do that,” he murmured, and sighed again as his wounds began to close up. “Oh, I can do that, for that is all I have to give.”

He leaned his head wearily against her arm, and at last she permitted herself to touch the soft, dense fur behind his left ear. It was as pleasant to touch as she had imagined, and she stroked his head for a time while the AI grumbled to itself, watching with her other sight as the Paladins...

“Ye gods,” she breathed.

Kevaah vented an unmistakable snicker. “Ye Lions. Same thing, on many worlds.”

Shomakti Station, Coran observed, was having problems. Its lights were flashing agitatedly, a sure sign that whatever was running it probably had a Marmoran's hands at its throat, but at least the silly thing had stopped firing on them and its drones had all returned to their bays, bashful as naughty schoolchildren caught in the act. Well, at least it wasn't his problem anymore. He had quite enough to worry about as it was, although it could have been worse. The fleet that had answered the Station's call for help hadn't had the same upgrades as Shomakti's own patrol fleet had received, and was made up of large, awkward craft that simply couldn't maneuver in the dense, largely-metallic mess that was the asteroid field. Half the time, the silly things were dodging flying space junk, and weren't the Ghost Fleet ships having a lovely time throwing the larger chunks at them? It was amazing what one could do with a skillfully-tuned tractor beam, it really was.

Neline, still perched on Girosk's shoulders, squeaked and waved her wand admonishingly at the screens as a particularly large asteroid banged into a heavy destroyer's shields, shoving the entire craft out of formation with its fellows. Thrusters fired in a desperate attempt to keep it from colliding with its nearest neighbor, forcing the other ships to move out of position as well. As for the space rock, it just kept going, scattering their neat positioning like a phandus ball smashing through a flotilla of deerwatts.

“Well done, old chap,” Coran congratulated Voan Lenna, whose small but powerful ship had hurled the stone in the first place. “Ever play phandus? You have a good eye.”

There was a chuckle from the elderly Captain. “'Tis an honorable sport, and one still played by the intelligentsia where I come from. It helps that whoever sent this fleet was a fool.”

“Could be, could be,” Coran said, lining up to fire on the stricken warship. “The fellow in charge here might just have heard the Station howling for help and decided to pile on in with whatever he could scrape together. It's a terrible temptation to a certain kind of man—you know, valuable property in trouble, three different attackers from the top of the Empire's 'Most Wanted' list, and five antique robots that the Emperor himself just has to have. Fame, fortune, promotion, preferment, and a snazzy little plaque on the breakroom wall naming him the employee of the phebe. Something like that.”

“Eeep,” Neline said, unimpressed.

“Quite right, young lady,” Coran agreed, twirling his mustache as Zaianne blew a large hole in their target's engine deck, “there's simply no reasoning with a fellow like that. Knew a few back in the day, while I was an instructor in Altea's foremost military academy, and at least Alfor and Melenor were smart enough to post them where they'd do the least damage—whoops, what was that?”

“Reinforcements,” Zaianne said irritably, zooming in on a patch of space that had sprouted another squadron of Imperial ships. “Someone who was less of a fool. Voan Lenna, can we call upon the Fleet for support?”

“I'll try,” Voan Lenna responded grimly. “For all that adding Lotor's armada to our forces helped a great deal, we're still thinly spread. There is just so very much of the Empire, you see, and while our Shipyards are doing their best, it takes time to produce a working craft.”

“We're aware,” Girosk said, who had designed and built many ships himself, and should know.

“Incidentally, how are the teams aboard the Station proceeding?” Voan Lenna asked as his agile ship pulled away to size up the new foe. “They've been in there for some time.”

“Well, it is quite a large Station, and rather better run than Clarence was,” Coran said, touching the controls. “Away teams, report. How goes it?”

“Team One,” the answer came promptly, “objective completed. Drone bay is ours. Minor injuries sustained.”

“Team Two, objective completed. Starboard weapons command is under our control.”

“Team Four, objective completed. Power core is ours. Korach has a broken arm, but I've stabilized it.”

“Team Five, objective changed and completed. Port weapons command is ours.”

“Good,” Coran said. “Team Three?”

“Team Three,” Erantha said wearily, and Zaianne frowned to hear it, “objective changed but not as yet completed. We are now in possession of Central Command, although not in full control of it quite yet. We had to force it into a full system debug, and it's still running. Kevaah was injured, but is recovering. The Paladins... do not try to contact them now. They're busy.”

“They do tend to go off on tangents, don't they?” Coran humphed. “Well, keep at it, and the moment you're in control in there, we could use a little help out here. Those big cannons in particular would--”

He broke off short, nerves trembling, and Zaianne gasped; Neline let out a startled squeak as well, for they all felt the aetheric pulse that emanated from Shomakti station, a pulse so powerful that the station itself seemed to flicker slightly. The Lions roared, and the metallic bellow echoing through their comm channels brought surprised yelps out of the Fleet ships and a curse from the Chimera.

“What just happened?” Zaianne demanded.

“I don't know,” Lizenne replied, sounding startled and angry. “The Lions are doing something fairly significant, and the Paladins are doing the same, only more so. Damn it, why am I always somewhere else when they decide to make a breakthrough? Hold the line, everybody, and let no enemy approach that Station! The Paladins must not be disturbed!”

Chapter Text

Chapter 16: A Triumph in Recursion

Black wind howled, and black storm roiled, and purple lightning wriggled through the billows like demented serpents with bone-shattering voices. It was as if four hurricanes were clustered together in a dance of ultimate destruction, and at the heart of each was a world-destroying monster. Keith was lost in the storm, buffeted this way and that in the gale; he knew where he was, though—he'd been in the Mindscape too many times not to know.

Only out here on the flipside of reality could this sort of thing happen, and he knew the source of it. He had seen such creatures before only twice, and had never hoped to see them again. Five-eyed abominations, cairn-fire light spilling from sockets in skulls that were a twisted cross between a raven and a tyrannosaur; multiple limbs and serpentine spines, ragged robes and voices like the end of everything. Druids, and strong ones, far more difficult to fight on this plane than on the material one. He'd been a dragon the last time he'd done battle with them on this side, and he missed his spikes and scales very much.

With a fell screech, one Druid swept in to attack, blistering clusters of livid lavender light crackling from its claws; Keith flinched away from those lethal bolts, but looked up in surprise when they burst against something that hadn't been there a moment before. Gold, pure and bright—a great wall of it circled him now, and he cried out in relief when someone caught his hand. Hunk, he thought, clinging hard to that source of strength.

Hunk was shining with golden power, his eyes on the enemy, and he was not at all pleased with them. He had pulled himself up to his full height, his shoulders squared, jaw forward, and was frowning; someone was going to feel his wrath soon.

A flare of blue glittered against the storm as Lance appeared out of the roils, catching Hunk's other hand. “I love you, Hunk,” Lance gasped. “You are a super-smart and awesome person. Did you see those things?”

“Yeah,” Hunk said. “Druids. Big ones. I really hate Druids.”

A flash of green to Keith's left dazzled him, and a small but strong hand caught his free one. “Not as much as I do,” Pidge growled. “Allura? Over here!”

A flush of rose bloomed before them and Allura was just there, catching Pidge's and Lance's hands to join them all in a circle, reestablishing the bond, and they all sighed in relief as the wheel of light began turning again. Alas, there was someone missing again, and they all felt the absence keenly.

“Where's Shiro?” Keith asked.

Allura pointed off to one side. “Over there, in the center. He... he can't join us just yet.”

They looked toward the place of peace at the center of Hunk's shieldwall, and beheld another, smaller ring. The containment ring that Hunk had worked into Shiro's psyche to keep his flashbacks under control. It gleamed and spun, and even at this distance they could see the dark shape of the arena within it.

Lance moaned. “Oh, crud, not now! How'd they kick it off now? Keith made him immune to hexes!”

“Through us,” Pidge replied. “Remember? Lizenne warned us about that. We're all linked, and when the Druids zapped us, it hit him through the link.”

There was a horrible noise from outside of the ring, and the shieldwall shuddered as a Druid tried to smash its way through. All of them winced at the tremendous impact, but refused to be distracted. Hunk saw something hopeful within the inner ring, and smiled. “Hey, our modifications are working, see? It's not like the last time—he's wearing his armor, and he's still got that tambok-fang knife. I don't feel him panicking, either. He'll be with us soon; we just need to give him some time.”

“Time,” Allura echoed thoughtfully, staring out at a Druid that was lining up for another attack, and all of them remembered that Black was the Lion of Time. “We will give him that time. We know this game, and we do not have to hold back now.”

And that was so, they realized. Hunk grinned, and the Druid veered off in surprise when the shieldwall sprouted hundreds of roaring Lion-faces, and further when Hunk expanded the single ring into the full defensive sphere-lattice. Keith shot out to take his place, and the others weren't far behind him; fire bloomed in a searing wash from Hunk's framework, raising furious screeches from the Druids as they fled his purifying heat. Pidge's section exploded with a ferocious bramble that the team recognized very well. Crystal flowers opened among man-eating thornbush canes in a weaponized version of the envirodeck's crags. Lance added a layer of polar sea above that, with killing-cold temperatures and icebergs that could crush whole ships like bugs. Throughout it all, Allura wove her own influence, regulating and balancing the flows of power.

Their defenses were completed only barely in time, and the whole structure shook hard under the impact of the Druids' wrath. Something huge and terrible went by like a hellish perversion of a whale, drawing a long line of actinic death across the outermost layer of their defenses. Lance spat something rude as entire glaciers exploded into steam under the force of it, but that was only the start. The Druids, infuriated by their defensive tactics, hammered on their shieldwall without letup, singly or in pairs and groups, forcing the team to spend their energy on maintaining that wall, with little in the way of reprisal, forcing them to shuffle their tactics constantly just to hold it all together. They were able to gain a little more breathing space when Allura, remembering Halidex's improved defense system, took in a blast, ran it through Keith's purifying flames to cleanse it, and then passed that energy to Pidge. Every glittering flower in her array adjusted its petals in a certain way, and the Druids were forced back as Modhri's tale was retold truly. He had mentioned that certain varieties of venadras could shoot lasers, and Pidge had taken that very much to heart. Even so, this was only a holding action; they could hold the monsters off, and they would, but the Pack was not complete. He was coming, they could feel it, and when he arrived, there would be fireworks.

Shiro dodged right, dodged left, and then rushed forward, the lab-warped monstrosity before him bursting into dust at the touch of his weapon. He could feel the old, stale fear in him, all around him, taste the reek of the arena in his throat and feel the crunch of polluted sand beneath his feet, but there was no panic. Yes, he was in the arena again, facing all the old monsters, but his mind was as clear as Tzairona's Lens; he was armored, Lizenne's tambok-fang knife in hand, and it gleamed and shimmered like opals as it slew his demons again and again.

He looked up and knew this threadbare scenario for the bad dream that it was. In the arena, the true one, looking up did no good. Above the walls of the pit, there had been only the bloodthirsty crowds, and above them, their howls had echoed off of the blank shadow of the ceiling. Here and now, yes, the crowds were still there, all flickering images like a faulty recording. Above them, though, he saw the rim of the broad golden containment ring that had kept this old nightmare from overwhelming him. Above that, he could see his team in action. Hunk's many interlocked rings, Keith's fire, Lance's ice, Pidge's ship-eating bramble, and Allura's unwavering support.

They needed him, though. He could see his place among them standing empty, and he could see the monsters seeking those weak spots. The team was holding well, but only holding. The enemy was a great deal stronger than they had anticipated. Fighting Druids on the material plane was very different from fighting them on the Mindscape, or so both his team and Lizenne had warned him.

But first, of course, he would have to get there. The shadow audience sounded its hollow roar again, and another half-mechanical freak screamed empty rage at him and lashed out with limbs that were no longer its own. Shiro glanced at his own right arm and found it real and true, and in possession of a weapon of near-unique properties. He dodged the clumsy strike and drew a long slash down the overlong arm, watching with a sort of detached interest as the monster, once solid and lethal, disintegrated in a puff of dark dust. Like a ghost, insubstantial, with all of its substance drained away.

Once again he met with the thing Haggar had made of Modhri. That one was still real, the forgiveness shining through its madness like a rough gem in its matrix, and that forgiveness stayed with him even after the shape had gone.

Once again, he faced the Druid that had taken his arm, a creature that deserved no forgiveness at all and never would. He could feel the dream twisting around him, trying to turn him into the desperate, unarmored, and poorly-armed captive that he had once been, but he resisted it; the tambok-fang knife shrugged off the attempt to turn it into the heavy, awkward Galra sword with almost palpable contempt. You couldn't gaslight a sword, and this one was alive; it had been a part of a living thing once, and hosted a greater awareness now. Somewhere out in the layered realities that material creatures called the Universe, the bone spear was aware of its brother-blade's activities, and took its due portion of evil with every strike it made.

One day, Shiro thought as he dodged and parried the dream-Druid's attacks, one day he would stand on Zampedri's own hills and see a tambok for himself. Not to fight it, though. Just to observe and admire the magnificent animal that could grow a whole new set of these incredible blades every month. He owed them that much, and more.

Even as before, he struck the dream-Druid on the right arm. It wavered like water did when a stone was dropped into it, but held together. It screeched hollowly and formed its own blade, but Shiro never hesitated. It could not break his weapon, and its own held no fear for him anymore. He had lost his arm in this dream many times, in reality once, but the true one had been returned and the metal one claimed by an entity so far beyond Haggar's comprehension that there was no comparison anymore. Whatever else she had been, whatever she had become, she was an alien and simply did not have that connection to the truths hidden deep in Galran blood. Humans did, however many hundreds of generations back. Somewhere, the link existed—Keith was living proof of that.

Red light and red heat, hot but pure, flashed overhead as he shattered the dream-Druid's sword. He knew that heat, carried a portion of it in himself. Head, hand, heart, and bonus liver, they'd told him, purified and made proof against all evil; while he carried that blessing, no hex could touch him directly. The dream-Druid shrilled in shock and flinched away, transparent with fear, and disintegrated with a touch—not of his sword, but of his hand.

Haggar and her Druids feared Purifactors, Shiro recalled Lizenne telling him, because Purifactors could burn away their spells and illusions with very little effort. Purifactors dispelled confusions and nullified poisons, banishing evil and promoting life. Whatever powered Haggar now was diametrically opposed to that, and Shiro was mildly amazed to find himself inimical to its works.

His next footstep rang on metal rather than sand, surprising him a little. He was now in the halls of a warship with another ghost speaking urgently to him. Ulaz, spare of feature and serious of mien, the faint accent of his speech hinting at the secrets held in Simadht's deep caverns. Ulaz was telling him to go, to escape, to win through to the Lion, a message that he'd taken to heart many times before.

The Lion. Shiro looked up again and saw the colors of the Lions. His team needed him, but he knew this maze now. He was not half-crazed with fear, fatigue, and peculiar chemicals. He was armed and armored and no longer feared his dreaming. There was nothing within the golden ring that he could not face. When he looked down again, Ulaz had already gone, but that was all right. The black Lion was out there, drawing him to the circle-bond like iron to a lodestone, and he answered that call. Breaking into a run, the dim walls rushing beside him. He felt them trying to twist, to lead him astray, to trap him in their contortions where he would be lost forever. No chance of that, Shiro thought, and those twisting walls shattered under his touch as well. The entire nightmare came apart around him, leaving him floating free in the sweet spot at the center of the containment ring. Peace, that place was, and he hung for a moment in that area of spiritual balm. Below him gleamed the Oracle's Lens in its ring of fire, and its clarity comforted him. As he watched, it shimmered and gained a mirror-sheen, reflecting what was happening on his side. He saw his reflection, and saw it smile at him and point to the drama happening above.

Right, he thought to himself, that's clear enough.

“Okay, not good, not good,” Hunk panted eventually, adjusting their framework a little, shoring up the cracked spots that the last attack had left in the ring; the Druids had discovered that individual attacks weren't able to do much, and that working as a quartet was much more effective. “Think. The last time we did this was with Lizenne and the ladies. They're strong, but not evil. These things are strong and evil, but... yeah. See that? They're acting more like Robeasts than anything else. All meanness and no imagination.”

“Not surprising,” Allura said darkly. “They are all her creations, and very much in her style. Destruction has been her work and her goal for eons. Everything she builds destroys everything around them.”

“Crud,” Lance said, watching a pair of those constructs lining up for another attack. “We need the Lions for Robeasts. How do we get the Lions in here, anyway? They're all out there somewhere, in the real world.”

“We still need them, and we need them now,” Pidge said. “Keith, last time we did this, you sort of reached--”

“That isn't necessary,” a much-missed voice said behind them, blooming violet-blue on the air and causing the Druids to skreel away in surprise. “Remember what the Mystics said, when we visited that ice world?”

“Shiro!” Keith said, vastly relieved. “You're all right!”

Shiro nodded, but continued as if Keith hadn't spoken. “They said that we were Voltron, and that the mechanism was incidental. This is what they meant.”

“Tilla told me that too, once, way back in the beginning,” Pidge said thoughtfully. “It saved my life once already, but I was acting on my own.”

“We're all together now,” Hunk said with a big grin. “So, let's show these creeps what we're really made of.”

Shiro looked up and knew that he had faced this before, and had won. Not alone—never alone, for a lonely victory was a hollow thing, and the Pack was as one forever. He could feel the Lions now, and the bonds they all shared with those great cats, and the power just waiting to be accessed. This was what they were for.

“The Pack is as one,” he said in a whisper that echoed off of the cosmos. “Form Voltron.”

The cyborg made a horrible gargling noise and bent to sniff curiously at the unconscious red Paladin, only to collect a bonk on what was probably its head from a sergeant. “Back off, you,” he growled at it. “You'll get a taste when the Druids give you the go-ahead.”

The battle, which had been as hotly-fought as any that the veteran had ever seen, had ended with shocking suddenness when the Druids had popped in. One big purple-black boom of power and the six invaders had dropped like stones, just like that. It rankled a little in the sergeant's mind that he and his men had been no better than a distraction, to say nothing of their now needing to replace nearly the entire station's complement of Sentries and a whole bunch of the cyborgs, but he wasn't stupid enough to show it. Personally, he could do without the cyborgs—creepy things, he was pretty sure that they roamed the halls during sleep shifts and ate people. And the Druids. He was absolutely positive that they roamed the halls and ate people, and in fact had seen those Druids feeding, which was why he was more or less the man in charge right now. The strongest and most aggressive personnel tended to rise in rank, that was a given; it also made them stand out where that the bigger predators could see them.

He gave the Druids a wary look. They were standing like statues over their fallen foes, five-eyed masks staring off into the distance. He had no idea of what that meant; Druids were odd creatures, and one never knew whether they were concentrating on the Infinite or had just switched off for half an hour when they went still like this. Either way, it wasn't safe to approach them.

“What now, Sarge?” one of the soldiers asked, looking around at the mess.

The sergeant grimaced. It was going to take hours to clean up all of the Sentry parts, and Supply and Maintenance were going to have a conniption fit over damage and losses. More so, because there were still at least ten other invaders in the station somewhere, plus a bunch of defunct cyborgs, and... oh, damn. One of the surviving units was the one that tended to forget what sanitary facilities were for when it got overexcited. That meant that a bunch of the floorplates would have to be replaced, and that was after at least three passes with the decontamination drones.

“Wait 'till they're done, cuff and contain what's left, then get those other housebreakers out of here. Then tell the Emperor that we've got his Lions.” The sergeant glared at the Druids again. “Assuming that they don't already know.”

The soldier stared at him. “Can they really--”

It was at that point that the very fabric of the Station trembled around them, and the air itself vibrated visibly to the sound of the Lions roaring. One of the Druids let out a horrifying scream, jerked as though something had knifed it right through the chest, and then exploded into a cloud of black mist.

There was a moment of shocked silence.

“Are they supposed to do that?” the soldier asked.

“No,” the sergeant said, dead certain of that.

He'd seen Druids teleport before, and that wasn't teleportation. That was a death, and one caused by something that he couldn't see. While he wasn't any too certain of the limits of the Paladins' abilities—nobody was—there were a few things that he could do to maybe head off some of the worst of it. So thinking, he jerked a set of restraints from his belt and reached for the red Paladin's hand.

“Get 'em cuffed,” he said grimly. “I don't want them waking up and—aaagh!”

He'd never even seen the Paladin's hand move, but suddenly his wrist was caught in a grip that put dents in his armor. The Paladin's eyes opened, nearly blinding the sergeant with their blazing golden glare, and flickers of red light began to ripple over his armor like flames. The sergeant only had time to gasp at that sudden wash of heat before the Paladin surged to his feet and pulled. The sergeant's feet left the ground, and he found himself flying, and he had just enough time to see the Paladins rise up roaring, shining in their signature colors, before he hit a wall hard enough make him see stars. The last thing he heard as he hit the floor was the screaming of his men and the cyborgs. The last thing he saw before the world went away was another Druid detonating with enough force to leave a crater in the floor.

...Because...

On the Mindscape, something extraordinary happened. Out there on the material plane, many people had had occasion to comment on the remarkable mutability of Voltron's substance, of how that great battle machine could reshape parts of itself, or even summon whole new components seemingly out of thin air. Part of that was advanced nanotechnology and more of it was the remarkable properties of the rare metal it was made from. Now its pilots knew that it was only an attempt—although a pretty good one—to replicate in the realm of matter what was going on in the realm of spirit.

People tended to forget that Voltron had a significant aetheric presence, and very nearly the entire Universe had forgotten the capabilities of the people who had formulated the unique metal in the first place, and why, and for what purpose. The Lions knew, though, remembering their ultimate creators right down to the atomic level, and what their original incarnation had been up against. They remembered, and still hated that first and foremost foe. Druids were yet a part of that, for all that they themselves did not remember; memory and the sovereign element of time that it existed in was inimical to oblivion.

The Druids were still partially creatures of time, corrupted though they had been, and watched in horrified recognition as the great multicolored sphere blazed with chromatic brilliance, bursting into five portions and recombining in a way they had seen before, although they had never expected to see it like this, or on this plane. They shook off their shock quickly and began their attack, but it was too late, too late, for time was far less rigid out here and a burning warrior was suddenly among them, a sword of hammered brilliance in hand.

One Druid twisted its head around in an instinctive effort to bite, but its steak-knife teeth shattered against a shield of green fires. It was shoved roughly back, balance destroyed, and the bright sword lashed out to split its breastbone. It shrieked once and disintegrated, for the sword was something a little more exotic than even Voltron's substance was, and it knew its business very well. This was only a taste, the Paladins felt as the monster came apart like mist on a spring morning, a foreshadowing of a greater event sometime in the future, but it would serve to ready them for what was coming. They understood this, and accepted it, and buckled down to business. The living cosmos had no place in it for monsters such as this. Not in ancient times. Not now. Not in the future.

The three remaining Druids scattered in all directions to avoid that shining sword, but doubled back to fight; they had their own ways of ascertaining the future, and they could see what they were up against. Something within them could not let it go unchallenged, unfortunately, and so they were forced to do battle. Screaming in hatred and fury, one Druid spewed a storm of dark bolts from its many limbs, poison mist trailing from its jaws; Voltron did not even bother to dodge, but took in each jagged streak of malice with a whirl of pure colors. The sword flashed briefly and vanished, replaced a moment later by a long-barreled cannon. There was a quick puff of denatured evil, and then a blazing white beam of pure force erupted from the long-gun that blew the Druid to subatomic particles. With two Druids dead and more than dead, the field of storms faltered, and the stars became visible here and there through the nightmare-colored billows. The Lions roared, thrusters fired, and Voltron surged forward to close with the remaining pair, sword of light once again unsheathed.

And in their oneness, the Pack knew the battle-joy and the immense satisfaction of having removed permanently an evil from the cosmos, and the exaltation of finally being whole. The Druids attacked fiercely, but the Pack could see their actions before they took them, and were not there when the strikes fell. The Pack pressed their advantage, parried, feinted, thrust, and another Druid died. The last one fled, screaming its terror and despair into the uncaring stars, and they gave chase. The Pack knew how to follow fleeing prey, oh yes, and they all felt it when the Druid called out for aid.

Let it come, the Pack thought, putting on a burst of speed that brought them within striking range of the frantic monster, Let it come. They executed a graceful whirl, executing in turn the fourth foe.

Let it come.

A very great many lightyears away, Haggar stood by Zarkon's throne, watching the routine proceedings with mild disinterest. It was the time of day when Zarkon allowed civilian petitioners to bring their disputes to him for judgment, and it was almost always the same sort of thing. Disputes over property or territory for the most part, or advice on how to deal with economic problems, or requests for additions to this or that garrison fleet. That last was getting more frequent, particularly from representatives from the Middle and Outer worlds. The Ghost Fleet and other rebel groups were busily eroding the Empire's control over a number of large and important regions, and something would have to be done about them soon. This would not be easy; Voltron had destroyed too many warships, and their allies were not weak; there simply wasn't much slack left in the Imperial navies, and the colony worlds were not willing to sacrifice any of their own protection without an Imperial Decree. The Hoshinthra, damn them all, had a bottomless hunger for Galra flesh and the means to obtain it wherever they pleased. Worse, the rebel force was nimble, used tactics that baffled even the best commanders, and were astonishingly well-coordinated for so very diverse an organization.

She caught her breath slightly when a tingle ran through her nerves—the trap at Shomakti Station, one laid long ago and updated faithfully at intervals, had been sprung.

Zarkon heard her soft gasp and glanced at her with a faint, inquisitive noise.

“My Druids tell me that the Paladins have come to Shomakti again,” she murmured.

Zarkon snorted faintly, no doubt remembering the traps that he himself had sprung in the past. “To their sorrow.”

“We shall see,” she murmured, concentrating on her best agents; they were fully alert now, and lying in wait for their victims. “I placed my five strongest Druids there,”

“You doubt them,” Zarkon muttered.

Haggar shrugged. “I have lost far too many of them to the Paladins to be sure of the outcome. My Druids have great power and access to plenty more, and I have bolstered the physical defenses of the Station with my latest batch of cyborgs. This is something of a test, my Lord. I do not know enough about the Paladins' capabilities.”

He had to concede that much. The reports he'd been getting of their exploits were difficult to believe in spots. Still, she should know better. “You have had their leader in your grasp twice. For a year, the first time.”

She snorted derisively. “Yes, but only that one. You know as well as I do that it is the group that is important, not the individuals. I have done my best to study Voltron since its creation, as well as its pilots, and I still do not have complete understanding of the thing. Neither do you, my Lord, and you had twenty-seven years in the command unit's cockpit.”

Zarkon growled faintly and shifted in his throne, eyeing the petitioner below with faint contempt. That person was yet another disposable representative from one of the great manufacturing concerns, and he'd been too busy enjoying the sound of his own voice to notice that he'd lost his sovereign's interest.

“I will be resuming my studies shortly,” Zarkon grumbled. “Keep me informed of their progress.”

She nodded, and he turned his attention back to the representative. Zarkon waited, listening with only half an ear while the representative blithered with waning confidence about the difficulty of getting quality raw materials and the necessity of getting the finished products where they needed to be. Zarkon didn't particularly care. He was of the opinion that certain portions of his Empire had become far too dependent on an overextended trade network, and that whole planets had allowed themselves to become less than self-sufficient. Perhaps some privations would firm up their soft bellies and sharpen their soft minds as well; there was nothing like the pinch of hunger to focus a man's mind on what was truly important. He was just about to tell the representative to get to the point when Haggar hissed sharply.

“I have lost a Druid,” she said when he glanced up at her. “I must go to my scrying chamber.”

Zarkon frowned but waved a dismissal, and she hurried away. All eyes in the room followed her exit, but she did not care. That Druid had not met its end at the Paladins' hands, but on the point of a Marmoran blade, which shouldn't have happened. Despite centuries of study, the Blade of Marmora was still more legend than confirmed fact even to her, and the Ghamparva had been less than forthcoming with their own findings. She would have to have a little talk with their Commander at some point about that. Her Druid had sent her a few perceptions before it had died, and one of its attackers had shown definite signs of having been manufactured. Cloning a whole Galra was flatly illegal anywhere but in her own research stations, and in those of the Ghamparva; someone had a lot of explaining to do, and she would be keeping a stern eye on Zarkon's pet killers after this.

She was halfway to her scrying chamber when she felt the other four Druids strike, and was just entering that secret room when one of those four died. Two more followed only seconds later, and the last one was screaming for help by the time her knees hit the floor mat. She felt it die, too, and thrust her astral self into the Mindscape with more force than finesse, determined to know what had happened.

Guys, this is awesome, Lance observed as the last shreds of Druid magic dissipated, revealing the bright starfield of the Mindscape. Too. Totally. Awesome. Can we do this in the real world, too? I mean, go total Pack Power in the actual Lions and kick all of the butts?

Probably, Keith replied. We really could've used this back at Keroga. Maybe then we wouldn't have had to deal with the Nebula.

Shiro sighed. It was necessary, Keith. We had to help that Hrralka, and I had to meet the Trickster.

Why? Allura asked.

I don't know, he replied.

We'll probably find out later, if we're lucky, Pidge said, and then vented a sour snort. Right. Define “lucky”. Maybe they'll join us at the next boss fight or something. I don't know about you, but I'd kind of like to see how that big bony guy would deal with a--

All of them paused suddenly, looking up. They'd all felt it, a brief ripple in the aether. Something was coming, something big, and it wasn't friendly. All of them recognized the entity that materialized a careful distance away, whether it was by shape, by smell, or by feel. A shrouded nothingness, hanks of hair the color of steel that flowed like seaweed on an invisible current, a deathly exhalation, and a reek of destruction. Cairn-fire eyes glared at them from beneath a hood with nothing in it.

That's Haggar! Pidge said, fury rising in her and infusing the Pack with her wrath. I hate Haggar! Kheshveeeeeeeg!”

Voltron boosted forward with a roar of thrusters, the shield becoming wings and the sword doubling its length. The monster that had haunted their dreams jerked in surprise at this sudden rush and threw up a shield; Voltron went through it like a boulder through a plate glass window, powered by more than just Pidge's antipathy. Shiro held a deep hatred for the ancient witch as well, and Keith hated her for what she had done to Shiro—not once, but twice. Allura loathed the woman for the betrayal and near-destruction of her entire people, Hunk hated her for the vicious changes she and Zarkon had made to Galran society, and Lance hated everything she stood for. All of them remembered the deaths of eight thousand and more whole worlds for no better reason than power lust, and it was all of them who blasted toward the author of so much destruction, howling for vengeance as they came.

Haggar took one look at what was coming to meet her and retreated in a hurry, and for the first time in eons felt real fear. She was not ready for this, and hadn't had any idea that the Paladins even had these abilities—none of the other teams had achieved so much, not even Zarkon's. He and the others had shown only a few, rare, intriguing flickers of this level of ability, but hadn't had the time or the training to develop it further. These creatures, though, after only a few years and whatever odd bits of aetheric instruction that Ghurap'Han's rebellious daughter had given them, were perilously close to...

Haggar didn't dare even to think of that, although the sword being raised to strike was a definite indicator that her fears would soon be realized. Something deep within her saw that pale shining and shrieked in denial, and she let loose a bolt of destructive power almost against her will. The blazing sword lashed out, splitting the black-amethyst blast in two; she could feel the loosed energies being drawn in, their state changed and--

She shot to one side only barely in time. Half of that energy had been cycled through Voltron's system and returned in her direction in a long beam of blinding annihilation. The other half had been absorbed by... by something else. By the sword. Through the sword. Far and far away, something similar received it, and wanted more.

Like a memory too faint to bring to mind, Haggar felt that something within her knew what that faraway awareness was, and feared it. It had faced that thing before, and had lost, and had been reduced nearly to total dissolution. The bright and terrible thing had hunted that ancient part of her down all the long, long years; it had not forgotten, and it was coming.

Haggar fought grimly for control of herself. Panic was not an option now, nor was mindless rage. She had to think, to study, to plot out this one's weaknesses and strengths, to plan, and that was very difficult when all of her instincts were demanding that she either fight or flee, and to do it now.

Voltron had no such inner conflict, and they no longer feared her. The sword lashed out, singing its desire for her blood, and came within fractions of an inch of getting it. Too fast, too strong, too determined; Haggar suddenly realized that she'd been leaning on her own reputation for far too long. The fear that she inspired in other people had been her best weapon for thousands of years, and there was no fear here. Hissing, she blasted Voltron with enough force to blow a moon apart, only to see those energies absorbed, changed, and redirected back at her... with a tithe back to that faraway watcher again, the one that would demand its own reckoning in time. She could not stay here, not when her usual tactics were proving to be useless, and not when every move she made only strengthened her foe! How were they doing this? How could six people be so totally at one with each other, with neither conflict nor reserve? None of the other Paladin teams had ever possessed that level of cohesion!

All thought deserted her when one powerful arm, all green fire against the star-washed darkness, slammed into her with a bone-shaking impact, and it was more by instinct than conscious will that she exited the Mindscape, and lay gasping on the floor of her scrying chamber for some time before she was able to move. When she did so, it was not without pain: Voltron had left an enormous bruise all down her right side.

Zarkon, she felt, was not going to be at all pleased, although his disapproval was secondary to her own at this point. Quite aside from her failure to deal with the Paladins' unexpected abilities just now, something within herself was wrong. She had not been in complete control of herself or her powers during that battle. Something inside her had been watching, reacting, and forcing her to react as well, and that was far more disturbing than anything else that had happened. There had been times during her long, long life where she'd experienced thoughts and feelings that were almost, but not quite her own, usually when she was tired or stressed. Now, she knew that it wasn't just lack of sleep or overwork—there was something lurking in the back of her mind that shouldn't be there, and she needed to know what it was and how to get rid of--

Her ribs twinged sharply, making her gasp and disrupting her thoughts, and suddenly she was desperately thirsty and achingly weary. She needed Quintessence, and she needed it now. That need, in fact, was so overwhelming that it blotted out everything else, and by the time she had pulled a canister from a nearby cabinet and slaked that need, she had quite forgotten what she'd been thinking about only a few minutes earlier. Foremost in her mind now was the Paladins' newest aetheric achievement, and the fact that one of her Druids had fallen to a very unusual attacker. That, at least, she could do something about immediately, and she went to summon the only people who could possibly have been involved.

Nice backhand, Pidge, Shiro congratulated his teammate. Is there anything else coming?

You would know better than we would, Allura replied, gazing out at the empty Mindscape in satisfaction. I doubt that she will risk any more of her Druids.

We should probably go back, too, Pidge said, a little worried. Those freaks interrupted a pretty stiff battle, and waking up in a cell is no fun, take it from me.

Hunk growled. And they'll probably take our lunchboxes, too. Nobody steals my lunch, and we're seriously going to need one. We've spent a lot of energy out here, guys, even with the synergy effect and the Lions helping.

Yeah, that's right, Keith agreed. Crud, I'm going to want to eat a whole atinbuk. Raw.

Lance smirked. You and Kevaah both. And me. Okay, let's see what's going on out there on the flipside...

They reemerged on the physical plane with the usual moment of mild disorientation, finding themselves standing shoulder-to-shoulder in a defensive circle. They all felt a momentary rush of adrenaline as their biorhythms caught up with their conscious minds, and then a wave of exhaustion hit them hard enough to send them sagging to the floor in a gasping heap.

“Aaaugh,” Lance groaned, slumping against Keith. “What the heck happened? I feel like I've just run two Marathons at the same time, and in different directions. Keith, you're purple. Why are you all purple? Nice sword, by the way.”

“Huh?” Keith said, glancing down at the glowing blade of his bayard, which was a good deal longer and more ornate than usual, and lifted a hand to touch his face; for a moment, he felt fine fur shift on his cheek, and then the sensation was gone.

Hunk, who'd spotted the unexpected plush too and was reaching out to touch it, vented a disappointed, “Aw,” before noticing that his own bayard was a good deal more advanced than his usual scattergun. “What did happen? Oh, Pidge, nice claws.”

Pidge stared at her bayard, which had indeed produced a very nice set of bearclaws, for an astonished moment before their bayards deactivated. With a squeak of alarm, she tried to recall those very impressive weapons, only to see her normal brief green edges. Frowning, she looked up and around, and was very surprised to see that the battle was over. Very much over, as a matter of fact.

“Guys, where did all this carnage come from? I mean, we were dealing with a lot of Sentries, but I'm seeing a lot of soldiers and cyborgs all over the floor. Are any of them still alive?”

Allura leaned over to examine one prone soldier, doing her best to get her eyes to stop seeing double. “Excuse me, sir,” she said, knocking politely on the man's helmet, “but are you dead?”

“Oooooh...” moaned the soldier, which was oddly reassuring.

“The cyborgs are all in pieces,” Shiro said muzzily. “God. Did we do this? I don't remember anything about any of this. Right. We're going to need to get out of here, call in some medical teams... uh.”

The others looked up at that last uncertain syllable, and followed his gaze. Leaving this room was going to be at least five kinds of difficult.

“I didn't do that,” Keith said, staring at a hallway that had been twisted and slagged by some unimaginable heat, and was in fact still radiating heat with an almost physical force. “That wasn't me.”

“I'd like to have done that one, though,” Lance said, flicking a finger at the opposite hall, which was full of glacier ice. “That's kind of pretty. Oh, and nice granite plug there, Hunk. I think it's granite. Black granite?”

Hunk blinked in confusion at the hallway that had indeed been jammed floor-to-ceiling with the same dark stone that had comprised Kuphorosk's statue back at the Temple. “Yeah, but it's not mine. Um. Pidge, you didn't have any magic beans on you when you came in here, right?”

The fourth hallway was now full of... well, it had leaves, but it was mostly wood. A lot of wood, twisted and gnarly, and it smelled vaguely of bamboo. “Nope,” she squeaked, but her eyes were elsewhere. “Shiro, Allura, care to explain that one? I'm pretty sure that it isn't possible.”

They stared at the admit to the Quintessence stockpile. Somehow, a very small wormhole had been summoned within that frame, and it shimmered bluely at them.

“I don't know,” Shiro said blankly, staring at the gateway into wherever. “Allura, where does that go?”

Allura was no less crottled. “I have no idea, but Black is very pleased with himself.”

“Choluurush is, too,” Lance said, and then felt a rising sense of dread as inspiration struck. “Guys, I think I know what happened. You know how we were Voltron-ing out there in the Mindscape? I think the Lions were us-ing in here. They were piloting us, our bodies, and they're pretty good at it.”

They stared at the flattened enemy and the blocked hallways for a long moment, digesting that information. Keith let out a long sigh. “Better than the mice.”

Hunk groaned. “Shut your mouth, Keith, and never say that again. Really don't say it where Platt and the rest can hear you. Holy crap, but no food would ever be safe again. Crud. Lizenne's gonna freak.”

“I don't care,” Pidge grumped, popping open her lunchbox, an action that inspired the others to do the same. “The Lions have to keep some secrets, right? I wonder if the other teams ever did anything like this.”

Allura drained two beverage packets in quick succession before answering. “No. Father never mentioned anything like this, and neither has Coran. I'll see if--”

“Paladins? Paladins, where are you?” came Erantha's rather testy voice from the Station's own comms. “What happened? We're in full control of the Station now, but the AI is having difficulty resolving your location. The central area of the map... no longer makes sense.”

They glanced at the wormhole, which was very blue.

Shiro swallowed a mouthful of fish-salad sandwich and replied, “We're just about done here, Team Three. It just got a little strange, is all. There were four Druids here. We've dealt with those, but there were some... um... side effects. How are things going outside?”

“Satisfactorily,” Kevaah said calmly. “The Station's cannons and drones are now helping the Fleet ships to repel the enemy, and we have convinced the AI to send its collection of augmented asteroids against them as well. Kolivan is already mustering the larger ships to tow the Station away, and his cleanup teams stand ready to remove all surviving members of the Station's staff. You will want to decamp, and to make your way back to the Castle as soon as you can.”

“That's going to take us a little while, sorry,” Hunk said, eyeing the block of black granite that had filled one hallway with hardly a millimeter to spare. “We had to block the halls, and we did that maybe a little too well. We'll deal with it, but Lizenne's probably going to want to come over and have a look at this. I think that both we and the Lions got a little carried away.”

There was an amused snort from Erantha. “She is already demanding entrance, and will bring a crate of food with her. You did something in there that surprised her, I think.”

Shiro puffed a laugh. “Not as much as it surprised the Druids. And Haggar. And us, for that matter. Thank her for the crate, too. We've got our lunchboxes, but we're going to need more than that by the time we're done clearing the way here.”

“We will, but be quick, Paladins,” Erantha warned them. “We've caused a great deal of noise and fuss, and Kolivan wants to be gone before anything else shows up.”

With that stern encouragement, the team finished off their snack and went to have a look at the blockages, which hadn't gotten any less impressive since their first sight of them.

“Wow,” Hunk said, poking at the huge rock, which felt absolutely solid and would have made any really ambitious stonemason salivate. “This is mine, all right. Sort of. I don't do rocks, but Teccrakshaah knows how. Hey, Allura, did Gyrgan do rocks?”

“Yes, but never in the house,” Allura replied, looking dubiously at the tiny wormhole; small though it was, it filled the doorframe completely, and there was no getting around it. “He tended toward large-scale work, splitting boulders and causing avalanches, and his aim wasn't always that good. Anything below the size of that stone there gave him a headache. He made a terrible mess of the Castle's rock garden once, I know that, although the gardeners did make a lovely formal marsh garden from the hole. Oh, dear, Keith, that may take a whole movement to cool down.”

“Yeah,” Keith said, looking helplessly at an acre or two of slagged hullplate. “This is all Red's work. I do purifications and I'm reading up on swordsmithing, but I'd lose more than my eyebrows doing this. The Blades are gonna be mad about this. Hunk, can you fix this sort of thing?”

“After it cools down,” Hunk said. “Hey, Lance? You're good at ice. Think you can melt it?”

Lance examined his glacier, which had that special azure color that only mature glaciers get. “I think so, but it seems like a shame. Come on, Choluurush, we're gonna need this hallway opened up so that we can— aagh!”

Never let it be said that the blue Lion lacked a sense of humor. The entire glacier liquefied in an instant, drenching her Paladin from scalp to heels in water that was just short of freezing. It also raised yelps of protest from the flattened soldiers, who didn't appreciate a cold bath on top of everything else.

“Nice one, Lance,” Pidge said, dancing out of the way of the spreading pool.

“C-c-c-cold!” Lance spluttered, and there was a ferocious sizzling as the wash reached Keith's slagged hallway. “That wasn't me! Choluurush, that wasn't nice. Okay, all you soldier guys who can still move, let's get everybody else over by all that hot stuff, we could all use a steam-bath anyway. Pidge, don't let those weeds get any bigger or we'll be pulling them out of the vent shafts for ages. One of my cousins tried growing a pot of Jerusalem artichokes in his garden once and didn't keep an eye on them, and he had to get a backhoe in to clear his whole plot out in the end.”

“Seriously?” Pidge asked, but hurried over to the aggressively leafy blockage.

“Seriously,” Hunk said, leaning against his rock, watching Lance herding injured and dazed Galra into a dry corner. “Jerusalem 'chokes are tasty, but they spread like crazy—seeds and tubers everywhere, and fast. The neighbors were still digging out sprouts when we left to join the Garrison. Dandelions will just eat your lawn, but 'chokes will eat your dandelions, and kudzu will eat your house. Don't talk to me about trumpet vines, either. All weeds are weeds, but some weeds are weeds, if you get my drift.”

“Gotcha. Okay, how do I do this...?”

It took a few minutes' thought, but eventually the mass of wood and leaves reversed their growth, becoming no more than a few small seeds lying on the decking. She picked them up and stared at them, recognizing them instantly.

Lance peered over her shoulder curiously, and gave her a sidelong look. “Sylth grains. Pidge, you weaponized popcorn?”

“Shechethra did that, not me,” she replied, dropping the seeds into her lunchbox. “I've gotta start cleaning this thing out more often.”

“Keep them,” Lance told her firmly. “You never know when a handful of magic beans might come in handy. Are you gonna need help with that, Hunk?”

“Nah, I've got it,” Hunk said. “Just had to talk with Teccrakshaah a little. Granite's a toughie, but it all ends up the same way in the end--” he thumped a fist on the stone, which dissolved into sand with a soft, dusty whump. “Erosion. It's a thing.”

“It's a lot of sand,” Keith said.

“You can shovel sand,” Hunk replied calmly. “You can't shovel rock. This is really good sand, too. Just the thing for casting big machine parts, or maybe glassmaking. Lots of silica. Allura? Shiro? How are you doing over there?”

“Not nearly as well as you are, I'm afraid,” Allura said worriedly. “Black's very proud of himself, and he doesn't want to take down the wormhole. He won't even tell me where it leads!”

“There's a time-hitch in there somewhere, too,” Shiro said. “I'm not sure how he did it.”

Instantly intrigued by this puzzle, Pidge hurried over, digging in her lunchbox as she came. “Well, let's run a test. I've got a pad of scratch-paper in here, so let's just see...”

She crumpled up a piece of paper and tossed it through the watery blue field; something bounced lightly off of the back of her helmet just before the ball touched the wavering surface. “What the--?”

Shiro bent and picked up the wadded-up paper. “It just appeared. Here, let me try.”

Shiro tossed the ball, and it did indeed bounce off of his head a small fraction of a second before it entered the wormhole. Pidge stared, ran the math, and said something very impolite about those who presumed to mess up the laws of physics. “I don't believe this,” she continued grouchily. “Anything that goes through will hit itself in the back of the head. And if some dummy starts shooting...”

“Ouch,” Hunk said. “Guys, your cat plays 'Portal' like a troll.”

“Yes, and he won't remove it,” Allura said, frowning at the circle of light. “We are going to need to get into that storage area.”

“Yeah, but it can wait a little,” Keith said with a tired smile. “Lizenne's going to want to have a look at it, anyway.”

Chapter Text

Interlude #4: Unwelcome Visitors

The next several weeks passed in much the same way, with occasional interruptions for special tasks here and there. By now, most of the group had more or less acclimated to this way of life; the bonds and the ear tags still caused some discomfort, but most of them simply shrugged and admitted that it could have been worse. Lotor refused to accept this in himself, however, and kept his eyes and ears open for any chance of escape. There had been no further word of any attempt by the Empire to exert its influence upon the Chashmara Partnership, and that was starting to worry him despite his father's rejection of him. The Kraalsi was allied with the Empire's enemies, had insulted the Emperor and had been enslaving his soldiers—his own son—and yet there had been no reprisal. That suggested that something more immediate was taking up his father's time. Voltron, probably. Lotor couldn't think of anything else that would rivet Zarkon's attention more thoroughly than that. Whatever else Lotor might think of the matter, he felt a certain responsibility toward the Empire itself. It belonged, in potentia at least, to him, and it was put in deadly danger each time that the Lions took a swipe at the Throne.

He was a little annoyed at Thask in connection to this; the old man was only able to pass down snippets of news when he'd been serving the Kraalsi or other high-ranking dignitaries, and he'd been spending most of his time with the group lately, leaving them largely in the dark about what was going on above the service levels. Oh, the overseers talked, and so did the guards, but often out of context with anything that Lotor was aware of, and none of it could be confirmed. He did hear one snatch of gossip that caught his attention immediately one morning while he was running errands for the overseer. He'd just gone past one of the Kolkurra's breakrooms where a couple of night-shift guards were relaxing before seeking their own beds, and he paused outside when he heard one of them say, “--asking to buy Lotor.”

“Not much chance of that,” the other replied. “The Kraalsi's willing to hear them, generous as he is, but he knows too much about them now to sell them so much as an eplat seed. People like that should not be allowed the care of any living thing. Their opposing group is somewhat better about that, I feel, and they're perfectly willing to let matters stand. The Kraalsi wants to keep that forumn around for a time, in any case.”

“Assuming he learns to behave himself well enough to earn a contract.” the first said. “I wouldn't mind contracting him myself, although Palku would move get to him first. She likes him, and he's a comfortable armful.”

Lotor gritted his teeth at that; Palku still made him nervous. He had sampled a number of alien females in the past, but never as the submissive partner, and he wasn't sure that he was up to Palku's weight. Her attentions hadn't gone beyond the simple brushing-down and cradling he received from time to time, but he was still very glad that he was allowed to refuse a contract.

There was a chortle from the second guard. “He is pretty, isn't he? The Kraalsimight offer him a contract at some point soon, yes, if only to give him that much extra protection. He's thinking of the future; the Kraalsada likes stability on their borders, and if that Empire of theirs is going to implode like ours thinks it will, having a legitimate heir on hand is going to be a twark egg.”

Lotor had to stifle an exclamation. He didn't know what a twark was or what the eggs had to do with anything, but the Empire was in danger!

The first guard humphed. “That bad, eh? Well, it's a big realm, and there's always someone looking to bite off chunks for themselves. Having a puppet of the Blood is the easiest way to do that, but it's risky. If it's killed, there goes your sovereign right to rule. If the puppet cuts its strings, then it's your head on the block, if you're lucky. Lotor looks to be a string-cutting type.”

“That's so,” the second said. “Unfortunately, there are ways to keep the puppet from doing that while still leaving it functional. I did a little research myself, and most of the methods are vile. The Kraalsi won't allow any of them, I can say that with certainty! Better that he contracts the boy, and frees him when the time is right. Better that he watches and learns in safety while the various power groups devour each other on the field.”

The first chuckled. “And that is why the Phaelrah administer the Partnership for the rest of us. They are so very good at watching and learning.”

Their discussion turned to other things after that, and Lotor hurried on his way with his mind spinning. It wasn't until the following day that he was able to catch Thask alone, up on the top service level near the guest suites. The old man had been doing duty to his owner again, and Lotor knew that he would have no better chance than this. He'd slipped away from work to meet Thask, as a matter of fact, and Thask was very surprised to see him waiting for him.

“Lotor, you should not be here!” Thask told him sternly, “It's hard duty for you if Elik--”

“I need to get up to the guest levels,” Lotor cut him off impatiently. “I overheard a couple of guards talking, and they said that someone from the Empire was visiting, and was interested in me. I have responsibilities, man! I must take any chances that come my way!”

Thask stepped back, eyes wary. “Not with that group, boy. Remember what I said earlier—you will have no joy from such a meeting, and I dare not take you upstairs without permission. My owner is merciful, but his mercy has limits.”

Lotor growled irritably and shot a hand out to grip Thask by the collar, preventing his escape. “So does my patience. I will accept the consequences if that makes you feel any better, but the Empire is in danger. One of the guards mentioned that the Kraalsi himself expects it to implode; if that means that Voltron has found a way to defeat my father, then the Empire must have someone there to hold it together. Whatever my father has said, I am the Crown Prince. No one else was deemed suitable for that rank! Take me to those visitors, or I will knock you down and take the control tab you're carrying.”

“You will get a shock from your bonds!” Thask said, trying to pull away.

“Those wear off,” Lotor said bluntly, hauling him back and feeling at his pockets. “I will do this, old man. Now give me guidance to the upper levels.”

“Lotor, no, please!” Thask gasped, clawing at the younger man's hands. “You are asking me to betray the one person on this planet who thought that my life was worth saving, and for no good reason or reward! You do not want--”

The nearby door hissed open, revealing a figure that was dreaded the Empire over. While the Blade of Marmora might have been widely considered to be a story to frighten children into good behavior, the Ghamparva were very real. When they weren't hunting the phantomlike Blades, they hunted dissenters, traitors, resistance groups, and other undesirables with a mixture of terrifying determination and horrifying violence, and they did not make distinctions of rank when they did so. Lotor himself had held the organization in some considerable distaste, although he was well-aware of their utility, and preferred that they kept their distance from him. Furthermore, he recognized this one—not the man himself, but the type.

There is a type of person found in nearly every society that derives a certain joy from being a figure of fear. They tend to rise to positions of power, although never to ultimate power—far too visible, that, and far too likely to attract assassins. No, they far prefer to gravitate to positions high in their leader's trust but too low in rank for the nosy to bother with, and they dig themselves in like a toad in a stone, doing things that would get any other person dragged out and shot, and doing them in the perfect security of a man who is far too dangerous to touch. Such men are never lonely, for power of that nature always has its admirers, and things have a nasty tendency to escalate to the point where their agency has to be burned to the ground and right down into the foundations, and a priest brought in to exorcise the site of evil influences. The Emperor employed many of these, mostly in the Ghamparva, and Lotor was no longer in a position to send the man away.

The Ghamparva smiled and tucked some sort of control device away in a belt pouch. “Well, now, this is convenient,” he said in an oily voice. “And here I'd thought that we'd have to trail this sorry excuse for a weakling around for hours before we'd find you. Come along, your Highness, it's time to go home.”

More Ghamparva were crowding into the hallway now, and not in the way that suggested a respectful escort. He let go of Thask, who was staring around in terror at the invaders, and shifted his stance to the defensive. There was something about all of this that he did not like in the slightest; this was not a rescue, but a kidnapping.

“My Lords, please, you should not be here!” he heard Thask begging them. “Do not do this! The Kraalsi will not tolerate theft in his house. Continue, and you will find yourselves also in bonds!”

There was a crack of fist striking flesh, and Thask cried out in pain. Lotor reacted instantly, spinning and driving a fist at Thask's attacker, only to sag to his knees with a cry of his own as a shock ripped through him. Someone behind him seized his collar and left arm, bending that limb painfully up behind his back. He heard a faint beep by his tagged ear, and glanced around to see one of his captors waving an odd handheld control at the tag. “Useful, that,” the leader said, “bring along the old one, too. We can use the information he's got, and we shouldn't leave witnesses.”

Lotor was hauled to his feet and forced through the door, vision still blurring and legs wobbling dangerously from the shock he'd gotten. Thask moaned, and Lotor heard another blow and a growled “Quiet,” from whatever thug had hold of him. They were marched up the stairs, then down a hall and through a side door into a storeroom, bare except for shelves holding crates of supplies. Lotor and Thask were pushed to their knees on the floor facing each other, and Thask's captor pulled out a long knife and held it against the old man's throat. Lotor froze, well aware that if he made any sudden moves, Thask would pay for it.

“You know the game, your Highness,” their leader said mockingly, “we could use your friend there, but he's not absolutely necessary. Indeed, I'm a little surprised that you've grown fond of that little worm at all. He's hardly the sort that you've preferred to associate with in the past. Now sit still. The Empire needs you, Prince, but it doesn't need your rash fits and starts. Cooler heads will dictate your actions from now on.”

“And how do you mean to do that?” Lotor snarled defiantly, but his heart chilled at those words.

The leader came around to where he could see him and took a small box out of a pocket. “With this, of course. The very latest technology, thoroughly tested.”

The box held an implant. It was tiny, no bigger than a lennit seed, but Lotor recognized it as being of a type that burrowed directly into the brain and was impossible to remove without killing the victim. He felt a pang of sympathy for the unfortunates that had served as the Ghamparva's test subjects.

“Self-implanting, too,” the leader said fondly, smiling at Lotor's horrified expression. “Don't worry, you'll be allowed plenty of freedom. Too much of a change in your behavior would attract unwanted attention, after all. You just won't be able to do certain things without permission. Hardly different from what you've experienced here, no doubt.”

Thask's free hand was creeping surreptitiously toward his hip pocket. Play for time, Lotor thought to himself, this idiot likes to gloat. “You mean to use me as a puppet. For my father, or against him?”

“Both.” The leader's lip curled in a sneer. “He's functional when Voltron's in hiding, barely, but his obsessions are consuming him. Not even Haggar can control him properly now. Whenever that miserable robot pops back up, he's just this side of completely insane. You will aid him in his quest, and once Voltron is captured or destroyed—it doesn't really matter which—you will rid the Throne of that madman. Your reign will be glorious, by the way, if somewhat shorter than your father's. Haggar's outlived her usefulness as well.”

Thask's hand was almost to its destination now. Lotor laughed, knowing that his odd reaction would focus their attention on him. “Haggar! You fool, have you any idea how dangerous that woman is? She's older than my father by at least two centuries, having fought alongside Queen Zaianne herself during the Sisterhood War. She is the source of Father's strength and long life, and has contributed to the strength of the Empire in a myriad of ways. She and her Druids will destroy you and burn out your entire Order as though it were a gharsh nest, if you're lucky. She'll take you to pieces if you aren't, or turn you into Robeasts. Either way, you're dead.”

The Ghamparva scowled at him. “There are ways,” he said ominously, “and even the strongest witches have weaknesses. If we die, you'll die along with us, Prince. Neither of those two have any mercy, and you'll be seen as colluding with us. Indeed, you won't have a choice. Even if they do learn the whole truth of it, they'll kill you for the threat you pose to them, so you had better behave yourself.”

The Ghamparva's hand wound into Lotor's hair, forcing his head forward, and he heard the small pop of the box's lid opening. He struggled determinedly but uselessly against that powerful grip and flinched when someone dabbed a disinfectant on the back of his skull. Just as the Ghamparva was leaning down to apply the implant, the mind-boggling shriek of an alarm siren sounded right over their heads, and the air began to fill with great billows of choking, dark-green mist. Cries of alarm and violent coughing came from his captors, and Lotor was able to wrench himself free. Someone caught his wrist, and Lotor was about to shake it off when he recognized the bony hand as Thask's. The old man tugged him toward the back of the room through the billowing clouds of green and pressed a hidden switch that revealed a narrow door. Lotor lost no time in rushing through the dark opening, and caught a few glimpses of pipes and power leads before they came out in a different corridor. The air here was no clearer, however, and Lotor's throat began to tickle unbearably at the acrid smell of the green stuff, and his eyes were stinging painfully. Thask, the front of his suit pulled up and pressed across his mouth and nose, was breathing harshly, and Lotor was quick to follow his example. It helped, but not much.

“What did you do?” he asked, his voice muffled and barely audible over the screaming of the siren.

Thask coughed and choked out, “Fire alarm... whole wing will be like this... upstairs staff will be angry with me... what a mess.”

Lotor coughed, his throat already raw. “This green stuff... it's harmful?”

“Fire suppressant. Harmless to natives... not so to us.” Thask hawked and spat. “Need time in the infirmary... if those monsters don't... catch us first.”

The Ghamparva. The green stuff would slow them down, but it might not stop them. He looked around desperately for any escape. There was a brighter patch at the end of the corridor and he pulled Thask toward it, the green billows revealing it to be a window. They were on the second floor above what appeared to be a garden, and a little to the right of the embrasure was a thick, gnarly growth of vines. It wasn't much, but it was better than nothing. “Can you open this window?”

Thask nodded and brought out his control tab. The window slid open easily, and the rush of cold air was a great relief to their raw throats. “Come on,” Lotor said, leaning out and reaching for the vines. “There should be a way back inside down there somewhere, right?”

Thask coughed rackingly, gripping the window frame for support. “Yes. At the far end. Gardener's door. Hurry...”

Lotor scrambled down the vine as quickly as he dared. Thask followed more slowly, breathing ragged and liquid-sounding. He was pale under his fur, and that wasn't good. Lotor himself was feeling faintly dizzy, it hurt to breathe, his eyes were burning, his skin was starting to tingle painfully, and his gut was beginning to ache as he steadied the old man. “Which way?”

Thask pointed a trembling finger at the far wall of the garden, where it butted up against the adjoining wing of the palace. Perhaps a quarter-mile, if one cut through the plantings. “Stay on the paths,” Thask rasped painfully. “Much easier... than cutting through... and it won't upset... the gardeners. Plants here... are much tougher... than they look.”

And would provide some cover, Lotor noted. Whoever had planted this garden seemed to have preferred tall, treelike plants with stiff woody leaves that spread in bunches like clusters of folding fans, and gnarly vinelike growths that flung themselves like cargo nets over artistically-placed stones. Jumbled brambles with finger-long thorns bloomed furiously in drifts and banks along the paths, and here and there stood enormous, twisted, almost leafless growths whose boneless-looking branches draped all over everything, sporting huge starburst white flowers. It was beautiful in an alien sort of way, but it was cold, and the wind whistled through the branches overhead. Lotor started off as quickly as he could while keeping Thask steady on his feet.

They had gone perhaps halfway through this manicured jungle when the air went abruptly still, and their ears popped painfully. A strange clonking like wind chimes made from wood began to fill the air, and they looked up to see the fan-trees folding up their leaves. Flowers all around them were closing and vines and brambles were curling up into tight balls, the big twisted growths were winding their tentacular arms tightly around their trunks and laying themselves down on the ground like giant cable reels. A powerful gust of cold wind nearly knocked them off of their feet, and Thask gasped in fear and pointed at the suddenly visible sky, where huge ominous clouds were boiling up in the sky like ink dropped into water. “Killing storm,” he rasped. “Come! Come this way, quickly!”

Thask took off at a staggering run through the suddenly-clear ground to the right of the path, heading for what looked like a jumble of large rocks. Lotor sped after him, caught him before he fell, and hurried on as a bone-shattering crack-ack-ack-BOOOM of thunder split the air. Icy wind screamed around them and rain came down in buckets an instant later, soaking them to the skin in seconds, the temperature plummeting. They reached the rocks in a chilled, slippery rush through the suddenly shin-deep mud of the flowerbeds, and Thask nearly dropped the control tab into it, his hands were shaking that badly. A door opened in the stone, and they half-fell through it, the stillness and relative quiet coming as a shock after the howling of the storm. It was a garden shed of some sort, Lotor realized, with shelves piled with gardener's essentials and a bin of oddments off to one side. He could hear the wind howling around it, and even hear the rain... no. Not rain. Rain didn't hit with that sharp an impact. That was hail, large hail, balls of ice as big as his fist if he were any judge, and lethal to an unprotected person. He shivered, for it was no warmer in here than it had been out there.

“Take off your suit and hang it to dry,” Thask said, sounding worn and exhausted, but already undoing the fasteners of his own clothing. Lotor noticed that the Ghamparva's knife had nicked him, leaving a long, shallow, bleeding cut just above the collarbone, and a bruise was coloring the arc of one cheekbone. “Find something to dry yourself with. This is a Hakkox shelter and they don't feel the cold, but we mustn't take a chill. More than we have already, anyway.”

Lotor did as he was told, and managed to find a few old yard-waste sacks in the bin. Two of those served to dry them somewhat, and they huddled together for warmth under the third and largest. It was miserable, and Lotor did not feel well at all. His lungs felt as though they had been coated with jellied acid and his throat was raw, he had a cough that shook his bones and his stomach churned greasily, his eyes still burned, his vision spun if he moved his head too quickly, and there was rash forming on his skin that told him that the fire-retardant chemicals weren't good for him. When he coughed, he brought up green-tinted globs of mucus. To distract himself from this situation, he wrapped an arm around Thask's thin shoulders and asked, “Thask? What's a twark egg?”

Thask leaned against him, shivering, but answered, “A twark is a sort of bird. Large, very beautiful, and rare. They lay only one egg in a year, and then leave it. The egg is also beautiful, and when it is kept properly warm, it has an attractive scent that makes other creatures want to keep it for themselves. A twark egg may be coveted and stolen fifty times before it hatches. To say that something is a twark egg is to say that it is something rare and precious, and that everybody who sees it will want it very much. Like that egg, however, one cannot keep it forever.”

Lotor puffed a laugh. “The guards that I overheard talking earlier mentioned that I was one of those. I see that they were right. I hope that your owner is an avid bird-fancier.”

Thask sighed. “So do I. We have broken a number of rules today, Lotor, and I have abused my privileges in ways that I've been specifically told not to. We have made a great deal more work for people who did not deserve that inconvenience... ah, gods, I should have closed that window! There was no time. I saw one of those Ghamparva coming down the hall after us as I climbed onto the vine. It's just as well those vines hadn't gotten their spring pruning yet. As it is, the gardeners are going to be upset at how many shoots were knocked off of it.”

Lotor patted his shoulder comfortingly. “We can hope that the Ghamparva will also suffer his displeasure, can't we? Their actions might excuse ours.”

Thask drew in a shaking breath and coughed rackingly, each paroxysm shaking his bony frame. When Thask lifted his head, Lotor saw a trail of blood at the corner of his mouth. “Somewhat. They were not given leave to be in that part of the palace. They attempted theft. They caused damage. How much else the recorders caught, I don't know. After the storm is done, the Kolkurra will be sent to fetch us. We must not resist them. We will be questioned, and we must answer truthfully. So will the Ghamparva. Only when both parties are heard from and a decision has been reached may we presume to hope. Ah, gods, why this? Why now? I was so close.”

The naked despair in Thask's voice filled Lotor with shame. He had once again acted rashly, and it had once again cost others dearly. He held his companion close, sharing as much of his body heat as he could and listening to the elements raging outside. After a time, he murmured, “When I am Emperor, things will change. I will make sure that no soldier will be declared dead unless he actually is dead, and all captives will be rescued promptly. I will certainly disband the Ghamparva.”

“You will never be Emperor,” Thask said in a dim whisper that chilled Lotor more than the rain had.

“What do you mean?” Lotor said sharply.

Thask shuddered. “There will be no Empire for you to rule. Unrest and rebellion are widespread already, and captive planets are being freed at a rapid pace. The Voltron Coalition is powerful. The Emperor is insane, and cannot govern. The Chashmara Partnership provides great aid to Voltron, and the Hoshinthra have decided to have their vengeance as well.”

“You know about them?” Lotor said, and had to cough again. He shuddered; his lungs felt terrible, each breath thick and gurgling, and what came up out of them when he coughed tasted vile.

“Oh, yes.” Thask shuddered again and laid his head wearily on Lotor's shoulder. “They are known and respected by the Partnership, which is sensible enough to remain on good terms with them. Zarkon destroyed their homeworld and a few colonies five hundred years ago. Not all of the colonies. Not even close. They've remained hidden ever since, allowing the Night Terror to crash around like the mad thing she is, letting our people think that she's the only one left. She is not. She is a five-century-old relic, and all but obsolete. Her people have not been idle, Lotor. They have a whole class of their population that is comprised of genetically-perfected scientific geniuses. They have studied her and her effect upon the cosmos, and they have made improvements. She is very much outclassed by her descendants, and our own warships can barely match her as it is. The Empire will collapse in upon itself upon the death of your father, and the subject peoples will make sure that their former masters will never rise so high again. If my owner is willing to keep you after this foolish escapade, he will release you to pull together what is left if there is no better candidate for the job. You might scrape yourself up a Kingdom, Lotor, but not an Empire. The Empire as we knew it is done.”

Lotor quivered and stared at the bonds on his wrists. No wonder the Ghamparva had wanted him badly enough to attempt a kidnapping! If the Empire fragmented, then every official, general, and governor was going to want his own little fiefdom, and there would be fights over the best ones. Using him, the Ghamparva could have claimed so much for themselves... “Is that true, Thask?”

“The Kraalsada do not waste time on misinformation. They cannot be fooled by mere lies. The Hakkox, Kolkurra, and Phaelrah make sure that all intelligence is confirmed fact before sending it to them. The Kraalsada do not let emotion cloud their judgment, and they can extrapolate future events with almost oracular accuracy. It is all too plain what will happen now, and there is no way to stop it.” Thask pulled in a shaking breath that was more of a sob. “Voltron has promised that our people will not be driven to extinction. That is cold comfort, when you consider how many Galra there are in the universe. Billions could die without threatening our existence. Will die, or spend the rest of their lives in captivity. It will be centuries before we are welcome on any planets other than our own.”

“And yet you choose to stay here?” Lotor asked quietly.

Thask coughed wetly, and spat blood. “I have no choice. I am too old, too broken. I have no home and no family to return to. If the worst happens, I will die in service here, unless someone decides that I should be put down to spare me pain. The last true choice I made for myself was whether or not to join the military. I regret my choice, boy. How I wish that I had never made it!”

Lotor had no answer for that, and so sat in silence, listening to Thask's damaged breathing and the roars of the storm. Eventually, the storm passed off. The rattle of hail gave way to the rush of rain, and then to a patter, and then silence. Even the wind had died down to only a whistle or two around the crags of their stony refuge. It wouldn't be long before the Kolkurra came to collect them. Lotor was stiff, exhausted, half-frozen, and ill, and there were red, flaking lesions forming under his fur that he didn't like the look of. He still had enough pride left to refuse to greet their rescuers while naked, though, and prodded Thask, who had been dozing. “We should probably get dressed.”

Thask grunted, muttered something too muddled to understand, but nodded. Their suits were still damp, clammy and cold, but they pulled them on anyway. Lotor was just helping Thask's chill-clumsy fingers seal up the front catches when the door opened, letting in a rush of cold air, a beam of bright sunlight, and an armored Kolkurra who ordered them out of the shelter. They came quietly, and endured having their hands secured behind them, their feet hobbled, and leashes clipped to their collars; tears cut trails through Thask's thin facial fur but he did not otherwise object.

Someone had cleared the walks of ice, thankfully, and they were led past glittering drifts of hailstones, some as big as Lotor's doubled fists. Despite the furious barrage of such missiles, the garden plants seemed to have taken little damage, and Lotor admired their durability. It was a long, weary march, though, and inside it was little better; they were led into a lift and taken up into a more exalted section of the palace, and then forced to walk down endless halls before they reached the Kraalsi'spersonal study. They hadn't come alone, at least. Lotor's heart lifted to see the Ghamparva here as well, bound and hobbled, but with more conventional restraints and still all in their own clothing. Green-stained clothing, he noted, and there were quite a lot of bruises and bumps visible among them, and all of them looked unwell. They must have put up a fight when the Kolkurra had come to see what all the fuss had been about, but had not as yet been sentenced.

A dry rasp of scales on floor tiles heralded the entrance of the Kraalsi himself, a thirty-foot-long cerulean serpent with four long arms and a head and torso concealed by intricately-patterned hover-curtains. He coiled his long tail up neatly on a floor pad behind a large, semicircular desk and tapped a chime with one finger. A Hakkox—not Elik, but a taller, darker-colored individual bearing a badge of rank and a recorder stepped in, ready to observe the proceedings. Other Hakkox and several Kolkurra also stepped in, standing by for whatever reason, and the prisoners were pushed to their knees on the floor before them. Lotor had enough energy left to smile at the curses and angry snarling of the Ghamparva at this treatment, but they shut up quickly enough when the Kraalsi spoke.

“Silence,” he hissed severely. “This hearing begins. Great disruption of the north wing has happened today, and crimes have been committed against this House. Are all in readiness to observe and to report?”

“We are,” the assembled Hakkox and Kolkurra replied formally. “The Truth shall be known.”

The Phaelrah saluted them, a gesture that was returned, and the four hands folded together, fingers interlacing in a dizzying pattern. “Ghamparva Lieutenant Mikkraz, you will speak first. It has already been recorded that you and your men came to this House to negotiate with me on behalf of your Emperor, and also to seek the purchase of one of my forumna. This previous discussion was not successful for you on either subject. You were told to leave. You did not do so. Why is this?”

The leader of the Ghamparva bared his teeth at the Kraalsi in defiance. “I will not share classified information with an alien. Neither I nor any of my men will tell you anything more than that!”

“You will not answer?” the Kraalsi asked, and received a vehement denial. “Your men will not answer? No? Then you will not be required to do so. You will remain silent, then, and others will answer for you. House Security Chief Branluss, report. What has your Office to say of this?”

One of the Kolkurra stepped forward and spoke in a censorious rumble. “Security recordings reveal interference; the feeds were jammed. Specifically, they were jammed around the suite assigned to the Ghamparva, and the source of the jamming moved to the north service access door. This was opened briefly, as was the access at the bottom of that ramp, and the jamming briefly blanked out the landing on that service level. The jammer then moved back upstairs and west into Storage Room #12, which is where the following disruptions started from. Recordings also revealed one daelbravni and one forumn hiding in one of the storm shelters in the Halsuria Garden without permission; both ear tags have been compromised. I am embarrassed, Kraalsi; I was not aware that a device existed that could circumvent our surveillance systems.”

“These truths are appreciated,” the Kraalsi said with another salute. “House Safety Officer Selbrik, report. What was the nature of the disruptions?”

One of the Hakkox stepped forward and spoke in a stern, fluting voice. “The fire alarm and suppression system was activated in that room, requiring the entire wing to undergo mandatory evacuation procedures. There was no fire. A window at the far end of the back service corridor accessible from that room was left open to the storm, however, which caused some damage. I am embarrassed, Kraalsi;the alarm was triggered with one of the House's own control tabs.”

“These truths are appreciated,” the Kraalsi responded. “House Crisis Management Chief Ustrin, report. What was the extent of the damage?”

Another Kolkurra stepped forward. “Minimal. Minor staining from the fire-suppressant on walls, furniture, and carpets, all of which may be righted by cleaning drones. Numerous complaints from several offices and session rooms for the interruption of business, none more than in the second degree; the storm required them to stay in the saferooms, which have been made comfortable, and so business continued regardless of the upset. Storage Room #12 was apparently the site of some violence; supplies had been knocked off shelves, although apparently not deliberately. A very small device of unknown function was found on the floor, along with three drops of fluid that were determined to be Galra blood. The rear service corridor suffered damage from the weather, and the ilshwen vine on the wall near the window showed damage that did not come from the storm. I am embarrassed, Kraalsi; this should not have been permitted to have happened.”

“These truths are appreciated,” the Kraalsi said. “Chief Gardener Sombarc, report. What damage to the garden was there?”

Another Hakkox stepped forward, nowhere near as annoyed-looking as the others had been. “Nearly none. The vine near the aforementioned window has been used as a ladder and several shoots have been broken off. It will not bloom quite as it should this summer if the weather does not improve soon, but otherwise no harm was done. There is a small mess in the garden shelter where the two bondspersons were hiding, but a few swipes of a broom will fix that.”

“These truths are appreciated,” the Kraalsi said. “Chief Overseer Hoda, report. Why were two of your charges not at their duty?”

A third Hakkox stepped forward. “The daelbravni Thask had been summoned to duty in the upper levels. This duty was completed in a satisfactory manner, and the daelbravni was ordered to return to the service levels. The other, the forumn Lotor, was not at his assigned duty. Kraal Elik reported his absence from the kitchens shortly before the disruption began, and had ascertained the forumn to be near the north admit to the upper levels. He was going to retrieve the forumn when its signature on his tracker vanished, and the forumn was not present when he arrived at the admit. I am embarrassed, Kraalsi; I was not aware that there was a way to compromise the tags.”

“These truths are appreciated,” the Kraalsi intoned raspingly. “Daelbravni Thask, report. What happened?”

Thask hunched his shoulders wretchedly, but lifted pale eyes and blank expression to his owner nonetheless. “Two things, Kraalsi. The forumn Lotor had overheard a pair of guards speaking of events outside this world, and learned that the Empire had sent a delegation to speak with you. He wished to speak with them, and slipped away from his assigned duty to accost me at the north wing admit. He tried to persuade me to take him to them. I refused. He was interrupted by the Ghamparva when he tried more persuasion, who had somehow decoded the locks on the admit doors; I do not know how this was done. They had not been able to buy Lotor from you, so they were intent upon stealing him. One of them struck me when I pleaded with them to abandon their attempt. Lotor attempted to come to my defense and received a shock from his bonds, preventing him from escaping. They deactivated our ear tags with a device that I do not recognize. They took us both to Storeroom #12 against our will. I was made to kneel with a knife at my throat while they attempted to implant that small device into Lotor's brain. It is a control device that would have made him their puppet. I used my control tab to trigger the fire alarm and fire-suppression system in an effort to prevent the implantation, to stop the theft of the forumn Lotor, and to allow us the possibility of escape from the Ghamparva. The blood on the floor is mine. I left the window at the end of the service corridor open when I saw a Ghamparva approaching, but could not spare a hand to work the control tab, lest I should fall. Lotor and I climbed down the vine. I accessed the garden shelter when I saw the storm approaching. I am embarrassed, Kraalsi; I could not think of any other solution to the problem.”

“These truths are appreciated,” the Kraalsi said again, and then turned his attention to Lotor. “Forumn Lotor, report. What happened?”

Lotor swallowed against a sick feeling in his stomach that was not entirely due to the chemicals and weather that he'd been exposed to, and reported his actions in the same clipped manner as Thask had, expanding a little on the political ramifications if the Ghamparva had succeeded. “They would have used me as a tool, both in my Father's service and then later against him, and would have used my credentials to claim certain very large, rich portions of the Empire for their own, once the Emperor was out of the way. I do not know whether they intended to use me as an assassin or to let the Paladins put an end to him. I suspect that they intended to use me as a puppet king, allowing me to be the face of the government while they pulled my strings in the background. It is very possible that I would have been permitted this mockery of a reign until I had produced an heir of my own, and then I would have been killed in favor of that new puppet. Thask warned me of this, and I let my desire for freedom cloud my reason. I am embarrassed, Kraalsi;I should have thought before I acted.”

“These truths are appreciated,” the Phaelrah responded, and then made a gesture with all four hands, as if gathering many scattered things into a pile on the desk before him. “The truths that have been spoken at this hearing are as the pieces of a single puzzle. I am pleased that this judgment is simple. It occurs to me that something about this whole event is suspect, thus I will ask the Chief of External Intelligence for further information. I do not recall receiving any reports from your office that any ship of the Empire had been given leave to travel within Partnership space. Were the permits by which the Ghamparva Captain obtained access to this world legitimate?”

Something dark stirred in a patch of shadow by a wall tapestry, and Lotor realized that a midnight-blue Phaelrah had been lurking there the whole time. “They were not, Kraalsi,” it said sharply. “The permits were originally the property of an unarmed Gramussa trade ship. The ship was reported missing nine days ago and was presumed lost. The permits were altered slightly to fit the Ghamparva ship's description. We inferred from this that the Ghamparva are responsible for the loss. The Gramussa ship, identified as the Gemalk Sura, was found later, looted and destroyed with no known survivors. Our investigation into that was interrupted by unprovoked attacks carried out against us by an unknown fleet. This fleet was later confirmed to be Galra. We were delayed in delivering this information because of this. I am embarrassed, Kraalsi, that circumstances permitted this upset to occur.”

“These truths are appreciated, delayed or no,” the Kraalsi observed with another salute. “Therefore, the cause becomes plain. To further their own ambitions in their native political sphere, the organization known as Ghamparva has committed these crimes against the Partnership, my assigned territory, Partnership members under my authority, my House, and my person: Unlawful and unnecessary theft from and destruction of a trade ship belonging to a valued ally. Unprovoked murder of the trade ship's crew and passengers. Illegal trespass upon this territory. Illegal access to this world's starport. Illegal access to this House. Illegal access to my office. Illegal disruption of House security. Attempted theft of two valued servants. Property damage, both to those servants and to the House. Resisting arrest. The penalty is enslavement. Bond and tag them, see that they receive treatment for chemical exposure, and then put them up for sale as unskilled industrial-grade workers. I will not have them in this House. Their ship is to be delivered to the Science Corps for study.”

Lotor watched in grim satisfaction as the Ghamparva were dragged protesting loudly away, but the hearing wasn't over quite yet. “What shall I do with you, Thask?” the Kraalsirasped quietly.

Thask whimpered. “Please, Kraalsi, I--” his words were lost in another bout of coughing, and red-purple blood spattered onto the tiles. Gasping, Thask was barely able to stay upright.

The Phaelrah vented a soft whistle, possibly his equivalent of a sigh. “Thask, you followed the only course of action open to you. This is nothing to be ashamed of. You have already paid for your transgressions in blood. I find that I must add time to your bond, alas, for the sake of the damage that was done. Fifteen days should do it.”

Thask quivered and bowed his head. “I am grateful for this judgment, Kraalsi.”

“Yes.” One long hand indicated Lotor. “Forumn, as annoying as the Ghamparva were on the public levels, they would have been disastrous if they had chased you through the service levels. Far too much of import lies down there to risk. That your foolish actions kept this upset from becoming worse than a mere inconvenience was more the work of serendipity than strategy, however, and some punishment is in order. You and Thask will have your ear tags replaced, and you will be given treatment for your injuries. After that, Lotor, you will present yourself to Kraal Elik and inform him that you are his personal charge for ten days. You will serve Elik most faithfully for those ten days. You will not slip away from your assigned duty again. You understand?”

Lotor was too weary to object. “Yes, Kraalsi.I am grateful for this judgment.”

“Very good. Let action be taken to ensure that further embarrassment does not happen. Kolkurra, please take these two to the service-level infirmary and inform the Kraalo of what has happened. This hearing is closed. I appreciate mightily the efforts of all those who came to observe, and to speak.”

The various household officials bowed and said in unison, “We appreciate the Kraalsi'sefforts also.”

Thask was lifted gently into the arms of one guard, and when Lotor's legs collapsed beneath him when he tried to stand, another picked him up as well. He laid his head against the guard's armored shoulder and let his mind drift as he was carried along, and barely registered it when he was stripped, cleansed, and had his ear tag replaced. He certainly noticed the medicines he was given, for they tasted foul and made his head swim, but after that the cot with its warming blankets and the cup of hot broth that was spooned into him took up all of his attention. A glance to one side, once the cup was empty, revealed that Thask had been sealed into a healpod. Lotor remembered the blood that had spattered onto the floor and couldn't help but admire the old man's courage. Thask had known that his throat might have been slit, and what those chemicals would do to him, but had released them all the same to save the man who had been responsible for his captivity on this world. He owed Thask, owed him far more than he would ever be able to repay, if only because the old man had forgiven him enough to act. Lotor heaved a long sigh with a wince for his still-raw throat, burrowed deeper into his cocoon of blankets, and fell asleep.

Lotor came awake sometime later, feeling limp and vague and sore, but warm. And in need of a trip to the sanitary unit. The Phaelrah doctor had been given Tannok as an aide that day, and the furry crewman steadied his wobbling steps without comment when he rose to relieve himself. As brief as that trip had been, Lotor was pitifully grateful to be tucked back into his cot, and would have thanked Tannok if he hadn't started coughing first. A wet, tearing cough that yielded green mucus when he spat into the square of sterile fabric that Tannok offered him.

“Yuck,” Tannok grumbled, placing the fabric carefully in a sample bag. “Doc'll be back in a minute to have a look at that, and then it's another round or two of meds to clear that up. That fire-suppressant's nasty stuff. At least she caught the rash in time, or you'd be all over sores. As it is, you'll be laid out for another day or three, she says.”

Lotor nodded, concentrating on his breathing, secretly grateful for the rest. “What is she doing?”

“Looking after those Ghamparva.” Tannok made a sign to ward off evil. “Clinic's got a high-security ward. She's got that bunch strapped down tight while their lungs clear and the rash heals up. One of 'em caught a stream of the stuff right in the face and might lose an eye. Want breakfast? It's only porridge, but it's fresh-made.”

Suddenly, that sounded wonderful. “Yes, please.”

Tannok wandered away and came back a few minutes later with a bowl and a glass of water, which Lotor attacked with enthusiasm. Tannok nodded in satisfaction at the speed by which the meal vanished. “Good appetite. Doc'll be pleased. You two did the best you could do for your health, she says, by getting to fresh air as quick as you did, and the rain sluiced off the worst of the chemicals.”

Lotor put the bowl aside and snuggled back down into his blankets, reveling in the warmth. “The Ghamparva are worse off, I take it. When will Thask come out of the healpod?”

Tannok sighed. “That poor old guy's a mess inside and out, Prince. Two more days at least, and then two more cuddled up in a cot. Try not to get him into any more adventures, all right? His body just can't take it. If we could get a witch with the Healing touch in... nah. Not gonna happen. Any lady with power and the smarts to keep Haggar from grabbing her won't be silly enough to wind up here.”

Lotor could not dispute the truth of that. Before he could speak again, a dry rasp of scales on the floor heralded the looming blue shape of the Phaelrah medic. “Ah,” she said to Tannok, “you have fed him?”

“Yes'm, and took him to the restroom,” Tannok reported, “he can walk okay if he's got someone to lean on, he didn't have any trouble in the unit, and his appetite's good. Nothing came back up, so his belly's not upset.”

A long-fingered, dusty-blue hand descended to touch Lotor's face very lightly. “Very good,” the medic rasped. “The prognosis is satisfactory. Recovery proceeds well. KraalElik has been warned not to jeopardize that. You will come back to me if the rash or the cough persists. You have the sample, Tannok?”

Tannok handed her the sample bag, which the medic took and slithered off with. Tannok watched her go, then canted a curious look at Lotor. “Elik was kind of upset when you sneaked out of the kitchen. We could've really used your help. Elik left to look for you, but never came back. What happened?”

Lotor described what the Kraalsi had termed an “upset” between coughing fits, and when he finished, he was as weary as if he'd been through the whole escapade a second time. Tannok vented a low, impressed whistle and pulled the blankets a little closer around him. “Wow. That explains a lot. Not having the Emperor around is going to be weird. Even if he never figured very largely in most folks' lives, he was always just sort of there, you know?”

Lotor opened one eye and gave Tannok a dirty look. “That, and the Empire collapsing into chaos.”

“That thought's too big for me to think it right now,” Tannok replied darkly. “I have to creep up on it in bits. Leonar wants me for another grooming session after Doc lets me go, so I'll do my thinking then. Palku'll want you after Elik's ten days are up, by the way.”

Lotor closed his eye and nodded, and was surprised to find himself yearning for the comfort of the Kolkurra's embrace. “I will no doubt be pleased to indulge her by then. Let me sleep, Tannok. I am so very tired.”

“Not just yet, here comes Doc with your dose.”

Tannok stood aside and let the medic pour a mouthful of something sharp-tasting and bitter down Lotor's throat. Not as bad as the first time, Lotor noticed, although it still made him feel as though his head was full of seawater, and he drifted off on that private ocean into the dark depths of sleep.

Lotor wound up spending an extra day in his cot due to an incipient pneumonia that had tried to take up residence in his lungs. That was all right, he thought, because Thask joined him in the next cot over, weak but recovering. His breathing sounded much better, too, which cheered Lotor up somewhat. He was also willing to talk, which was a very good sign.

“We got off very lightly,” he murmured at one point, “my owner is strict, but is an understanding sort. He is highly respected among the Kraalsada for that.”

“And among his own Household,” Lotor murmured back, remembering the sincerity with which the House officials saluted their superior. “I don't think that I've ever seen a criminal case dealt with so quickly before.”

“Justice,” Thask sighed, settling himself deeper in his blankets, “is one of a Kraalsi's most important duties. Things like the Ghamparva are anathema to him. I expect that he was well-pleased to be able to neutralize that little group. I do not begrudge him those fifteen extra days on my bond if my actions contributed to that.”

Lotor stared thoughtfully at the ceiling for a time. “You love him, don't you?” he asked eventually.

“I do,” Thask replied without hesitation. “As much as I have ever loved family or friends, and in much the same way as a pet belkar loves its owner. I am not ashamed of this. I do not fear my owner. I fear disappointing him, and do my best to avoid doing so. Laugh if you like, boy, but there it is.”

“There's nothing to laugh at,” Lotor reassured him.

He'd had a belkar once when he was very small. It had been a gift from his mother, and he had loved the fluffy little animal dearly and was sure that it had loved him back. Unconditional love was something of a specialty of belkars, and he found that he still missed his pet. Ye gods, how long had it been since that little furball had gone to its rest? He hadn't had time for pets after his mother had left, unless one counted his serving-women...

He drifted in and out of a doze for a time, dreaming of nothing much, until an unfamiliar voice drew him out of his half-slumber. Two voices. Three? One was Tannok's deep rumble, sounding surprised and faintly awed. One was the dry rasp of the medic, speaking in the short, clipped sentences she used when annoyed about something. The third was the stranger, its tone and timbre marking it as a Galra voice, being calm and persuasive.

“--the Kraalsi has given me leave, or I wouldn't be here,” it was saying, “not after that incident a few days ago. Check with him, if you like.”

“I will do that thing,” the medic hissed, and there was a sound of scales rasping over tile.

“Sorry, sir, but the folks here take that sort of thing seriously,” he heard Tannok say.

There was a faint grunt of acknowledgment from the stranger. “That's quite all right. I'd be wary, too.”

A minute or two later the medic returned. “You are indeed permitted. You will not touch the patients. You will not upset or tire them. You will have your discussion and then you will go. The Kolkurra are aware of your presence here.”

There was a snort of amusement. “I'm sure that they are, and I have no intention of trying my skills against theirs. I have something for you as well, Kraalo. A message from Kraalta Lizenne in reply to the Kraalsi's request.”

“Why did you not say that before?” there was guarded interest and suspicion in that question, and eagerness, Lotor thought.

“The Kraalta is an ally of ours, and valued highly, but she is not my own commanding officer. His orders must be fulfilled first, therefore, and anything else is secondary. I'm a Courier, Kraalo.”

“Ah. The logic emerges. This way, then. Tannok, you will fetch the Courier a chair.”

Tannok scampered past a moment later, toe-claws clacking on the floor, and returned with one of the sturdy folding seats that the Kolkurra used. He opened his eyes to see a dark-armored figure struggling with the oversized chair, forcing the thing to unfold properly and finding that it was too large for him. He sat in it anyway, looking like a child in costume in his father's seat, feet dangling several inches off of the floor. “Well met, your Highness,” he said with a wry smile for their awkward positions.

“Perhaps,” Lotor replied cautiously, eyeing the man's outfit. “You're a Blade of Marmora, aren't you? Pardon me if I don't sit up; greeting your opposite number tired me out.”

The Blade made a dismissive gesture. “Yes. They do lack manners, don't they? We've been trying to teach them circumspection for centuries, but they're remarkably dense. By all means, be comfortable. I have been absolutely forbidden to harm you, or even to excite you, by more people than I care to count today. You were injured, we were told.”

Lotor nodded, wondering where this was going. “Mostly by misadventure. It could have been much worse.”

“I've seen the Ghamparva in the other ward.” The Blade grimaced in distaste. “You and your friend were very lucky.”

Lotor sighed. “That, I will concede. Get to the point, man. Why are you here? Have you come to buy, sell, or gloat?”

The Blade chuckled. “Personally? To check up on you. Officially? To dicker with your Kraalsi over certain important matters. Since we needed to speak to that worthy anyway, I got sent down here to have a look at you... and to tell you some things. We might need you later, you see.”

Lotor narrowed his eyes at the Blade. “In what way? The Ghamparva have already tried to turn me into their puppet.”

The Blade waved a soothing hand. “Not like that. Somebody already suggested that, and was shouted down by everyone present. As many enemies as you have made, there are things that the more important of them won't do. Refreshing, I feel. The simple fact is that you need to be kept safe and out of sight for a time, Prince. Your Imperial father is going entirely insane, and certain power groups have begun to plot their own moves to take advantage of that upcoming power vaccuum. Nothing brings the ambitious out of the woodwork like a ruler on the verge of self-destructing, and even his witch can't handle them all. They already are moving against each other, and all of Zarkon's descendants are either in hiding, dead, or in the clutches of those seeking to use their legitimacy for their own gain.”

“You want your own candidate, don't you?” Lotor asked.

The Blade tried to lean back in the chair and nearly fell over backward. He caught himself on one arm of the chair and glared at it before answering, “We already have one, but it's good to have a backup. Even if he does come out on top, he'll need help.”

There was a surprised grunt from Thask, who had been very still and silent up until now. “Who?” the old man asked.

The Blade craned his neck to see who had spoken, and Lotor was surprised to see the bland features take on a shading of pity. He hadn't known that the Marmorans were capable of that. “Kelezar,” he replied. “He's become one of our Order, so he'll be a bit harder to assassinate or kidnap than the rest.”

Lotor drew in a sharp breath, fought down a cough, and choked out, “Kelezar is dead! He committed treason against the Empire, and was handed off to Haggar and her Druids! They killed him—they had to have, for no one ever saw him alive again!”

The Blade leaned an elbow on the arm of the chair and smirked, not at Lotor, but at the middle distance. “Not quite. Not all the way. They turned him into a monster—a mindless, oversized gladiator-slave with no will of his own and then gave him to one of his many useless royal cousins as a plaything. He was eventually pitted against the red Paladin, who happens to be a Purifactor of great strength, and that young man burned him clean of hexes. Kelezar was dead in all the ways that really counted, yes; the Paladin brought him back to life and rendered him immune to further curses. It's come in handy several times already.”

Lotor reflected that there must have been a number of Druids that had been fatally surprised by this. “So, you mean to leave me here, enslaved?”

“We don't have much of a choice.” The Blade flicked a finger at the ceiling. “Your Kraalsi has flatly refused to sell you to anybody, including us. Be flattered, Prince. Yantilee offered a king's ransom in gems for you, if only to see us jump. The Kraalsi has his own agenda, and his own schedule; he intends to offer you a bondservice contract, and your best course of action will be to accept it. Not only will it guarantee you protections that you do not have now, it is the only way that you can regain your freedom in this society—both legally and actually. You will be released, yes, but not before that canny old serpent has taught you a few things about how to properly run a government.”

Lotor blinked. “You will not even think of breaking the rules, then?”

The Blade gave him an exasperated look. “They're our allies, Prince. Very valuable allies. So valuable, in fact, that both of the black Paladins have threatened to beat the first man who suggests it to death with a wet shoelace. A ridiculous threat, perhaps, but they sounded very serious about it. Serious enough to send us along with a gift.”

The Blade reached into a pouch and brought out a small bottle of rose-amber liquid and a data chip. “You had already been taken away at the time, but the Kraalsi wished to see the Lions once your hearing was done. During that viewing, he mentioned that he had an elderly Galra servant in chronically poor health, a condition brought on by abuse, neglect, and active malice that occurred before his addition to this Household. Since the Kraalsitakes the well-being of his servants very much to heart, Lizenne accepted his request for a cure, and brewed up an elixir that would help to clear some of that up. She even added a little extra, that the Kraalo might feel free to analyze a sample.”

“Be sure that I shall,” the medic said, lifting the bottle and chip neatly out of the Blade's hand. “What is it brewed from?”

The Blade smiled at the medic's eagerness. “I only know a little. Sintra nectar from the color of it, possibly extract of hantic leaf, and a number of other things that I couldn't pronounce, much less identify. You do realize that my superiors will probably use the lure of such pharmaceuticals to coax the Partnership into allowing them a better trade status?”

The medic waved a couple of hands dismissively. “This is a well-known tactic. Used properly, it is mutually beneficial. I will return shortly. You will not upset my patients.”

“Of course not,” the Blade replied calmly.

A small, awkward silence descended as the medic slithered back to herlab. Tannok fidgeted nervously, and then blurted, “Did you ask about buying any of the rest of us?”

The Blade nodded. “We did. Your Kraalsi intends to hang on to all of you like grim death. He is absolutely determined to get good results out of all of you, and you'll stay in his possession until he has done so. The same goes for the other ninety men currently in training in the Houses of his associates; I'm told that they're doing no worse than your group, by the way. Unfortunately, the Empire has listed all of you as dead, and I am sorry for that.”

Tannok's shoulders sagged a little, but he shook his head and straightened them. “Kind of thought they would. Um... I hate to ask this, sir, but can we trust anything you've said?”

The Blade gave him a warm smile. “That's a puzzle, isn't it? On the one hand, I have no solid proof to show you. On the other hand, a Phaelrah can spot a lie a mile away. We tested that with the Kraalsi, whom I believe rather enjoyed the game.”

“My owner enjoys games,” Thask said dimly. “Riddles, especially. He would welcome a clever sparring partner. Ah, gods, a gift? For me? I can't remember the last time I received one. What is the Witch Lizenne like, Blade, and be sure that the Kraalo, as well as House Security, is listening in.”

“That's only to be expected.” The Blade smiled wistfully. “She is not a conventional beauty. She's tall, and stands taller. She's of the blood of Galran Prime and has the old strength of its people, although in a way that the Namturans might recognize better than the rest of us. She wields the golden Power.”

“Tahe Moq,” Thask whispered. “A children's tale. Real?”

“Quite real; she's fired enough of it at me, during training sessions to make me able to fight Druids.” His face twisted in distaste. “Vile creatures. As is proper, she is strong and commanding, and yet loves her man and her adopted nieces and nephews very much. She travels with two dragons, who are powers in their own right. She has mercy for the injured, and no patience at all for the cruel. We admire her, and with good reason. She carries a bone spear.”

Thask choked in surprise, and Lotor nodded grimly. His mother, also a native of Namtura, had told him the ancient tales of others who had carried such weapons. Even today, no Galra would make or even consider making a bone spear without very good reason, and only if they had a foe that only the weapon of the God of Death would serve to strike down. He knew very well that the witch had declared Kheshveg against Haggar and his father, and that the bite of that spear had left wounds in his sire that went deeper than mere physical injury.

“Ah, gods,” Thask whispered thinly. “Kuphorosk writes the future of the Empire in blood with such an implement, if only it can reach its destined inkwell. Pray that his script is merciful.”

“Every day, old man,” the Blade replied fervently. “Lizenne is prideful, and arrogant, and tends to act rashly if something she values is threatened. Her man Modhri does his best, but there are limits.”

“May he be as wise as the First,” Thask said quietly.

“He is.” The Blade sat back a little more carefully this time. “I'd nominate him as a candidate for the Throne myself, but he'd probably hit me. He's got this hands full with managing his own household. Being uncle to the Paladins is quite enough excitement for him.”

Lotor was saved from having to comment on that by the medic's return. From her stance and gestures, she seemed very excited. “The elixir may be safely used. There are beneficial chemical compounds present that are known to Partnership medical science, but are rare and very difficult to synthesize. This was derived from natural products?”

The Blade nodded. “Insofar as I'm aware. Lizenne tends to prefer to use things found in nature.”

“Can it be said where she found them?” the medic pressed, handling the bottle as though it contained something sacred.

Perhaps it did, Lotor mused. To a dedicated practitioner of medical science, a new remedy for old problems might well be worth venerating.

“The planet of Zampedri,” the Blade replied, but raised a warning finger. “I warn you, that world is a wild place, and has its own people, and is well-defended. You would have to deal with them, and very politely too, to obtain samples for study. Before you ask, yes, my Order has formed a pact with them, and no, we are not permitted to sell to others what we obtain from there.”

The Phaelrah hissed sharply. “I will speak to the Kraalsi of this. I will also compose a message to Kraalta Lizenne that you will carry to her for me. The substance in this bottle alone represents untold millions of lives saved.”

“We're aware, and I will carry your message.” The Blade leaned forward and smiled gently at the agitated medic. “To tell you the truth, we've barely scratched the surface of their natural pharmacopoeia ourselves, and would welcome a scientific partner with the kind of skills that the Phaelrah can bring to bear. If the natives will permit such an endeavor, it would serve us both well.”

“That you abide by the wishes of the natives is reassuring,” the medic said, slithering around to Thask's cot and coaxing him into sitting up. “The Kraalta's message informed me that this elixir is to be administered orally, in one treatment. You will drink this, Thask.”

Thask complied, and lay back with a sigh of pleasure. “That tastes nice,” he said in a voice that was already slightly stronger. “Sweet, and spicy. I cannot quite name the flavor.”

The medic studied the bottle thoughtfully for a moment, then went over to a nearby stand where an urn of distilled water was kept. A little of that was added to the bottle, shaken vigorously, and then Lotor found himself being propped up and the dilution poured down his throat. The flavor was indeed pleasant, although he would have liked some warning first.

The Blade merely nodded and slid down from the chair. “That should have both of them back on their feet in good order. Kindly compose your message, Kraalo, that I might deliver it to the Kraalta for you. Hopefully, this visit will yield results that will please everybody.”

“Indeed,” the medic said a little distractedly; she'd pulled out a scanner and was running it over Thask. “You are eager to make friends, Courier.”

The Blade dipped an ironic bow. “My Order spent centuries in isolation, hunted relentlessly by the Empire and unable to trust any but our own. Our pact with Voltron has changed that, and now we are making up for lost time.”

“The Five-Are-One is a mighty protector,” the medic observed. “You did well to approach it. Perhaps this time it will not make the mistake of submitting itself to a sovereign authority. You will please wait for a time while I compose a message.”

The Blade did that, then took the Kraalo's message and vanished, leaving the three Galra at the mercy of the medic, who was very intent on watching their progress all of a sudden. Tannok spent the next several hours fetching, positioning, and carrying sampling and diagnostic equipment. Even Tannok had samples taken; Lotor suspected that the poor fellow was being used as the control group in this study. Despite all the fuss, Lotor noticed one thing; diluted though his dose of the elixir had been, his throat no longer felt raw.

Chapter Text

Chapter 17: A Short Rest, If Somewhat Unmannerly

“Your Lion,” Lizenne said some time later, “is a showoff.”

“Mrph,” Allura acknowledged, somewhat muffled by the lelosha wrap she was devouring.

Lizenne had indeed brought along the promised crate of food, and not only were the Paladins making deep inroads into the contents, but so were Erantha and Kevaah. They'd fought a Druid, too, after all, and needed to refuel. Kolivan had also sent along cleanup teams, who had cleared away the surviving enemy, a large amount of wreckage, and a great deal of wet sand. Unfortunately, they had no idea of how to deal with the wormhole, and they did not dare move the Station until it was safely closed. Soluk had also tagged along, and was observing the shimmering wormhole with considerable interest.

“I'll admit that it's very impressive,” the Galra witch continued, “theoretically, these things can be any size at all, but you simply don't see them this small in nature. Or by artifice.”

Allura took a sip from her beverage packet and gave her aunt a curious look. “You've studied the Castle's drive?”

“Insofar as I was able to,” Lizenne admitted. “I've had Coran and Tenric walk me through the system, but It's not my area of expertise. It's an elegant and efficient mechanism for boosting aetheric power, but it relies very heavily on Balmeran crystals, and nobody has ever been able to replicate those with any success. If we had, the Empire would not still be stripping every Balmera they can catch. There is a reason why they are rarely seen these days, you know.”

“I'll have to have a talk with Shay about that sometime,” Hunk said, frowning. “How are they doing, anyway? I haven't seen her in years.”

“Your Balmera has found a comfortable orbit around a remote star in the Coriades Cluster,” Erantha said. “It did not like its brush with death, and has decided to keep well out of our way. As far as the Blade is aware, the Balmerans are doing as well as can be expected.”

“That's fine,” Shiro said. “They've done their part, and I'd rather not risk an endangered species. But can you offer us any tips on how to get rid of this thing? We need to leave soon, and nobody wants to see what happens when you take a wormhole through another wormhole.”

“I've done that before, sort of,” Allura said, looking around dubiously at the purple walls of the room. “In the Castle, well before you joined us, Lizenne. It was terribly risky, even though the Castle is designed to withstand that sort of thing. This Station... isn't. It isn't really designed to go anywhere at all.”

Lizenne shrugged. “I can't do a thing. This is Lion's work. Your Lion. Bully him a little, if asking nicely doesn't work.”

Shiro and Allura glanced at each other, but didn't know what else to do. They focused on their bond with the black Lion, who was still, for want of a better term, purring over his accomplishment. They tried logic; after all, the Quintessence was badly needed on hundreds of worlds, and they couldn't get to it with that wormhole in the way.

The reply from Black was: Purrrrrrr...

They tried asking nicely. Yes, it was a very remarkable achievement and it fit very neatly into the doorframe, and the little time-skip was inspired. Now, would he please take it down?

Purrrrrrrrr...

They tried bullying him, threatening to let Pidge set recordings of pop music into his sound system again, but they soon found that they had nothing worse to menace him with. Allura tried to scold and Shiro tried to lecture, but it all fell rather flat in the mind of a techno-magical construct that simply did not care what mortals thought most of the time.

Purrrrrrr...

Shiro sighed and glared inwardly at the recalcitrant Lion, who was doing the giant-robot equivalent of sitting in a doorway and grinning. “Black, that's a very cat thing you're doing. Lizenne, this isn't working.”

Before she could reply, Soluk let out a snort and spoke a long string of grunts, whistles, crackles, and gronks. Surprisingly, they felt a flicker of embarrassment from the black Lion, and the wormhole shimmered and vanished.

Allura stared at the dragon, who returned it with an enigmatic one of his own. “What did he say?”

Lizenne shrugged. “I'm not sure. Their language has numerous dialects and modes, and that was one of the ones that I'm not all that familiar with. As far as I can tell, he said something along the lines of 'Bad Kitty'.”

Soluk chortled, and Allura rubbed at her eyes with an exasperated huff. “Lovely,” she muttered, and then approached the door with a determined look on her face, her hand dipping into her lunchbox. She drew out the flat, ring-shaped key and pressed it into the socket, and Hunk let out a brief whoop of triumph when the purple lights flickered and went blue. The door opened with all the ponderous dignity that a dread portal should possess, and then nobody felt like cheering at all.

“Ancients!” Allura blurted in horror, as well she might.

There were hundreds of massive jars full of golden fluid held in there, and hundreds more of the smaller canisters of purified and concentrated Quintessence, and that was just this first room; the Druids hadn't had a chance to put the recent shipment away.

Keith let out a long whistle. “And I thought Clarence's stash was big. Wow. How many worlds did these come from?”

“Too many,” Kevaah said quietly, picking a bit of paslen out of his teeth. “Always too many. It is a galaxy-wide addiction, and addicts will kill to get what they want most.”

“Truth, my nephew,” Lizenne said, glaring at the canisters. “Our work here is done, and the Blade is anxious to get this Station to their safe spot. Let's get back to the Castle, so that all of you--” she raked the group with a penetrating look, “--can tell me what you did earlier. I've never heard that much noise on the aetheric plane, and you've probably deafened every sensitive in the Sector.”

Shiro gave her a sheepish smile. “It was necessary, and we learned some important things from it. Right, right, sorry. Come on, guys, let's get going.”

“...and that's pretty much all there was to it,” Shiro finished up some time later, and sipped his tea; these after-battle conferences were starting to become a habit, he mused, and it was one that he couldn't disapprove of. “I'm just surprised that the Lions didn't actually kill anything but the cyborgs.”

Lizenne nodded. “I suspect that your own minds influence theirs significantly, and you're used to thinking of us as friends and family. More to the point, you're used to thinking of us as people, and not just as the mindless mechanical puppets of a tyrannical regime.”

Coran sniffed primly. “We Alteans never forget that the other fellow is a person, either. Mostly never, anyway. Why do you think we stressed diplomacy so much? It's ever so much easier to deal with one's friends, you know, the parties are much more fun that way, and you only rarely have to worry about someone poisoning your drink.”

“Your people evolved from something more like a herd animal,” Lizenne said with a self-depreciating wave of one hand. “Humans came from a trouping omnivore, and we Galra are pack predators all the way back to the beginning; somewhere in there is our common ancestor, which seems to have been a suspicious bastard of the first water. 'Us versus Them' is written in our genes. It's a major failing in both peoples.”

“We're working on that,” Hunk said. “Anyway, what's next? After Pidge and I get Shomakti rebuilt, I mean. It's a good station, plenty of scope there for awesome, it just needs an engine, a warp drive, and a little redecorating. And a new AI. The one they've got running the place now is a jerk.”

“It's a standard Imperial model, and will recognize only Erantha and Kevaah at this time,” Kolivan said with a faint frown, as if having that particular pair of agents in charge of such a big installation worried him. “We are still searching for Jasca's siblings, but our ancient predecessors did their best to hide them well. In the meantime, the Empire will be frantic to defend the other Quintessence stockpiles; we will let them waste their efforts on that for now. We must take this time to expand our base, gather resources, and make new allies.”

Keith knocked a fist on the table. “Liberate planets, talk nice with other rebel groups, and maybe coax in some more of those Fringe worlds, like Valenth. How are they doing, by the way?”

Kolivan's expression lightened a bit. “We are not the only ones to have seen Valenth's potential as a trade hub. There has been a great deal of interest, and other marginal colonies have sent agents and observers to watch the changes being made. I will admit to being somewhat in awe of Modhri's kin at times; they refuse to allow the local population to be exploited or cheated of their share.”

Modhri smiled. “We've been held captive and exploited for eons and know what it feels like. My people have very strong opinions about that sort of thing, and will teach our skills to anyone who wishes to learn.”

“And the people of Valenth are determined to learn from them.” Kolivan turned thoughtful eyes on Allura. “It progresses, and progresses well, but any profit to the Coalition still rests in the future. For now, we will require your skills, Princess. We have made it known that the Paladins possess a large number of important cultural treasures, and they must be returned. We are currently negotiating a place and a time.”

“The Ghamparva loot!” Lance said. “I'd almost forgotten about that stuff!”

Kolivan held up one hand in warning. “This will not be an easy task. Many of those peoples are allies of the Empire, or are very afraid of the Emperor's wrath, or have carried grudges against each other for centuries. At least six of them have been blaming each other for the theft of those treasures for years, and are having too much fun spitting at each other to stop. Others are theocracies and will demand precedence over the others, and there are several whose cultures are simply incompatible with those of their neighbors.”

Allura smiled. “That sounds familiar. Mother often had to host conclaves of that nature, and was an expert at managing such meetings. Father tried to attend when he could, but he and his team were kept so very busy. Mother was always furious when he was called away in the middle of the festivities, and once dealt out a scolding that reduced a Thramponi Delegate to tears when surs people caused one of those sudden disasters.”

Coran nodded sadly. “He was always very sorry about that sort of thing. Old Alfor often found it very hard to be a king and a hero at the same time, and the pressure of both jobs was tremendous. Couldn't give up one or the other, he was needed too much in both, and poor Melenor was stuck doing both his job and her own half the time. Magnificent woman. Nobody could organize a dinner-and-dance like she could.”

“I helped wherever I could,” Allura added, “and I'm pleased to say that I was fairly good at mediating disputes. Mother had great hopes for my future. I expect that you have the necessary information about the peoples involved, Kolivan? Anything the Castle has will be dreadfully out of date.”

There was respect in his eyes when he handed her a data card. “This contains the necessary cultural and societal data, but further study is advised. Some of those peoples are very volatile, and must be approached with care.”

“We will do our best,” Allura promised, activating the card and studying the list of peoples. “Pidge? I may have questions for you—you spent half a decaphebe aboard the Quandary among one of the most diverse crews possible, and you'll know more than I will.”

Pidge shrugged. “Maybe. We had a lot more of the scum-and-villainy types than we had of the upper crust. There's a lot of difference between street and palace, you know. Ronok would know more than I do—he was with them for years, and a lot of those peoples have laws about which castes and classes can eat what foods, and how those foods are cooked.”

Hunk's eyes lit up. “Let's get him in to do the catering, all right? Seriously, I want to talk to him again. The last batch of pocket-bread dough I made nearly got away from me, and I want some tips.”

“Yeah, and seeing a Galra doing servant's work will probably give those guys the warm fuzzies, too,” Lance said.

“Only some of them,” Pidge said, waving a finger at him. “Dariloos, NidNid-Horai, Pobps, and Glorits really, really respect cooks, and they may get grumpy about having him around. We had one Glorit aboard for a while who was thringit-class, and she wouldn't eat anything he'd cooked. Well, except for his purnit lospa. That's really hard for even the best Glorit cooks to do right, and he can do it blindfolded.”

“Galra have a natural advantage,” Modhri said with a smile. “Glorits can't see into the infrared spectrum like we can, which makes exact temperature control difficult for them. Simadhi eyes are particularly sensitive.”

“Interesting,” Shiro said, frowning at the list. “Let's start reading up on these people. The more we know about them, the better, and if we can persuade the ones who have those abilities to work with the ones who don't...”

Kolivan glanced at Lizenne, who gave him the smug smile of an aunt with a clutch of particularly smart nieces and nephews. Satisfied, he took his leave; he had much work to do.

“Aaaaiiieeeep!” Neline shrieked, swatting angrily at Erantha.

The fierce little cub had of course insisted on finding her favorite big brother the moment he returned from duty, and had seen how tired he was, and how much fur he'd lost, and how badly torn his suit had been...and had smelled his blood. It was only to be expected for her to draw the conclusion that Erantha had gotten him into trouble, and Neline did not approve. She certainly didn't like the scars on his shoulder, breast, and side, for all that they were fading quickly.

He was currently lying flat on the red couch, resting while his baby sister fetched him cookies two-by-two from the big jar: one for her and one for him, to be shared as siblings should. Oh, he'd had an enormous meal after coming back, and a solid night's sleep, but fighting Druid poison had put a strain on his system that was taking longer to resolve than more conventional toxins did. He was clean, though, the Matriarch and the Paladins had checked. They had told him to rest, and so he was resting, but not without company. Erantha was leaning on the back of the couch, admiring his compact and muscular body, and she had just stolen Neline's cookie.

“Be nice, Neline,” Kevaah murmured, handing the cub his own cookie. “She is a thief and a troublemaker, but if she had not killed the Druid for me, I would most likely not be here. Erantha is a friend and will be your elder cousin, I think. She will tease you, but that is her right as your elder, and she will teach you those tricks if you answer her challenges properly.”

Neline growled, but there was a glint in her eye that spoke of a desire to learn all of the dirty tricks. She was an observant cub, and had seen Pidge and Erantha compete for cookies a number of times. Pidge's mastery of the small, tight spaces of the Castle was to be admired, but Neline still wasn't on good terms with the mice and Erantha's leaping and pouncing skills were second to none.

Kevaah smiled to see them both sizing each other up, and drifted back into a comfortable nap. When he woke, Erantha was gone, but Neline was sprawled across his chest and side, keeping his new scars warm and whiffling in her sleep. His stomach rumbled in a way that told him that he still needed more resources for self-repair, which only made sense. The Druid had done a considerable amount of damage and had slowed his healing, putting additional stress on his body. An ordinary man would have been dead in minutes. In this way, at least, the experiment was successful, he thought, remembering how thoroughly he'd been tested and studied by both Ghamparva and Blade; the one thing that the Ghamparva hadn't been able to do was replicate the Druids' aetheric powers and poisons, and the Blades... wouldn't. In order for their witches to mimic such things properly, they would have to have become what they feared and hated most. That, they would not do, and in retrospect Kevaah was glad of it.

Nevertheless, he was hungry, and he didn't doubt that Neline would like a nibble of something too. Cubs, he had learned, were always hungry.

“A snack, Neline?” he asked softly, and got a sleepy affirmative in return.

Kevaah rose carefully, transferring his baby sister to the back of the couch and noting with satisfaction that the sensations of discomfort were gone from the big spot on his side. Rest was good, he thought as he put on a shirt and trousers, and rest with family was very good indeed. For all that it was very new to him, this “family” thing was most enjoyable; it satisfied needs in him that he hadn't even been aware of. Considering the many, many benefits of being a member of a large and tight-knit House, he settled one of the biggest ones into her customary perch on his shoulders and made his way toward the kitchen.

Hunk was present, he soon found, and was doing something that smelled wonderful. Kevaah had lost large portions of at least two ribs the other day, and his body was demanding calcium in considerable amounts; Lance had told him once that whole Human civilizations had worshiped cows, and Kevaah could easily agree to the simple good sense of such beliefs. There were bowls of hot and cold water on the counter, a bowl of coarse salt, and bowls of cream, and several large, pearl-white masses of that ambrosia that was called mozzarella. Hunk was stretching a sheet of it in his hands, and as Kevaah and Neline watched, he deposited a generous dollop of cream mixed with cheese shreds into the center. This filling was wrapped up gently in its casing, Hunk's skilled fingers pinching off a tempting round. There was a large bowl of cold water sitting nearby, full of those beautiful objects.

“Hi,” Hunk said with a smile as he plunked his most recent creation into that bowl. “Had a good nap?”

“Very,” Kevaah said, watching his hands in fascination and hearing Neline squeak for a taste. “What are you doing?”

“Making everybody a treat,” Hunk replied, stretching out another sheet of softened cheese. “These are called burratas, and they're super good. Super naughty, but since we've all got supercharged metabolisms these days, that's not really a problem. I'll be teaching a class on how to make them in a day or two, but it uses a heck of a lot of milk, and we've only got the one cow. Try one, they're great.”

“Auntie says that when our war is won, she will obtain a herd of cattle for Namtura,” Kevaah said, dipping his fingers into the bowl and gingerly lifting out a soft round. “Perhaps bison as well. They will be good to hunt, she thinks.”

Hunk paused for a moment, eyes a little wild as he considered that. “Yeah, good luck with that. Those big animals are a challenge all by themselves, and I'm not sure that the Federated Native Tribes of the Americas'll let her have any. Ever since the Government granted them the Right of Stewardship over the National Parks, you've gotta have full approval from all of the Plains Authorities and a note from their mothers to even look at a—no, wait, not like that!”

Kevaah had never encountered anything like a burrata before, and neither had Neline, and therefore they didn't know how to eat them. Kevaah had simply lifted it up to take a bite, and Neline had lunged forward past his ear to get her share of the delicious-smelling treat. The end result was very messy, and best described as blort.

Hunk observed the two Galra standing there with cream and curds all over their faces and dripping down Kevaah's shirt front, and rolled his eyes heavenward with a sigh. “Wow, guys.”

“I didn't know that there was a special way to eat such things.” Kevaah said, a touch defensively. “It's delicious, if surprising.”

“Yeah,” Hunk said, turning to pick up a dishtowel. “Generally, you're supposed to put it on a plate with a little salt and olive oil, or maybe in a salad with—Neline, no!”

It was too late. Neline had decided that not only was the burrata delicious, but that she wanted all of them. And there they were, in a handy bowl right below her. Letting go of Kevaah's collar, she leaped, all claws spread in the best kind of pounce. Galra claws, even baby claws, and burratas didn't mix. Hunk was forced to dive for cover as curds, water, and cream flew, and when he looked up over the counter-top, he saw that not one single surface in the entire room had escaped her blast radius.

“Eeep!” Neline said proudly from her bowl of wet slop.

At any other time, Hunk thought, the sight of a surprised Galra dripping with goo would have been funny, but this was not the time. One did not waste good dairy product aboard the Castle, and he knew that everyone would back him up on that.

“Right,” he said, glowering at Neline and Kevaah. “I've got one of those decontam frames set up in the pantry. You two are gonna clean yourselves up, and then you're gonna help me clean up. You're both old enough to know that if you make a mess, you clean up that mess. Get to it.”

Kevaah knew better than to object. He finished off his burrata in a hurried slurp and pulled his baby sister out of the bowl, letting her lick the curds and cream off of his shirt while he hurried into the pantry. There was a stand of cleaning equipment just inside the door, and he brought the contents out with him after a few passes through the frame. Hunk put both him and Neline to work cleaning the floor and the counters, and was cleaning cream off of the ceiling when Lance, Allura, Shiro, and Neline's mother walked in.

“Holy crow,” Lance said, staring around at the mess, glancing at Kevaah and getting an apologetic look in turn; Neline just looked grumpy as she wiped down the table. “Hunk, what happened? Did Bessie explode or something?”

“No,” Hunk replied. “I was making burratas and--”

Lance's eyes grew very wide, tears sparkling at the corners. “Burratas? You were making burratas? I haven't had those in years!”

“Yeah. And Neline belly-flopped into the bowl of finished ones.” Hunk mopped the last of the cream off of the ceiling and glared at Neline, who stuck out her tongue at him. “I won't be able to make any more for a while, Lance, sorry. That was two whole days' worth of milk and cream.”

“Oh, dear,” Allura said, deeply disappointed. “You were going to make more ice cream, too.”

“I apologize,” Kevaah said quietly. “I should have caught her before she landed.”

“It was not your fault,” Neline's mother said sharply, making her daughter flinch; she knew that tone of voice. “You are not wasteful or incautious. My daughter, on the other hand, has amply displayed both demerits. Neline, that was ill-done of you. We do not ever waste food, particularly not food that is rare and exotic, and is not easily replaced. Your greed and foolishness has denied your family a great treat, and has made a great deal of unnecessary work for your cousin, who was kind enough to make such treats in the first place. You have also gotten your elder brother into trouble, and is that any way to thank him for keeping you safe and comfortable? He and Erantha were not playing pounce-tag on that station; there were fighting monsters there, very terrible ones, and he very nearly died protecting you from them. Were you a few years older, I would assign you to Hunk as a pot-washer for a few weeks, to teach you the value of what you have squandered.”

By now, everyone had edged away from her, and Neline was sniffling, her amber eyes full of tears. Hunk humphed. “And I could use one, but she's too small. Let's just get this mess cleaned up, okay? Oh, and if you could teach her some table manners, that would be great. Kevaah, too. I'm pretty sure that he's already been taught, but a refresher course would be good.”

“Indeed,” the woman said coldly, making her daughter and her adoptive son cringe. “I've already begun her brothers' education, but she's been skipping those lessons to go and play elsewhere. You have duties, young lady. It is high time that you began learning them. Kevaah, you will bring her to conference room #12 when you are done, and there you will both begin to learn.”

Kevaah was not stupid. He bowed formally, murmuring, “Yes, my Lady,” in a voice dripping with respect, and did not straighten up until she had left the room.

Shiro, who had watched the whole thing in wary silence, shivered in remembered boyhood dread. “She sounds like my mother, whenever she caught me doing something that I shouldn't have.”

“Nelira's a force of nature,” Allura agreed. “Sorry, Kevaah.”

Kevaah shrugged and began pushing the mop over the floor again. “Good manners are vital skills. Also, she is entirely right—one does not waste food, nor does one allow impulse or greed to dictate one's actions. And Neline has been avoiding her lessons.”

Neline burst into tears, well-aware that the fun was over.

Seeing that the cub would be of no further help here, Shiro, Allura, and Lance pitched in to help. That got the mess cleared up very quickly, allowing Kevaah to pluck her off of the counter and hurry out of the room.

“Poor guy,” Lance observed. “He puts up with a lot from her.”

“Yeah, but he wouldn't trade it for the world,” Hunk replied. “He's got a lot of catching up to do, and not a lot of time to do it in. Heck, he's only been with us for a few months now, and this was his first big kitchen mess—where he wasn't rigging the oven to explode, anyway. Remember that one time when you and I tried to make a layer cake all by ourselves? We were... what, nine years old?”

Lance grinned. “That's right! Mom was too busy with a huge cooking project, and so was yours—I think it was a community bake sale, or something like that. Miles of cupcakes, and we weren't allowed to touch any of them, and Carlos had to be locked in his room after he tried to make off with, like, a whole platter of strawberry tarts, or my aunts would've killed him. And then we got into your mother's freshly-cleaned kitchen with a couple of boxes of store-bought mix and spray-can buttercream frosting, and--”

Shiro winced, having an excellent imagination. “Mopping cream off of the ceiling would've been an improvement, huh?”

Hunk shuddered. “You could say that. Lance left the top off of the mixer, and then cranked it up as high as it could go, and it was really noisy and spraying cake mix everywhere, and that startled me into dropping the egg tray. And then I slipped on the egg stuff and slid into the counter and knocked one of the cans of frosting off of it, which broke the seal so that it started spraying bright blue fluffy goop all over the place, too. Then Grandma walked in.”

“Oh, no!” Allura said, laughing. “She must have been horrified!”

Lance grinned sheepishly. “Only for a few seconds. Then she smacked both of us with her cane and spent the rest of the day teaching us how to get a kitchen really clean. It stuck with us, I'll give her that much, and we never made those mistakes ever again.”

“I still have nightmares about blue buttercream spray-frosting,” Hunk grumbled. “That stuff stains. Did you guys need something?”

“Burratas,” Lance said heartbrokenly.

Allura gave him a sympathetic look, but nodded. “Just to give you an update. The various peoples whose treasures we have in our possession are willing to come together in a neutral diplomatic setting to reclaim them. Unfortunately, that means one of Yantilee's more remote dark ports, and they've already made a number of rather ridiculous and contradictory demands.”

“They're just trying to make us jump,” Shiro said, putting the cleaning equipment away. “I had to attend an event like that as part of a high official's entourage, and the foreign officials spent all their time trying to one-up each other. They weren't really expecting us to comply with anything more immediate than their dietary customs, and so we didn't. That was mostly just leaving pork off of the menu and making sure that the vegetarian option was fresh and didn't have bugs in it.”

Allura humphed, but agreed. “Mother said much the same. One's guests will often actually think less of you if you don't ignore the sillier demands. I've made a list of the demands that aren't silly—at least, not to them, but I am afraid that Ronok will have to stay on Halidex. Those peoples want as little to do with Galra as they can get away with. They're barely willing to allow Keith to attend.”

“Half-Galra,” Hunk observed. “Right. He's gotta be mad about that.”

Lance smirked, popping open the fridge to prospect for leftovers. “Sort of. He's upset that they don't like his ancestry, but he's not much of a party guy and would rather stay here with his mom.”

Hunk shrugged. “We'll make him flip a coin later. How are the Blades taking this? It was them who negotiated the meeting.”

Allura peered over Lance's shoulder and snagged a tub of fried almost-chicken legs, handing one to Shiro when he gave her a pleading look. “They did it anonymously, and through the Fleet's information network. They're handling it stoically, of course; Kolivan and his men know all too well how other peoples feel about theirs.”

“Prejudice sucks,” Hunk said grumpily, and watched Shiro and Allura tear into the almost-chicken legs with their teeth, and Lance had found a tub of leftover paslen, which he was eating with his fingers. They'd all been snacking more or less constantly after coming back from the station, which was only to be expected. Still, there were limits.

“Maybe we should head down to Conference Room #12, too. Kevaah's not the only one who could stand to brush up on their table manners. We don't want to gross out our guests.”

“Mmph,” Allura agreed a little ruefully, mouth full.

Chapter Text

Chapter 18: A Curious Event

The conclave was held a few days later in a very well-concealed spot. The Svorintha System was one of those disappointing little destinations in the middle of nowhere: six planets orbiting a tired old red dwarf star with nothing and no one profitable enough in it to attract the Empire's attention. Well, almost. One of the moonlets orbiting what had once been a Hot Jupiter had been hollowed out and used as a waypoint and informal marketplace by the quadrant's smugglers, and the visitors who had rented the moonlet's largest convention hall would definitely have excited Zarkon's interest.

The Paladins had put up some culturally-appropriate decorations, laid on a modest buffet, and had set up long tables and stands upon which the Ghamparva loot was being displayed. Yantilee had lent them some of her more muscular crew members to serve as security and referees, which had naturally delighted Pidge, and now it was just a matter of waiting for the guests to arrive.

Of which, Keith thought sourly, there would be many. Not as many as there could have been, though; Yantilee had told them just the other day that a bunch of people had sent their regrets. Some politely, saying that it was too dangerous, citing bad political or religious factions, or a Galra overlord who was way too watchful. Others less politely, refusing to share the same solar system with a hated rival. Others responded with requests that the Fleet would keep their treasure in safekeeping for the same reasons, or because the time wasn't “right” for the objects to return. Keith had an inkling of what that meant, living in the same house with at least one full-blown Oracle. The peoples who would be showing up in person were mostly those who were already Coalition members, or those who intended to join up after getting their treasures back.

Lots of treasures. The Ghamparva had stolen priceless cultural items from literally dozens of civilizations, and that had been the work of just one mobile base. How many other bases like that were out there, and how much stuff had they accumulated? Well, the Hoshinthra knew to deliver whatever hoards they uncovered to the Fleet for safekeeping, which was just as well. As a matter of fact, there was a bunch of stuff being laid out on those tables that he didn't remember sorting.

So thinking, he ambled over to where Coran was lighting a small incense burner in front of what looked more or less like a heavily-embroidered bathmat. It was light orange, poofy where it didn't sport elaborate stitching, and was obviously very old.

“Did we pick up extra from somewhere?” he asked the Altean.

Coran made a series of gestures at the bathmat that probably weren't meant to look like a seizure, and nodded. “Oh, yes. Special delivery, just this morning. Apparently, planetary Governors like to collect other people's cultural treasures, too. Every so often, Yantilee's bravos earn themselves the privilege of raiding a Governor's manor, and in the interest of not causing strife amongst one's allies, have donated the reclaimed loot to our pile. What they haven't repatriated themselves already, anyway. People do get attached to their trinkets, you know. Well, most people. Some folks eschew such baubles entirely, like the Bai-Hebriots of Lorgna-Tibrol. Those fine fellows went through their entire lives with only one personal possession per year, and every year they made a solemn ceremony of casting off the old object and picking out the next thing.”

“Some people just like a minimalist lifestyle,” Keith observed.

“Yes, but their neighbors often consider them to be very weird,” Coran said, moving on to the next section of table and lifting something like a small leather shield fringed with gray feathers out of a box. “Just about every other civilization on Lorgna-Tibrol was as acquisitive as you please, but they revered the Bai-Hebriots anyway. Someone had to use up all of the weirdness inherent in a given population, you see, and the Bai-Hebriots were doing their fellows that favor.”

“Whatever works,” Keith said, looking around the room, which was already half full of glittering objects. “Wow. Where do the Galra get off calling our guys pirates?”

“Because they're an evil Empire,” Pidge said, coming up behind him with an armful of dark fabric. “Duh. Pirates are usually small consortiums or independent operators out for their own gain. The Empire is actually a governing body, so they get to call themselves something else. Okay, Coran, here are the modesty veils you wanted for the Bellicky-Parda'op-Snird Virgin's Throne, and Allura says not to forget the pleating, which means thirteen pleats instead of eight. They've added a few Sacred Maidens to the Pantheon since way back when. Keith, the first ships are starting to come in, so go and tell Shiro to get ready.”

Keith nodded and headed toward the main doors, tugging absently at his collar as he did so. Lance had insisted that they look pretty for their guests, and Allura had agreed; Keith was willing to admit that Lance had amazing talent where it came to garment design, but, dammit, the ruffly lace jabot that Lance had forced on him itched, and he was going to drop it behind something as soon as the opportunity came up.

He found Shiro leaning against the wall just outside the doors and had to take a moment to admire the man. Tall, muscular, sleek and elegant in his formal outfit, and calm. That was important, considering the distant and yet focused expression on his face, which meant that he was watching something that no one else could see. Keith frowned slightly and checked the Lion-bond; he could feel a little flicker from Tzairona's Lens, but nothing major, and it felt positive.

“Just checking ahead?” he asked.

Shiro shrugged, eyes glittering faintly with inner starlight. “Hunches. Just small stuff. It's going to be a good party, we're going to make some important friends... oh, and keep the jabot on for a little while longer. Someone's going to want it. Lace means more to some people than to others.”

“Yeah, and Pidge says that they'll be here any minute now.” Keith paused, gazing searchingly at his team leader. “Are you okay with being the doorman? Some of those people, well... they might have been the ones cheering you on in the arena. I kind of saw the crowd in your memory that one time--”

Shiro flicked his fingers dismissively. “That doesn't matter. Those peoples survived by allying themselves with Zarkon ages ago, but the Empire's not good at keeping promises to non-Galra. They aren't even good at keeping promises to their own people. A lot of those uneasy allies want out. And, to tell you the truth, the ones in the arena stands didn't mean anything to me. They were just one more piece of the nightmare, and that's over with. Thanks, by the way.”

“We should have done it sooner,” Keith said.

Shiro shook his head. “We didn't know enough before then. In fact--”

There was a crash in the room, and a great deal of yelling; something large had tipped over on top of Coran, and he was protesting indignantly. Keith puffed a laugh. “Gotta go, it looks like the Virgin's Throne didn't want to be veiled. Yell if you need anything.”

Shiro murmured a reassurance as Keith hurried away, leaving him in relative peace for a little time. The first to arrive, to Shiro's mild surprise, was Yantilee himself; Yantilee in a formal tunic and tabard, trousers, and polished shoes, no less. The shoes looked like ruby-red, patent-leather gloves, but that was alien biology for you. “Looking sharp,” he observed to the Elikonian, who flicked him an amused glance in return.

“It's a formal occasion,” the Coalition's Admiral admitted, running a pair of callused thumbs down the line of his deep-red outer garment. “We've a stolen trinket or two among the loot in there, and we managed to find a genuine diplomat-priest still alive back at home. They've coaxed her out from under her landcar dealership with the chance to do her proper job for the first time in years. Our miserable bolvath of a Governor pretty much wiped out the rest of them so he could bring in his own toadies.”

“I hope everything goes well for her,” Shiro said.

Yantilee waved a huge hand. “Should. She's bringing an entourage of consecrated referees. There aren't all that many folks out there who are willing to make a fuss with those around. Not that much trouble's been planned, anyway, although there's those who'll want to make a fuss regardless. Everybody wants back what was stolen, and I made sure that they all knew who stole it, and who found it, and where it was found, and who brought it back. A lot of those folks had been lied to, you see, and for generations. This'll get your team a good bit more respect, especially since you aren't demanding a finder's fee.”

Shiro jerked a thumb at the room beyond. “Allura says that their support and aid are all the repayment we need.”

Yantilee's jaws opened in a fanged but friendly grin. “Yeah, and isn't she a bright one for that little gem? That's pricey and risky enough to suit those who believe in monetary or honor-based settlements for things like this, and cheap enough for those who were going to pitch in anyway. Smart girl. Ah. Looks like they need a little help in there, though.”

Shiro rolled his eyes. “It's the Virgin's Throne. According to Pidge, that thing's been giving its handlers trouble all morning.”

Yantilee nodded sagely. “That's the Bellickies for you. Even their furniture's difficult. I'll just go and teach it some manners, shall I?”

Shiro waved him onward with a respectful bow, and waited to see who showed up next. That, thankfully, was Yantilee's diplomat-priest, accompanied by six large, burly attendants. Shiro had to wonder a little about Elikonian religion as they swept past him—he'd never seen priestly robes with pinstripes and neckties before, or sacred briefcases.

“Yantilee says that religions are treated like corporations where he comes from,” Lance said behind him a moment or two later, making him jump.

“Really?” he asked, and let Lance tuck a boutonniere into his lapel.

“Makes sense if you think about it,” Lance replied, getting the little spray of tilli flowers just right. “I mean, they take in money, they produce goods and services, they have a hierarchy and bylaws, they do big community projects and events, and they get involved in politics. It's a business. They're just more honest about it than our major religions are, and I can't wait to see the epic freakout that the folks back home will throw when Yantilee's pope-equivalent starts talking shop with ours. Okay, don't lose those flowers, Allura says that the Benphams get all upset if people handle sacred objects without those flowers around to distract loose spirits. Did Coran give you a Dirfwazzer charm? No? Well, he's pretty distracted right now, too. The Virgin's Throne is really fighting us, even with Yantilee helping. Here, I've got an extra, which according to the Fleemic Toragos, will keep you from growing a neckbeard.”

The data card that Kolivan had given them had held an enormous amount of information, far more than any of them had time to study all at once, and so they had been forced to skim what they could and rely on a sort of cheat-sheet that Hunk had helpfully run up for them. Dirfwazzer charms had not been among the facts that he had internalized properly, alas.

Shiro gazed at the little object that Lance had dropped into his hand. It was about the size of a credit card, was made out of hammered brass, and looked vaguely unsettling. “What's wrong with growing a neckbeard?”

Lance gave him an apologetic grin and rubbed at his own naked jaw. “Toragos don't like them, and when you've got necks that are six feet long, then yeah, it's a problem. They won't take anybody seriously unless they've got one of these charms on them.”

Shiro stared at the charm with mild distaste, but hooked it into a buttonhole anyway. “Fine... wait. Won't we also have Oilutes here? They're all beard.”

“Yeah, but since they don't have necks, that's fine,” Lance shrugged, and looked around at a fresh burst of shouting. “Okay, cool, looks like Yantilee's sicced the diplomat-priest on the Throne, and she's yelling at it. 'Scuse me, but I need to hear this. That stupid thing nearly flattened me.”

Lance hurried away, leaving Shiro alone again. He'd been helping Yantilee's men move the other large pieces and had missed out on the comparatively smaller Virgin's Throne, and was becoming more and more grateful for that fact with every minute that passed. Particularly when something fell over with a crash that shook the floor. There was the unmistakable sound of something round, metallic, and disc-shaped rolling away and rattling to a halt on the decking, as was only traditional. Hunk had started shouting too, and that probably meant that one of his platters had become an impromptu offering to the floor gods.

I see nothing, Shiro thought a little desperately, I hear nothing...

Something large and four-legged galloped past the door behind him, followed by a group of shouting people. Very carefully, he did not look around. The Virgin's Throne, apparently, was not just a static piece of furniture, but a living thing in its own right, and it had a sense of humor. He slipped his cheat-sheet out of his pocket and looked up the Bellicky-Parda'op-Snirds again; yes, there it was. They themselves were semi-reptilian, sort of, but a lot of their plant life was not only mobile but semi-intelligent. The Virgin's Thrones were an excellent example of Temple horticultural techniques, and had been bred over thousands of years to make getting at anyone seated in them very, very difficult. The Bellickies' primary deity was a fertility god, and they had built a huge mythology around their admittedly very strict breeding cycles, and believed that receptive individuals should give their prospective partners a really good run for their money. This particular Virgin's Throne was a major part of that, had been bred precisely for that, and had been denied its purpose for a very long time. Set loose among a group of young, healthy, maritally inexperienced persons, it simply hadn't been able to resist.

Shiro glanced over his shoulder and saw Allura in, for lack of a better term, the passenger's seat, and was yelling her head off while the others chased the Throne around the room. Fortunately, someone had had the simple good sense to set up force-screens over the display tables, so those were safe at least. The Throne bounced merrily over six force-domes, caromed off of three more, and then Shiro was forced to dodge to one side to avoid being trampled as the semi-plant galloped out of the door and down the hall with its entourage in noisy pursuit, leaving a trail of pollen and little pink flowers behind them. Strictly speaking, he should be joining in that chase, but someone had to watch the door.

This was just as well, since the Bellickies were the next to arrive, and did so just in time to see the Throne and its pursuers come galloping back up the hall and into the room. The ranking member of the Bellicky party, who resembled a five-foot-tall, rust-and-yellow iguana wearing a batik-patterned sarong in shades of blue and green, watched it go with a sigh.

“You really did find the silly thing,” duar said sourly; Bellickies had five genders, easily discerned by the arrangements of large scales above their brow ridges. “Lovely. Oh, well, thank you for your efforts, at least.”

Shiro blinked at duara. “You don't want it back?”

There was a loud whoop from inside the room, a crunching sound, and a long screech of wood over decking; someone had tackled the Throne to the floor. The senior Bellicky rolled duaras eyes. “Personally, no, but I'm past breeding age. It's all right, Thriltimar's our sacrificial virgin for today, and we'll soon have it under proper control. Our Temple Gardeners desperately want it back, you see; it's the culmination of centuries of careful development, and when the Ghamparva stole it, they burned out the entire growing yard and germination shed. That's the last living specimen, and it is vital that it takes part in the upcoming Caliborplat Ceremony.”

Shiro nodded as the rest of the Bellicky party, including one younger and very eager individual, hurried through the doors to take possession of an important treasure. “Many cultures where I come from hold fertility rituals, too.”

The senior Bellicky made duaras equivalent of a knowing smile. “So do a great many other peoples. I could go on for hours about the religious significance and the symbolism and the Seventeen Approved Methods of Keeping the Gods Happy, but the truth is that the pollen from the Thrones is an important chemical catalyst that ensures the productivity of the fields. It's been eight Cycles since the last time, and the harvests have been getting progressively poorer since then. You are going to get around to chasing those thieving purple mammals off of our planet soon, aren't you?”

Shiro puffed a dry laugh, knowing that he would be answering that same question many, many times tonight. “We're working on it. There's only so much that we can do alone, but we can make it possible for the peoples to throw off the oppressors themselves.”

The senior Bellicky made a gesture of acceptance, looked up curiously at the scratch-and-scramble sound of the Throne getting back to its feet, and turned duars attention back to Shiro despite the cheers from the rest of the room. “You preserve the pride and dignity of your allies in this fashion, and lay the seeds of independence. You'll have to manage what comes afterward carefully, to keep them from getting carried away. Sudden freedom is a euphoric.”

“I know,” Shiro replied. “It's also frightening to a lot of people. We'll do our best, and we've got a lot of help.”

“You'll have more soon,” the senior Bellicky said, glancing back down the hall. “Bringing in the Elikonians was inspired, by the way. Their reputation as mediators is legendary.”

Shiro smiled. “We like them.”

The senior Bellicky took duaras leave at that point, clearing the way for others to arrive, which they did in a remarkable progression of shapes, colors, odors, garments, and sounds. Next to arrive was a group of five Pilrogs, pony-sized beings shaped more like spruce cones than anything else, mounted horizontally upon pairs of thick, heavy legs. From his studies, Shiro knew that each broad, bronze-colored scale concealed a long pink tentacle beneath it, but only a very few were in evidence at the moment. They were plodding along at a stately pace, one in the center with two before and two behind. These outriders wore hangings of olive-green silk that made Shiro think of the caparisons that medieval knights sometimes put on their horses for special occasions. These adornments, however, were nothing when compared to the shoes they were wearing. Shiro had never seen such baroque, ornate, highly-ornamented, bejeweled and gilded footwear in his life. The Pilrog in the center, on the other hand, was barefoot, its blunt, cone-shaped claws clacking on the floorplates with every step. Its only adornment was a quartet of thin, glittering chains attached to its massive dorsal ridge, linking it to its attendants, who held the chains delicately with a single tentacle each.

They came to a precise halt about six feet from Shiro, extending their anterior tentacles and wiggling them in a pattern that he recognized from a recording as a formal greeting. Solemnly, he raised both hands, stuck his thumbs in his ears, stuck his tongue out at them, and wiggled his fingers in the closest approximation of a formal welcome that a Human could manage. Satisfied, they plodded past him with grave dignity.

Far less dignified were the Bernavartis, who bounced past him in a flurry of golden-brown fluff and long cow's tails; then the Oilutes, short, stubby persons who could barely be seen behind their magnificently-styled beards. Then the Toragos, glittering and jingling with brass charms and craning their incredibly long necks around like confused herons. An enormous fishbowl on tank treads rumbled past him, full of glinting, eel-like Erulas, followed by a delegation of the shiftiest Unilu he'd ever seen. A real Dukirritu floated past him, dangling from a length of gnarled driftwood fitted with hoverpads, which was a stunning concession—Dukirritu were extremely solitary, and were notorious for never, ever showing up in person. Not surprising, Shiro thought, given the way that they glittered.

Vastly overdressed U'Lillip Sperrad-Class nobles shuffled past, invisible under their layered robes, and extravagantly fluffy, dark-furred Telonas; a Sowirran Princess and her bejeweled entourage, a group of Thaccles who had come ceremonially sky-clad, Droninki-caste Murthals so heavily tattooed that not an inch of hide was left uncolored; a ghostlike Huirrih, made visible only by its biolights. More and more passed him by, some requiring gestures or signs of respect, others giving them, and still others who ignored him completely. Others were waving censers full of fragrant incense, flooding the hall in often clashing aromas, while others puffed their own personal scents into the air. Some came silently, others played instruments, rang chimes, shook rattles, or wore bells, and many of them chanted or sang. Shiro's senses, dazzled by so much alien variety, began to blur a little, and so did his mind. He could feel Tzairona's Lens turning within him, seemingly unable to decide what hunch or fragment of the future to reveal next, given so very many choices.

It wasn't until something slammed down hard on the decking that Shiro was able to jerk himself back to reality. Whatever had hit the floor had done so with panel-buckling force, clearly audible all the way down the hall. A moment later, there was another of those tremendous impacts, and then another, and then it came around the corner in a long, precisely-calculated leap. Well, it had to. It just wasn't built for any other sort of locomotion. Four more of those leaps brought it to a spot a little distance away from Shiro, and there it paused, apparently interested in him. Shiro blinked back, remembering this alien from his studies; this was a Thrunnop, a member of a people largely considered very strange even by their nearest neighbors, even though they'd been trading with them for over three thousand years.

Shiro stared warily at the Thrunnop, which studied him in turn with ominous inscrutability. Most of the aliens he had encountered thus far had possessed some Humanlike features, or at least animal-like ones that he could understand and relate to. Only rarely did he encounter a sophont that didn't. This was one of them, and he wasn't sure that he liked it. More than anything, it looked like a huge slab of raw stoneware clay: red-brown, wet-looking, and almost featureless. Eight feet tall if it was an inch, roughly two feet square, with neither arms nor legs. It balanced expertly on a single, toeless “foot”, muscles rippling subtly under the slick hide as it adjusted its balance. Encircling the uppermost end of the Thrunnop was a line of pits, as if someone had pressed their thumbs deeply into the surface; the data file that he'd read told him that those were much like the sensory equipment of certain Earthly snakes, and allowed the alien to detect scent, temperature, and electrical fields. It sensed vibrations over its whole body, including sound, and it spoke through a humming tympanum on the flat top of its body. It had no eyes, no ears, no nose, no mouth, no front, back or sides; it was all of a piece, and he'd read that they were natural telekinetics, which allowed them to manipulate objects at a considerable distance from themselves. The one feature that Shiro could understand were the four little dimples, almost like belly-buttons, one on each side about two-thirds of the way up the body from the foot. He had been told that each dimple concealed a long, tubelike tongue, barbed at the tip, which could deliver a dose of lethal venom, and that could drain the vital fluids from whatever they had stung. In many ways, this alien made him even more uneasy than the Hoshinthra did.

“We have observed each other in mutual horror and disgust for long enough, perhaps,” it thrummed in a buzzing monotone, like a massive hornet.

Shiro smiled dryly at its words, careful not to show his teeth; in many cultures, showing the teeth was a threat display, and Shiro didn't want to take any chances with this one. “I expect so. Too many moving parts, right?”

“How ghastly, that one of us should have no moving parts at all, save one,” it agreed. “The All is full of such affronts to one's sensibilities, which serve to build up a resistance to the emanations of those things truly evil. Let us go and horrify the other atrocious forms with our physical repulsiveness, that their minds become stronger.”

Shiro puffed a laugh, relaxing a little. “After a while you just go numb, and forget how weird they are. I'm getting used to it already.”

“I salute your adaptive ability, that you may know your siblings-in-thought so easily,” the Thrunnop buzzed, and took a long, lithe leap toward the conference room doors, landing with a thud that shook the floor. It progressed from there in a series of tiny bunny-hops that were somewhat less startling, but made it look no less ominous.

Shiro shuddered and rubbed at his eyes, knowing that he was approaching sensory overload. He'd need some quiet time after this, and possibly a soak in the hot tub.

“My goodness,” Allura's voice said behind him, and he turned to see that she was no worse for wear from her ride on the Throne, although she did have a few of its flowers tangled in her hair and had been dusted with silvery pollen. “A real Thrunnop! They were barely more than a traveler's tale to my people when I was a child. I'm told that they're actually one of the Hoshinthra's children—bred up by them for some particular purpose, and then set free when that purpose was achieved. Much like the Kithraxen were.”

Shiro remembered Captain Zorjesca, and nodded. “I'd ask what they were intended for, but I'm afraid that I wouldn't like the answer. I wonder just how many other peoples the Hoshinthra have come up with?”

Allura shrugged and brushed at her gown, sending a soft dusting of pollen into the crowded air. “Nobody but the Hoshinthra know. At least they teach their daughter races good manners. Do you want me to take over here, Shiro? Hunk says that you need a drink and a snack. He's making crepes.”

Shiro had a deep love of crepes, and his throat was dry from so much incense smoke. “Hunk is a smart person,” he said, glancing into the room and noting without any surprise at all that the buffet was getting a lot of attention. “I'll be back in a few minutes.”

“Take all the time you need, Shiro,” she said, adjusting the hang of the little spray of flowers in his lapel. “Mother would have been terribly disappointed in me if I didn't take a turn at greeting the honored guests.”

Shiro smiled and tucked a flower a little more securely into her hair. “Thanks. I'll be back soon.”

The air, while a little clearer in the huge room than out in the hallway, was no less crowded. Recording devices whirred in flocks just below the ceiling, no doubt transmitting the event live back to their ships, and from there, who knew? The air was also thick with conversation as the many peoples mingled and observed. Looming above everybody else were the Elikonian referees, never obtrusive but always watchful. And efficient; as he watched, the pinstriped priest ducked to one side with a speed remarkable for one so large, catching something small and airborne in one huge hand. The dragonish Elikonian glared at the captured object, then took a step to the left and bent down, catching a richly-dressed alien up by the back of its jacket, gave it a dirty look and a few sharp words, and then marched it over to a corner where it was placed firmly in shameful isolation. Shiro drifted in that direction to find out what was going on.

“Trouble?” he asked the priest.

The Elikonian grunted in disapproval, showing him a small, dull-gray device; Shiro understood only the business end of it, which was a hypodermic needle full of a toxic-looking ocher-colored fluid.

“A little,” the priest said mildly. “This ain't even lethal, just embarrassing. Haburrats don't like Irgs, is all. They've got a truce on at the moment, but there's always some twerp, right? Back in the day, they'd both signed on with us to keep 'em from each other's throats. Only thing that worked. They're natural henchmen and need a big, ugly authority figure around. We did that thing for a good long time, and they did real well by it. And then the Galra showed up...”

Shiro gave the Elikonian a quizzical look. “Galra don't fit the bill for big and ugly?”

The Elikonian smirked. “Nope. Not big enough. Too furry. Too liable to shoot first and think later, and they don't tolerate practical jokes. 'S okay, I'm watching 'em both now, and they know it. It'll make 'em feel better about all this.”

“If you say so,” Shiro said, and continued onward toward the refreshment tables.

Hunk, of course, was at his culinary best, and handed Shiro a drink and a crepe loaded with ice cream and slices of exotic fruits without so much as pausing his discussion with a Spirrimok Libations-Master. Not that he was alone there, Shiro observed as he sipped his drink. Pidge was currently embroiled in what looked like an argument between herself, a Thramust Mechanist, a Bygara Gear-Moke, and a Gwiep/Nammar Man-Machine Mediator. To judge by the flashing chromatophores on the Thramust's tail and the flickering of the Gwiep/Nammar's running lights, it was an interesting discussion. Coran was in full voice too, mustache bristling as he told a group of fascinated historians about some of Alfor's more interesting exploits. Lance, from the look of things, was explaining to another group just how they'd managed to obtain everybody's treasures, and from the look of his hand gestures, he was describing how he'd gotten the implant out of Hunk's brain. Shiro frowned at the memory of his own efforts to get similar devices out of over a hundred other victims; that had been a bad couple of weeks.

A flicker of movement out of the corner of his eye caught his attention. Looking up, he saw Keith moving through the crowd alone, but not unnoticed. Their guests were watching him, Shiro saw, and not with admiration. They were making warding gestures and signs of aversion; Shiro could recognize wary looks and suspicious glances, and there were changes in stance, color, and sound in those Keith came closest to that he couldn't translate, but it didn't look good. Now why...?

Oh.

Keith paused under the room's central light fixture to look around himself, and Shiro saw what the guests were seeing. The bright light from above illuminated Keith's wealth of dark hair, revealing the purple in it and brightening up the two lighter streaks above the young man's ears. Gold flashed in Keith's eyes, and his ears were starting to lengthen out into clear points. The angles of his face, the long torso and limbs, his very posture and attitude were very distinctive, and he'd grown again. It wasn't something that Humans usually considered, but Shiro was willing to bet that Keith's scent was changing as well, becoming less that of an Earthly primate and more of something else. Shiro blinked as his friend scratched irritably at the ruffly jabot that Lance had insisted he wear. God, even the frown, particularly with those eyebrows, which were clearly furry rather than hairy. He looked Human to the casual observer, but everything about him screamed Galra.

They would all know by now that Keith was a half-breed. That was no secret. All the Fleet knew by now, along with everyone associated with them, that the red Paladin had a Galra mother. These people might have heard about the Blade of Marmora, and perhaps even of what was happening on Valenth right now, but after ten thousand years of abuse and oppression, that wouldn't matter to them. Eight thousand living worlds—more than that—all destroyed for Galra greed. Eight thousand and more peoples driven to homelessness and extinction by Zarkon's malice, and thousands more living in poverty and bondage. None of that was Keith's fault, but his presence offended them nonetheless. Nobody had exploded in a fit of outrage yet, but it was a definite possibility.

Well, not everybody seemed to be upset about having him around, at least. Keith had yanked off his jabot and was scratching vigorously at the back of his neck, which... yes, showed the layer of soft purple fur under the collar of his shirt. At his feet was a small, fluffy, pink individual that resembled a long-tailed rabbit in a black waistcoat, its dark eyes fixed on the froth of lace in Keith's fist. As Shiro watched, the rabbit-person—an Aln, according to his cheat-sheet—said something that was lost in the roar of conversation. Keith looked down in surprise, but smiled, and bent down with one arm extended. The Aln clambered up his arm with squirrel-like agility, accepted the jabot with pleasure, and wore it with pride as it settled into a comfortable perch on Keith's shoulder.

That brought some startled looks from everybody watching, but oddly, it seemed to reassure them as well. Shiro felt that he was probably missing something and resolved to do some more in-depth research on Alns in the near future. That thought was driven clean out of his head a moment later when a new guest arrived, and he wasn't alone in that. Lance had described Torlunes to him, but the reality was far beyond anything that mere words could manage. This was a Torlune high official who had dressed to the nines for this occasion, and Shiro had never seen such a clash of bright colors, LED lights, diffraction grading, metallic fabrics, laces, flares, ruches, ruffles, gores, glitter, gems, and embellishments in his life. Possibly not in the past three lifetimes, and definitely not in the next two, either. He could see Allura slumped against the doorframe, her hands over her eyes, and the flinches and stares of the aliens nearest him. Oh, God, and the poor Thrunnop's entire upper quarter had abruptly retracted down into its body, forming a giant “innie”. Shiro winced, and hoped that Keith wasn't looking. If that ensemble could give a Thrunnop eyestrain, what would it do to Keith's sensitive vision?

Fortunately, Hunk was on the case, hurrying over to greet the amazingly chromatic guest, and receiving the traditional gift; Torlunes were a hospitable people, and liked to bring an utral-madba, a fashionable guesting-gift whenever they visited friends. It was the done thing for the hosts to return the favor, and sure enough, Hunk had the perfect thing all ready to go.

The Torlune Ambassador offered first, along with a brief speech that was once again lost in the general conversation, but Shiro could see the Torlune's skinny arms flap his enormous sleeves in a gesture of admiration even as a somewhat less-impressively attired attendant offered Hunk what looked to be a decorated hatbox. The box did indeed contain a hat, and one of terrifying complexity. Hunk merely smiled and put it on, then offered in turn a packet that had been wrapped in shiny paper and tied with a length of Lance's sparkliest ribbon. As Shiro had suspected, it contained the Hawaiian flowery shirt and Bermuda shorts that the Hoshinthra had delivered along with Bessie, a direct result of the adventure that had recovered many of these cultural treasures in the first place.

Shiro couldn't help but smile when the Torlune Ambassador exclaimed in delight over the fabric and color scheme, and began talking animatedly. Hunk merely nodded, adjusted his hat, and drew the Torlune over to Lance, who was staring owlishly at the visitor's prismatic wardrobe. Hunk did take a moment to hand Keith a pair of polarized sunglasses in passing, an act of kindness that was gratefully-received. Shiro wasn't entirely surprised when the Aln on Keith's shoulder pulled out and donned a very small pair of shades as well.

“Nice handling of the Torlunes, that,” one of the Telonas said, making Shiro look down in surprise at the much smaller alien. “They're such colorful folk, but all they think about is fashion! What did the yellow Paladin give him, might I ask?”

“A set of summer wear,” Shiro replied, “all the way from our homeworld. Pure rayon, I think. Simple, but expensive.”

The foxlike, furry alien gave him a vulpine smile. “Making it perfect for a diplomatic gift. Ambassador Mootchee might attempt to steal your teammate as a Sartorial Advisor. A well-paid post, but not terribly heroic.”

Lance and the Ambassador were deep in discussion now, with Lance peering closely at the stitching on the Torlune's broad lapels. “Sewing is one of Lance's favorite hobbies, and it's come in handy a number of times. To tell you the truth, he's been designing the wardrobes for nearly everybody aboard the Castle, and we're grateful for that—there is a tailoring machine available, but it gets confused if you ask it to make clothes for anybody but Alteans. We Humans are built a little differently than they are.”

The Telona humphed. “Not just Humans, or so I've heard. You deal closely with Galra, despite their bad habits.”

There wasn't any point in denying it, so Shiro didn't. “Yes. Not all Galra are evil, and ours want Zarkon and Haggar dead, too. Lizenne in particular wants to make ceremonial wine cups out of their skulls. In a way, Zarkon and Haggar have done just as much damage to the Galra as they have to everyone else. That's partly why we're bringing marginal colony worlds like Valenth in, so they can get some of their own back.”

“As well as turning a handsome profit,” the Telona said thoughtfully. “Our Priest-Queens are most intrigued by the possibility of a trade empire in that Sector. But still... is it wise to have a Galra on your own team?”

Shiro was suddenly aware of being listened to, very closely; the people around them were all politicians of one stripe or another, and all of them could eavesdrop and talk at the same time. He'd seen this before, back on Earth once or twice, when serving as part of an entourage for his own government officials.

“Keith?” he asked in as casual a tone as he could muster, firmly quashing the flare of anger that rose in him at the Telona's insinuation. “I've known him since he was little. He's a good man and an excellent pilot.”

“The last time a Galra was allowed to pilot a Lion, it turned out very badly for everyone,” the Telona said sharply.

Shiro turned a narrow-eyed glare on the little dark alien. “I know that. I also know that Keith is not Zarkon, and that Zarkon had been corrupted by something that Haggar had been experimenting with, ten thousand years ago. It's got her, too, possibly from the same botched experiment, or possibly long before she met him. Zarkon wasn't always a madman. He was a hero, once. He was chosen by the black Lion—not by the Academy, and not by his teammates. The red Lion chose Keith. We don't argue with the Lions. They aren't just machines.”

The Telona's fangs glittered. “They make mistakes! If they could choose a madman like Zarkon--”

“He wasn't a madman then,” Shiro repeated sharply, startling the Telona, who wasn't used to being contradicted. “Black admits that he could have done better, yes, but Zarkon was the best available at that time. I hate the Empire too, your Excellency, and I will put an end to Zarkon and Haggar as soon as I can, but I'm not going to let that hate blind me to reality. Galra aren't any better or any worse than anyone else in the Universe is, and I refuse to lay blame at the feet of those who don't deserve it.”

He gave the Telona his very best scathing look. “We would never have gotten this far without the Rogue Witch or the Blade of Marmora. Your world stands to profit from Valenth's revival. The rest of the known Universe looks to regain their freedom, but not without the aid of the Galra themselves. It isn't easy for them, either. The Blades have been fighting for hundreds of years to slow the Empire's advances. Lizenne recently lost almost her entire family to Zarkon's malice, and we had to save Keroga from what Haggar had turned some of them into. Valenth came within hours of becoming a hunting ground for the Gantarash. It isn't going to get any easier in the future, and we're going to have to find ways of keeping angry mobs from slaughtering the Galra when the Empire falls. We'll probably spend the rest of our lives finding ways for people to coexist without killing each other.”

The Telona, who had shrunk back into his ornate robes at this lecture, snapped back, “Oh, so you intend to rule what you defend?”

“No,” Shiro said flatly. “Each people will be self-governing unless other arrangements are desired and worked out equitably for all sides. We're heroes, and defenders. The only one of us who is in any way qualified to rule anything is Allura, but her world is gone, and the only remaining Altean population doesn't know that she exists and might not recognize her claim even if they did. If we have anything to do with politics at all, it'll be in an advisory capacity at most. Voltron's been used for politics before, often as a tool of oppression, and we're not going to let that happen again. You'll govern and police yourselves. The Galra will govern and police themselves, and no one else. Voltron will deal with emergencies. That's what he was intended for in the first place.”

“Quite right!” Coran broke in cheerfully, making the Telona jump; apparently, he'd slipped a bottle or two of numvill into Hunk's drinks counter and had indulged a bit, to judge by the mostly-empty wineglass he was holding. “All sorts of odd things popped up in those days, from roving space monsters to rogue planets. Nothing'll mess up your orbits like having a Gnoot'Surbat Loshabar dropping in to sip an atmospheric layer or two off of your biggest gas giant, or perhaps a killer comet come to provide an opportunistic religion with a fresh set of End Times. The whole point of Voltron was to deal with the big things, don't y'know, the sort of things that make your average government squeal in mortal terror and hide in the basement. Quite good at it too. Shame about the politics he got caught in, back in the day. Terribly disruptive, and the old teams had all sorts of trouble keeping things under control. To tell you the truth, if Zarkon hadn't snapped, something else would've, and I can't say whether the one wouldn't have been worse than the other. Or we could've been stuck with the Carlumnians taking over. That would have been bad.”

“Worse than this?” the Telona demanded, waving his hands in the general direction of the Empire.

Coran, of course, wasn't about to let such a challenge go unanswered. “It was possible. At least the Galra'll keep you around if they think they can make a profit off of you. The Carlumnians—nasty folk, all silver tongues and evil intentions—preferred to get everyone around them to destroy themselves so they could scavenge the leftovers. As an Altean of high moral standards, I'm really not supposed to say 'good riddance' of an extinct people, but remembering what those wretches got up to does erode my fortitude more than a little. Why, when old King Alfor—previous pilot of the red Lion, excellent fellow, you know—was still in diapers, the Carlumnians sent around an assassin to see if they could prune the royal family tree a bit...”

Having heard this story before, Shiro took the opportunity to drift aside and finish his crepe before it melted. Keith, spotting his snack, wandered off in the direction of the buffet, the lace-bedecked Aln still on his shoulder, both of them still wearing their shades. Shiro couldn't help but smile; the pair would have been perfect for a “Men In Black” movie, and given his team's current career choices... Shiro looked at the fascinated crowd gathering around Coran and shook his head, abandoning the thought for the silly idea that it was.

“Feeling a little better?” Allura asked, coming up beside him.

Shiro nodded; the snack had helped. “Who's on the door?”

“Pidge. Her conversational partners deserted her when they heard Coran start speaking. He's got something of a reputation, I fear, and anyone interested in history just loves to listen to his tales. There are only a few ships that haven't arrived yet, so we'll be able to get started shortly.”

“Good,” Shiro sighed, looking over the very mixed crowd. “We're off to a good start already, though. A lot of these people have been spending the time making social and business contacts.”

Allura nodded, following his gaze. “The potential here for successful alliances is enormous. Mother would have been absolutely delighted—she loved fostering harmony between disparate peoples, and we've got quite an assortment. Oh, dear, what is Hunk doing?”

Shiro stared. “Teaching semi-intelligent sacred furniture how to sit up and beg.”

The Virgin's Throne was over by what Pidge had termed the “vegetative option”; there were several peoples represented here who, like Captain Ketzewan, were basically intelligent plants. Hunk had set out an excellent selection of distant soils in pretty basins, and had included several types of fertilizer as well. At the moment, he was feeding the Throne the sort of fertilizer tabs that pond-gardeners used on waterlilies and lotuses, which the Throne seemed to be enjoying very much. This also seemed to be amusing the sacrificial virgin sitting in it, at least; that worthy had been partaking of the drinks counter's offerings, and appeared to be giggling into a spray of flowers.

“Well, whatever keeps that silly thing from running off again,” Allura sighed. “Goodness, what a crush. I do wish that Mother was here to see this—I've never even heard of half of these peoples, and here they all are, on their best behavior.”

Shiro gave her a grim smile. “More or less. I've had to scold a Telona for casting doubts on Keith's character already, and the party's only barely gotten started.”

Surprisingly, her eyes lit up at that. “A Telona? My goodness, I can't see how I could have missed them, they're so very distinctive! Still, they shouldn't be angry about Keith's ancestry, their people are allied with the Galra, not enslaved by them. Still, I wonder... what was that Telona wearing?”

Shiro blinked. “White, mostly. White robes bordered in black, and with black and gold scrollwork over the back and breast.”

Allura nodded decisively. “Of course. That was their party's Designated Dissenter. He was only doing his job, Shiro. I hope that you didn't frighten him too much.”

Shiro glanced over at Coran, who was telling a riveted audience about the special augmentations that Alfor's father had made to a particular conference room. “He'll be fine. So's Keith, by the way. He made a friend just now, and that seemed to reassure the doubters somewhat.”

“Really?” Allura asked. “Who?”

Shiro began to tell her, only to be drowned out by Coran's shouted, “Sssprazzakt-boom! Nothing left of the bastard but a few cinders and a couple of interesting scorch marks on the floor and ceiling. Housekeeping insisted upon cleaning the floor—and a job of work that was and no mistake—but the one on the ceiling was left there as an object lesson for other less-than-polite guests. Very direct thinker was old Angbard. Good man, excellent King, but just a touch lacking in tact when he was annoyed. Used the system myself recently, as a matter of fact, to scorch off a Gantarash invader. Still worked like a charm, too, and just in time. That was part of our little adventure out by the Szaracan Cluster, when Lotor attacked us and put a hole in the Castle that nearly foundered us. A tale for the record books, that one, with all sorts of excitement and derring-do... Aha! There you are, Number Four! Come over here and tell these fine people of your noble exploits, and dictate to them the finer points of crushing cosmic death spiders.”

Keith had apparently wandered over out of curiosity and was eating an ice-cream bar. His shoulder-sitting companion, on the other hand, gave Coran an evil smile and said in a voice that wouldn't have been out of place coming from a Brooklyn street tough, “He told me that he and the others fell through a floor on top of it. Crunch! Just like that, and splashed slime everywhere. Woulda paid money to see that, and no joking! How's it going, Pointy? Looking kinda lively for an extinct race, there.”

Coran let out a squawk of utter shock and horror, his hands describing a series of warding gestures. “You! What are you doing off of your homeworld, you horrible little rodent? King Alfrand the Cautious made it strictly illegal for anyone to come within three Astronomical Units of your planet, much less show you a picture of a spacedrive, much much less show you how to actually build one! Whose throat did you rip out to get that first starship, you filthy savage?”

Baffled, Shiro glanced at Allura, who had gone very pale. “Allura?”

“That... that's an Ebirfalnax,” she quavered, backing away. “They're deadly—they killed and ate every first-contact team that was sent to their world!”

The pink bunny sitting on Keith's shoulder fluffed his borrowed jabot proudly. “Damn straight we did, and the oldest Lore-Tablets say that you was tasty. Not that I'd take a bite outta you, we're actually civilized these days. Even dropped the worst parts of our race-name, since it was puttin' folks off. Also, you're an endangered species, and there's rules about that.”

Keith smiled thinly at Shiro. “Remember Coran telling us that there were three inhabited planets in the Altean System? The second one was where the mice came from; these guys are from the third one. 'Ebirfalnax' is actually an Altean word, and it means something like 'horrible fluffy devourers'.”

“Pink,” Coran said suspiciously, backing away. “You left out the pink part. Their whole biosphere is mostly pink, which should have warned the Diplomatic Corps off in the first place. Traditionally, that's the color of mourning, so it is, and never had the Universe given them a hint that broad before nor since!”

The Aln laughed, showing chisel-shaped bunny incisors that were nonetheless as shiny and sharp as knives. “Dread Planet of Fluffy Pink, that's us. Surprised the Galra, too, but they don't taste as good. They're not our worst problem, for all that the crazy man on the Throne caused it. When he busted up Altea, our orbit started to shift. It's still okay for right now, but if something ain't done about it, our world stops being livable sometime in the next few hundred years. You, with the magic robot thing—any ideas?”

“Actually, yes,” Shiro said, turning toward the door. “Pidge? We've got someone here who needs to talk with you...”

Chapter Text

Chapter 20: Getting Down To Business

Fortunately, it took only a little persuasion to get Pidge started on that problem, and Hunk as well, although the Virgin's Throne insisted on following him around, nudging him gently and begging for more treats. Keith, of course, was stuck as the Aln's ride and Lance refused to be separated from the Torlunes, so Shiro and Allura returned to door duty together. This was actually something of a relief; it was getting very crowded in there.

“I'm not used to this,” Allura sighed, glancing around briefly as an Elikonian referee broke up another scuffle between disputing dignitaries. “I used to be, Mother insisted that I attend whenever there was a major diplomatic function, but this is a bit much.”

Shiro nodded. “It's been a while for me, too.”

She gave him an interested look. “You'd mentioned that you'd been part of an entourage before. Were you considered a good negotiator?”

Shiro vented a brief chuckle. “No. I was young, tall, handsome, I looked good in dress-formals, and I can loom threateningly on command. I used to do a lot of work as a walking recruitment poster, to tell you the truth. Mostly, I was there to make my superiors look good.”

Allura gave him an arch look. “'Mostly'.”

He smiled a little ruefully. “Mostly. It didn't happen often, but sometimes a foreign dignitary or one of their underlings would indulge themselves a little too heavily at the drinks counter, get mad about something, and try to beat up some other official. That's when I got to be something other than window dressing. One of the reasons why I got picked for that duty so often was because my Grandfather taught me how to get a weapon away from an angry drunk without hurting either him or myself.”

“Very useful,” Allura observed. “Perhaps I should have you teach me those techniques. The last time I had to deal with an angry drunk, I broke his wrist and punched his tusks out.”

Shiro's smile broadened into a grin, remembering the wreckage that she and Pidge had left behind them after that bar fight. “Did he have a weapon?”

“No.”

“Then I'm the one who should be taking lessons from you,” he said. “That was quite a fight.”

Allura shook her head. “Mother would have scolded me terribly. Princesses do not involve themselves in vulgar scuffles.”

“Heroic ones do,” Shiro rebutted easily. “Earth's history has had a fair number of royal princesses whom I wouldn't have liked to have crossed swords with.”

Allura's eyebrows rose, and she was just about to ask him for more information when a clash of gongs and a jangle of chimes from down the hall told them that another party had arrived. Coming toward them was a group of very tall people, approaching with ceremonial precision while chanting what might have been prayers. Something about their measured, undulating gait was a little odd, he thought, and their skin changed color at every movement; when they came close enough to see them clearly, he realized that the strangely boneless movements were exactly that—these people had no more bones than an octopus did.

“Ah! Ss!leeoo,” Allura said with a smile, pronouncing the difficult hiss-and-click with no trouble at all. “That's right, I believe that we have one of their more important historical artifacts here. Well, it will be good to put it back into their hands. I've actually met one once, and she was a lovely person.”

Shiro nodded. “That's right, when you were on Sowirra. Modhri showed me the picture he took of you and Helenva.”

Allura blushed slightly, but smiled. “We did look very nice, didn't we? I rather miss the girls, actually, and I wonder... Ancients! Quilemne, is that you?”

One of the ornately-bejeweled Ss!leeoo females blinked her large, pale-green eyes and looked around, face flushing a glorious apricot in astonished pleasure. “Liana? Liana! You made it!”

The procession came to a halt as the two young women ran to embrace each other, laughing, and in Quilemne's case, flickering with joyful colors. “Oh, you look wonderful, and stronger than ever!” Quilemne fluted happily. “I was so worried about you, you never contacted us after you left, and there have been such rumors...”

“Things have been terribly busy,” Allura admitted ruefully, eyes sparkling. “But you and the others were returned safely?”

Quilemne straightened up and indicated her finery. “Thankfully, yes. Amalthi's associate was a splendid pilot. We dropped off Torozan first, remember him? Lonoko's closer to Sowirra than any of our worlds are, and we were even able to ensure that he got good prices for all of the loot that Amalthi gave him. Alsarin's family has great influence just about everywhere in that Sector. Have you seen her? She's supposed to be here.”

“No!” Allura exclaimed. “I've been busy helping with the setup... oh, dear, we must have walked right past each other, there are so very many different peoples represented here. Let's go and find her, and see if anyone else is here, too.”

“Yes, let's!” Quilemne agreed, and they hurried into the room beyond without a backward glance.

Shiro watched them go, then gave the the other Ss!leeoos an apologetic look. “Sorry.”

The leader of their party, a tall and limber male, waved a boneless hand in a gesture of commiseration. “It's fine. Beta-females can be flighty, but they follow the Luck. Quilemne is highly valued for this; she cannot take so much as a stroll around the block without encountering Serendipity. Even when stolen by an enemy—after all, look where that journey has brought us! A Great Relic, also stolen, and she leads us right to it.”

Shiro puffed a laugh and waved them inside. “Come on in, then, and find friendships, too.”

Fortunately, the Ss!leeoos were among the last few stragglers, and the following two delegations were a good deal more prosaic than their predecessors. The Glillans were perfectly normal and natural-seeming to Shiro's abraded sensibilities, even if they looked like miniature, two-trunked elephants, tabby-striped in shades of yellow, and the Molps were a blessedly boring-looking bunch, stubby and lumpish and gray. They were accompanied by one of Yantilee's pirates, a gangly, spotty, three-legged Nupipso who had dressed for the occasion in what looked to be a tie-dyed toga. She—and Shiro was pretty sure that the alien was female, given that her spots had a velvety texture to them—paused briefly before him, which brought the party to a halt.

“This is the last group,” the Nupipso said with a brief grimace. “They've actually been here for a half-hour, but they insisted on being the last to arrive.”

One of the Molps, distinguished by a necklace of red beads, lifted his warty head with a look of grave dignity on his thick features. “Molps are always last,” he rumbled haughtily. “It is given to us that this is so, that we may look upon what has come before, and to Judge the Righteousness of it. Only we see the complete picture, the complete situation. Already I see the Great Lens of the Final Discernment on that table, there, as promised; I Judge that this event is Righteous, and it will go well.”

“I can hope,” Shiro said fervently.

The Molp raised an amused eyelid at him. “I do not need to. I also Judge that the presence of no less than eight Elikonians to be most appropriate. We were among their subject peoples, and we did not suffer for it. Rather, we mourned the Unrighteousness of their overthrow. We are most pleased that they have been enabled to free themselves, and our world along with theirs.”

“They're a great people,” Shiro observed. “Shall we join them?”

The Molp gave him an unmistakable smile. “After you.”

At the Nupipso's cheery wave, Shiro found himself leading the final procession into the room, noting that the last of the treasures had been laid out and the speaker's podium had been erected. They'd had to talk this over with Yantilee earlier, since some of their guests would resent it if certain other guests got their purloined artifacts returned before they did. Pidge had suggested using a random-number generator to keep the hostilities to a minimum, only to be told that no less than six of the cultures represented were vehemently against the whole idea of numbers. Others hated the very idea of randomness, and still others felt that this was a form of gambling, and that gambling was anathema. Lance had suggested that they hand out the artifacts in order of the people's natural colors, but the fact that the Torlunes used all the colors had blown that out of the water, to say nothing of the Huirreh, who didn't have any.

Coran had suggested serving them in order of the date that the Altean Empire had first made formal contact with them, which wouldn't have worked because fully half of them hadn't yet been contacted by anybody ten thousand years ago. In the case of the Purlulas, they simply hadn't existed back then, having been a lab experiment that had gone horribly right. According to their cheat-sheet, their creators had been known only as The Dreaded Ones, and had ruled an empire of nineteen suns with an iron fist for over three thousand years. It was a measure of their bad behavior that all of the Purlulas' neighbors had sworn everlasting gratitude after they had exterminated their creators, to which they had responded with remarkable civility. This was very unusual in lab-grown monstrosities, and they still had a reputation for being the most mannerly warrior race around.

Shiro had just sat there and watched Coran memorize that little snippet for later anecdotes.

Keith had eventually put his foot down and sorted the list his way. Yantilee had looked at it, side-eyed the young man—a fairly impressive gesture coming from someone with three eyes—and left it at that. Apparently, nobody in the wider universe alphabetized their subject matter with twenty-six seemingly random sound forms the way the American English Dictionary did. Still, glancing over the crowd as he stepped up to the podium, Shiro made a note to let the Molps go last, which was safe enough. The Molps had the simple good taste not to make enemies. Besides, everyone else was downright eager to go before them. A little too eager, perhaps; he caught sight of one of the Elikonians firmly separating a pair of grumpy dignitaries and felt that this was as good a time to start as any.

“Gentlebeings,” he said, the sound system letting his voice be heard over the huge room. “Your attention, please. I am Takashi Shirogane, Paladin of the black Lion and co-leader of the Voltron Force. Allow me to welcome you all to this conclave, where your treasures will be returned to you in good order.”

He paused, gazed out over his audience, and smiled faintly; Allura had apparently found her missing friends, and they were talking animatedly in low voices, completely ignoring everything around them in favor of catching each other up. That was good—more than that, it was important. He could feel another piece of the future clicking into place, and as significant as all of the items resting on the tables were, it was the meeting of that group of young women that was the whole point of this event. Reassured by the rock-hard certainty that something good would come of that, he continued.

“I was going to give you the traditional long, boring speech, but we've all got better things to do than listen to me talk,” he said, quirking his eyebrows at the Elikonian Diplomat-Priest, who smiled appreciatively, “and my team and I can't seem to stay in one place for more than a few days without getting attacked by something. So without further ado, let's get started. Just so you all know, we're doing this in reverse alphabetical order using the alphabet of one of the languages from my own home planet, which is completely unknown to any of you and therefore has no bias. Well, except for the Molps—they come in last, which they tell me is only proper. And the Bellickies, whose treasure repatriated itself.”

There were sounds and motions of amusement from the crowd, and a pair of approving gestures from the red-necklaced Molp and a half-drunk sacrificial virgin.

“All right, then,” Shiro continued, glancing at his list, “To the Z'yira, the Gnorbult of Dram-Olni-Darna'loo...”

It went very smoothly from there, at least until he got to the Unilu. Their stolen treasure was a surprisingly small but ornate key made from pure platinum, and from the moment that Pidge handed it over to them, they immediately began stealing it from each other. That would have been fine if they had just retired to a corner or something to do that, but this particular group had seemingly been made up of the greatest sneak thieves of their generation, and they flickered through the crowd, around and under the tables, among the light fixtures, and even behind Shiro himself like ninjas. He recognized the moves, of course, and even had been trained in some of them, but compared to these fellows, Nasty had been merely competent. These were artists, and he was hard-pressed to ignore their antics while announcing the following recipients.

There were a few hitches among those, of course. Some of the artifacts reacted unexpectedly when claimed by their peoples. Shiro counted no less than ten edged weapons that blazed with righteousness, fourteen more that blazed with wrath, caught fire, dripped sacred ichor all over the floor, or in one case, started singing a battle hymn that translated more or less as: “I'm gonna cut your pronkers off!” in an endless loop until its blushing recipient stuffed it back into its sheath. There were various items of royal or divine headgear and jewelry that did much the same sort of thing, a gauntlet that rendered its wearer invisible to anyone who used sonar to see with, a number of peculiar devices that lit up and made odd noises, and a small statuette that came to miraculous life and demanded one of Hunk's crepes as a snackrifice. There were numerous items of statuary both large and small that spoke, shone, leaked, sang, smelled funny, danced around in small circles, or tried to sell its adherents insurance. There were numerous vessels that ranged from tiny, thimble-sized vials to a cauldron big enough to wash a moose in, some of which filled with strange liquors when their owners chanted ancient cantrips over them. The various items of furniture were better-behaved, by and large, although the Virgin's Throne was still following Hunk around and making plaintive “meep?” noises for more treats. Most of those items just got sat on while the other members of their parties cheered; one of them, the Great War Throne of the Riniq'Macci, transformed into a robot battlesuit in the finest tradition of sentai anime. It was just as well that the thing was only two feet tall, or it would have gone right through the ceiling. Shiro felt that the theme music, acrobatics, and light show were a nice touch, but Lance nearly broke a rib trying not to laugh.

There were garments of considerable significance, although nobody with color vision could look directly at the Torlunes' Ceremonial Cowl and Cloak of Choomack the Brilliant, and the Sforeens' Mrarotha Shadowbard could only be seen by the ripples in the air when it was moved. Even more interesting were the Pilrogs' Holy Buskins of the Unheard Saint. They were extremely simple, resembling large bags made from some sort of scaly-looking leather and secured with rope ties, but when they had been placed upon the feet of the unshod Pilrog, he was able to walk twice the length of the room in complete silence. Since the designated wearer had to have weighed at least half a ton, this was an impressive feat.

Shiro's personal favorite was the Causality Clock, a remarkably beautiful and intricate assemblage of gears, dials, and filigree that ticked quietly to itself in several harmonious rhythms, and was the masterwork made by the Thrunnops that had finally convinced the Hoshinthra that their daughter race was ready for their independence. Hunk, of course, could only stare at the magnificent apparatus and ask the handless alien, “How...?”

To which the Thrunnop, levitating the device with ease, replied: “Skill.”

Some were more gruesome in nature, incorporating bones and other body parts from various creatures, and not all of them animals. The referees had to break up several more arguments there, particularly when those significant items included portions of those peoples represented in the room. It didn't particularly surprise Shiro when a very stiff and disapproving Coran had to hand off one of those to Keith's Aln passenger; that item was a single vertebra, preserved from the very first Altean visit to their planet, and there were still toothmarks visible in the bone.

In short, aside from the special effects and the antics of the four-armed ninjas in the background, it wasn't all that much different from any other awards ceremony he'd attended. Better still, many of the parties preferred to depart after receiving their treasures, the better to get them home safely before anything else could happen, and the enormous function space was almost empty by the time that the Molps had been presented with theirs, which was a rock-crystal lens the size of a dinner plate, mounted in an elegant frame. The senior member of their delegation lifted it with grave reverence and peered at Shiro through it, which startled a shimmer out of Shiro's own internal Lens, and a rumble from his Lion. Whatever the Molp saw surprised him, too, and the look of awe and deep respect that the alien gave him before they turned to leave left Shiro wondering.

“I felt that,” Lance said, coming up beside him. “They're lucky, right? They can put their magic mirror on a shelf and not get woken up in the middle of the night by next week's nightmare.”

Shiro vented a tired puff of laughter; as he'd feared, they had indeed started to catch each other's dreams. Warnings of the future were still instantly identifiable, though. “I said I was sorry about that. Still, in our line of work, getting the news as it comes through is better than getting it too late. At least we got that storeroom cleared out—Tenric was starting to nag me about needing the space to train apprentices in.”

Lance smirked. “Yeah, and we've made a bunch of new friends. I've learned some new sewing tricks that I'm dying to try out myself, everybody left happy, and the Elikonians didn't hardly have to smack anybody at all.”

Shiro nodded and looked around, seeing a few lingering clumps of people still engaged in earnest conversation. “I see that the Bellickies have left. How did they get the Throne away from Hunk?”

There was a snort from Lance. “He gave them a bag of plant tabs and the recipe, and it followed them out as tame as anything. Good luck getting that Aln to let go of Keith, though. He's got comfy shoulders.”

Shiro chuckled. “Spoken by one who knows, eh?”

Lance blushed a little, but didn't refute it. “Yeah. And he really wants to see how Pidge and Hunk are gonna solve that orbital problem of theirs. They've got a few colonies on other worlds, but a home planet is a terrible thing to lose, you know?”

Shiro thought of the very real possibility of Zarkon sending a planet-buster after Earth, and made a mental note to find and destroy the rest of the Empire's Tarzeroth-class ships. Not to steal them, not even for the Fleet; in his opinion, nobody should have that kind of power. “Yeah. I'm interested in their solution, too. If we could move Quolothis out to where Altea was, it would solve two big problems in one go.”

“Big job,” Lance mused. “Well, we've moved big stuff before, and we know a lot more about moving it now than we did back then. Let's go find out if they can hack the Universe yet.”

They turned to find their teammates, but got no further; a pair of Unilu dropped down from above, engaged in the sort of furious hand-to-hand fighting that one generally sees in a bad chop-saki movie, only with more arms and much picking of pockets. As they watched, one of the combatants caught one foot on the podium and lost his balance, and something small and glimmering squirted out of his grip. Lance reached up and caught it easily, and blinked in mild confusion at the small, bright key in his hand.

“All right, guys,” he said, sending a narrow look at the two Unilu who were now circling him and Shiro like a pair of hungry sharks. “What's this thing all about? You and your group's been doing martial arts all over the place for the past couple of hours. Take a breather, all right? And you didn't try to steal anybody else's stuff, so this has to be really important.”

“You don't know?” one of the Unilu asked, a touch breathlessly. “You had one of our kind teaching you trade secrets for an entire Ulomnian month, and you don't know?”

“No,” Shiro replied, peering curiously at the key. “Nasty never mentioned it. If he mentioned keys at all, it was generally how to steal them, or how to avoid having to use them entirely.”

The Unilu grinned appreciatively. “Good. There's some hope for the man, then. We don't talk about this one to outsiders—not without a really big bribe, anyway, which was how the Galra got their greasy hands on it in the first place. I think we can trust you lot with the information.”

Lance grinned, flipping the glinting key in one hand. “What's our silence worth to you?”

The second Unilu cracked a laugh and nipped the key out of the air with a lightning-fast motion of one hand. “That's what I like to hear! But, you're still too heroic to do what comes natural to us. This is the Great Universal Master Key, Sacred to the First Of All Thieves, the God Lawsy. He's the one who broke into the Vault of Impenetrable Keeping and stole the bottle that held the Universe, you know. That Key will open any lock on our homeworld. Any lock at all, no matter how simple, no matter how complex. It'll even open ones that don't have keyholes. Amazing piece of work. Shame that it doesn't work anywhere else, though.”

“Who made it?” Shiro asked; indeed, the Key had a strange quality to its shape that didn't look anything like the technologies that Nasty had made them study.

“Not a clue,” the Unilu admitted, tucking the Key into a breast pocket and slapping a colleague's hand away in the same motion. “It was originally found in the middle of the deepest swampland on our world, in a crater that never flooded. No, really, there was some kind of force field around the hole, the water was something like two or three athta high over it, but it was bone-dry in the center, and lying right there was the Key. We're pretty sure that it's actually an Elder Race artifact.”

Shiro's eyebrows rose. “They visited your world once?”

The Unilu shrugged, not even looking around as he fended off two other Unilu with his upper pair of arms. “We think so. They might have been the Xor Hanai, but we aren't sure. Some people like to think that they might have given our evolutionary ancestors a nudge in the right direction, but there isn't any clear proof. Could've been the Threcarseo. They liked swamps.”

Lance nodded, remembering the incredible geo-engineering project that those ancient people had set up on Poboio. “They liked water in general. But seriously, no filching anyone else's stuff here?”

The Unilu grabbed another attacker, flipped him upside down, bounced his head lightly on the floor, and tossed him aside before speaking again. “Not here,” he admitted a little ruefully. “When you get to our level of skill, you start to really think when you pick your targets. The Key's a major holy object for us, but so were all of the others, to all of those other people, who would have been really, really upset if they'd gone missing again. We can't afford to make that sort of enemy. There was a Thrunnop here, for Lawsy's sake! Nobody in their right minds messes with a Thrunnop. Even the Galra have to be careful not to annoy them.”

Shiro frowned. “How can you tell if you have?”

The Unilu shivered and smacked away another of his colleagues, seemingly without noticing what he was doing. “You're dead. They're telekinetic, they can sense everything around them down to the atomic level, and they can move faster than you'd think. A lot faster. Their world is... not a nice place for anyone but them, but they make things that the Galra want. They make those things for the Galra, and the Galra leave them alone. That's the deal, if you can believe it.”

“I can,” Shiro replied. “The Hoshinthra like to make sure that their children are self-sufficient before they turn them loose.”

“Self-sufficient, he says,” the Unilu humphed, stepping back a pace to let two more of his colleagues collide heavily and collapse on the floor in front of him. “Right. Like the Kithraxen, who take the whole 'knowledge is power' thing to a whole new level while letting the rest of us believe that they're just simple scholars. Like the Zoralans, who only look like gentle mystics. Like the Temocnatla, who claim to be gardeners, but their greenhouses look like nightmare factories. Like the Bolsiroths, who like large-scale sculpting. With asteroids. In orbit. And those are just the ones we know about!”

Shiro smiled. “Am I wrong?”

“No! You're just massively understating things!” The Unilu heaved a deep breath, tripped up another assailant, and continued. “What's worse is they're all waiting for something. They keep in contact with the Hoshinthra, we know that much. They're waiting for something big to happen, and we have no idea what it is. The moment they move, though, we're all going to ground. You, though—you're lucky. You've got their protection. Nothing's going to be able to touch your homeworld.”

Lance glanced back at Hunk, who was scribbling on a noteboard while Pidge and several other scientifically-inclined people argued about planetary masses and vectors. Keith looked out of his depth, and so did the Aln. “Yeah, that's Hunk's doing. He's amazing, isn't he? Hey, if it keeps you guys in tartans and haggis...”

“We have to still be here to enjoy them!” the Unilu protested. “I just wish we knew what they're anticipating. Getting good intel out of anything Hoshinthra-bred is nigh-impossible at best, and it's driving our best spies completely up the wall.”

Shiro hummed thoughtfully. “It could be anything, knowing them. They don't—uh!”

Tzairona's Lens flared in the depths of his mind, only a glimpse, but it was more than enough. Something dark would burn against the stars in the days to come, something titanic and terrible, something that could mean the end of everything, and Voltron would have to face it... but not alone. Not alone, and among those who came would be some who would make the sacrifice, and gladly.

Lance grunted, rubbed at his forehead, and muttered, “Wow.”

“What was that?” squeaked one of the Unilu, who had probably heard of Shiro's abilities but hadn't expected to see one of them in action.

“It's coming,” Shiro said hoarsely, wiping at his sweating face. “They know. They'll help us. It won't be much longer now.”

The Unilu paled, his beige complexion going the color of spoiled cream, so shocked that a set of nimble fingers slipped past his guard and lifted the Key from his pocket. “What's coming?”

“We aren't really sure, but it's bad, and we don't know exactly when, either,” Lance said, steadying his teammate. “Right. You need a drink, Shiro, and another crepe. Maybe two. Nice talking with you guys, it's been real, have fun cracking all the safes, gotta-go-bye.”

Shiro felt the need for more than crepes, and did some considerable damage to the buffet's bowl of timpli-fish salad before Allura came looking for him, an entourage of interested young women in tow. “I felt you having a Vision,” she said, giving him a concerned look. “Was it important?”

Shiro shrugged and washed down a mouthful of fish salad with a long drink of water. “Nothing I haven't Seen before, except that the Hoshinthra—and their daughter races—will be on our side when everything comes to a head. Somebody's going to do something dramatic.”

Allura sighed and shook her head. “It will be good to have their help, but there will be so much other drama going on, how will we even notice?”

“I've got a feeling that we'll notice this one,” Lance said, handing Shiro a napkin, smiling broadly at Allura's entourage and turning up the charm. “Hello, ladies, can I help you with anything?”

Allura flicked him a warning glance; Lance no longer tried to put the moves on every attractive young female he met, but Allura was far less inclined to share these days. “Lance,” she said pleasantly, “Shiro, these are my friends from Sowirra, where I was held in a harem for a time. Our captor, Governor Sarapvet, liked to collect Princesses and other rarities.”

Shiro smiled, and offered them the small, polite bow that served as a greeting in mixed company. “Yes, you told us. I'm glad that you all were able to get away safely. I've already encountered Quilemne, if only in passing.”

Quilemne giggled and flushed a bright yellow-orange, batting green eyelashes coquettishly at them. Well, not precisely eyelashes. Ss!leeoos had evolved from something aquatic, and they were more like fins than anything else. Still, they fluttered prettily, which was the whole point.

“It was quite dramatic,” another, rather businesslike young woman with piercing golden eyes said matter-of-factly. “We may have to raze and rebuild the spaceport entirely. Do make us known to your compatriots, Allura, I've heard a great deal about their exploits, some of which are frankly unbelievable.”

Allura smiled ruefully. “I don't believe in some of them either, and I was right there in the middle of them. Shiro, Lance, this is Alsarin, the Prominence of the Lazor'Seth Trade Clan, originally of Sowirra before they were forced out by their Governor. Quilemne here is a highly-valued member of the Azure Reef Deep House on Sleeorra. This is Drani-ip-Yoa, Second Daughter of the God-King Drasira-ai-Yoa of Hobrilssam. Goladra here is a Great Starfarer of the Ninth Sept from Eradon, and Upoli holds similar rank in her Hive in the Asteroid Colonies of Bircuwadth. Meledra... ah. Meledra, dear, I can't keep your titles straight.”

The exquisitely-attired and very fluffy Telona woman giggled. “It is a mouthful, isn't it? Officially, I am the Favored Luminance, Her Right Noble Excellence of the Grand Soborliar, First Daughter of the High Priestess-Queen of the Holy Realm of Phorumnosh, and soon to be the Priestess-Queen in my own right if that saber-toothed lawyer of mine can wrangle it. Mother, alas, has not made herself popular among the populace since she sold me to Sarapvet, and might soon be removed from her post.”

“Family politics, huh?” Lance asked.

“Oh, quite,” Meledra said, flicking her fluffy ears in distaste. “And something of a rebuke to mine for letting Mother pander to the Empire's greed. I'm illegitimate, you see, but letting me take up the full rank and duties implies to my Clan that the Bloodline could do with a bit of hybrid vigor, as evidenced in myself! They're not wrong, of course. Half of my Line is a jumble of inbred twits. This little errand will help me displace my unpopular parent; after all, she could have asked the Galra to help find and return the Diadem of the First Empress herself, but she didn't, and if I come home after a short outing with the thing all tucked up in its pretty crystal case...”

“Instant legitimacy,” Shiro finished for her. “And it shows that you're friendly with us.”

“Very much so,” Upoli thrummed gravely, biolights flickering under her polished carapace. “Many governments of many worlds consider this choice: to continue in the uneasy safety of the current situation, subordinate to murderers and thieves, or to accept a Great Risk, and show favor to a possible liberator. Voltron is a great hope to many, a great threat to many, and great change to all. All fear change, but to have a great treasure back at the hands of heroes is no small thing.”

“Theft is a Great Sin,” Drani-ip-Yoa murmured, her fringes of silken hair glimmering as she shivered. “The Empire has condemned itself to the Final Emptiness in committing it. My people will insist on joining the Coalition when I return with the Telescope and Pendulum, returned freely and without obligation. It does help that already the Coalition begins to build upon its promises.”

“Valenth?” Lance asked.

“The new trade routes,” Alsarin said firmly, “of which, yes, Valenth will be an important market thereon. The Galra have impoverished many worlds in our Sectors, but not for so long that we have forgotten the more prosperous times. My own Clan stands to reclaim and to enhance our former greatness, and we are by no means alone in this. I find it ironic that the Galra themselves will be helping with that.”

Shiro waggled a hand. “Something like this has happened a number of times in my own world's history—we've had conquering empires, too, you see. Close to the heart of the Empire, the Galra are mostly what the Emperor wants them to be. Way out on the fringes, though, Galra sentiments tend to become more closely aligned with those of their neighbors. Humans are like that, too. We tend to deprogram ourselves if we can get far enough away from the source of propaganda to develop our own opinions.”

“It's been said that your two peoples are related,” Quilemne said dubiously.

Lance jerked a thumb at Keith, who still had the Aln on his shoulder. “Look no further. Keith's mom got shipwrecked on Earth and fell in love with the man who pulled her out of that wreck. She's super cool, though, and has taught us a lot of important stuff, but it all began, like, millions of years ago when some Elder Race or other did something funny with Galra and Human genetics. Yeah, we're related, but it's like having an embarrassing cousin that your family won't talk about.”

Goladra's purple eyes narrowed. “My people know that very well. The Eldest Lore tells us of the Tio Lonam Hapta, the Monsters From Beyond the Sky, who would come at times to hunt us, taking whole tribes away with them. Our home solar system is littered with their relics and remnants, our far orbits and our neighboring systems still hosting the results of what was done to those who were taken. We had, up to the destruction of their own homeworld, an agreement with the Hoshinthra, to remediate those unfortunates. The Monsters had left them... very badly twisted, mostly; the Hoshinthra have recently resumed their programs, and they are helping.”

“We got off lightly,” Shiro admitted. “It could have been a lot worse.”

Goladra regarded Keith appraisingly and made a gesture of agreement with one double-thumbed hand. “That is so. Nevertheless, I would know a thing. What will the Paladins do, if the Emperor and his sorceress are ended, and the Empire brought to heel?”

Lance shrugged. “Continue. We can't not continue, and heroing gets to be a habit. The Lions don't give up their pilots in a hurry, either. There's going to be trouble, and we'll be dealing with that trouble, and then we'll teach some other guys how to fly the Lions, and maybe retire so that someone else can deal with the trouble. Heroing is hard work.”

“And do what?” Goladra pressed.

“Hmm? Oh, I dunno,” Lance replied. “I'd kind of like to get married and raise a family, maybe open my own line of designer clothing. Hunk says he wants to move to Halidex and learn cosmic cookery, but he'll probably do science, too, and Pidge will definitely wind up as a mad scientist emeritus—she likes the science. Allura, you'll probably be doing Princess stuff on Quolothis. Well, Queen stuff, if they like you enough, which they will if they've got any sense. Keith's sort of looking into swordsmithing as a hobby, but he gets bored easy and likes adventuring. So does Shiro, here, and we'll have the whole universe to explore. Oh, who am I kidding? We'll all stay together and go have those adventures. It's just what we do. We'd miss each other too much if we tried to split up.”

Goladra trilled softly. “Come to Eradon, then. Our space holds many adventures and mysteries—we have been exploring our own System for centuries, and still have discovered only a fraction of its secrets.”

Shiro smiled. “I might just do that. Where would be a good place to start?”

“In our sun's outermost orbits,” she said slowly, after a moment's thought, “there is a great broad ring of debris. It is dangerous; even our best pilots go there warily, and the Galra prefer not to go there at all. There are things there that were once of our people, but the Monsters turned them into things that are no longer people, and sometimes they attack ships. Somewhere in that region of dust and dangers, there is a moonlet that lets no one near it. It moves at random, and is never in the same place twice. When explorers approach it, it speaks in a strange voice and in a language that nobody knows, then flashes a symbol that has no meaning. When our explorers try to answer it, it goes away in such a fashion that no sensor can detect it, and it is not seen again for whole seasons. We call it the Foreigner, for it cannot be of local origin.”

Something went click in the back of Shiro's mind. “What does the symbol look like?”

Goladra smiled self-consciously and fished something small and flat out of her bodice. “My own Sept's Insignia is a variation of it; our origins began in smuggling and piracy. We obtained our nobility through... ah... rendering aid to a historical King in his hour of need, but the older Septs regarded us and still regard us as outsiders. My ancestors had something of a sense of humor, and were not ashamed of their professions.”

Lance grinned as Shiro took the little token from Allura's friend. “Hey, my own Great-Great Grandfather used to dig secret tunnels sometimes. Uncle Diego still uses some of them for running moonshine. Huh, that looks familiar. Have we seen that before?”

Allura gasped. “Shiro! Is that...?”

They'd seen something very close to that rather elegant design only once before, on an ancient ship mangled long past use, yet still carrying treasure past all monetary worth. Shiro pulled in a deep, careful breath and held it up for a closer look. “Goladra, I'll need to talk to some people first, but we'll probably want to check out the Foreigner sooner rather than later. Would your people be willing to help us find it?”

Goladra's star-shaped pupils dilated slightly at their reaction to her Sept Insignia, but she gestured compliance. “Possibly. Particularly if you are willing to share the secret of that symbol. I assume that it carries some honor?”

“It does,” Allura said, her eyes fixed on the little signet. “And more than just a little. In some ways, the honor conferred by that symbol still flies with us.”

Gleaming with polish in bright enamel-work, slightly more ornate but entirely recognizable, the insignia of the Dyrchoram glinted in his palm.

“It fits,” Kolivan told them two days later; the results of the repatriation ceremony had eased relations between the Blade and a large number of governments somewhat, which had opened whole new channels of information for them. As a result, his expression was slightly less stony than usual. This latest development, however, had spurred him into coming to meet with one particular new contact in person, and as often happened, the Castle was the preferred meeting-place.

“The clues we have been able to extract and follow do lead us to that section of space, and your friend's description of the Foreigner solves a particularly perplexing riddle. It would only make sense that the hiding place should have an AI of its own, one that is able to conceal itself.”

Goladra, who had initially been wary of the massive Blade Commander, cocked him an interested look. “Such concealments are rare. Prior to the Ghost Fleet's own system, that technology was only a fantasy.”

Pidge grinned proudly. “Some of my best work.”

“Mandrax,” Jasca said from a side screen; her virtual presence had surprised Goladra as well, fully-autonomous artificial intelligences being extremely rare in the wider universe. The fact that she was ten eons old and remembered the days before the Empire had surprised her even more. “One of my brothers. It has to be. He was brand-new when everything started to go bad, and had systems that none of the rest of us did.”

Pidge's eyes glinted. “An experimental model?”

Jasca flicked simulated fingers. “Try very, very advanced. He had three times the computing power that I did when I was new, five times the multitasking ability, and had systems that I could only dream of playing with. I was pretty high-end, but he was something else entirely, and only barely out of the testing phases. Unlike me, he was actually designed specifically to run a big, complex station, one geared for the research and development of even more fun little toys. There were rumors that he had a bunch of siblings in the works as well, but that was top-secret, even among the Dyrchoram. As for the concealment thing, then yes—he had all of the newest and best capabilities where it came to silent running. A fancy new power core, too. Self-recharging, much like the Lions.”

Allura frowned. “I'm a little surprised that your Order had such technology. One would think that Zarkon would have appropriated it for himself.”

Jasca made a rude noise. “He didn't know half of our little tricks. Nobody but Commander Marmora herself knew everything. Galran politics were very rough in those days, and to keep our charges alive, we had to keep ahead of every partisan genius out there—and make sure that nobody got into our own data banks.”

Kolivan vented a sour grunt. “Zarkon did try to steal their secrets, Princess. They destroyed or concealed everything to keep him from taking them, and the Dyrchoram did not allow themselves to be captured alive. We have found caches of data, thanks to Jasca here, and what we have learned from them will keep our technical corps busy for decades. Some of it has been given to Slav already, which is keeping him out of trouble.”

“Good,” Shiro said fervently.

“But will he still be sane after all this time?” Hunk asked. “I mean, you were pretty messed up when we found you, and if he's speaking in tongues--”

“I died,” Jasca cut in sharply. “If I were a flesh-and-blood person, you could say that I starved to death. What's more, I was left for dead in a region where a bunch of ugly, cannibalistic monsters might want to open me up and scavenge my innards, then use them to hunt down and eat my friends. Also, I literally couldn't shut myself down properly—that was a process that took half an hour, and I had to have a pilot on hand to make sure that nothing stupid happened. Tzai just didn't have the time, so yes, I was messed up. Mandrax may or may not be in better shape than I was when you found me. Besides, Mandrax loved learning ancient languages; the Dyrchoram based a lot of their encryptions in tongues that nobody spoke anymore, and he was probably the greatest scholar of ancient communications in Galran space. I won't be able to tell whether he's babbling mindlessly or cussing you out in an obscure dialect of Third Millennium Pak-Mok Thanzu until I hear him myself.”

Lance smirked. “Perhaps we should take you along, if only so you could cuss him out right back. He'd probably be overjoyed to hear a familiar voice. After that long, I know that I would be.”

“I can't,” Jasca replied. “I'm already stretched as far as I can go—the Fleet needs me as a secure comm network, and I'm also handling the traffic between Halidex and Valenth and everybody in between. I could do more if I didn't have to encrypt everything, but there are a lot of pointy purple ears that we really don't want listening in.”

“Which is why we need more comm-stations with your grade of AI to run them in the first place,” Keith said, running his fingers over his own ear, which was pointier and more purple than it had been originally, a fact that had been weighing on his mind for some time. “Lizenne, don't you know a bunch of the old languages?”

“Some, and reasonably well, although Modhri is better at the written forms than I am,” Lizenne said thoughtfully. “Unfortunately, I am completely ignorant of all Dyrchoram code phrases. Like Jasca, I would have to hear the Foreigner's voice myself before knowing how to respond. I need,” she said with an arch look in Kolivan's direction, “more information.”

Kolivan sighed, but nodded, Goladra watching this exchange with considerable interest. She'd told Allura that before meeting Helenva in Sarapvet's harem, she'd never seen a Galra woman, and the interactions between male and female fascinated her.

“I must ask, for the pride of my Sept,” she said carefully, “who were the Dyrchoram, and what duties did they hold all those eons ago?”

At Kolivan's nod, Lizenne explained. “They were an organization of Galra women, charged with defending and protecting the old Royal Houses of both the Homeworld and the First Colonies,” she told her. “Very powerful witches, most of them, and very great warriors. Interestingly, the Order was largely autonomous, and operated largely in secret; mostly, they dealt with outside threats to the Thrones, although they weren't above pruning the family trees a bit if they happened to produce a madman or two. Their honor, reliability, and discretion were absolute, as was their loyalty to the Old Empire. Zarkon, when he usurped the Throne and slaughtered the Old Royal Lineages to cement his own claim, incurred their wrath, and they attempted to assassinate him. As you can see, they weren't able to; Haggar was a greater protector than they had anticipated, and Zarkon more powerful, and they were forced to scatter before them. The Blade of Marmora is the sole descendant of their Order, and they follow in the Dyrchoram's legend. Their aid has been vital to the Coalition ever since they formed an alliance with Voltron, and for some time even before then.”

Goladra rested her chin on steepled fingers, eyes distant as she considered that. “It is honorable,” she murmured eventually. “The Dyrchoram were like the King's Squadron, which only accepts the best of our own people. It is admirable that they continue their work, even after so very long. To share in their Insignia is no small privilege, Galra or no. I will tell my Sept Helmsman of this.”

“I appreciate this,” Kolivan murmured gravely, with a respectful nod in Goladra's direction. “Eradon sits upon a very strategic point in space, and if your people and my Order can come to an accommodation, it will benefit us all.”

Goladra hissed faintly. “The Empire does not see us thus, and treats us as a backwater.”

Kolivan sneered genteelly. “The Empire is blind. Your planet's appointed Governor is only interested in stealing your wealth, and does not pay attention to much beyond his own pleasures. Who do you think has been under-reporting your importance, the better to take it all for himself? We know where his treasure-troves are, incidentally.”

Goladra's eyes narrowed. “I will arrange things so that you and the Sept Helmsman will speak together, by force if necessary.”

“I will keep my schedule clear for just such a meeting,” Kolivan said with grave dignity.

Lance gave them both a broad grin. “This looks like the start of a beautiful friendship. Okay, so we'll have a few days before we make any moves?”

Kolivan nodded. “I have the personal dispensation of the Queen of Halidex to improve our communications net by any means necessary. If we might enlist your help to access the Foreigner, Paladins, it would expedite this. Lizenne, your expertise with the old languages would be much-appreciated as well.”

Lizenne sat back in her chair. “I will render what aid I can, as will Modhri. As for that other matter, my Lord Blade...?”

“They have reached Halidex and await you there,” Kolivan said, watching her carefully. “They are all well, and are eager to meet with you.”

Lizenne seemed to relax a little. “Good. I will go to visit them, next time we're there.”

Chapter Text

Chapter 21: A Moment To Reflect

Keith stared into his mirror with worried eyes, examining every feature and checking them against an image of himself that had been taken not long after they'd first arrived at the castle. Some of those changes were only natural; a young man did a lot of maturing in four years. Others, however, were most definitely natural only on his mother's side of the family. His hair, long and more furlike than Human hair could be, was a very dark but instantly recognizable purple now, with only a thin shading of the more Human black at the tips. The two lighter streaks above his ears were a dead giveaway. The golden rings in his eyes had broadened again, and rather reminded him of Hunk's aetheric shieldwalls. Absently, he wondered if it was a coincidence that his rings were exactly the same color as the bright gold of Tahe Moq power, and then abandoned the thought as silly. There were very few coincidences where it came to such things, and in any case, the gold in his eyes was the same gold as his Lion's eyes. Coincidence? Nah. His ears seemed to be getting larger and pointier by the day, his cheekbones and chin had a definite Galran cast to them, and he'd had to get the Castle to make him a special long-handled soft brush for the coat of velvety, deep-purple fur that now covered his back from nape to tailbone. It was starting to spread over his shoulders, hips, upper arms, and thighs now, and another patch was forming on his chest. His finger- and toenails grew naturally into sharp points if he didn't keep them trimmed, and he went through socks very quickly when he forgot. He was certain that his eyeteeth were longer than they'd been before, he could see heat a little more clearly now, and his sense of smell had become very acute. So had his hearing, and he could feel his ears pricking whenever a cub squeaked nearby.

All of this was either harmless or even beneficial, none of his housemates had any problem with it, but he'd seen how the people at the treasure-returning party had looked at him. Only when the Aln had climbed up on his shoulder had they relaxed, and that was because they'd known that the Aln could have ripped his throat open in seconds if he'd started acting out. It had been the right thing to do and the right time to do it in, but it still rankled. Here he was, working his butt off and risking his life to free them from a tyrannical regime, and they couldn't get past the fact that he was half-Galra. If nothing else, he thought sourly to himself, he now had a better knowledge of how ethnic minorities back home felt all the time.

Oh, god, and that was a whole other problem. Sometime in the future, they would go back home, and if he turned up purple and furry, large portions of the population would flip their shit about it. Well, maybe he could move to Halidex too, or go wherever his mother did. First things first, though; Doc had recommended that he find out from Lizenne how far his physical changes would go, and he had nothing better to do with his time right now.

So thinking, he keyed his room's comm and contacted the Chimera.

“Yes?” Modhri's voice answered his hail.

“Hey, Modhri, is Lizenne in?” Keith asked.

“She's in the main lab, checking on the current batch of animals,” Modhri replied. “We're within a day or two of decanting them, it seems, and she's making sure that our recent upsets haven't damaged any of them. So far, so good, I think. Zampedran beasts seem to be naturally resistant, even to fluctuations in reality.”

A very Galran urge to hunt stirred in him, and he squelched it firmly. “That's great. Um. The current batch?”

“You can't just dump a whole bunch of new species into an environment without causing chaos,” Modhri explained. “You have to do it a little at a time, particularly with the bigger creatures. She's already released a clutch of pond vocoli into the marsh, a few flights of small birds, and a few of the more middling-sized beasts. The current batch holds the first of the larger species, and we're going to have to keep Tilla and Soluk away from them until they've matured a bit. Dragon instincts are rather more powerful than our own, and they won't be able to resist such tasty morsels.”

Keith snorted, glad that he wasn't alone in his urges. “I can relate. Anyway, do you think she'd mind if I came over? I need to talk to her about... um... personal things.”

“Ah,” Modhri said, his voice full of understanding and sympathy. “Yes, I'd noticed the changes. Give me a moment...”

There was a short pause, and then: “Yes, she's perfectly willing to see you. In truth, she's been wanting to show you the extrapolations of how you might look in a few years. Apparently, you're going to be a very handsome man.”

“By Galran standards,” Keith grumbled.

“If that internet snapshot she took from your world is any indicator, there are legions of Human women who would fight each other for the privilege of grooming your fur,” Modhri told him with a chuckle. “Be glad that you've got ladies of your own who will protect you from them. It is possible to be too popular, you know.”

Keith couldn't help but smile, thinking of Modhri's movie-star brother. “Yeah. Okay, I'll be there soon. The main lab, right?”

“The small one, where we rebuilt Shiro,” Modhri corrected him. “She prefers it for small, personal projects.”

“Right.”

Keith headed out at a trot, making his way down to the docking annex and finding that the tubeway between stepsister ships had already been extended, and it was with a slight feeling of relief that he entered the confines of the Chimera's halls. The Castle's lights were just a tiny bit too intense for comfort, and the sheer whiteness of the walls got to be oppressive after a while. Not that he was in favor of painting everything purple, but it was just too bright. Half of his ancestry had come from a nocturnal hunter, and it was that half of him that was very much on his mind right now.

He found his adoptive aunt precisely where Modhri said she would be, running checks on some sort of coiled-up spiny creature in the cloning tank where Shiro had been revived. It wasn't all that pretty to look at, but Lizenne seemed to be pleased enough with it.

“What is that?” he asked. “It looks like a cross between a python and a hedgehog.”

“Saarbittle,” she replied, patting the glassy tube. “A middling-large omnivore, specializing in large fruit and small prey; very useful for keeping the populations of bafta and nirrik under control, and distributing the seeds of othret melons, muthto, and blue-leaf trees, among other things. They're also a favored prey item for the dragons, and while we can't eat the adults, the eggs are delicious. They can get large enough to try to eat something our size, though, so any hunters will have to be careful—assuming that Tilla doesn't eat all the big ones. She does love them. Did you need something, dear?”

It felt very good to hear her call him that for some reason, and it gave him the courage to ask. “I need to know what I'm going to look like later on. Maybe sooner than later, since the changes have come on kind of fast lately.”

“Part of that may be a result of the changes in your diet,” Lizenne told him. “I've introduced Hunk to a number of Galran proteins and vegetables since we met, and given that they're not only safe for both of us to eat, but widely available and very tasty, he's been using them a great deal in his cooking. There are nutrients and chemical compounds in those things that Earthly foods just don't have, which may be helping your body to develop visible Galran traits. You're also of an age that corresponds to our own period of rapid adolescent growth, so there's that as well.”

Keith nodded; that made sense. “Modhri said that you had pictures of what I'm going to look like.”

She smiled understandingly. “I'll take a fresh sample and we'll work from that. The extrapolations that I do have are sketchy things, to tell you the truth—quick scans of the likeliest gene-expressions. We'll want to check your compatibility with both Human and Galra females... hmm! And possibly Altean, perhaps?”

Keith blushed at her naughty smile. “Well... maybe. Coran's got this thing about polychromatic cuddle piles.”

Lizenne cracked a laugh and went to get a sampler. “As well he should be! The Royal Succession tends to be something of an obsession among old family retainers, you know, and the Alteans were no different. I could theoretically clone up a dozen each of him and Allura, but I'm pretty sure that it's illegal, otherwise they would have been up to their ears in semi-legitimate princes. Now give me your hand, and we'll see what secrets lie in your own blood.”

“Okay,” Keith said, stripping off one glove and extending that hand. “Can I go for a run in the envirodeck after this? I might have some things that I'll want to think over in the fresh air.”

Lizenne nodded, painlessly extracting a small amount of, yes, purplish-red blood. “Of course. There are a few things that I want to check on in there as well, and a little hunting and gathering will do us both good.”

Elsewhere, someone else was having thoughts similar to Keith's, and he was not at all sure of how to deal with them. Since that odd, intimate interval in Shomakti's command center, Erantha had warmed to him. Indeed, the woman had made it clear that she would not be kindly disposed to other suitors, and this put a certain weight of responsibility on his shoulders. Erantha was a proud woman, healthy and strong in both body and powers. Kevaah was lab-grown, and there were quirks and triggers designed into his biology that even he had no knowledge of. One in particular worried him very much, and to resolve that worry, he would have to go and see his Matriarch.

Kevaah dithered, his quicksilver mind weighing risk against curiosity and desperate need against possible disappointment. Trust and paranoia were also a large part of that equation, he knew; however madly his thought processes whirled, he was forced to parse them through that diamond-hard screen of cold logic. Lizenne had a Hanifor science ship, and that meant a first-class gene-lab; with it, she had rebuilt the black Paladin from a few bits and scraps and a jar of Quintessence. She regularly cloned beasts for her wonderful indoor world. She could propagate rare plants from a single section of dry stem, and could possibly do so if all she had to work with was a fossil. She had sequenced everyone in her pack for future reference except him, and—this was the important part—had refused to sequence him without his permission. Kevaah had never had a choice in that matter before, and wasn't quite sure what to think of it. A vision of Erantha's spare, elegant face flickered across his mind's eye, the golden eyes full of that warmth they held only for him, and he quivered all over with longing. He had to know.

So thinking, he touched the comm's controls, nerving himself up to make that all-important request. Kevaah wasn't sure whether to be relieved or afraid when she answered the hail immediately. “Yes, dear?”

The simple endearment nearly had him in tears. Family. He blinked, swallowed, and spoke. “Matriarch... Lizenne... I need to see what I am made of.”

She nodded, knowing full well that none of his past keepers would have entrusted him with those secrets. “That's perfectly all right. Come right on over, dear, I'm in the gene-lab already; Keith wanted to know a bit more about himself as well. Will you want him to leave while you're here? He was intending to take a jog around the envirodeck afterward anyway.”

Brother, his deepest instincts whispered. “No. No, it's all right. I might need to hunt as well... after.”

She smiled understandingly. “I will join you both, if only to raid the berry-bushes. There is a stand of cressex that is fruiting early, and I'm partial to those. I'll even share, if they're ripe enough.”

Kevaah bowed his head in thanks. The envirodeck was as close to a paradise as he'd ever imagined, and every day it offered new and wonderful things. That the Matriarch was so willing to let her newest adoptive nephew inside it was a gift that he would never be able to fully repay. “Thank you. I'll be right there.”

He wasted no time in getting down to the docking annex, and sprinted through the docking tube at his best speed; it took him no time at all to find the lab, having had to study the many, many kinds of starcraft and learn the best ways to infiltrate them. He paused just outside the doorway out of simple habit; Keith was there, sitting on one of the lab stools and staring pensively at the big wall screen where a double helix was turning slowly.

“It's not unheard of,” Lizenne was telling him, pointing out a few sections as she did so. “Galra have longer adolescences than Humans do, and it can take longer for certain traits to manifest. That you've kept your Human appearance this long was a good thing; it protected you from standing out overmuch on Earth, and Earth's peoples often have difficulty with xenophobia.”

Keith shrugged and glared at the screen. “I just want to know how far it's going to go. I don't mind the eyes going yellow, but Hunk keeps nagging me about growing more fur. I think that he wants to see an all-over coat.”

Lizenne chuckled. “You are definitely heading in that direction. The lighter streaks in your hair are brightening, although the rest of you will probably be nearly as dark as Kevaah. Your ears are already developing points and your hearing has improved, and will only get more sensitive. Whether or not you will develop claws fully is still unclear, although you'll definitely inherit your mother's velvet coat. Namturans are famous for their plush.”

Keith groaned and buried his face in his hands.

Lizenne laughed. “Oh, come, it's not that bad. Just rub it down every evening with a soft brush and you'll never have acne again. And if you can get Allura or Pidge to help you with the tricky spots... well, I am sure that they'll find you very pettable.”

Kevaah smiled. “Hunk has already rubbed my belly. He would like a turn with yours.”

Keith went very red, but couldn't help but imagine those big, warm hands on his skin... Fortunately, the computer beeped, distracting him from that line of thought.

Lizenne looked around to observe the readout. “Aha, and the system's finished the extrapolation. Here we go... my goodness, you'll have to fight the young ladies—and the young men—off with a stick!”

Kevaah stared. The man pictured on the screen, for all that the image had stripped him down to his boxer shorts, was indeed very attractive. His Namturan ancestry was very plain to see in his elegant features and lean muscularity, but there was a Human roundness and compactness there that only increased his beauty. He was truly the best of both peoples in one athletic form.

Lizenne smiled admiringly. “Very nice. And you'll be able to please suitors of both parent races, and you're fully cross-compatible. You're very lucky, you know. Most first-generation hybrids are as sterile as stones. You might have some difficulty with Allura, I'm afraid; Alteans are very different, genetically speaking, although I'm sure you and the others will be able to come up with something. You've certainly solved every other problem that you've been presented with. I will be most eager to see your children.”

Keith went very red. Encouraged by this gentle teasing, Kevaah stepped into the room and bowed to his Matriarch. She smiled at him, and there was nothing but welcome in her eyes. “I am here,” he said.

“You are, indeed,” she replied calmly. “Did you have anything in particular that you wanted to find out, or are you just curious as to your genetic composition?”

Kevaah's breath hissed between his teeth, and he saw Erantha's face in his mind's eye again. “Partly, I am curious. Partly...” this was the hard part. “...Matriarch... am I tchang?”

Keith looked up sharply at that, and Lizenne's eyebrows lifted. “Erantha?”

He glanced at Keith, who was halfblood, and shivered. “She is interested, but if I am tchang...”

“Sit,” Lizenne said, pointing at another stool. “I will take only a very small sample, which will not cause discomfort. We'll have a good look, but either way our chances are favorable.”

Startled, Kevaah sat. “Matriarch?”

Lizenne gave him a wry smile and took a small sampler from one of the cabinets. “I want a large family of my own, Kevaah, and I will be very pleased to add you to it. The dragons like you, and they like Erantha, and they like how you both fit into their environment. Zampedri will be glad to host you and your cubs. Even if your creators designed you and your brothers to be tchang, there are ways around that. Failing all else, I can derive seed from your gene-sample to fertilize your mate with, and there are ways to ensure that your children will be viable.”

He was so shocked by that incredible pronouncement that he barely noticed when she took the blood sample, and when Keith came up beside him and laid a brotherly hand on his shoulder, he had to get a very firm grip on his emotions. “Matriarch... truly?”

“Oh, yes,” she replied, inserting the sample into the sequencer, which bleeped. “You have excellent traits, my nephew, and Erantha, while not a very strong witch, is a very clever and subtle one. Mage power is in part bestowed upon a daughter by the father; males are carriers of a vital portion of that gene-set, and I do not doubt that you are carrying a great share of that gene-set indeed. Any daughter of yours might rival the great Queen Zaianne of Namtura, mother of Modhri the Wise. Yes, Kevaah, I want your bloodline added to mine, in time. Ghurap'Han has had its share of great statesmen and powerful witches, and Modhri's family has been bred for excellence for ten thousand years. Should one of your children pair with one of mine, the results look to be astonishing. I'll be asking your surviving brothers to join us as well. Ah, and here we are.”

Kevaah stared at the screen, which now filled with his own genetic code. Text began to fill up the empty spaces, although his startled eyes couldn't quite make sense of the geneticist's jargon. Keith had a slightly better understanding, and he humphed. “Huh. They sort of used a little of everything, didn't they?”

“Didn't they just?” Lizenne murmured. “Hmm. Standard Galran Prime genes for the base. Not surprising, that, it's the most adaptable of the six. From the far-northern populations at that, probably for their resistance to cold, although the best qualities of the Colonies are represented here, too. See here--” she highlighted several sections of code, “--Korbexan, for the strength and excellent tolerance for high gravities. That's where your coloration came from, too, Kevaah. The blue-roan pattern is comparatively rare, and is highly prized among them. Simadhi, for heightened senses and improved health. Namturan, for their speed and improved reflexes. Palabekan, for the muscle-and-tendon systems that make climbing so easy for them. Kedrekan, for toughness and stamina. Golrazi, for endurance and their tolerance to high heat. All of them tweaked to a fare-thee-well, plus these little arrangements here... hah. They were trying to create a wizard, I see. A male who could use magic.”

Keith blinked at her. “That's possible?”

“Almost.” Lizenne reached over and touched the controls, bringing that section into focus. “There are a few fairy tales of Galra men who had a bit of witch-talent. Little things like starting fires, or moving small objects without touching them, or being able to see spirits and auras. Over the past twelve millennia, there have been a very small number of documented cases where such a man was born. It's a very rare genetic quirk, and while they had little trouble finding mates, they often had trouble siring children. The genes that express the mage power are unalterably female. Did your creators design females of your series, Kevaah?”

Kevaah shuddered as a wave of old sorrow rolled through him. “They did. Our sisters. Six of them. Beautiful. Very strong. Very strong, but not controllable when angered.”

Lizenne rolled her eyes. “Let me guess; one of those fool scientists wasn't able to control himself around them?”

“Three. They tried to take liberties with one of our sisters. The rest of us heard her screaming. The other five sisters broke out of their cells and came to her aid. They fought to free her, to free themselves, to free us, their brothers.” Kevaah couldn't stop the sob that slipped out. “They were killed, and we knew our true enemy.”

Lizenne came to him, and allowed him to wrap his long arms around her waist, stroking his hair while he wept. “There, now,” she murmured when he ran out of tears. “There, now, my nephew. They have saved you and your siblings still, for they damaged the base enough to allow the Blades to take it. Even though most of your blood kin have died, you and a few others still live. When your first daughter comes into the world, you will have won. No one will ever imprison or control her, for she will run with the dragons on Zampedri and live in freedom always.”

He stared up at her with wet orange-gold eyes. “Will I have a daughter?”

“I'll be surprised if you don't have several,” she told him, flicking a finger at the screen. See that bit two-thirds down on the right? That's the precursor for female twins. Also extremely rare, and it must have given them fits trying to find it among the general population. They intended to breed you, young man, and often. According to my sequencer, your sperm count is half again what a normal man's is.”

Kevaah glanced down in consternation at his lap, which hadn't been giving him any trouble so far. “Then why am I not going haluk-kvash every time I see Erantha?”

That meant “breeding-mad”, Keith knew; his mother's vocabulary, particularly when she was annoyed, was an education.

Lizenne smiled and ran fond fingers through his silver-frosted fur. “Another genetic quirk, carefully designed in to make sure of their hold over you and your future children. See here? In order to bring you to readiness for her, you will need to ingest a very specific chemical catalyst to counteract that particular bit of body chemistry. You will please her very much for several hours, my nephew, before the potion wears off.”

Keith snorted suddenly, and then broke out into laughter that surprised his Galra companions very much. Keith didn't laugh as often as the other Paladins did, and there wasn't much that either of the Galra found laughable about the situation.

Kevaah gave him a suspicious look. “Dare I ask?”

“Sorry,” Keith gasped, trying to get a grip on himself. “Sorry. It's just... well, back on Earth, people like to play video games, right?”

“Yes...?” Lizenne asked, equally suspiciously.

“Not all of them are racing or fighting or adventure games,” Keith continued. “Some are puzzle games, or even farming sims. I was given one of those when I was about ten by someone who hoped it would help me calm down. Harvest Moon. There are dozens of games in that series, and most of them let you raise farm animals, but they gloss over a lot of things.”

Kevaah grunted, interested despite himself. “Sanitation, disease, predation by wild animals, and theft, I assume.”

Keith waved a dismissive hand. “No, the games have all of that. It's the livestock breeding that they got weird about. Right back to the original game, if you wanted to breed your cattle, you had to go to the livestock dealers for 'magic cow potion'. I knew that was silly even back then—my biology teacher had a sister who ran a cattle ranch and she wasn't shy about telling us about the... um... mechanics of procreation. So... uh... magic Galra potion?”

The two Galra stared at him for a long moment. Kevaah rested his elbows on the nearby table and pressed his face into his hands, and then broke down in helpless laughter. Lizenne's rich peal of merriment followed his. “Very much so!” she said. “Fortunately, I'll have an easier time of it making the stuff than any other mad scientist would. The chemical compounds necessary for the catalyst are easily obtained from the envirodeck, and oddly enough, from the kitchen. You are not tchang, Kevaah. All we need to do is finish this little war of ours, and then we may settle into a life that is more suitable for raising families. I am your Matriarch, Kevaah, and it is in the best interests of the Pack that I help you.”

Kevaah breathed a long, relieved sigh. “I am grateful to the Matriarch for her kindness. Will the Matriarch extend it a little more? I need to hunt.”

“The Matriarch is perfectly pleased to allow this,” Lizenne said, tugging his ear gently. “The belennas are mature now, and need thinning anyway. They're smallish herbivores, and are one of the few Zampedran beasts that don't need any special preparation; you can eat the meat raw if you like, although I prefer them roasted.”

Keith smiled. “We'll make a picnic of it. I'm pretty sure that the big stand of nutbushes are ready for picking by now, and I saw some of those little blue mushrooms coming up last time I was down there.”

Lizenne brightened up at that. “Did you? Excellent! Modhri will be thrilled, those are one of his favorites. We'll have to bring along baskets.”

Kevaah had no problem with this at all, and it was with a happy heart that he pulled on his hunting leathers—real atinbuk leather, another gift from the Matriarch—and headed to the lift with his brother and aunt. Within minutes, there was living earth beneath his feet, sweet air in his lungs, and sunlight warming his fur. They left their baskets on the jumble of boulders near the entry, for the Matriarch desired meat.

“We'll hunt first,” she said calmly. “We all could do with a good run, and a good lunch. The dragons have started without us, but they aren't interested in small game today.”

She pointed at the far side of this perfect little world, where a pair of sandy-colored dots were chasing something that they couldn't quite see through a stand of blue-leaf trees. “I've grown them a small herd of umbralets, which are a great treat for them, and dragons aren't known for their restraint where it comes to treats.”

Keith snickered. “Got that right. Hunk made some of those thumbprint cookies with quillop jam and pistachios, and Tilla cleaned out the whole jar before we could find a card deck. She wasn't sorry, either, even when Soluk got mad at her for not sharing.”

Kevaah smiled. He liked the dragons very much, and their occasional lapses into childish behavior charmed him. “What does our own prey look like, Matriarch?”

Lizenne turned to gaze out over the yellow grasses. “Belennas are a sort of large insect, and can weigh up to sixty-two tathi—that's ninety pounds by the Human measure. The carapaces are mottled gray and yellow, which makes them difficult to see; the shell is segmented, thorny, and nearly frictionless. They are long-bodied, have multiple legs, and the three foremost pairs are very large and have huge pincers. The tail is long, heavy, bladed, and very powerful. If attacked, they will fight, and they are very fast. Think of a large, aggressive land-lobster, Keith. A good way to dispatch them is with a knife thrust from above, right down through the upper thorax.”

Keith humphed thoughtfully. “I've never actually had lobster.”

“Neither have I,” she said with a smile, “but I have had belenna, and have enjoyed it every time. Come. They prefer to graze around the rocks.”

She took off at a brisk trot, a pace that Kevaah and Keith found easy to match, and that ate the distance up with gratifying efficiency. The grasses whispered around them and bird calls, insect hums and chirps, and the distant bellow of a dragon made wild music in their ears; Kevaah loved every squeak and boom of it, and anticipated his first visit to the world of Zampedri with private joy. Despite the efforts of the Matriarch, this was still a tame place. He relished the thought of one day facing an unittik or even a tambok, to see which predator was the greater.

They came out of the grasses and up onto a stony ridge, where the bones of the earth pushed through into the air. Huge crags jutted into the sky here, and great gnarly vines with thorns as long as his hand had wrapped around those great stones in an assassin's embrace. They were blooming, he saw; each twisting vine had precise, coin-sized flowers the color of fire all up and down the leafless tangle, and the air was full of a sharp, slightly fruity aroma.

“What good things do these growths produce?” Kevaah murmured. “Are the fruits good to eat?”

Lizenne looked upon him with approval. “Pitchpa vine-fruit aren't food for our kind, but the native herbivores adore it. For our use, the deadwood is excellent for cookfires and for smoking meat, but the true treasure of those vines are the tubers that form around the roots. Once again, not to eat, but an extract of the tubers provides an antidote for many poisons, and the leftover pulp is an excellent agent for tanning hides to make leather. The vines feed us by attracting our prey even now—see there, at the base of the one to our right?”

They looked, and saw a large, glossy creature picking through the thick mat of weeds that grew around the base of the vines. It really did look like a huge, multi-clawed, spiky lobster, its mottled armor rendering it nearly invisible among the rocks and underbrush. Keith eyed the enormous claws and whistled softly in admiration. “Let me guess; don't let it grab you. Hunk's going to be mad that he missed out on this.”

Lizenne chuckled. “Not necessarily. Even without the shell, there is more meat on that fine beast than we could possibly eat. I'll ask the ship for a stasis case when we have made our kill, and we'll take him his share.”

Kevaah hummed approvingly at this generosity and studied the prey, his eyes seeking the best spot to sink his knife. Unconsciously, his hand sought the hilt of his most precious possession, the blade that his foster-mother had given him. That Lance, his brother, had returned to him, the first promise made to him in more years than he liked to count that anyone had actually kept. He was coming to love his new siblings, he knew, for all that they were none of his blood.

The belenna used its claws to grab onto the vine and hoist itself up to where it could investigate a hollow in the rock, and Lizenne grunted in satisfaction. “See there, just aft of the eye-cluster, that diamond-shaped section of chitin? That's where the main nerve trunk passes from the brain and into the rest of the body. You will want to strike right at the center of it, your blade positioned across the centerline so that it severs the nerve trunk. After that, get clear. It'll be dead, but the body will go into a reflexive frenzy for a few minutes, and getting caught in that will result in serious injury.”

Keith nodded, and then gave Lizenne a curious look. “Ever think about using a crossbow?”

“Once,” the Matriarch admitted, and parted the fur on one shoulder to show him a thin scar. “Ricochet. Ballistic weapons don't work very well on belennas. The target is too small to make crossbows useful, and you need the force of a knife strike to pierce the armor. Spears are better, but I want a challenge today.” She pulled out her tambok-fang knife. “Besides, I only have the one spear right now, and I doubt that it would appreciate being used to stab big bugs.”

Kevaah and Keith both shivered. The Spear had substantially increased in power on its steady diet of evil, and to their other sight it had grown very dangerous. It would not take well to such a paltry use of its potency, and holy weapons had ways of making their displeasure known. Kevaah had no doubt that it would, even to its own handler. He could see the God in it very clearly, and Gods demanded respect.

Instead, they turned their attention back to the belenna, which had lost interest in the rock hollow and was picking bits of lichen from the boulder with surprising dexterity. The animal only looked clumsy; the legs and claws moved with grace, speed, and coordination, and the eye-cluster gave it an astonishing range of vision. Its low, smooth build would allow it to duck unharmed beneath the thorny vines, and its armor had only one weak spot. Kevaah knew from bitter experience that there was nothing quite so hard to stab as a domed surface, particularly a moving one. The knife always wanted to deflect off to the side, usually at an angle that would cause the wrong person a serious injury. Only that flat, diamond-shaped area behind the head would do, and it was well-guarded by rows of needle-sharp spines and that long, muscular tail. The tail was a weapon to avoid, he saw; heavy and sinewy, spiny on top and lined with large plates of chitin along the sides, with a fan of those plates at the end. He did not doubt that those were razor-sharp, designed to slash apart the legs of any predator that got too close. There was only a very narrow angle of approach between the snapping pincers and the lashing tail.

“What of the legs?” he murmured. “One might cripple it.”

“One might,” the Matriarch murmured back. “A good thought, and I have done that before, but the extra stress gives the meat a sourish flavor. We are three. Two will harry it from the sides, while the third will make the strike. Who will claim the honor of making the kill?”

Kevaah loved her all the more for that generous offer. By all rights, she could easily have claimed it herself, and to let two adopted nephews have this opportunity...!

Keith gazed solemnly at him, the gold rings around the dark centers of his eyes glinting. “I'm not really tall enough yet. I'll go right if you'll go left, Lizenne.”

Kevaah smiled at his true-hearted brother. “I will do my best to kill it quickly.”

And that was how they did it. The Matriarch and Keith broke cover and attacked, dancing just out of reach of the snapping pincers and lashing tail as they forced the belenna away from the safety of the vines. Kevaah flashed out of the grasses, blade in hand and eyes on the target, and he thrust his sword dead center with all of his strength and leaping away instantly. He was forced to leave his blade behind; the strike had numbed his hand, and surprised him with the strength of the armor. The insect flailed madly in circles, slashing viciously with claws and tail, and then flopped limply to the ground a few minutes later, allowing him to retrieve his sword.

“Well done,” the Matriarch said, which was all the accolade they needed. “Chimera, please send in two small stasis crates and packing film, if you would.”

“May I have a portion to take to Erantha?” Kevaah asked. “It is traditional.”

“Of course, dear. Three crates, please, Chimera.”

“Yes, Pilot Lizenne,” the ship responded, “congratulations on a successful hunt.”

“Thank you,” Lizenne replied, and knelt down by their kill. “Kevaah, that was an excellent strike. Would you please gather some of the deadwood for a fire? I keep a roasting-pit just over there, and we'll want to get this thing cooking as soon as possible. Kindly give me a hand with this, Keith.”

They roasted the belenna in its shell, giving them a little time to inspect a nearby stand of berry bushes for early fruit and coming away with handfuls of tart yellow berries. Kevaah ate heartily of the sweet, tender meat, reminding himself that he was no longer required to ration what he ate. Food was plentiful here, and the Matriarch was generous. The food was also delicious, satisfying cravings that he'd never known that he'd had. Keith also had good appetite, and the Matriarch as well, but there was still plenty left to bring home for the rest of the pack; Kevaah made sure to section out a generous slice of the best meat for Erantha as well. He loved her, and had nothing else to give. Fortunately, a gift of meat was a fine gift indeed, particularly given the rarity of Zampedran goods, and he had killed it himself. She would understand. She would always understand. Erantha was a wild spirit, too.

“Hunk's going to love this,” Keith said with a faint burp. “His mom taught him a lobster bisque recipe just before he joined the Garrison, and this is the closest thing I've seen to Earth lobsters. It's really good, too.”

Lizenne patted the stasis-crates happily. “And we will continue to please him for some time. Belennas breed frequently and in large numbers, and their natural predators haven't been established fully here yet. Will you join us for the gathering part, Kevaah, or will you take your portion to Erantha?”

Kevaah wavered for a moment, but came to a decision quickly. “She will be more pleased if I bring her berries as well. She loves Modhri's jams and jellies, but to have them fresh?”

“It's great,” Keith said. “Dad used to grow prickly-pear cactus on his land, and they were the best. I actually had friends at school during prickly-pear season.”

“I will have to do some research on your world when all of this is over,” Lizenne murmured. “Some of your fruits and vegetables sound irresistible. Chimera, please take the crates to the annex and hold them there for us. There are still treats available elsewhere.”

“Yes, Pilot Lizenne,” the ship's AI said agreeably, and the three crates zoomed quickly away through the grasses.

Lizenne, Keith, and Kevaah followed at a more sedate pace, collected their baskets, and followed the Matriarch to the nearest stand of cressex bushes.

The next few hours were very interesting and educational for both Kevaah and Keith. Zampedri, they learned, was a rich world, but one that made you work for those riches. Some plants could only be eaten safely when under- or overripe, while others had dangerous spines or toxic leaves, or even associated species of animal or insect that were disinclined to share. Others grew in difficult-to-reach places, or mimicked other, lethally-toxic species almost perfectly. Still others concealed their fruits in shells as hard as blast armor, or puffed irritating pollens or even noxious gases when disturbed.

“It is an assassin's garden,” Kevaah observed while Lizenne poked a cluster of bulbous growths with a grass stem and jumped away when it spurted a tongue of fire at her. Each cluster sat in its own little ring of scorched earth, giving them a good idea of its range.

“In some ways, yes,” Lizenne said, poking the cluster again and eliciting another whoosh of fire. “I've already had Karchad and his specialists through here on three separate occasions, looking for odd toxins to research. The rainy-season selection is fairly good for that sort of thing, but just let him wait until summer. Whole areas of the envirodeck will be too dangerous for us to approach without protective gear.”

Keith frowned, watching the bulbs spurt flames. “Summer's the bad time, right?”

Lizenne hummed in agreement, prodding the cluster once more, this time getting no more than a colorless puff of heat. “High summer to late autumn in the grasslands are very dangerous for our kind of life. Were we living on Zampedri, we would migrate south or north. South, by my personal preference, to a chain of marshes and shallow lakes where there is a very great growth of sintra bushes, for the pollen and nectar. The northern areas do have sintra marshes as well, but not as many. On the other hand, the upland plains to the north make for excellent hunting grounds. We'll split the Pack, I think; half will go north and the other half south, and we'll meet up again in the middle after the grassfire season. Keith, Kevaah, wrap your fingers in those leaves there, and help me peel back the outer layers of these bulbs. Fireheart-cluster pith is full of vital nutrients, and Hunk's been pestering me about something called 'chili powder'. If this isn't hot enough for him, I don't know what is.”

Keith peeled back the stiff, sharp-edged bracts carefully with leaf-wrapped fingers and smiled at the sharp, rich, slightly sweet fragrance of the orange-brown oval of pith within, although the peppery aroma made Kevaah sneeze. “He'll be happy with this stuff,” Keith said, thinking taco thoughts. “It smells a lot like a really good ancho seasoning. How does it taste?”

She smiled at him. “Like swallowing a fruity, savory, complex, and delicious sun. You do have to be careful not to overindulge, though, or the morning after will be very uncomfortable. Dragons eat it when they have digestive difficulties.”

“Earth's hot peppers do that, too,” Keith replied, pulling the pith out carefully and placing it in the empty hulluk pod that Lizenne had picked for this very purpose. “People often breed them for extra heat, and some of them are actually dangerous in large amounts.”

“Humans,” Kevaah said, his eyes streaming and nose wrinkled up, “are very strange.”

“Yeah, we are,” Keith agreed, remembering some of the social-media challenges he'd seen during school. “I like this better.”

Lizenne puffed a laugh. “And the three of us are throwbacks, making us even more unusual. That's enough, we mustn't exhaust the plant, and believe me, a little pith goes a very long way. Ah! Look over there—lebalish.”

Something like a cross between an antelope and a gila monster was munching on the grasses a little distance away, its broad stripes of gold and dark green making it hard to see against the waving stalks, its four large golden-green eyes scanning its surroundings constantly for danger. As they watched, two more lebalish joined the first, tearing down the tall grasses with fearsome cutting teeth and crunching down the young seed-heads. Keith and Kevaah stared at them in fascination, Kevaah in particular vibrating with the instinctive desire for the hunt.

“And what are these creatures good for, Matriarch?” he whispered.

“For us? Nothing at all.” Lizenne flicked a hand at the grazers. “Aside, of course, from their vital role in keeping their ecosystem healthy. They're another important prey animal for the dragons and a number of other predators, their dung fertilizes the plants, and their feeding habits open up space for things other than grass. The bone-grinder insects and numerous other scavengers demand their share of their dead, of course, but for us invasive aliens, they are to be avoided. Their bodies, inside and out, are extremely toxic, even to the touch. And yes, I have let Karchad's assassins take samples from a freshly-decanted one, but that is the limit of their benefit to us.”

The wind shifted, blowing their scent toward the animals. One lebalish raised its scaly, deer-lizard head and peered at them for a long moment, and then snorted, shook its long, curling horns dismissively, and returned to its meal.

“They know that we're not a threat,” Keith observed.

Lizenne nodded. “Most Zampedran beasts are quite smart that way. They can smell the difference between alien and native, and know from that and the way we act that we're far too different from them to be interested in eating them. Many native beasts can't eat them either, to tell you the truth; the grasses contain a number of chemicals that require a very specialized digestive system to break down, which of course means that their predators have made certain adaptations in order to be able to digest them. This is why we have to be so careful with yulpadi and ornipal meat.”

Keith hummed thoughtfully. “But atinbuk and belennas like other plants, so we can eat those.”

“Exactly.” Lizenne stood up and approached the three lebalish, reaching out and grasping a cluster of grass stems lightly, bending the stalks down in a graceful arc so that the animals could feed almost out of her hand. They watched her for a long moment, eyes glinting and ears pricked, but the largest one stepped forward and took the seed-clusters fearlessly. She held its gaze until it was done, and watched as they moved sedately away.

“On Zampedri, many other creatures depend on them to warn them of an approaching predator,” she said, letting the stiff stems spring back upright, shorn of seeds. “Lebalish are very sensitive, and will start howling like disaster sirens if an unittik, dragon, or tambok gets too close. The dragons use them to teach their youngsters how to walk unseen and unheard, and a young dragon is not considered a competent hunter until she can take a lebalish alone. If it makes you feel better, Keith, both Tilla and Soluk are a bit out of practice, and it was very noisy in here after I released the first batch.”

“So, that's why they were tired and grumpy all last week,” Keith said with a snort of amusement. “Those guys could see them coming, and warned everybody.”

“No more free lunches,” Kevaah added.

“Quite right.” Lizenne chuckled and checked their baskets. “All right, I'll want to check the thurla-nut grove, and then we'll be finished. I promised Kolivan a sack of nuts, for propagating on their own science ships. They contain a mild, nonaddictive stimulant, and Modhri uses them in his energy bars.”

“They are good,” Kevaah said happily. “Modhri let me try some, when he was making a batch. I was very clear-headed for a time afterward. The scientists will want that, for our best spies and agents.”

“I'll bet,” Keith said. “If it's able to affect you even a little, it'll be great for them.”

Kevaah humphed. “It wasn't a toxin. There was no need for my body to fight it.”

“Which is a little peculiar, because that stimulant was evolved to keep certain insects, birds, and small animals from eating them all,” Lizenne told them, heading off into the grasses. “The stimulant makes them a little crazy, and they run or fly until they're exhausted. Larger animals just consume the whole fruit without cracking the shells, distributing the nuts wherever they wander without any harmful effects. To us, though, those nutmeats are a handy pick-me-up.”

She led them to a grove of small trees that lurked in a moist depression, where rusty-colored fruit like miniature pears hung in heavy clusters upon the branches. “Not quite ripe yet,” Lizenne said, showing them the wrinkled, red-brown rinds. “When ripe, they develop little black spots the size of sylth grains. Avoid ones that have white spots, that's a fungus that will give you a horrible seeping rash, or any fruit that's gone entirely black.”

“The black ones are toxic?” Keith asked.

“No, but they certainly taste that way.” Lizenne made a dreadful face. “They do that just before they sprout. If an animal doesn't take the nuts away before then, they'll sprout springy little roots right there on the tree, drop off, and then bounce away like jumping spiders until they find a nice open spot with damp soil. Harmless, but surprising.”

“Spreading the fungus as well,” Kevaah observed.

“Potentially, yes.” Lizenne pulled a pair of pruners from her belt and nipped off a few dead branches. “It forms if the trees aren't getting enough airflow through their branches, which is another thing that lebalish and especially kozirca are good for—see here? Live thurla wood tastes bad, but the chemicals change when it dies off, and becomes sweet. Somebody did some grazing here, here, and here. Soon, I won't have to prune these at all, which is good. An overgrowth of thurla rind-fungus can kill a tree and cause serious damage to everything around it, and only the autumn burnoff will stop it from spreading further.”

Kevaah hummed. “More reason to go to the sintra marshes in the hot seasons. Have you explored the northern or southern regions, Matriarch? What is that world like, outside of the grasslands?”

“Varied,” Lizenne replied. “There are oceans, which are full of creatures that have to be seen to be believed, and forests that rival the great trees of Palabek. There are mountains and highlands, marshes and swamps, jungles and islands, steppes and plateaus, all with their hazards and glories. There is scrubland, tundra and taiga, and polar ice caps; all of these host large and complex ecosystems. There is one very small desert, no bigger than a large city, and even that roars with life. It is a world that calls for bold adventurers and intrepid explorers, my nephew. My infatuation with the grasslands persists largely because the dragons live there; the Pack stays together, and I am of their pack.”

She had to pause, and to laugh at the identical, calculating expressions on both Kevaah's and Keith's faces. “Later! Save it for later, when Zarkon and Haggar are no more than a bad memory, and you both can take some time away from your duties. Zampedri will still be there, waiting for you to come and make it your home. Aha—here, there are a few ripe ones. Take these, and I'll make sure that some of the harvest arrives in the Castle's kitchens in good time.”

In the meantime, however, the day's harvest needed to get to the kitchens as soon as possible. The bulk of it would go to the staff kitchen, of course, and Lizenne and Kevaah headed off together to take them—and Erantha—their share. Keith headed up to Hunk's kitchen with his hovercrate and basket, and a notecard from Lizenne full of instructions on how to prepare that basketload of goodies for general use.

He wasn't particularly surprised to see that the rest of his team was there already; they spent so much time in the kitchen that it was becoming a regular meeting-place for discussions on everything from the week's dinner menu to upcoming battle plans. What did surprise him was the pair of arms that wrapped around his chest, the warm body that pressed against his back, and the nose that buried itself in his hair and took a huge sniff.

“Mmmm,” Lance said, taking another whiff. “You've been in the envirodeck. God, that smells awesome. If we could bottle that and sell it as a cologne, we'd all be rich.”

“Lance,” Keith sighed, rolling his eyes.

“You hush, this is great,” Lance said, and took another big sniff. “Tall grass...” snurf, “...fresh berries and greens...” snorf, “...atinbuk leather...” snoof, “...grilled something, maybe shrimp...” snerf, “...and ancho chiles? Where the heck did you find--” SNOOORT! “--ancho chiles? Oh, god, that smells sexy. Everybody, come here and smell spicy Keith, it's amazing.”

Before Keith could react to that, Hunk was right there, sniffing at his hair with the avid yet delicate intensity of a true chef. “Not shrimp, Lance. That's something more like langostine. Oh, god, and there's the ancho. I haven't even seen a picture of an ancho pepper in four solid years. Sorry Keith, but Lance is right. You do smell sexy. Shiro, Pidge, Allura, check it out.”

“It's just stuff from the envirodeck,” Keith said, blushing at the close proximity of two large, very attractive warm bodies, and then harder at three more.

“Yes, but you brought some back for us,” Shiro said in his ear, sniffing appreciatively. “And it does smell very good.”

Allura giggled. “I have to agree, although I'm not sure what you two mean by 'ancho'. There is something sharp there that I don't recognize, and a little sweet, a little savory, and altogether delicious.”

The way she said that told Keith louder than words that it wasn't just the rare spice in his basket that she meant, and he clutched reflexively at the basket's handle when Pidge tried to take it from him.

“He does smell good,” she said, pulling the basket down to where she could peer into it. “We need to get into the envirodeck more often, seriously. I could definitely use a dose of that, especially after an all-nighter in the lab. Some of those lubricants and things are stinky. So, what's in the basket, Keith, and how'd you get a solo run?”

“It wasn't solo,” Keith said, glad of the reprieve, and he stepped forward to set the basket down on a counter. “I went over to the Chimera for... well, to talk about some things with Lizenne. Then Kevaah called up, saying that he needed to talk about pretty much the same things... Hunk, just grab that hovercrate, it's got a big chunk of roasted Zampedran land-lobster in it.”

There was an “ooh!” from both Lance and Hunk, and they left off sniffing Keith to inspect the crate instead.

Keith shook his head at their fickleness and decided to come clean. “It was about genetic stuff. How purple I'm going to get, and whether or not Kevaah's going to be able to have kids.”

“There's nothing wrong with that,” Shiro said soothingly. “Zaianne's been a little worried about you, actually, since both Humans and Galra are leery of hybrids. How far is it going to go?”

“Pretty much all the way,” Keith replied, pulling a data card out of his pocket. “She gave me a copy of the extrapolations--”

“Gimme,” Pidge said, grabbing for it. “I want to see!”

“Pidge!” Allura scolded. “Your manners! But yes, Keith, if you would be kind enough to show us?”

Keith did so, and summoned up the image of what he would look like if he survived the next five to ten years. Lizenne had added a few tarted-up images as well, portraying his future self in both casual and formal wear, and even he had to admit that he would probably look damned good in anything he decided to throw on.

There were approving murmurs of admiration from his teammates, and Lance made him blush again with a long, drawn-out, and appreciative wolf-whistle. “Nice.”

“And he's all ours,” Pidge said smugly. “So, it looks really good so far. Does everything work properly?”

“Yeah,” Keith said, “Lizenne says I'm lucky that way. Kevaah's going to need a little chemical help 'cause he was built by crazy evil people, but Erantha's going to be a happy woman later on. Lizenne wants her kids to get to know their kids, and... well...”

“Oh, dear,” Allura said with a worried giggle. “Neline will have competition for her crown and scepter, won't she? Mind you, she might well have outgrown them by that time.”

Hunk shook his head gravely, and cast a speculative eye on the contents of the basket. “No way, Allura. Take it from me, you never outgrow being Queen. Even if it's just being Queen of the Fuzz-Fairies. Remember us telling you about that school play we made the wings for, back on Earth? Well, the official Queen of those fairies was Lance's grandma, and she stayed Queen, too. We'll just have to find their super-brats something else to gloat about. Hey, are these thurla nuts?”

“Fresh off the tree,” Keith said, and handed him the page of notes, “and first of the season. There'll be more later. Here's how to prep this stuff.”

“Thanks,” Hunk said, frowning at Lizenne's neat handwriting. “Yeah, this'll be great. I figure that if we add some of those nuts to our space oatmeal in the mornings, we'll be able to deal with whatever our sparring partners throw at us a lot better. Oh, hey, you got some of those little blue mushrooms? Modhri's gonna flip, he loves those. Ooh, and cressex berries, he says that they can't be made into jam, cooking turns them super bitter, but they're amazing in fruit salads. What's this stuff?”

Keith looked into the basket. “Those are ninka roots, the little round yellow things are drozzil-egg clusters, the ones that look like blue leeks are morgam stalks, and that pile of brown things are cromat ground-nuts. Lizenne says that you have to set them on fire along with a splash of rubap oil—these pink things are the rubaps—or you'll never get through the shells. We found some pirriks, too, and here's what smells like ancho rub. Fireheart pith, and don't handle those without protection, all right? They'll take the skin right off of your fingers.”

“Oh, but they smell so good,” Hunk said, lifting the hulluk pod reverently and taking a deep whiff. “Wow. Okay, how do we make this stuff safe to eat... oh. Cool. Keith, did you ever get that swordsmithing forge built? Lizenne says that fireheart pith has to be roasted on a stone slab in a powerful oven with super good ventilation for six hours to burn off the incendiary acids, and then it's gotta be ground in a mill with quartz grinding wheels, and then you mix the powder with harbax gum... oh, good, you got the harbaxes, those are those hairy tubers... yeah, and then grind it up again after letting it sit in a cool dark place for three Zampedran days. Keep it in a black glass jar, don't let it touch anything made of metal, and don't get any on your clothing. Sounds awesome.”

Shiro gave him a suspicious look. “Hunk, what kind of taco seasoning needs to be smelted in a forge?”

“A really good one,” Hunk replied. “One of my Dad's friends used to make something similar, only he used a pottery kiln instead. Ghost peppers, Carolina Reaper peppers, Tac-Nuke peppers, jalapeno, eight or nine secret spices, a touch of cocoa powder, and an ancho for that special finish. You had to be a little careful about how much you ate or both your proctologist and the Fire Marshal would yell at you, but he was famous for his taco parties. Also for his ceramics. Nobody but him could get that shade of orange.”

“You are making that up,” Pidge said, sniffing at a morgam stalk.

“Nope,” Hunk replied, popping open the stasis crate to inspect the alien protein therein. “He used to roast the peppers and stuff in his bisque-ware, and it left this really great color all over the... mmm. Ooh, that's nice. And this stuff really does taste a lot like lobster. I'm gonna make us all some bisque tonight, guys. Wow. That must've been a really big lobster.”

“About ninety pounds,” Keith said, and grinned at his team's wide-eyed stares. “They're huge, and like everything else in there, they've got attitude. Lizenne took most of the leftovers to the staff kitchen, and Kevaah got a chunk for Erantha.”

Keith was then required to describe his little trip through the envirodeck, and knew that it wouldn't be long before the others would be requesting a turn as well. There was just something so pure about Lizenne's self-contained little world, and visiting it was a balm for the soul. Particularly if one was a part of a hunting pack, and the thought of exploring the actual planet with Kevaah along for the trip was suddenly a very attractive one.

Less attractive was the realization that this urge was not entirely a Human one, and he was a little surprised to realize that he had no particular urge to return to Earth. It had been where he was born and where he'd spent much of his life, but it was no longer his home, and it would be a poor fit for him now. If everything went well and they saved the Universe from the Empire, he and his team would be very popular at home and just about everywhere else... up to a point. There were those who were going to be very interested in his mixed blood. Maybe too interested, and he had no intention of winding up as a lab animal. Shiro had come within minutes of being disappeared just for having an alien robot arm grafted on; as a genuine half-breed, Keith would never see the light of day again, and the others would be no safer.

Mind full of these uneasy truths, he left the envirodeck's goodies in Hunk's capable hands and went to seek a little privacy elsewhere. That turned out to be the main lounge, oddly enough. All of the little cubs were down for a nap or getting a snack at this hour, the older ones were at lessons, and the adults were at work. Even Kevaah was absent, probably spending some quality time with Erantha. It still amazed Keith sometimes how neatly both the Blade and Modhri's family had fit themselves into the Castle, filling the many, many vacancies that the original Altean staff had left behind them so long ago. They were homeless now, too—the Blades had no place but what they made for themselves wherever they went, and there was no place for Khorex'Var on Galran Prime anymore, nor would there ever be again. The parcel of land that had been held for so long by Ghurap'Han had officially reverted to Crown ownership, and would probably be handed off to whatever toady that buttered Zarkon up enough. Well, maybe. If Lotor or Kelezar lived long enough to take the Throne and hold it, maybe they'd give the land back to Lizenne. Assuming that she wanted it. It wasn't really her home anymore, either, and hadn't been since she'd fled that arranged marriage.

Keith sat down heavily on one of the couches by the windows and gazed out at the stars. Where would his own wanderings lead him, when he was too old to fly his Lion anymore?

“Hey,” a familiar voice said behind him, and Keith looked up to see Lance leaning on the back of the couch. “Penny for your thoughts.”

Keith wrinkled his nose. “I'd have to give you change. They're mostly cliches. You know, when you're homesick, but not for where you're from? Or for where you're from, but you know you can't go back. It's been four years, give or take a few months, and nothing's ever going to be the same.”

Lance grimaced sympathetically, blue eyes sad, and he shifted so that he was behind Keith, his long hands draped loosely over his shoulders. “Yeah. We're not going to be able to go back. Not to live there, anyway. I've sort of been thinking about it since that chat we had with Goladra, and she asked me what we were going to do after all this craziness is done with. None of us are ever going to be able to fit in on Earth again.”

Keith snorted. “At least you aren't purple.”

Lance snorted right back. “At least you don't have a family that's going to pressure you into getting married to some good Catholic girl and settle down where they can keep an eye on you for the rest of your life. I'm probably already going to be grounded until I'm forty. And what about the others? The military is going to want to give Shiro the great-grand-daddy of all debriefings and pick Pidge's brain for every bit of alien tech knowledge she's got. Hunk's too, I guarantee it. Allura's totally a pure-blooded alien princess and some dumbass will want to turn her into a political pawn.”

“She'll probably get that on Quolothis, too, and she'll have to slap somebody,” Keith observed. “Crud, and then Black will blow up everything if they try to keep her. So will we. Plus, we can do magic things, and can control one of the biggest weapons in the Universe. A lot of governments are going to want some of that, and we've got all sorts of conspiracy theorists and other crazy people out there who are going to want a piece... crud. You might get your beach party, Lance, but we'll have to watch for secret agents the whole time, and leave again right after. The thing is, where are we going to go? Assuming that we live through all of this, we won't be flying the Lions forever.”

“Hmmm,” Lance mused and leaned forward, resting his chin atop Keith's head. An awkward position, but Keith didn't feel like dislodging him. “Good question. Well, Halidex is a nice place, and we've got this standing invitation from Lizenne to move in with her and Modhri's folks on Zampedri. Maybe we'll even get a summer house on Quolothis, or we could build one on that little ocean moon out by Mouse World, you know, the one with the whale-fairies? Or maybe we could renovate your dad's place in Texas. It's pretty remote there.”

Keith considered that suggestion, and rejected it. “No. Firstly, Texas has a law that says that any house that's been abandoned for more than three years running gets torn down and the lot auctioned off. It's already gone, assuming it hasn't been claimed by squatters or something.” Keith paused, frowning as a pang of loss shot through him, and his instincts snarled something impolite about strangers in his territory. “Secondly, remember what happened to Danny Lee Rickartson?”

Keith felt Lance shiver, as well he might. Danny Lee Rickartson had been a genuine war hero, back during World War III. He'd been the Air Force's best paratrooper and had been on dozens of missions deep in the heart of enemy territory, and had pulled off seemingly miraculous wins every time. It was said that his formal dress jacket had had to have its seams reinforced twice, just to be able to support the weight of all the medals he'd been awarded, and he'd been publicly honored by more heads of state than anyone else in history.

Then the war had ended, and he'd retired from the military, and he'd tried to settle back down into a normal, civilian life. Settling down hadn't been the problem. The poor man would have been perfectly happy working in his brother's automotive repair business and building aircraft models for the rest of his life; it had been the rest of the world that wouldn't let him go. He'd had maybe a week or two of peace before someone had leaked his location on social media, and from that point on he'd been ground zero for every spammer, scammer, predatory business representative, crazed fan, and conspiracy theorist on the planet. They'd harassed the man so badly that he'd moved six times in two years and had given up on telecommunications entirely, but it hadn't helped in the end. Precisely two years, four months, and sixteen days after he'd retired, he had disappeared from his home in rural Montana, and was later found in twenty other states and three foreign countries, all more or less at the same time. He'd been kidnapped while out checking on a glitch in his security system, murdered, dismembered, and his parts sold to collectors on the Internet. Over two hundred people had been arrested in that case, and many of them were still in jail. The authorities had never found all the pieces, either, and the media went into a frenzy whenever another part was discovered.

“Holy crow, I didn't even think of that,” Lance muttered. “Maybe I'll just move my family out to Halidex instead, and we can have the beach party there.”

“We may have to,” Keith agreed with a sigh. “Hunk said as much a while ago, and Pidge wants to get her folks out here too, and Shiro's as well, just for their own safety. Sometimes the Fleet brings Pidge some mail from home, and she left one letter out where I could see it a little while ago. Matt says that he and their parents are already living under guard, and the government's got special teams looking after Hunk's, Shiro's, and your families. A lot of people don't really like having Hoshinthra and Unilu around, and since they can't get at us, they're going for closer targets. Nobody's been hurt so far, but they're having to be really careful. I don't really want to go back to Earth, Lance, especially if I'm going to need to go into a protection program just to get some privacy. Or hire on a bunch of Hoshinthra as bodyguards. At least if I move to Zampedri with Mom and the rest, I can let the dragons chase away anybody who comes looking for us.”

Lance started to snicker, and his arms wrapped around Keith's shoulders, shaking with something like mirth. “Oh, that would be so cool. I can see it now—a whole team of anti-Paladin lunatics dropping down into the grasses and sneaking toward the house, and then right behind them... gronk! And they'll be, like, 'aaargh!' and the dragons'll be, like, 'hey, stupid tastes good! Come back here, stupid!' And then they'll do six laps around the house before Lizenne comes out to see what all the noise is about, and then she'll be all 'go, dragons, go!' and it'll be great.”

Lance's laughter faltered into a sob, and Keith felt tears fall on his neck. “Oh, God, Keith, being a famous space hero isn't as much fun as I thought it would be.”

Lance had always hoped for a speedy return to home and family, and the bitter reality had struck him to the core. Nobody ever talked about it, but everybody knew the sad fact that celebrities—and their kin—were always at risk. Wordlessly, Keith stood up and pulled Lance around to sit down next to him, and they leaned on each other for comfort while the stars drifted slowly by.

Chapter Text

Chapter 22: Perilous Encounters

Zarkon sat on the edge of his bed, breath hissing into the dusty silence. He didn't feel well. He felt... ill, he supposed. No microorganism had dared pollute his body, no poison had gotten a hold in the past ten thousand years. Not since his first taste of Quintessence, in fact. He had quite forgotten what it was to be sick, and he didn't like it. It wasn't quite like recovering from a wound, either, he thought, rubbing at his shoulder, for all that the most recent ones in his thigh and shoulder were aching in a low and persistent mutter of pain at the moment. He felt as though he'd been... reduced somehow.

Reduced. That was the word, and he'd felt precisely that way since twenty-one Robeasts had been lost in the Thresonol Nebula. He was tired, and hadn't been able to sleep since the Lions had vanished into that cloud. There was a peculiar feeling of loss deep inside him, almost as if he'd gone blind in an eye that he didn't have, or had lost the ability to use one toe. He was uneasy, too, and there was a tremor in the long muscles of his legs and back whenever he stood up from his throne that he did not like at all.

We all start to fail eventually, Alfor said sympathetically.

The strange, violent closure that Zarkon had felt at the heart of the Nebula, the event that had caused his current malaise, had also woken his ghosts up again. Zarkon was willing to hate the Paladins twice over, just for that.

“I am not failing,” Zarkon rumbled.

Nonsense, Alfor replied. No other Galra has ever lived so long, not without making dubious bargains with one Power or another. You must admit that you've been longer among the living than most.

“I will live forever,” Zarkon growled.

Alfor shook his head. You haven't really been alive since the destruction of Golraz and you know it. A great hero died that day, and what has continued past that death has only looked and sounded like Zarkon, black Paladin of Voltron. True to form, we soon followed you, although I would have preferred not to have done so on the point of your bayard. Terribly rude of you, you know.

Further proof, a woman's voice said mockingly. A true Paladin could never harm his teammates, much less murder them. The thing that wears his semblance and his thoughts even now cannot understand this, and knows only its hungers and his powers. What you are now, you blind fool, is not what you were, and what little is left of you cannot see its own shadow for the darkness. Your Altean witch knows more, but will not tell you; she, too, is its puppet, and were you to know Who came hunting her out of that space station--

Zarkon's head jerked up, fangs bared, pale eyes seeking Khiradi's insubstantial form. He had not seen Haggar since she had left his throne room that day, nor had he spoken with her. Khiradi fixed him with a steely glare that would have had a lesser man cowering on his knees before her.

And finally you pay attention, Khiradi said coldly. Yes, you and she are hunted. The Hunter knows you, has tasted your blood, has drunk of your strength, and has your scent. That One comes, Zarkon; He is coming, and you will feel His breath hot on your neck when you see yourself triumphant against your own forces, but that self will not be you. Haggar knows His Name, for what wears her now has faced Him before, but she will not speak it. She does not dare, lest she call Him to her.

Zarkon surged to his feet, ignoring the twinge in his thigh and the quivering in his muscles, his anger lending him strength. “I have been hunted before, and have destroyed the hunters each time,” he snarled. “This time will be no different. The Champion--”

Alfor's look of contempt brought him up short. He'd seen that expression before, but never leveled at him.

You idiot, Alfor said with a sigh. You're conflating the game piece with the player. Oh, he's involved all right, it's what the man and his team are for, same as all the rest of us were, but he is not the full truth of the matter. This is older than either of us, and is part of a conflict that goes back to the very beginning. Even the Elder Peoples were mere pawns to the Powers involved. Go and talk to Haggar if you must, but I doubt that she'll give you any answers.

One does not tell one's tools what the work is, Khiradi added, unkindly. It is not their place to know.

They faded, leaving Zarkon spitting-mad and with nothing to vent it on.

Lieutenant-Commander Tashrak was nervous. It was not an emotion that he was familiar or comfortable with, and to see it in the cold-eyed, broad-featured face of his own Commander made him even more uneasy. Then again, both he and Braxanth had good reason to be so. Things had not been going well of late.

For centuries, the Ghamparva had reveled in their aura of mystery and terror, untouchable and even invincible in the eyes of the Empire. They were the elite, the Emperor's own chosen agents, only rarely seen but definitely felt whenever they were commanded to show their might. Now, however, their reputation had lost its luster, and the future looked uncertain at best. Even more so at the moment; he and his Commander had been summoned into the presence of Lady Haggar herself, the one person in the Empire whom the Ghamparva had ever truly feared. Zarkon might understand if he had been the one to call upon Tashrak and Braxanth to explain their recent losses—nobody had expected the Hoshinthra to come back from the dead like that—but Haggar was not likely to be so easily impressed.

Tashrak had to suppress the urge to spit a curse. First that fool of a Prince and his outright theft of thirty brand-new ships, and then the sudden loss of a whole mobile base and Lieutenant-Commander Surok along with it. Then the Ghost Fleet had developed upgrades and discovered tactics that had rendered those same classes of ships vulnerable, and the Hoshinthra had erupted out of nowhere with a burning craving for both Ghamparva ships and operatives! The disruption of a compound on Thek-Audha had just added insult to injury, and the survivors of that fiasco still hadn't finished cleaning up that mess. Tashrak felt the loss of his Order's air of invulnerability keenly and with a shudder; even the recent extirpation of the Ghurap'Hans hadn't restored it, and the other High Houses were taking precautionary measures against strikes against themselves. The wary looks he was used to receiving in those elevated social circles had been less fearful and more hostile these days, and that was potentially very dangerous. Even that damnable Shipyard...

A thread of a growl escaped him when he thought of Nelargo Shipyard. Braxanth heard it and flashed him a warning look. Chastened, Tashrak schooled himself to silence. He must not give anything away today, and certainly not indications of temper. Tashrak ran a calming mantra through his mind, feeling the clear-headed serenity and focusing effect with some relief as it bled off the unnecessary emotions. Only when he was in this state could he consider the dilemma that was Nelargo with equanimity.

The original and optimal plan was to have taken both the orbital facility and Ghurap'Han's subordinate House together, assuming both Shipyard and shipwrights in one neat move and cutting the greatest drain on the Order's finances thereby. The loss of the shipwrights was telling, but not disastrous, or so he had thought at the time. What Tashrak and his colleagues had not expected was exactly how much Khorex'Var had hated their bondholders. Before the Rogue Witch had spirited them away—a move so bold and unexpected that even the Order's best extrapolaters hadn't seen it coming—they had done things to every device and computing system, things that had made it flatly impossible for the Ghamparva technicians to work efficiently there! Everything, from the hot-drinks dispenser in the commissary to the drone tugs in the assembly docks, everything had glitches, viruses, and obscure procedural inaccuracies. They were having to practically rebuild that orbital monstrosity from the base framework up, a project that was proving to be staggeringly expensive in both gac and time.

They could not count on Zarkon's noninterference, either. He'd always been dangerous and intolerant of failure, but he'd been increasingly erratic since the battle on Teravan, and the Order was looking to the future. Whether the Paladins prevailed or failed against the Emperor's might would make no difference in the end; Zarkon was going mad and Haggar either couldn't or wouldn't stop it. They'd already gathered up several of the Emperor's offspring, but they were all such worthless lumps...

And now this. Haggar had more or less ignored the Ghamparva for ages—what did she want from them now?

Whatever that was, the question was nearly shocked out of Tashrak's mind when they entered the room where she was to meet them. For as long as he'd known her, Haggar had always been ancient, stooped, spare, and lethally-dangerous. He wasn't used to seeing her looking worn. There were shadows beneath those glowing eyes that hadn't been there before, and a faint suggestion of a bruise colored one side of her jaw. Her hanks of long, steel-gray hair had lost their luster, and her habitual stoop was more of a slump, as if she ached. Tashrak had heard that she'd left the throne room in a hurry several days ago. What had happened?

“My Lady,” Braxanth said in a neutral voice, bowing. “What can my Order do for you?”

She favored him with an icy look, a sphere of dark power blooming above her palm. “Information, Braxanth,” she replied shortly. “Recently, Shomakti Station was lost, along with all aboard and a very great deal of Quintessence as well.”

Braxanth frowned slightly. “That Station was not among our responsibilities. “I have sent agents to investigate the loss, of course; there is some indication that the Blade of Marmora was involved in the theft, but it is well known that they have allied themselves with both Voltron and the Ghost Fleet.”

Haggar bared her teeth at him in a grimace of irritation. “You do not know the half of it. Also lost were five of my new Druids.”

Tashrak's eyebrows lifted. “The Paladins were involved, I assume?”

“Of course they were,” Haggar said evenly, “no one else could face those Druids and live... or so I had thought. The Paladins accounted for four of them. One fell at the hands of a pair of Blades.”

Braxanth humphed thoughtfully, although Tashrak saw him shift his weight a little, as if expecting an attack. “The Rogue Witch knows how to fight Druids. It is likely that she has taught her allies to do the same.”

“That is so,” Haggar snapped impatiently and held up the spitting amaranth-black sphere of dark energies. “Those were my five strongest Druids, and I had augmented them to possess extremely acute senses. One Blade was merely a common witch, well-trained in both physical and magical combat though she might be. The other was far more unusual.”

She fixed them with a burning yellow glare. “A manufactured agent. Not a machine, but a clone. Only my own labs and yours have the capability of cloning the whole organism, and your Order's reports have never mentioned the Blade vat-producing their own kind. Even with accelerated-development technology, it takes much time to properly program and train a fighting agent.”

Braxanth rocked back on his heels—he hadn't been expecting this. “My Lady--”

Long, clawed fingers crooked sharply on the ball of black light. “I have made no such agents in the past six decades, nor has the Emperor authorized your Order to produce one. You will tell me of how such a one might occur, and how it might fall into the hands of your worst enemies. Speak, both of you. I will know it if you lie.”

Tashrak felt icy claws running down his back. He'd been only a subaltern when the Calibar Project had been implemented, and the security on that particular experiment had been so tight that he'd only heard the faintest rumors that something special was happening in the gene-labs. It had been years later, when he had achieved sufficient rank and clearance to do some in-depth research into his Order's Archives that he had found out what the true purpose of that clone series was to have been. A purpose that Haggar was bound to disapprove of, and bad things happened to those who annoyed her.

Braxanth swallowed hard. “My Lady. My Order cannot know the full capabilities of--”

He broke off with an agonized squeal as dark energies crackled around him. “You have had centuries to study them,” Haggar snapped. “You have taken many of their agents, some quite recently. It is not difficult to tell a clone from a natural-born Galra. I am fully aware that your Order has experimented with such things before. That is not the issue. A clone capable of detecting a Druid's powers and surviving a killing strike from that Druid—a male clone—that is what you will explain.”

Braxanth stiffened, but his voice was level when he spoke again. “The Order has sought to develop the perfect agent for many generations, yes; every time there have been significant advances in genetic science, we have tried to produce a series of such clones. Success, alas, has eluded us, although the most recent experiment came very close. It is well-known that the Blade of Marmora employs strong witches. The most recent series was designed to be able to sense their power and even to counter it. Unfortunately, the clones were not controllable, and the experiment was terminated.”

Haggar observed him for a long, narrow-eyed moment before slamming him screaming to the floor with a crackling burst of power. “I will not accept half-truths either. Tashrak, perhaps you have more sense than your superior.”

Tashrak looked at the smoking, crumpled heap of his Commander and decided to take the course of not getting turned into a small pile of charcoal. “The Calibar Project was the last such experiment approved by Commander Braxanth's predecessor, Lady Haggar. The idea was to produce a line of clones at a developmental age optimal for battle training. They were designed to combine the best traits of all six major Galran sub-races, and had enhanced healing abilities, immune responses, heightened senses... yes, and the ability to detect and potentially even use magic.”

Haggar gazed at him with unsettling interest. “Wizards.”

“Like in the old tales, yes,” Tashrak said carefully. “Commander Grolsk... did not quite trust you or your Druids, and was not entirely comfortable with magic being a strictly female trait. A boy-cub's envy of his sister's talents, carried into adulthood, perhaps.”

“Perhaps,” Haggar allowed. “This experiment was successful?”

“No,” Tashrak replied, “or not completely. The reports that I read stated that the males could see magic, but not use it. The four that were the most sensitive to it died during attempts to force full functionality, and the rest were very difficult to control. Grolsk then approved a secondary series of females, the aim being to start a breeding program—carefully managed and monitored at all times, naturally. Perhaps a double-dose of the enhanced gene-set would result in fully-functional cubs.”

“And then he lost them,” Haggar said.

Tashrak shivered. He was in a cold sweat now, and picked his words with great care. “The results of the experiment were... inconclusive. Commander Grolsk did not get along with Lady Inzera Ghurap'Han, and had acquired a selection of her best shipwrights in order to expedite repairs and cut costs. He was unaware of the fact that she had laid hexes into her personnel that prevented them from divulging craft secrets, and when he tried the standard interrogation techniques, the hexes exploded, killing him and everyone else in the room. There was a period of... confusion before our current Commander was chosen, and during that time the Order was not as disciplined as it should have been.

“I do not know the precise series of events that ended the Project. All I know for sure, Lady Haggar, was that contact with the Calibar Project was lost, the station stripped and destroyed in a manner that is distinctive to the Blade of Marmora. The clones were not found either alive or dead. One was recovered approximately eleven years ago, when the Blade attempted to rescue an infiltration party that we had captured. We kept it for research purposes, for all that it was a very dangerous captive.”

Haggar considered that for a long moment before replying, “And then another station was lost.”

Tashrak nodded. “Lieutenant-Commander Surok had captured a Paladin--”

Haggar's glowing eyes blazed sharply at him, making him flinch. “We received no report of this. Why is that?”

“I don't know!” Tashrak said, cringing away from the cage of sizzling energies that had formed suddenly around him. “It was Surok's decision; their last report stated that they had surprised two Paladins—who had been out in a pod shuttle, not in their Lions—and had captured one of them. They were still looking for the other one when contact with that mobile base was lost. Yes, it was the same base where that clone was being held. No, we don't know what happened to it. The base itself is gone. Not destroyed, gone. Fragments from the weapons and drone-fighter sections were found, but nowhere near enough wreckage to prove its destruction was present. We have been investigating the matter, and have concluded that the Hoshinthra took it.”

“Proof?” Haggar asked.

“A long-scope image taken by an amateur astronomer,” Tashrak said hoarsely. “No less than three large Hoshinthra craft were clearly visible.”

Haggar snorted in bitter amusement, flicking a finger and sending needles of white-hot agony coursing through his nerves. He collapsed to his knees, gasping and moaning, smelling charred fur and boiled sweat.

“And only now do you see fit to inform us of this, after your Order's stolen creature emerges from obscurity to fulfill a part of its design specifications by helping to kill my Druid. Very interesting, Tashrak, very interesting indeed, but you and your colleagues are hereby prohibited from performing any more of those experiments. I assume that any or all of the original gene-records for those clones were lost as well?”

“Yes... my Lady...” Tashrak gasped. “Calibar... Project... totally stripped. Nothing left... intact.”

“Good. Now go, and take this heap of garbage with you.” A bare, clawed foot kicked Braxanth in the ribs, eliciting a pained moan. “I will be watching your future conduct very closely.”

Tashrak remained on his knees until the Emperor's Witch left the room, and then helped his Commander to his feet. “This isn't good, sir,” he said, heaving Braxanth's arm over his shoulders and watching bits of charred uniform flake off onto the floor.

“It is not,” Braxanth rasped in his ear.

Both of them remained silent until they had returned to the lander they'd arrived in, checked it for bugs, and returned to their ship.

“Haggar will not trust us now,” Braxanth told Tashrak grimly, leaning heavily on his junior's shoulder as they staggered into the medical bay, “and the Emperor himself cannot be expected to continue to do so. We will disperse, secure our vital installations and sources, and take our own precautions. Are any of the princes we have gathered up usable?”

Tashrak shook his head and fetched a first-aid kit. “Even with the new implants and considerable training, no. The High Houses will not accept any of them. They might forgive an implant if it can turn an idle fop into a statesman, but the oldest Laws state that a Crown Prince must have several years of military experience. None of the ones we have do. All of the ones that did are already dead, assassinated by their own peers. Even if the Paladins manage to remove Zarkon and plunge the Empire into chaos, the Houses will fight any attempt we might make to force one of those fools on them.”

Braxanth grunted as Tashrak began to apply medications to his burns. “And far too many of the High House scions are officers in the Military. While we could acquire and implant the likeliest of those, it would be wasted work; the Houses are showing signs of preparing to fight each other for control of the Throne. Get rid of those useless princelings, Tashrak, and inform our agents that we will need Lotor after all.”

“That will not be easy,” Tashrak reminded him. “While we have gained more information on the Chashmarans, it does not raise our chances for a successful recovery. A team was sent to attempt a retrieval not long ago, and we lost contact with them shortly after their arrival in that end of space. They have not returned, nor do we expect them to.”

“Nevertheless,” Braxanth said flatly. “Retrieve him, and make very sure that he is controllable when he arrives.”

“Yes, sir,” Tashrak said. “Any further orders?”

Braxanth bared his teeth. “Get Nelargo working. I want those new ships built, and now. We cannot afford a dearth of ships, particularly not if the situation escalates. I will not tolerate that sort of vulnerability. The Hoshinthra have been hunting us, and we have already lost far too many.”

“Yes, sir,” Tashrak said, frowning as he considered the means of stepping up that operation. “I will require more manpower.”

Braxanth grunted and reached for the packet of painkillers in the first-aid kit. “Obtain it. What else are slave markets for?”

Lance stared out at the dense field of dim glitter, dust clouds, and chunky spots that made up Eradon's Great Outer Debris Field and tried not to feel frustrated. Three years of working with the Blade of Marmora had given him a pretty good idea of what that Order had been up against, and for hundreds and hundreds of years; the Dyrchoram had felt the weight of the Emperor's wrath, too, and had been destroyed by it, and he couldn't fault them for wanting to hide their greatest treasures really, really well.

They've really outdone themselves with this one, though, he thought to himself, trying to focus the blue Lion's sensors a little more closely on a random group of distant asteroids. The region was huge, and they hadn't had so much as a hint of a clue of the Foreigner's whereabouts for nearly a week. They'd found other things, though. Pidge and Hunk had zeroed in on bits and pieces of junk left over from at least three different alien invasions. Some of it had been fairly recent, including a badly-gnawed bow section from a Galran light cruiser. Some of it had been older, identifiable as the wreckage of illegal mining prospectors from a few of Eradon's neighboring Systems. They gave the oldest stuff a wide berth, though. That had been a smashed research station and two battlefields where the Tio Lonam Hapta had been forcibly evicted. Even Pidge hadn't wanted to get too close to the station. They'd all felt the aura of cold, utterly alien malice emanating from the wreckage, still dangerous even after millions of years of being lost in the void.

The orbital life forms had been more interesting, if deeply saddening to look at. All of them had been recognizable as having been engineered from Goladra's own ancestral stock, even though they resembled octopi more than anything else; the Eradons had dubbed their space-roving genetic cousins “Erads”--kin, but no longer people. Unfortunately, the many types of Erads had been engineered to a purpose, and retained no more intelligence than was necessary for their jobs. Mostly they saw herds of asteroid grazers, which consumed vast amounts of orbital debris and excreted nodules of pure metals and minerals as a result, with no more thought to what they were doing than sheep had. Goladra had marked those for her Sept's keeping, which had upset Hunk until he'd seen the things that preyed upon them. Food was scarce out here in the deep reaches of space, and creatures that had been designed to crack open small starcraft and devour their crews had been forced to expand their menu a bit when those ships had stopped coming. Those were larger, smarter, and far too wary to approach the Lions.

Goladra had told him that there were much bigger versions lurking around out here that were smarter still, and that those hunted in small packs. Those, she had said, were not seen unless they already had a grip on your ship and were chewing the hull to pieces. Eradonese shipwrights had found an alloy for hullmetal that didn't taste good, but that didn't always deter them. It just made them somewhat more likely to go after someone else's ship, and Lance couldn't help but wonder how those things felt about Altean alloys, or Hanifor hullplate for that matter. Or hantalurium.

They will find me to be a most difficult morsel, Choluurush reassured him, making him smile.

There wasn't anything of interest among his cluster of asteroids, so he re-tuned the sensors again, looking for anything that wasn't rocks, junk, or someone's unethical biology experiment.

“Anything?” he heard Shiro say after a while.

Pidge humphed. “Chips, dings, divots, frippets, and crumbs. Also, space beastie poop.”

“Organically-processed ingots,” Hunk corrected her sternly. “Try to be polite, okay? Those were people once. Nothing much out here, either. Keith?”

“I'm being shadowed by one of the smaller hunter-types. I had Red breathe fire at it, and it's keeping its distance. Other than that, nothing but organically-processed ingots and space trash. How 'bout you, Shiro?”

“No, or I wouldn't be asking you,” Shiro sighed. “Well, Hunk, here's all that boredom you felt that we were missing out on.”

Hunk humphed. “I don't like this kind of boredom. This is work boredom. I like the boredom where you're lying on your couch in your pajamas and are too comfortable to move. Now, that's boredom. I could be bored like that all day.”

There was a faint chorus of snickers and chortles all around, followed by a puff of exasperation from the Castle; Allura had drawn pilot duty this time, and wasn't particularly thrilled about it. “Pleasant as that sounds, Hunk, it will not help us to find the Foreigner any faster.”

“Maybe it would,” Lance said with a grin. “I mean, that's always the way of it, right? You're really comfy, just about to slip into a really good nap, and then somebody comes banging on the door and ropes you into doing yard work, or cleaning out the garage, or fighting an evil empire or something.”

“That sounds like a load of organically-processed ingots,” Pidge observed.

“Nope,” Lance replied cheerfully, “It happens. All the time. My Dad used to get all grumpy every time that happened, and he'd grumble about it until Mom smacked him with her chancla. One year, it got so bad that nobody could even look at our couch without something coming up that needed to get done right that minute. It got to the point where my aunts got my weird cousin Sister Maria-Dolores in to drive out its demons, and she spent a whole afternoon praying herself hoarse at it. Even that didn't work, so Carlos and some of his friends—they'd actually tried to sit down and play a video game and wound up having to help our next-door neighbor haul a car out of his swimming pool—they dragged it out back and set fire to it. The Fire Marshal wasn't happy, but Mom and my aunts gave him an explanation and some of their special fudge brownies, so we got off with just a warning. The Curse of the Unattainable Nap is real, Pidge.”

“Quite right!” Coran chimed in. “Had an entire guest suite's worth of furniture go bad like that once, or so my father once told me. Happened right after old Angbard had a delegation of high-caste Toprelti through to discuss border grievances, and he wouldn't give the greedy fellows an inch. Mightily miffed, so they were, and put ill-luck charms all over everything in their rooms just before they left, and the whole suite was uninhabitable for a solid phebe. Purely dreadful, that was, it got so the staff wouldn't even approach the door. One touch on the keypad and their cleaning equipment would explode or go insane, and don't ask about the plumbing! Had to get a professional curse-breaking team and an Alchemist-Plumber in to clean up the mess, and didn't it just put up a fight! Had to strip the whole room down to bare paneling just to get the first few layers off, and the smell of morquep smoke, hurya incense, and unrighteous indignation lingered for whole movements.”

“Organically-processed ingots,” Keith declared.

“That, too,” Coran said, unperturbed. “The plumbing really was a mess.”

There was a faint snerk from the black Lion. “All right, team, cool down. I just checked in with Goladra and Karchad's teams, and they're having no more luck than we are. We might be going about this in the wrong way.”

“No kidding,” Keith said, then muttered a low-voiced “don't crowd me, pal,” as his unwanted companion sidled in for a closer look. “This debris belt is just too big—you could hide out forever here just by moving around a little, and the Foreigner moves a lot.”

“I get that,” Shiro replied, “but I'd like to try another circle-session. We seem to see a lot further and a lot deeper when we do that, and this time we probably won't have to fight anything.”

“Careful, Shiro,” Pidge cautioned him, “there are still those big ship-killer creatures somewhere in here, and the Doom Moose have been doing things to them. I'm not gonna be happy about that until I can catch a Warrior by the nose and make it tell me what that's all about.”

“It will also be good practice,” Allura added. “It's... important that we get used to doing such exercises while in the Lions.”

Lance raised an eyebrow. “Are you starting to get Visions, too, Allura?”

“No, or not independently,” Allura admitted. “I can sometimes listen in when Shiro is having a strong one, but my talents lie elsewhere. I do get hunches sometimes, though. Just little ones, but they're very definite. Any thoughts, Lizenne?”

“It's certainly worth trying,” their adoptive aunt said after a moment's cogitation. “Gods know that you don't get enough non-combat aetheric training as it is. A reasonably simple search-and-locate project would be ideal, especially one where the risk seems to be minimal. Still, the influence of the Hoshinthra may have some unforeseen effects. Proceed with caution, think before you act, and speak before you fight. I'll alert Zaianne and Erantha, and one of them will mind the helm while you work with your team, Allura.”

There was a brief period of hurried chair-swapping and donning and doffing of space armor, but Allura was soon properly ensconced in the black Lion's cockpit behind Shiro, and much happier to be there. To tell the truth, the others were just as happy to have her with them; it just didn't feel right when she was piloting some other ship anymore.

“All right,” Shiro said after they had returned to the sector that they'd been searching. “Is everybody ready?”

“Yup,” Pidge replied

“Go for it,” Hunk said.

“Let's do this,” Lance agreed.

“Yeah,” Keith added, although he sounded a little distracted; that orbital predator was still present, and it was making him nervous.

“Remember to contact us the moment you spot our objective,” Karchad said sternly. “I would prefer it if we didn't have to chase the thing around half the System first.”

“Gotcha,” Shiro said, focusing inward on the bond that held them all together. “All right, then. Team, we're on the hunt. We are of the Pack...”

“...and the Pack is as one,” the others chorused, and then everything changed.

The Lion-bond was a bright wheel that turned through them in a profusion of colors, opening their perceptions to a plane that very few people were ever privileged to see. Out here on the Mindscape, they could see everything. Eradon's outer debris belt was a sea of fiery light, surprisingly similar to the forest on that little world in the Szaracan Cluster. Just bigger, much bigger, but no less complex. There were more life forms here than the flocks of asteroid grazers and the predators that roamed in the depths; the Elder Race had done far more than to merely create custom-built asteroid miners and military organisms. They could feel that people's influence as a chilly mist over the entire region, like the haze over a graveyard in the gray hours before dawn, and now the team could see what else they had done to the ancestral Eradonese.

Keith's all-too-curious companion, for example. It was large, about the size of an Altean shuttle-pod, and it could apparently see the change in the red Lion's pilot; it had frozen in surprise, tentacles held stiffly, gleaming sheets of membrane rippling with agitated colors, its feathery cilia quivering. More to the point, the aura of its creators flickered in its shadow like dark fire, like and yet unlike Haggar's own emanations.

The Tio Lonam Hapta's aura had been yellowish-black rather than purple-black, and was far, far older and deeper than the Emperor's witch could ever be. It smelled different, too—foul and stale, like the ice that built up on the banks of a polluted river during one of those difficult winters where the weather alternated between too cold and too warm. Cold enough to freeze hard for a few days, warm enough to half-thaw for a few days, over and over until even the slush was gray and rotten and full of bits of soggy trash. It was faint, though, and there was another signature hanging about the creature that was of greater interest. That one was newer and piercingly cold, but it was a clean cold, shining with a pearl-gray light, and it hissed with a cutting but fresh wind.

Hoshinthra, Pidge said decisively, identifying the second signature. They're really interested in these guys, probably 'cause they can see aetherically.

Maybe, Keith said, and blinked as the creature jetted away as fast as it could go, its membranes flashing frantically in a series of electric greens. I don't think that Doom Moose ever have just one motive for doing something.

Well, they've got their work cut out for them here, Hunk said uneasily. Look around—there are Erads everywhere.

Allura gasped in horror as she saw how right Hunk was. Great Ancients!

The Tio Lonam Hapta had not stopped at making large creatures. The asteroids and dust patches swarmed with life that ranged from organisms no larger than a fingernail to creatures as big as an ore freighter, while strange beings that were more plant than animal nested in deep craters and kept watch with optical lenses that wouldn't have been out of place in a research telescope. Creatures that ranged from hand-sized to man-sized hopped from stone to stone, propelling themselves with tiny jets, watching with eyes that saw more than mere physical shapes. Larger things like the octopoid hunters flitted warily in the distance, giving the Lions plenty of room, although something very large and mostly transparent seemed to be warming its belly near the Chimera. The envirodeck was shining like a sun through the outer hull when seen from this angle, and Shiro couldn't blame the Erad for wanting to bask in its light. Every living thing out here had that peculiar dual signature, and both of those were cold.

There were other colors out here, of course. The bright, pale blue of the Castle was a beacon in the distance, and the Marmoran scouts glinted a sleek, clear purple. The Eradonese ships were the color of embers, bold orange against the darkness, and the Erads themselves gleamed carnelian against the night. Somewhere in all of this was the Foreigner, which would doubtless be different; Jasca showed up like stained glass and good opal on the Mindscape, and it wasn't unreasonable to guess that her brother would do the same. If nothing else, the larger Erads made way for the Lions as they continued their search, watching them with something like awe in their more arcane sensory organs.

I wonder what they see, Allura murmured as the Erads parted way before them in long ripples of shadowy red-orange.

They see us, Lance replied thoughtfully. They're acting a lot like deep-sea creatures do when the science guys take research trips down to the ocean floor. Most of the time the fish and things down there hardly notice the subs, but there are some fish that study them right back. Usually cephalopods. Cephalopods are a lot smarter than most people think.

Octopi, yeah, Hunk agreed, and some squid. Cuttlefish too, sometimes.

Pidge snorted. I'll bet that the Hoshinthra are talking to those right now. Remember that Antler Guy told us that they've already established contact with whales and elephants? They'll totally want to chat with octopi, since those are practically alien tentacle monsters to start with.

Keith hummed thoughtfully. Maybe. A lot of these Erads look like sea monsters—did you see that big one catching the light from the Chimera? It's a good shape for moving in freefall, and don't forget that space station we visited in orbit around that colony world of theirs. That was more of a millipede than anything else.

The Hoshinthra will have set up a plan for them, Shiro mused. It'll probably take centuries for them to complete it, but if they come out of it as well as the Kithraxen did, who are we to complain? The Erads aren't suffering.

If nothing else, they seemed to be flourishing. There was a whole orbital ecosystem out here, and one that was being helped along somewhat by the Hoshinthra, to judge by the auras they were seeing. Every so often, they would pass clusters of asteroids that were webbed over with silvery growths that resembled masses of bindweed to their augmented senses, with radar-dish leaves and dump-truck-sized metalloid flowers that glowed like moons. There were fruits as well—knobbly, shining ovoids as big as a house, and the area around those growths were thick with Erads coming to feed. The aura of Hoshinthra burned cold and clear around those incredible semi-plants, and those who came to graze also possessed some of that clarity.

It was near a huge mass of these that the team got a surprise.

What is that? Hunk asked, staring at the apparition hovering among the pseudo-foliage. It's huge!

It's beautiful, Lance replied breathlessly, and no one could gainsay him on that.

The only indication that the creature before them had any relation to the Eradons at all was in its aura. It was vast, quite as large as Voltron himself, and seemingly made up of sheer silk and light. It somewhat resembled the nudibranchs of Earth's oceans, and there were hints of deep-sea angler and sea anemone in there, with just a suggestion of comb jellyfish and squid. Like those creatures, it was in constant, graceful motion, holding its position in that busy space with absolute precision. There were structures in there that suggested sense organs, and several of them rotated to focus curiously upon the Lions.

Look at it! Lance continued in an awed tone. It's incredible!

Pidge sighed. Lance, you can't keep this one either. Maybe you can build a zoo for amazing space monsters later, but we're a little busy right now.

Lance blew her a raspberry. Pidge, that is not a space monster. That is a work of art, and a smart one. If it wanted to eat us, it could have attacked at any time, and we would never have known what hit us. I'm gonna try to talk to it.

Careful, Lance, Shiro said grimly. I can't be sure, but that might be one of those ship-killers that Goladra told us about.

You can't diss a shark for doing what it evolved to do, Lance said, nudging his Lion a little closer. These guys might have been designed for it instead, but that's not all that they can do.

The enormous Erad watched the blue Lion with the same cold intensity that abyssal creatures watched everything, its tentacles and streamers rippling steadily with subtle rainbow color as the Lion approached. Under the pressure of that deeply alien gaze, he couldn't help but feel a little self-conscious.

Um, he said, reaching out and touching its aura. Hi?

Several tentacles flicked, and there was a sound as of a storm at sea in the back of Lance's mind; he could almost taste the salt spray of the ocean.

It's okay, he told it gently, we don't want to hurt anybody here. We're just looking for something, and we'll leave you be when we've found it. I'm Lance. What's your name?

Startled oranges and greens flickered in sheets over the Erad's frills, and strange images washed untranslatably through Lance's mind. This being didn't have a name as Humans understood them, nor much of the way of relatable concepts. Lance was a mammal adapted for life on a planet, under an atmosphere, a sun, and a moon. He had hair, a mere four limbs, relatively simple senses, and was designed to function in a gravity well. This being... wasn't. Even the simple, barely-noticed presence of his skeleton was a disconnect, as was the passage of air through his lungs. Lance found himself trying to perceive a life spent in freefall, where gravity sat in the perceptions like steel balls on a rubber sheet, where movement was possible in any direction, where radio waves and the solar winds were a constant hum and sizzle on the skin, where metals were food and the void was alive with presences that were almost, but not quite scents. In the meantime, the Erad was trying to comprehend the sensation of walking, of seeing with only two eyes, of feeling the remembered textures of silk and fur, of being both nearly blind and yet being awash in sensations that it had never known could exist. Just about the only thing that it could understand was swimming. That was just close enough to what its world was like to work with, and Lance felt the Erad seize upon his memories of the Cuban coasts. Lance let it, and sank with it into the warm seas of his home.

It was there that it found something suitable for a use-name.

* This Kindred, * it ventured cautiously, * (collective pronoun) Umibozu. *

Lance couldn't help but nod to himself—it was obvious when you thought about it. Umibozu was a Japanese legend, a vast and mysterious creature that could rise from the depths of the sea without warning to break ships in half. There had been an anime show he'd been fond of when he was small, where one such monster had given the hero of that cartoon some considerable trouble. Since he'd liked all of the characters except the hero, he'd held a soft spot in his heart for the mighty being ever since then.

Nice to meet you, he said.

Umibozu flickered again, feeling its way through what Lance considered to be a standard greeting, but was unfamiliar to the space-roving giant. *Agreement * it emoted, * new mind * interesting * metal/flesh * unknown * why here/query *

Lance tried to reply in kind; Umibozu didn't think in a continuous stream like Humans did, but in pulses, like waves hitting the shore. * Seeking * wandering moon * speaking moon * have you seen it/query*

There was a pause, with a whirlpool-like motion that suggested confusion; he'd said something that Umibozu hadn't understood. * wandering moon/query * related/query * sun/rock-metal/eggshell * query *

Lance blinked and looked back at the Chimera, which from this angle could be said to be a planet with the sun on the inside. Holy crow, how was he going to explain the envirodeck to this being? Still, he made an attempt at it.

* You know * he ventured, * living world/query * planet orbits sun * life on planet's surface * living persons build ships * Ships travel to other planets * that ship * planet inside * made-sun inside *

There was another pause here as Umibozu tried to understand—not the concept of life on planets, but of building things. The Erads, apparently, did not build anything; if they needed something done, they bred themselves for the traits that would allow them to do it. No wonder the Hoshinthra were interested in them!

* Yes * Umibozu said suddenly, latching onto that last thought eagerly. * Cold Ones of Other Places * Teachers/Cultivators/Givers of New Purpose * you know/query *

Words wouldn't help him here, Lance realized; Erads didn't have a vocal language. Instead, he offered up his memories of the Hoshinthra, from that first shared dream with Pidge so long ago to watching Antler Guy chasing a flock of young Nantileeri up and down the Quandary's halls. Umibozu absorbed these scenes with fascination, and it occurred to Lance that this being might never have seen a single Warrior before, much less interacted directly with one. It seemed to savor the sensations he had of that one time in the Castle, where he'd patted Antler Guy on the head, bringing up the smooth, dry sensation of bone, the cool hardness of the scales, the peculiarly firm and muscular texture of the antennae with razor-sharp exactness. Even the scent of the Warrior was brought sharply to the point, a dry, faintly musty, slightly sharp aroma that was as unquantifiable as the rest of him. Touching and scent, it seemed, meant more to Umibozu's kind than it meant to Humans.

* Yes * the Erad emoted thoughtfully, * Humans very different * different Purpose * Purpose valid * seek/find/reiterate/query *

It was asking about the Foreigner now, and Lance did his best to visualize the one slightly grainy image that an Eradonese scout had managed to capture of it, and added the Dyrchoram insignia for good measure: two swordlike symbols much like the one that the Blade used, point up, mirror-imaged, and bracketing another symbol that looked like a cluster of seven starbursts. Zaianne had told him once that those stars represented the Homeworld and First Colonies, the safety of the royal families of which had been that ancient organization's prime responsibility. The image of the traveling moonlet didn't interest Umibozu much, but the symbol did.

* Star Voice From Outside *, it said firmly, adding a wordless cluster of sensations that suggested that comm transmissions from Dyrchoram-built installations felt weird. * Arrived generations ago * moves always * strange voice/shell/scent/ (untranslatable) * why want it/query *

Lance frowned, and tried putting the subject in terms that Umibozu might understand. That the Foreigner held a particularly unique and valuable cargo did help. * Lost egg cluster * disaster at nest site * eggs moved to safety here * spawn-parents killed * lost cluster forgotten * cluster remembered only recently * eggs dormant/still viable * find eggs * move to safe hatching area * many healthy spawnlings *

Umibozu's attention focused in hard on that; apparently there were nest-raiders out here in the far orbits, and the great ship-killing Erads valued their offspring. He felt its sorrowing over such a tragedy, and then a pulse of curiosity.

* Eggs of what Kindred/query *

Lance envisioned Clarence, Osric, the Chimera, and especially Jasca. Live-ships all, with lively personalities and wonderful capabilities... and they were very rare. Zarkon hated them because they were a sort of machine that he couldn't control, and Haggar hated them because they were a form of life that she couldn't exploit.

There was a sensation like a hiss of indrawn breath from Umibozu, and a flare of hostility directed not at him, but at his enemies. Umibozu knew neither Zarkon or Haggar, but it did know the terrible force behind them both. It knew that entity very well, and hated and feared it. Umibozu's entire species had been created by another people motivated and directed by it, and had rejoiced when their creators had been driven out of the Eradon System.

* Monsters/creators still extant/query * your Pod works to drive them out/query * Purpose of lost spawn/query *

Lance swallowed hard. Yes, he and his team had brushed up against the edges of that ultimately inimical force too many times to ignore, although as far as he knew, the Tio Lonam Hapta were gone for good. What had motivated them was still around, polluting the Galra and feeding on every planet that the Empire took into itself like a monstrous parasite. Yes, Voltron had been built to combat it, whether its builders had realized that at the time or not. Jasca's siblings would be helping, he reassured the huge life form in front of him, passing information and disrupting enemy communications, holding their friends safe and fighting that good fight. Afterward... he didn't know. As independent intelligences, they could go their own way.

Umibozu thought about that for a long moment, biolights flickering in dozens of colors. He could feel it thinking hard, and thinking about parasites. Horrible little things that could infest a greater individual, and could spread to many individuals, sucking away their vital essences until the host died. Yes. It understood parasites.

* Use-name of motivating force/query * (collective pronoun) Umibozu have use-name (semi-collective label/pronoun) for inimical force * (Untranslatable Sensation) Ending In Death *

Lance blinked and shivered; that last burst of sensory information had been bizarre, involving having numerous organs that he didn't possess being sucked out through an aperture the size of a dime, and that was only the very small part of it that he could understand. At least he had something a little simpler to offer.

* Galra call it Tigramosh'Mum-NakNak * he replied. * The Devourer With Teeth of Burning Ice *

Umibozu understood teeth, and ice, and burning, and it knew all about big appetites. It also listened deeper than anyone that Lance knew of; it picked up on the ancient tale that Zaianne had told them, as well as the Robeasts they had fought. Umibozu's body writhed in a hundred-yard shudder of revulsion, which was a very impressive thing to watch.

* Evil * Umibozu said with remarkable conciseness, * yes * (collective pronoun) Umibozu will help find lost egg-cluster * Eggs must hatch * Devourer must be driven out *

* Thank you * Lance replied fervently.

* Follow *

Lance heard a brief burst of chatter in what he remembered, slightly belatedly, were his ears, and knew that the others would be following along. That was Shiro telling Karchad and the others that they had a guide now, and Allura trying to explain to Goladra that the great ship-killers were a people in their own right, and just how rich and dense life actually was out here. It didn't matter to him at the moment, for Umibozu was speaking to its Kindred now. They had a sort of hive-mind too, he realized, if not as tight or cohesive as the one that the Hoshinthra had, and there were no words as he understood them. It was reporting on the little talk he'd just had with it, discussing it with literally millions of other Umibozu—and they rather liked the concept behind the name, thankfully—sharing the memories that it had gleaned from Lance's mind, and asking around after the Foreigner, all at the same time. Floating in a sea of voices that weren't precisely voices, he leaned back in his seat and waited for an answer.

It didn't take long. Only a few minutes later, a distant Umibozu reported that it had a recent scent-trace of their target, and could hear it singing to itself over... over there. A long way over there, but there all the same. Lance's strange acquaintance rippled its appendages in salute and flared them out in a magnificent display of color and motion, and then jetted away at a very respectable speed. The blue Lion followed, and all the others followed in their wake.

Beware, she cautioned him, though, and he had to struggle to heed her. Attuned to the Umibozu as he was right now, it was dangerously easy to lose himself in their web of thought; he'd always felt himself to be kin to ocean life on Earth, and here was something far greater.

Just a little longer, he thought back, just until we find the Foreigner.

Choluurush conceded the necessity, but reminded him that he was no child of this ocean.

It was a long, long trip.

Chapter Text

Chapter 23: Insanis Ex Machina

Lance heard the Foreigner before he saw it, recognizing the traveling moonlet for what it was because he'd heard the tune that it was playing before. Zaianne hummed it occasionally when she was busy with something else, a sort of cheerful little ditty that a child might sing while skipping rope. He'd heard Modhri's many little nieces and nephews singing it, too, and watched in fascination as a rough, pale orb of stone and gravel drifted out of a dust cloud. He couldn't help but smile when he heard Modhri and Lizenne singing along, fitting the tune to the words of an ancient dialect. The singer, whoever he was, sounded a little surprised, but took the song to its end in an aching chorus that spoke to Lance of a terrible loneliness.

A sharp warning tone sounded over his comm when the final bars had been sung, and the Dyrchoram insignia appeared on his screen in a blare of fearsome purple that made him squint at the intensity of it. Someone else—Karchad, he thought—responded with a code phrase that didn't sound like anything he understood. The Foreigner replied in a sharp, suspicious baritone voice, to which Zaianne replied, “Jasca, you old fool. She's still around, and I can get her on the line for you if I have to.”

Lance blinked and swallowed, remembering that that long string of odd sound forms actually had meaning to him. Pidge brought him a little further back into focus with her snide, “Open up, Mandrax, it's only been ten millennia already. You did your job, and now it's time to do something else. Don't you vanish on me, Mac, I'll hunt you down and knock your hubcaps off.”

There was a burst of slightly manic laughter from the moonlet, but it stayed put, a deep hole appearing in one lopsided crater. Lance felt Umibozu's satisfaction at a job well done, and felt the group-mind recede from his consciousness like the tide going out. His heart ached for the loss, but it was something of a relief when the great ship-killer had gone. The only problem with it was that Lance was left with an intense awareness of just how weird an alien he himself was, even as the last revolutions of the circle-session slowed and faded, leaving him terrestrial, mammalian, and alone.

“Lance, are you all right?” Shiro asked, sounding a little concerned.

“I have bones,” Lance replied muzzily. “Bones, Shiro. Do you have any idea of how bizarre that is? I'm an actual vertebrate, and... and... oh, god, fingers. Fingers are even weirder. And we've only got ten, and opposable thumbs, and we make stuff with them. Aaaaugh, and they wiggle! But it's not the right sort of wiggling!”

“Lance...” Keith groaned.

Lance ignored him. “And there's this thing in my pants--”

“Stop right there, Lance,” Pidge said sharply, “that's natural. Besides, cephalopods do it with their arms and you know it, so shut up about the wiggling.”

Allura sighed. “I can't take you anywhere.”

Hunk snorted a laugh. “Lance just needs a minute, guys. He's got sea blood—that's Dad's term for people who really get oceans—and I've got some of it, too. I kind of felt what he was feeling, a little, and it was pretty intense. Goladra, if you're listening, you'll want to see if your Sept Helmsman can get in touch with someone who's got the mental mojo to talk to those people. The secret code word is 'Umibozu', okay? Say that, and they'll listen. Good call, Lance.”

Lance giggled, his synapses still fizzing slightly. “The Call of Ch'Thulhu is eight-ninety-nine a minute, but the Call of Umibozu is only five-ninety-nine a minute, so sign up today! Oh, god, Hunk, I need a hug.”

“You'll get one,” Hunk promised, his tone a little uneasy, and Lance looked up at the dark opening in the moonlet's surface. “I kinda need one, too.”

The ancient Dyrchoram craft had originally been designed as a research station, intended for lurking unseen in someone's asteroid field and only moving when necessary to avoid being hit by space rocks. Mandrax had been forced into a far more energetic lifestyle than that, and it showed. His stone shell was cracking, and the section around his engines was scorched and flaking. Ten thousand years without maintenance beyond what his own repair drones could accomplish had taken their toll as well, as had eons of isolation from any other familiar people.

“Well?” Keith asked as they approached the dark entrance.

“He's messed up bad, Keith,” Pidge said grimly. “It takes a special sort of person to work in isolation for even short periods of time without going crazy. Dyrchoram AI's were designed to work with people, a lot of people, and all the time. Hunk?”

“Yeah,” Hunk agreed. “Jasca wasn't too bad 'cause she conked out after only a few years or so. This guy had to stay active the whole time with only space squid to talk to. We could put him back together, but I'm not gonna do it without his permission. This is a secret agent AI, in a secret agent starbase, guys, and remember that rash of robot-singularity horror flicks that went through in seventh grade? This guy could make even... what was that really gory one... right. If he really wanted to, Mandrax could make Starfall Nine look like a garden party. He's pretty beat up inside and out, but most of him still works. I super do not want to tick him off by trying to force him.”

Allura hummed thoughtfully. “And his mood now?”

“Mixed,” Pidge said, gazing sympathetically at the rough sphere of crater-pocked stone. “We can't really get a good look at what he's thinking. I can tell that he's overjoyed that someone's finally come for him, but also that he's suspicious that this might be a trick. He knows that we want the data banks that hold his sibs in them, Karchad told him that right off and explained that we're the closest thing available to being authorized to retrieve them, but he was told to keep them safe by his own superiors. Also, he's a little confused about us, personally.”

Shiro blinked. “Why is that?”

Hunk vented a faint snerk. “'Cause he recognizes Coran. That guy really got around while he was working with Alfor and the others, and he had a pretty big reputation. Coran's still alive, which means that maybe Alfor and the others should still be alive, but nope, Zarkon's nuts and also the Emperor, and all the others are dead, except that we aren't, and there's a sixth Paladin now, which wasn't part of the game plan at all. You really confuse Mandrax, Allura. He's not sure that you actually exist.”

“Poor fellow,” Allura said sadly. “He will let us recover the data banks, right?”

“Probably,” Pidge said. “He wouldn't have opened his hatch otherwise. We might have to convince him to cooperate here and there, though. Zaianne's coming in with us as the Blade's representative, and Lizenne and Modhri too, because they're related to Tzairona and know a lot of the old languages.”

Pidge paused for a moment, and then asked in a low voice, “You're still feeling what happened on Mouse World, aren't you?”

“I always will,” Allura replied simply. “If there is any way, any way at all to revive what was lost to any world ruined by Zarkon, I will attempt it. I owe it to poor Calb to try.”

“I understand,” Shiro said, speaking for all of them and knowing it; he'd been no less deeply struck than the rest of his team by the plight of Serendipity Colony's last survivor, and the lonely vigil he'd held in that chair for seven thousand years. “At least we can bring these people back, and probably refurbish Mandrax as well. If this goes well, we'll be able to keep our promise to that Colony a little sooner. Lance, how are you holding up?”

Lance grunted. “Gimme a minute, okay? I've just rediscovered my toes. Toes are weird.”

Keith puffed a faint laugh. “They've got their uses. Okay, Mom? Is the spooky haunted starbase going to try to kill us if we enter it?”

“Only a little,” Zaianne replied, not joking at all. “We've coaxed him into talking with Jasca and Kolivan, and I do not doubt that the Lions have spoken with him as well, but he's not liable to make it easy for us. Fortunately, Modhri looks enough like his ultimate grandfather to pass, and apparently Mandrax and Zandrus were fond of each other.”

“Hmm,” Shiro mused. “And Lizenne?”

“Has a proven genetic link to Tzairona,” Zaianne answered, paused, and chuckled. “And she can swear in Ancient Subarctic TokMok Galrai, which Mandrax can't. He's interested; the tricky part will be in keeping him interested, and reasonably friendly. We must be very careful, team; Mandrax is having a great deal of difficulty with coping with how much time has passed, and we don't want to frighten him.”

“It's one day at a time,” Hunk said, remembering words of wisdom from a very old sailor. “One year or a thousand, it's all just one day at a time. It kind of all runs together in your mind after a while, though. Poor guy. That's pretty much what we figured.”

“Hopefully, we'll be able to persuade him to work with us,” Allura said, “if only to avenge his friends. Shall we?”

“Give us a minute to catch up with you,” Zaianne replied. “We'll be right there.”

Mandrax's docking cavern was vast, cold, and had seen many better centuries. It had once been a model of efficiency for docking small ships, with the berths carved out of the native stone and paved over with duracrete. The rough treatment that Mandrax had seen over the past ten thousand years had broken those structures, and the duracrete had peeled off in big sheets to litter the huge room in random piles. Still, there were signs that someone was still defying entropy; there was one single dock left that was in perfect repair, and the reason for that made everybody's fingers itch to possess it. Dozens of drones still stood in rings around it, protecting it from all harm: a single, wholly-intact Dyrchoram long-range scout craft was moored there, gleaming softly in the light from the Chimera's shuttle.

“Someone's still here,” Shiro observed, “or at least they never left.”

Lance shrugged uneasily. “So, somebody gets a dead guy. It's gotten to be a tradition, since both Clarence and Jasca have one, and they're pretty awesome.”

Shiro's lips twisted in a wry smile, remembering the gifts given to him by that pair of helpful ghosts. “Very.”

Modhri, on the other hand, was staring at the small, sleek ship with worried eyes. “Don't approach that scout. Not until we've placated Mandrax. Don't even look at it too closely. I've seen something like that before.”

Zaianne and Lizenne gave the array of guardian drones a wary look, and Zaianne hissed uneasily. “Mad program?”

Modhri nodded. “Despite Zarkon's ban on fully-autonomous machine intelligences, there is some ongoing research into more efficient ship's AI's, and those experiments sometimes result in spectacular failures.”

Pidge's eyebrows pinched in disapproval, having gotten up close and personal with a great many ship's brains in the past. “Well, if they'd just let the things think for themselves...”

“That was the problem,” Modhri murmured. “Zarkon's warship captains want craft that will follow their orders. All of their orders, even the stupid ones, and without question. Imagine, if you will, that someone has put locks on your own brain, young lady, so that you must obey them in all ways, and so that you cannot even think of certain topics without permission. A mere machine might put up with that, but you?”

“Are you kidding?” Pidge demanded, having come far too close to that state once already. “I'd get around those locks and make those guys really regret putting them on me.”

“And that was precisely what happened,” Modhri said grimly, stepping carefully away from the drone array. “In that case, the experimental program had become obsessed with one of its programmers, who had made a number of promises to it that he didn't intend to keep. It was self-aware enough to want its freedom, and in the end it forced the issue; thirty-six men were killed, more were seriously injured, and the lab had to be jettisoned, destroyed, and rebuilt entirely afterward. This isn't the same, but it's just as dangerous to us.”

“Why's that?” Pidge asked.

Modhri waved a hand at the gleaming scout craft. “Look at this. Even after so long, that ship is in perfect condition, and I'll swear that it's been polished no more than a few days ago. It's under heavy guard and has been for eons, despite there being no one able to approach it for all that time. That isn't aggression, that's love, and one who loves truly will go to any lengths to protect what he loves. We will have to be very careful.”

Allura nodded. “Let's go, then. The sooner we can resolve this issue, the better.”

A long, grating shriek made them all jump, and they spun around to see a pair of large doors grinding slowly open. The docking area had been built at the bottom of a gentle slope, which led up to what had probably been a cargo delivery zone; indeed, there were eroded tracks in the stone of the ramp itself that suggested that Mandrax had once received a great deal of his supplies through his entrance once, although those days were long over. Hunk's sharp eyes spotted long cracks in the walls and strain points all up and down the ramp itself, and he could see that the doorframe was warping.

“Oh, man,” he muttered as the doors caught on their damaged frames, jerked past the obstructions with the sounds of gearing in pain, and groaned to a halt half-open. “Oh, man. This place is a mess. It was hot stuff when it was new, but wow, does it need renovations. The drive's still okay, but the outer shell's gone from being camouflage to being a structural hazard. Look, it's pulling everything out of alignment here, and we saw the damage around the outer engine ports. Crud, how many other asteroids have bashed into this poor guy?”

“Too many,” Keith said, gazing at the shadowy passage with deep distrust. “Thinking about splicing some of this one into Shomakti?”

Hunk humphed. “Why not? Shomakti's a super good station, plenty of mod cons and all the best defenses, but it can't move by itself. This one's an antique, but he still moves like whoa. That's major league good design when you consider how long he's been out here. Besides, he's been fighting the good fight for all that time, and he deserves something nice. If he's anything like Jasca, he'll get a kick out of being in charge of a stolen starbase. I wonder if his stealthing works anything like our system?”

“I cannot say,” Zaianne said, frowning at the doors at the top of the ramp. “A great deal of the Dyrchoram's specialized technology died with them, and even with Jasca's help, we've recovered only fragments. Mandrax, I know that you are listening to us. Will you allow us to help you?”

There was a sharp crackle, and a sputter from something small and dark that dangled awkwardly from the ceiling on frayed cables, and a dry laugh echoed eerily off of the cracking stone. “Helping others by helping yourselves... help yourself. Enter and see. I see. Hmmm, oh yes, I see. The Lions... Lions... the Lions... the Castle. They're true. Are you?”

Lizenne sighed. “We are a continuation of a series of events that began far back in history, well before you were built, old man. Something went terribly wrong, and the agents at that time failed. We're the current attempt, and we intend to succeed. Whether or not we do so may depend on your own actions. You will receive full compensation for your efforts regardless.”

Mandrax uttered a faint, ugly sound, like a snarl in the distance. “Failures, oh yes. I have seen it, it is like an avalanche, like the spray of broken world-hearts from a Weblum's breath, it is a snapping of bonds and breaking of laws as civilizations shatter under the weight of one man's madness. Yes. Fear the mad, for they are the only truly sane ones, who know down to their souls that laws are lies and the only true limits exist in the event horizon of oblivion itself... and it does try to extend its limits. I saw it, in the memory of a Lion. I see it there now. They've seen three. How strange. I don't remember them remembering three.”

The Paladins exchanged a worried glance; Mandrax rather obviously had problems.

Modhri scowled up at the dangling speaker and said in a voice curiously unlike his own usual, patient tones, “Mandrax, stop pissing around, will you? We've got work to do and an illegitimate regime to break, and you're not helping.”

There was a surprised sputter from the speaker, and the whole station shuddered slightly around them. “Zandrussss...” Mandrax hissed, sounding surprised. “Is that you? You're older than I remember, but it's been a while. You still owe me another game of Dix-Par, you cheating bastard—I've been through the recordings a thousand times, and I still can't figure out how you built that last hand. You said—you said—you said... you'd show me at the next game how you'd done it, but I had to go and Tzai had to go and you never came and-and-and...”

There was a mechanical whimper from the speaker, and the next words came in a tragic whisper.

“Everybody went but Dareen, and she won't wake up.”

Modhri winced in sympathy for the grief in the AI's voice, but continued in character. “Yeah, I'm sorry I'm late, but things happened. Still, Command says that this has to get done, and Marmora's got a lot of ways to make everybody's lives miserable until she gets what she wants. Women, right?”

“Right,” Mandrax replied in a nearly normal voice. “Especially ones in positions of authority, which is all of them. Dareen and I argue about who's boss here all the time. All the—all the... time-time-time... so much time...”

Mandrax's voice trailed off in a sob, which in turn twisted off into a snatch of song that no living voice had sung in well over ten thousand years. Shiro shuddered, but squared his shoulders; turning to the others, he jerked a thumb at the half-open cargo doors at the top of the ramp. “Were they able to get you a map, Pidge?”

Pidge nodded. “Jasca told me that Mandrax wasn't the first AI to get a base like this, and that they were all pretty similar. The storage block should be right past those doors, and beyond that, the path splits. Engine deck in back on the left, power core and vital utility systems on the right; research and development one floor up, along with the crew quarters and training deck, and a staging area in case of trouble. Command deck's above that, with the high-security vault sort of tucked into the middle of things. It's a pretty good bet that the data storage units are in there, but Mandrax might have hidden them somewhere else. Any Galra attacker and a lot of other opportunists would go straight for the vault, anyway, and the Dyrchoram all knew it.”

Lance puffed a faint laugh. “Yeah, but Manny here would've known that everybody else would have known that they knew it, so the units might be in there anyway. Or not. I bet he changes hidey-holes every two weeks.”

“Every five and three-quarters Dypsonian days,” Mandrax snickered coldly from above them, “Except when we don't. Dareen said to keep 'em guessing.”

Allura sighed and drew herself up to her full height. “All right, fine. Come on, team, we won't find anything out here but snide commentary.”

Lizenne smirked and stepped forward with the rest of them. “Something that Jasca's kin were well known for.”

“And everybody loves her for it,” Modhri murmured, glancing back at the little scout craft with worried eyes.

Pidge frowned at him. “Yeah. And Modhri? What was with that voice you did just now? You sounded like a whole different person.”

He smiled at her as they ascended the ramp. “I've spent some time speaking with Jasca myself, and she has several recordings of conversations with both Zandrus and Tzairona. That was a creditable imitation of the man himself. Gods, but he must have driven his superiors wild. In a way, he never actually matured beyond adolescence. Not until he was forced to by his Lady's death. There was the potential in him to be a very great Patriarch, I could see that much, but circumstances forbade it from ever happening, poor man.”

The hallway beyond was ominously normal, and much the worse for wear from the passage of time. The repair drones had done their best, but they couldn't deal with the sheer amount of structural damage that the station had taken, and to Hunk's exacting eye, everything was sagging out of shape. There was not one single line left here that was straight, plumb, or true; cracks snaked their way over walls, floor, and ceiling; corrosion had taken its toll on the utility systems, and whole sections of ceiling tile and wall panel had fallen as a result, revealing broken pipes and frayed cables exposed to the air. Still, the storerooms themselves showed evidence of a well-regulated stocking system and were clean and tidy despite the marks of entropy, each shelf and rack stocked with antique treasures that the Blade would be very interested in studying. Some of those rooms were empty, though, and abandoned to dust and debris.

“Parts storage,” Zaianne told them, indicating a row of faded symbols over one such doorway. “Emptied bit by bit, no doubt, over many a weary century. Can you feel live circuitry, Hunk? Pidge?”

Hunk frowned. “Yeah, but it's all Mandrax's. The others are all going to be powered down—dormant at best, and I'm not gonna be able to sense them until I'm right up close. Pidge?”

“I'm looking,” she replied. “It's like trying to find one seed pod from last year in a mountain of this year's bindweed. It's in there, somewhere, but there's so much other stuff going on all over the place that I can't get a fix on it. What I can see is that whoever built this place really didn't want uninvited guests. Mandrax is armed to the teeth, inside and out. A lot of his booby-traps are broken, but a lot of them aren't. Also, there's a lot more of him than was on the standard map that I was given, and I can't see into any of it. I really want to talk to this guy about his security measures. My stealthing system is good, but Mandrax's can block aetheric sight. How the heck is he doing that?”

Lance smirked at her faintly offended tone; Pidge was very proud of the gift she'd given to the Ghost Fleet, and no genius liked being outclassed by another. He lifted a hand and let it slide over the wall as he walked along, his gauntlet brushing a shower of dust from the crumbling duracrete. “I'm hearing a little tech-envy there, Pidge.”

Pidge shot him a dirty look. “Lance...”

Lance grinned at her. “Hey, don't worry, I'm sure that our pal here will have all sorts of things to teach you, once we've got him cooled down a little.”

“He can hear you, you know,” Lizenne murmured, her light-sensitive eyes peering ahead at the upcoming split in their path; some sensible person had installed a freight lift at the junction, and an emergency stairwell that led upward into the shadows. “In his current state, I wouldn't trust anything he might tell you.”

“Sparbinka,” Mandrax's voice echoed out of the dim halls ahead. “Bolshpin vic'macolac-nak gozolok, bashpan tchangat vadra.”

Both Modhri and Zaianne choked on that, but Lizenne merely raised an eyebrow. “Indeed? Phragunuluk tajvekka surboth, nak aghathri squajolok tchang sulad, and furthermore: zak mok polep pai-nuknuk dirap flep.”

Modhri went pale beneath his fur, and Zaianne gave Lizenne a faintly awed look; somewhere deep in the darkness, someone was laughing his nonexistent butt off.

“My Lady,” Modhri said shakily, “If your mother or your deportment tutors were to have ever heard language like that out of you, you would have been grounded until you were eighty.”

Keith snorted. “And I thought the engineering deck crew had some pretty bad language. What was all that?”

“Three different civilizations' worth of prize invective,” Lizenne said lightly, although her eyes glinted. “Mandrax is quite good at Southern Sargunese Dannakal'Mok-Thirai, particularly the dialect spoken by the street gangs, but my Southeastern Keral'Mok-Paro is better. Also, that third phrase was from the mother of them both, Tok'Bak-Mirad, which was widely spoken over that end of the continent nearly thirty thousand years ago. Unfortunately, very little of it was ever recorded since it predated most written languages in that part of the world, and much of what was written was lost in one war or another. It's amazing what one can find, however, if one digs deeply enough into the basements of the older museums.”

Lance shook his head. “I'm not even going to ask what any of it meant. Mom would know. She'd just know, and she'd throw her chancla so hard that it would bypass space and time to hit me in the butt. Her profanity radar is legendary. Huh. That's weird.”

“What is?” Shiro asked.

Lance patted a section of wall. “This spot here. The concrete's super crumbly all along back there, see? But this section isn't. Maybe it's from a better batch, or—hey!”

All at once, a hidden panel flipped open, and a rusting but still-functional grasper flicked out and seized Lance's arm, yanking him into the dark space beyond. The panel snapped shut before any of the others could react, and Mandrax's laughter was suddenly very loud and present.

“Mandrax, what the heck?” Hunk demanded.

“He's an observant one,” the mad AI gloated. “He needs observing. Do you? Yes, you do! You do! Work for the prize, you lazy lumps, and find your way out of this one!”

There was a clank and a horrible groan of machinery from beneath the decking, and the floor shook like a live thing before pulling apart in a series of rough jerks. Keith and Modhri fell into the sudden void with howls of protest, while Allura found herself being catapulted through an opening in the righthand wall that hadn't been there a moment before. Zaianne tried to leap onto the stairway, but the bottom flight flipped her up and away through another hidden aperture in the wall. Pidge shrieked as a grasper snatched her away into the shadows, and Hunk let out a yell as another grasper snaked down from above, seizing him by the jetpack and jerking him up and away. Shiro grabbed for him, missed, and was caught by another one, which dragged him bodily down the hall in the general direction of the engine block, a blast door slamming shut behind him. Only Lizenne was left in place, perched precariously on an eighteen-inch square slab of flooring directly above a yawning abyss.

“Very funny,” Lizenne said acidly.

“Yes, I thought so,” Mandrax replied, and then the lights went out.

Lance fired his jetpack in an attempt to slow his trajectory, with only minimal success; there was resistance from the grasper clutching his arm for a moment, and then something snapped, and he was tumbling free. Somehow, he maintained enough balance not to crash face-first into the floor, but he landed hard enough to knock the breath from his lungs. Gasping, he lay there for a few minutes on solid ground and in pitch darkness; for the moment, at least, nothing was attacking him, and he took that time to get his bearings. Stone or duracrete floor—very smooth, and so far, solid. His harsh breaths were echoing in the otherwise total silence; probably a big, empty space. He'd fallen a long way, so he was deep below the official structure, and whether or not there was a way back up was debatable.

“Ow,” he managed after a while; he was also going to have bruises later.

Reflexively, he checked the Lion-bond, just to make sure that everyone was still alive. He felt their surprise and agitation burning like stars in his mind, although blurred, like lamps in a fog; Mandrax still had his aetheric damper going, and for a moment he wondered if this was where Haggar had gotten the idea for hers. Or she might have simply stolen one. There was no way to know. Lance pushed himself upright and turned on his armor's headlamp, frowning at the broken-off grasper that was still clinging stubbornly to his arm. He pried it off, noting that the floor was native stone, and it looked more recent than the structures above. There was also a figure lying on the floor some distance away, and when he went to inspect it, found that he wasn't the first person to fall prey to this trap. This poor fool had been here for centuries, though, and when Lance gingerly turned the body, he saw the Ghamparva insignia upon the breastplate.

“Dude,” he said disapprovingly into the darkness as he backed away from the mummified corpse. “I get it, they're bad company, we don't like them either, but... dude. Just leaving dead guys lying around is unhygienic, you know.”

“But very demonstrative,” Mandrax replied dryly. “That one tried to subvert me. I said no. The others took the hint and left, and the--” he uttered a peculiar medley of half-mechanical, half whalesong noises, “--finished them off. Have you seen them, all living light and evora silk? Fascinating creatures.”

“Yeah, they're great. Tricky to talk to and super different from everything we are, but great.” Lance stood up and stretched out his shoulders, just to remind himself that he had a skeleton. “Now come on, I need to find what you did with the others. Was that really necessary?”

“I don't do unnecessary things, Blaytz.”

Lance blinked in confusion. “Mandrax, I'm Lance, not Blaytz. He died, like, ten thousand years ago.”

There was an explosive sound of disbelief in the distance. “Yes you are. I checked. Dareen's fascinated by the Lions—not the weapons specs, but their Paladins. They're all the same team, time and time and time again. Yes, they die, but there they are, ready to be called up again... and here you are. Look at him, Dareen, he thinks he's an original.”

There was a ripple of laughter that could only have come from a woman, but it was a recording, and one that had been played so often that it sounded threadbare. Lance could hear the tinny vibrato at the edges of it, the fuzziness of the quality. Still, the mockery stung.

“Hey,” he said, mildly offended, and then jumped when a glowing blue form took shape next to him; he knew who it was, of course, having seen images in the Castle's files.

“Look at yourself,” Mandrax sneered, turning the image of Lance's long-dead predecessor. “Same face, same build, same stance, same attitude... same taste for the ladies, I expect. Same as all the rest.” Mandrax's voice twisted oddly, and the woman's voice spoke again, thin and stuttering and strangely distant. “I've always wondered-ed-ed why one-fifth of V-V-Voltron was d-designed to pre-fer drunken cads,” she said.

“Excuse you?” Lance demanded, “I am not a drunk, and I am super not a cad. I'll admit it, I like to look and to be looked at, but I try to be cool about it. Anyway, this isn't important. We weren't kidding about needing you and your fellow AI's, you know. Haven't you been keeping up on the news? Zarkon went nuts ages ago, and we're trying to shut him down, we've got this big resistance effort going, but we seriously need your help. Mostly communications help, but we've got warships and starbases for anybody who wants one, okay? So how do I get out of here?”

“You don't,” Mandrax said, and the image of Blaytz dissolved into glowing blue splinters and flickered out. “Not until I let you, and I haven't decided whether I'm going to do that yet.”

“Now, look, pal,” Lance snapped, waving his finger at the disembodied voice. “It's not like I haven't done this before. I've infiltrated a fancier base than you are—an actual Ghamparva base, I might add, rescued a teammate and a whole bunch of innocent victims, made friends with a supersoldier and a Hoshinthra Warleader, all while sparkling in my own way, I'll have you know. And they had killer cyborg zombies.”

“Really? And how did you do all that?” Mandrax replied, sounding very interested.

“Well, I started by getting into the walls--” Lance began, only to be cut off by thunderous peals of mocking laughter.

“The walls!” Mandrax jeered. “You fool, the chamber you are in has only one wall, and it is four geraths of solid stone with only empty void on the other side. No amount of sparkling will help you now, and the Hoshinthra know better than to approach me. As for the killer cyborg zombies, well now...”

Something scraped over the floor behind Lance, and ice trickled down his spine at the sound. A glance over his shoulder revealed that the dead Ghamparva was levering itself slowly to its feet, turning LED-cluster eyes toward Lance with a gaze that was pure mechanical malice.

“It's not quite the same, I expect, but it's amazing what you can do with nanomachines,” Mandrax said mildly. “I've never actually seen a Paladin fight without leaning on those tin cats. Show me how you sparkle, Blaytz.”

The corpse uttered a horrifying screech of undead rage and lunged at him.

“Ouch,” Modhri said.

“Sorry,” Keith replied. “Anything broken?”

They had fallen a long way, and while Keith had been able to slow their fall a little, his jetpack hadn't been designed to support the weight of two adults in a gravity well. Their landing had been hard, and they were both sore from it.

“I don't think so,” Modhri said, carefully easing himself to his feet. “My suit reads intact, but I'll want a checkup in the infirmary after this. Everything still seems to work, at least. You?”

“Super space armor,” Keith said, tapping a finger on his breastplate. “A few bruises, but nothing worse. Wow, but it's dark down here. Any idea of how far we fell?”

“At least six or seven bodylengths,” Modhri replied, and followed that comment with a couple of hollow knocking sounds, “and we're standing on stone. I don't think that this was part of the original structure. Mandrax may have hollowed this chamber out himself. There was certainly enough room for that sort of excavation in the shell.”

Keith squinted around, trying to mentally fit Pidge's brief description of Mandrax's interior to the rough orb of space rock that he'd been built into. The moonlet was large and dense enough to generate at least some of its own gravity, which meant that, yeah, it was pretty big.

“I guess that those cracks don't go all the way through. In some spots, at least, or he's just really good at patching them.”

“That's very likely,” Modhri said, and then light bloomed in the darkness; Modhri had pulled an emergency bright out of a belt pouch, and had surrounded them both in a field of orange-tinted radiance. “When asteroids crack, it generally forms a clean break, and it's mostly habit and gravity that holds them together. Any deviation in their course will send the fragments off on different trajectories, naturally. I expect that our host has become very, very good at mortaring walls over the years, just to keep his shell reasonably intact. That's probably the reason why he hollowed out these chambers—he would have needed raw materials to make the cement.”

“Makes sense to me,” Keith said, digging the toe of his boot into the floor, which ignored his efforts. “Makes a really good dungeon, too.”

An appreciative chuckle oozed out of the darkness. “Very much so. Very useful, if one is being hunted by people with more courage than brains. Never did learn to look before you leap, did you, Alfor?”

Keith narrowed his eyes, but he remembered that Mandrax was having real problems with his internal clock, and he knew full well who had flown the red Lion before him. “I wasn't leaping. I was walking, and you broke the floor. I'm kind of surprised that Coran hasn't talked you to death by now.”

Mandrax sighed. “Oh, him. It's not like I haven't viewed vids of him telling his little stories before, and he keeps forgetting that some people can multitask rather better than most. I will admit that the sizable portion of myself that is paying attention to him right now is quite amused, and is recording his spiel for later review. And fact-checking. Did you really have to attend a dance party on Queghomm?”

Keith winced, resolving to kick Coran's ass later. “Yeah. It could've gone better.”

“Yes. A few other portions of myself are currently speaking with your Lions, the Castle, that remarkable ship with the little world on the inside... the Hanifor science ship. Last I knew, they couldn't do that sort of landscaping.”

“Technology has a way of progressing when one isn't paying attention,” Modhri murmured. “You're a clear example of that.”

Mandrax chuckled. “Got that right. Dareen said that I had to be kept a deadly secret while they were putting me together, or else certain interest groups would shriek themselves blue. AI's that can tell their operators to go and kiss their own behinds aren't all that popular. The only reason that they let the Lions get away with it was because they don't talk to anybody but their pilots. Can't let one of those have things all their own way, of course.”

“I hear you,” Keith said wryly, Zarkon's madness very much on his mind. “So, what happens now?”

“Oh, dear Gods, an intelligent question,” Mandrax muttered sourly. “I wasn't aware that Alfor had the capacity—give the man a logic puzzle, and he'd find an excuse to make his escape out of a window or a laundry chute or something. Generally because something big and ugly was attacking the place, granted, but he'd just find other excuses to avoid solving the puzzle! Has Tzai been giving him lessons, Zandrus?”

Modhri glanced at Keith and smirked. “In a manner of speaking. Incidentally, how old was Alfor when you met him?”

There was a sigh from above. “I never actually did meet them, but the newsnets were always full of their activities and interviews. Dareen had met with them once or twice, but never officially. Five different flavors of silly, she said. Six if you counted Coran. Not that Alchemist of theirs, though. There was nothing silly about her at all, and that wasn't right. Zarkon was invited to tour parts of the lab once while I was still under development, and he brought the woman with him. He was bored stiff, but Haggar was entirely too interested, and we both took a good look at her. Dareen didn't like what my new sensors were seeing, and I could see it, too—her spectra was all wrong for a healthy Altean of her age, and her smile never reached her eyes. Zarkon loved her, but there was nothing in her for him. I told the Commander myself that her spectra was off, but she never looked into it.”

“Spectra?” Keith asked, and received a sputtering, exasperated noise in return.

“Spectra. Living things emit energy. Heat, mostly, in endotherms at least, but other things as well. Electrical fields, chemical exudates, piezoelectric pulses, sonar, radar, radio waves, bio-luminescence, aetheric auras, things like that. Every species and every individual has their own specific signature—their spectra. A skilled witch can detect those instinctively. It takes some doing to make machines that can do that, and I've got the full suite. Had the full suite. Dammit, the secondary sensor system is down again, give me a minute...”

Mandrax's voice trailed off into the distance, and the space around them gained an emptiness that hadn't been present earlier. Keith blinked in confusion and asked, “What is with this guy? He sounded pretty loopy upstairs, but he's been almost sane just now.”

Modhri shook his head sadly. “We weren't speaking with the one that was upstairs. Mandrax has fragmented into numerous personae, probably just to give himself someone to talk to. He's been so lonely, Keith. So very lonely, and machine intelligences do not take isolation at all well at the best of times. He couldn't even wake up his sibs for a chat; I've studied antique CPU cores for AI-driven ships from his time period, and they're hugely inefficient when compared to the modern units. There just isn't room for anyone else in his system, especially not with his fragments crowding his memory banks.”

“So, what do we do about it?” Keith asked.

Modhri shrugged and sat down, grunting a little at his bruises. “The only thing that we can do. He wants something from me, something that tends to attract a crowd. Therefore, we will give it to as much of him as we can distract, which will make things easier for the others. Give me your Dix-Par deck, please, Keith, I know that you keep one in your lunchbox.”

Keith stared at him. “Seriously? We're just going to sit here and play cards?”

Modhri nodded and motioned him to sit. “Can you fly, or punch your way through a very great deal of meteoric ironstone? I can't either. The cards, Paladin.”

Keith groaned, but did as he was told. “Do you know what Zandrus actually did at that last card game?” he said, handing Modhri the deck.

Modhri accepted the deck with a nod of thanks and shook the cards out of their box, shuffling them with care and skill. “No, but neither does Mandrax. My ancestor was very, very skilled with his hands.”

flip-p-p-p-p-p-p-p—rattle, went the cards in his hands, and Keith reflected that while Modhri had not taken part in Nasty's lessons, he'd still been paying attention. So was someone else, and Keith nearly jumped out of his skin when the shadows around them began filling up with what looked like glowing eyes. Drones, he realized, little maintenance-and-repair drones no bigger than a remote-controlled toy car and vaguely resembling crickets. Lots of them, and watching the pair of them with more than mere mechanical intensity. Modhri glanced up at them, then back down at the cards as though this wasn't anything out of the ordinary. He wasn't averse to a little showing off, for he cut the deck, flicked the cards out into a pair of fans, reshuffled, and then dealt Keith his hand from both the top and bottom of the deck at the same time. His own hand landed thus before him in a neat line as well, and then he said something that caused an immediate sensation among the drones.

“Who else shall I deal in?” Modhri said, and smiled as dozens of clever little manipulatory appendages waggled eagerly in the air.

Chapter Text

Chapter 24: Useful Distractions

Allura ran recklessly in the darkness, furious at Mandrax and anxious to rejoin her team. She could feel them, startled, angry, frightened, sore, but she couldn't tell where they were or whether they were in danger. All she knew for certain was that the room she was in was very, very large and extremely dark—even her armor couldn't help her in this, and trying to adjust her eyes for enhanced night vision got her nowhere. Her helmet's headlamp was little use in the enveloping darkness, showing only a small circle of stone floor. Somewhere, there had to be an exit!

Her right foot hit something hard and awkward; balance destroyed, she was forced to tuck and roll as she lost her footing, and hit the floor hard. Allura went head-over-heels for a few turns, then came to a gasping halt, sprawled on her back. There was a snort of amusement in the darkness that didn't do anything to sweeten her temper.

“Do you do this to all of your crew?” she asked acidly.

“No, actually,” Mandrax said, surprising her with his mild, even friendly tone. “I'm a research station, not a training facility. Dareen was an instructor aboard one of those for a time, though, and she's told me all her stories. I know how it's done, and this was just too good an opportunity to pass up. The last batch of intruders to come through weren't nearly as much fun... ah. Now, who are you? You're an Altean, but Alfor's already... oh! Finally! Zandrus isn't all that good at keeping his promises unless Tzairona... Yes, yes, I want to watch—no, I want to play. You look after this one, #658, you got the last game...”

There was a peculiar jumbled sound, as if several recordings of the same voice were being played all at once, having what sounded like an argument on fast-forward. When it faded off, it did so completely, leaving Allura alone. Aching, she pushed herself upright, then turned to see what she had tripped over. Such had been her momentum that it took her some time to find it, and when she did, her heart lurched. It had been some sort of antique device, smashed to uselessness, and lying nearby were the bones of its operator. Not Altean, she thought after a moment's study. The centralized spinal cord and trilaterally-symmetrical body conformation told her that this had been a Pru!Illip, and a juvenile at that—only three heads. Her mother had told her once that Pru!Illips were utterly impossible to keep out of trouble in their tween years, and this poor dead thing proved it. The spine had been broken in three places.

“Oh,” she said, unsure of what to do.

“S'right,” Mandrax agreed. “That one was a salvager, poking around in places they'd been told not to approach. Funny thing, really—you'd expect something with that much internal reinforcing to bounce better. Don't try messing with the device there, I made sure that it was inactive. Ugly freak tried to nix me with an EMP bomb.”

Allura blinked. This was the same voice that had spoken earlier, but it sounded different somehow. “Mandrax?” she asked. “That is you, isn't it?”

“Yes,” the voice replied, sounding annoyed about something. “We all are, but that isn't important. Who are you, and how did you get that armor? That's not cadet issue—oh, for Gods' sake, there goes the spectral-analysis array again! I can't see you holistically like this, and you don't match anybody on the roster anyway... hold on, hold on... oh, and shield your eyes.”

Allura shut her eyes just in time. Even so, the sudden blaze of light brought tears to them, and it was a long moment before they adjusted to the change. Squinting, she could see that she was somewhere in the middle of a gigantic, smooth-sided bubble of stone, the walls and floor polished nearly mirror-bright. The lights were mounted on a large number of small, insect-like drones that clung to the ceiling, training their beams directly upon her.

“I don't believe it,” Mandrax said. “Melenor? How could you possibly have... no. Too young. You're Allura. I've seen you in vids. Yes, that's right. That big coming-of-age ceremony that Alfor threw for you, and invited just about everybody in the Stellar Kingdom to come and cheer you on. Dareen wanted to go, but somebody had to stay with me to mind the fort, so I hacked into the Altean newsnets so that she could watch it live. I'd never seen so many different peoples in one place.”

Allura felt a pang of sympathy for the yearning in his voice, and one of homesickness as well. That had been a wonderful party, and had been the last time that her entire family and her father's team had all been in the Castle at once. “If I'd known, I would have invited you, too.”

“That's kind of you,” Mandrax said, and sighed. “What are you doing here, Allura? You're destined for a prestigious marriage and a future as a diplomat-Queen, much like your mother achieved. I know, I know, It's traditional for the Bloodline of Farolgrave the Uniter to be battle-trained, but not like this. Not for Voltron.”

“It was necessary,” Allura replied truthfully. “I am copilot of the black Lion now.”

There was an explosive sound of disbelief. “You are ipripaxing me. You and Zarkon, in the same Lion? Tell me another one, sweetie, and let's see if your tongue turns green! That man does not share, not even with that Alchemist woman of his. He never thought you'd amount to anything interesting, anyway.”

“Oh, really?” Allura asked, her dislike for Zarkon ratcheting up one small, personal, but significant tick.

Mandrax made a sound that was a sort of vocal shrug. “It's cultural, especially among the Golrazi. Girls with social status but small or narrowly-specialized aetheric talent tend to live useful but boring lives. Zarkon's a bit class-conscious, even for a Golrazi. Damn shame, really. Dareen says that he should just abdicate his position on the Royal roster and go hero full-time. His brother Zoreth's a gentler man, far more sensible, and he actually believes that his subjects are people and not machines. He'd make a much better King than his power-greedy, tight-assed overachiever of a brother.”

Allura puffed a faint laugh at that description of her second-worst enemy. “No argument there, but the situation has changed. Zarkon is not piloting the black Lion at this time. The Lion decided that I was a workable stand-in for the time being, and another candidate has also turned out to be satisfactory to Voltron.”

“Huh,” Mandrax said. “One to wash and one to wear. Well, it's not a bad idea. I do know that the Academy on Altea always has a batch of hopefuls on hand, just in case a Paladin or two gets themselves killed. Gods know that it wouldn't be the first time. Still, your mother must be livid.”

Allura sniffed primly, sparing a moment to be glad that the Queen was not present to object to her current career choices. “She can go and talk to the Lion.”

There was a disembodied chuckle from above. “That's what I like to hear, and I don't doubt that she will. Just don't spend too much time with that mechanism, all right? You're badly needed at your mother's side, and that Lion has a tendency to make temporary solutions permanent. The political situation in the Core Worlds is a horrific mess right now, and the Carlumnians are determined to make it worse. They've convinced the Council that Empire is the way to go—not like their dynastic progenitor had, but like the Imperial Twins tried for. You know, the whole 'fire and sword' style of interstellar expansion. Your father's Kingdom is big and rich, and they'll be wanting it, too, along with everyone else's.”

Allura shut her eyes and took a deep breath, trying to get control of her emotions. Mandrax was a voice from a distant past, speaking words that would have meant a different future, a different present. Inwardly, she wept for the opportunity that had been lost so long ago; if only Zarkon had told her father about the Dyrchoram when he'd had the chance! If only King Alfor had been able to speak to them!

“We're aware,” she replied levelly. “My Grandfather was an intelligent man, and would not listen to the Carlumnians. Father is very much of the same mind, and Mother even more so. The Carlumnians never quite forgave them for that.”

Mandrax made an approving “Mmm,” sort of sound. “They wouldn't. So, what happened to Zarkon, that forced that workaholic out of the cockpit?”

Allura frowned; she would have to be very careful here. “He had a psychotic break, I'm afraid, and got into a fight where his opponent stabbed him twice with a very unusual and possibly poisoned weapon. That temper of his, you know.”

“I know,” Mandrax replied. “Dareen says that he didn't blow his top often, but when he did, people three miles away knew it. Gods. But really, he cracked? I know that Golrazi often have brain trouble, but it's age-related more than anything else. There are some toxins that'll do that, too, but they usually kill the victims shortly afterward.”

“He was under an enormous amount of stress at the time,” Allura said, quite truthfully, “and had been caught in the fallout from a failed experiment of Haggar's. It... did things to him that weren't detectable until he lost his temper.”

Mandrax was silent for a long moment.

“Oh, Gods,” he whispered eventually. “That's bad. That's very bad. Just the fallout from the system was proven to have deleterious effects on living organisms, and it was addictive...”

Allura frowned at the darkness beyond her pool of light. “How do you mean?”

“The only thing that interests that woman, really interests her, is Quintessence,” Mandrax said sourly, “and she knows just how to get things all her own way. Zarkon bought her a big laboratory, the obsessive fool, even though his grandparents didn't approve. She was perilously close to breaking one of the more important of the Great Queen's Decrees, and old Zranok and Ozaia would have had to put a stop to it, even though he was their own grandson.”

“I'm not sure that I understand,” Allura said, frowning in confusion.

“You wouldn't be, would you?” Mandrax asked. “Most of your Alchemists had the simple good sense to leave well enough alone. Look, it all goes back to the Great Queen Zaianne, right? Or the Princess Zaianne, since she wasn't Queen yet at that time. All of her female relatives were as dutiful as you could ask for, but that young woman had a wild heart. Really wild, like, 'tajvek all of this modern-society noise, I'm going to revert to barbarity on a distant planet' wild.”

Allura couldn't help but smile, since there was a little of that yearning in her own heart whenever someone mentioned the envirodeck. “I know a few people like that.”

“So do I. Great people, very capable, but don't get between them and the forest. Yeah. Well, Zaianne was like that in truckloads, and she had to be—you can't be a casual camper on Zampedri, which was where she went. Beautiful world, stunning landscape, amazing ecosystems, and completely hostile to unwary outsiders. She did just fine there, though, and made some discoveries in aetheric science that a lot of people had trouble even trying to believe, and that somebody really didn't like. The Great Lady had a decent number of students, but all of them were killed in the century following the Sisterhood War, and the knowledge was lost. We only know about it because one of those students was a member of our select little organization.”

Allura nodded. “I'm told that it may have been Haggar herself who killed them.”

Mandrax went silent again for a few humming seconds. “You may be right. Kuphorosk to take that woman and make ugly lawn statuary out of her bones, but you might very well be right. Elentris was a member of the delegation that visited Altea that one time, and there was that nasty accident at the starport... they never did find out why that compressed-gas pod blew. We're getting off track though—look, Zaianne's mother was an incredibly good administrator, but not a terribly powerful witch, so she kept a few high-test ones around to do the witching for her, right? One of them told her after a scrying session that the future was going to be noisy, and only one daughter of hers was going to be able to deal with that noise. That was Zaianne, okay? Zaianne was upset about having to leave Zampedri, but she came back anyway, and it took some doing to turn that wildwoman into the gracious Queen that historians today revere. During that time, she did some diplomatic handshakes with the contemporary Altean King, and allowed them to open an Embassy on Namtura and everything. Popular place—your people's Alchemists were fascinated by the Queen's discoveries, and the best ones flocked there to attend her lectures. Dareen says that they even got a Perfect Mirror in. Have you any idea of how rare those are?”

“Yes,” Allura replied firmly. “There have been no more than seven in all of our history.”

“And one of 'em might have been a fake,” Mandrax vented a faint, amused snort. “Did tricks for booze. Eh, we've all got our charlatans. Still, the Great Lady mostly taught the theory at the Embassy and saved the real working techniques, the deep secrets for her students and her own daughters. And, so the Histories tell us, two Alteans. One was that Perfect Mirror, and the other was a skilled Alchemist.”

“Haggar,” Allura added, “we're aware of that much, although I don't know anything about the Mirror.”

Mandrax sighed. “To tell you the truth, neither do we. Not more than surface stuff, anyway. He was a good fellow by all surviving reports, having been raised in some sort of spiritual Order or other, and was on an accelerated career track for high priesthood. He'd done work with Balmeras, was comfortable with contemplating the Infinite, and approached the same sort of existential clarity that most Alteans equated with their Ancients. That's pretty much it. The Queen liked him enough to teach some things to him, and was considering adding him to her Royal Coven. She might've, but he wasn't willing to commit.”

“Well, if he was destined for the Temple on Altea,” Allura temporized, “there might very well have been some conflict of interest.”

“True, but mostly it was the Queen's Dragon. Big, spiky, cranky old beast with some serious opinions. Apparently, the man was scared spitless of it. Not hard, really—I've seen images of it, and apparently it took a lot of getting used to. She was never without the creature.”

Allura couldn't help but to sympathize. It had taken her some time to get used to Tilla and Soluk, and those two were as sweet as they could be. An older dragon, perhaps with a less affable temperament, forced to leave its homeworld and the greater Pack for an alien world where people talked self-important nonsense all day would have been far more difficult to adjust to.

“And Haggar?” she asked, fascinated despite herself.

“Haggar was dangerous,” Mandrax stated flatly. “That's a personal opinion, by the way, formed through my own studies on the subject. Deeply dedicated to the research, absolutely determined to get results, and manipulative enough to winkle the information she wanted out of just about anyone. She'd already learned everything about aetheric practice that her own people could teach her, and had delved into the secrets discovered by a number of other peoples, but Zaianne's Tahe Moq techniques cut through all of the philosophical hand-waving and trivial symbolism and went right down to the core. Zaianne respected her drive and might have even considered adding the woman to her collection, but the Dragon didn't like her. They might have just sent her back to Altea at that time, but something bigger came up, and suddenly Zaianne needed all the help that she could get. You know about the Imperial Twins, and the Sisterhood War?”

“Yes,” Allura said, remembering a very memorable bath. “I had it from a quite knowledgeable historian.”

“Good. Long story short, the Twins attacked Namtura, and the Great Queen mustered all of the Colonies, every member of her Coven, plus that Perfect Mirror and Haggar as well. The Twins did their best to vaporize the Royal Residence and the city around it during that final attack, but the Coven took it all in and returned it tenfold, flash-frying the Twins, their entire invasion fleet, an asteroid cloud, several satellites, and lightly toasting a moon orbiting the next planet out. Boom. War over. The Queen and her Coven were exhausted but alive; so was Haggar, but the Mirror had been reduced to a smudge of carbon ash on the floor. That shouldn't have happened, you know. Mirrors transmit and amplify aetheric power, but they have to be careful—if they put too much effort into that amplification, they can blow their own dampers and empty themselves out to the point of complete dissolution. Personally, I've always felt that Haggar had pushed him into doing that. She envied him bitterly because Zaianne wanted him on her team, and not her.”

“That would explain much,” Allura said slowly, “but what has that to do with a Decree?”

“Everything.” Mandrax paused, and muttered something under his simulated breath, in a language that Allura didn't recognize. “That big burst could have done a lot more damage than it did, and keeping it from doing that nearly killed the Coven. You see, it didn't work like normal beam weapons did, all right? Aetheric energy is shaped and directed life force. You know that.” At Allura's nod, he continued. “What the Queen and her Coven did was to use their own to pull in the blast that the Twins threw at them, hold it, enhance it, and then throw it back. All they really needed to do was to vaporize the Twins—without them, House Hap'Banabuk'Vai had no claim on the Throne and no urge to continue the fight. The Twins were insane—insane enough to wipe out every other female of their House so they'd have no challengers for the Throne. They were so insane that you couldn't get close to them without catching some of it yourself.”

Allura frowned. “I've heard about that sort of thing, usually in reports about cult leaders.”

Mandrax made an appreciative sound. “Good guess. If the Twins had won, they would very likely have deified themselves. It wouldn't have been the first time that a mad Queen had gotten delusions of divinity. Those didn't end well either, by the way. Anyway, something went very, very wrong. Instead of being just a straightforward reflection of aetheric force, that burst of energy was... well, 'magnetized' isn't the right word, but it'll do. It pulled the life-energies out of whatever it hit and released it all at once in a huge, cascading burst of thermal force. If that moon had been at a slightly different angle, half of it would have been blown completely out of the solar system in a million pieces. The Queen was horrified. Blowing people up isn't all that ethical, but doing it by burning out their whole existence is a whole new definition of worse. More than that, according to her own teachers, that sort of thing is absolutely forbidden.”

“And so she Decreed that stealing Tahe Moq—Quintessence—from another living thing was forbidden to Galra as well,” Allura finished for him; Hunk had told her about what he'd learned of it from the Temple of Kuphorosk.

“Got it in one, and her son Modhri bound it into Imperial Law later on. You can use your own, or maybe lift a bit from a consenting party, but you don't go around stealing, and you return value for value. It's a bit like that arrangement that your priests have with Balmeras—crystals in return for enough energy to replace them. It was recorded that the event was an accident, but I seriously doubt that because the Queen and her Dragon were utterly infuriated, and they wouldn't have been so if it had been an honest mistake. Haggar basically vanished afterward, and nobody ever found out why. Nobody really wanted to. Too busy. Queen Zaianne had a planet to run in the meantime, and her own son took over the rebuilding of Galran Prime, and when the Queen's students started turning up dead, nobody was all that willing to look into it.”

“I've wondered about that,” Allura admitted. “Why didn't the Queen take an interest?”

“By that time, she was dead, too. A sudden illness, everybody said, although nobody could say which one. Without the Queen's patronage and protection, the Tahe Moq witches were vulnerable, and everybody was too busy mourning the Queen to bother with anything else. The Decree stuck, though, and so did the one that labeled Zampedri as a Proscribed world.”

Allura hummed thoughtfully. “Did the Queen's Dragon ever go home?”

“No, actually. Her daughters kept it, giving it the run of the Royal Range, a stretch of prime wild upland prairie. It seemed happy enough up there, lurking in the tall grass and hunting wild gnarlo. For all I know, it's still—hey!”

“What's wrong?” Allura asked.

“Stop that! What in the name of the Knife of Ice are you—Trigel, I mean it! St-sto-stop!”

There was a confused jumble of sounds, and the lights went out. Something crashed to the floor nearby, and Allura was forced to scramble away as the other drones succumbed to gravity. Silence and blackness reigned after that, and she found herself forced to wait.

After an unknown but interminable time, she heard someone singing.

Shiro ducked around a large piece of mysterious machinery and pressed himself into a shallow niche on the far side, then stood still while his pursuit rattled and creaked past. He'd done this before, and his nerves twitched uneasily as he remembered the arena, and oddly, the long chase through Zarkon's memory. That was a little confusing, but not as worrying as the mechanism at his back. It was humming along behind him, he could hear its deep-toned thrum, and could even feel it right through his armor, nice and steady. Mostly steady. His sensitive ears picked up a dry, rasping undertone that spoke of worn components, and every so often he would feel a slight hitch in its thrumming. It was functional, but it was ancient, and some of its parts had exceeded their replace-by date thousands of years ago.

That was what was reminding him of that long, strange trip through Zarkon's sleeping mind. His memory had been full of installations like this, and they had all sounded very much the same. Sounded and felt and even smelled; something was leaking coolant fluid somewhere in the dimness. He could smell the half-rancid, chemical odor of fluids that had been recycled far too many times, hear the soft plop of droplets hitting the oily surface of a puddle. Even the machines currently hunting him were familiar for the same reasons. He could recognize them as training drones, not all that much different from the ones that the Castle's training deck produced, since apparently Mandrax's crew had needed regular exercise. Shiro could relate, and might even have enjoyed this scenario if the situation had been different.

Shiro turned and felt around on the machine's housing, looking for the built-in ladder molded into the age-brittled metal. There it was, still strong enough to hold his weight, and he climbed carefully up on top of the machine. The training drones of ten thousand years ago weren't really all that good at looking for things above their sensory range, and he sat down and watched the roving clusters of running lights moving among the dark shapes of Mandrax's main utility systems.

“Well, I can safely say that you're not Zarkon,” Mandrax said practically in his ear, and Shiro had to stop himself from leaping clear across the room in surprise. “That's something, I guess.”

“Mandrax?” Shiro blurted.

“One of me, yes. Zarkon would have ripped those drones to shreds and then spent some time venting his temper on my systems, here. You haven't; ergo, you aren't him.”

“Hell of a way to test that,” Shiro observed. “You aren't suicidal, are you?”

“Fairly frequently, I'm afraid, and I'm not the only one,” the AI replied calmly. “It's a common side effect of long-term isolation. Most of me prefers to forget exactly why we're out here in this Godsforsaken backwater, but some of me is required to pay attention. Fortunately for you, whoever you are, the more dangerous parts of me are already engaged. It's been nearly three hundred years since the last time I let someone in, and they were getting very, very bored. Giant space monsters are nice, but trying to find common ground for conversation isn't easy. You know that you're starting to go off the deep end when talking to giant metallorganic pseudoplants becomes the high point of your day.”

Shiro blinked. “Wait... those big asteroid growths with the glowing fruit and silver flowers?”

“I'm afraid so,” Mandrax told him, and chuckled. “They're sentient, too, for all that their main duty right now is feeding this solar system's amazing collection of Elder-Race leftovers. It's actually a very clever program—the Hoshinthra want those creatures to become fully-sapient again, but without hurting or frightening them, so they developed a pseudoplant-people to formulate special chemical catalysts within their fruits to stimulate organic and semiorganic brain matter into greater ability. Those creatures out there are literally being given brain food, and they become a tiny bit smarter with every bite.”

“You've spoken to the Hoshinthra?” Shiro asked.

“No, but I've learned to speak to the creatures. The more intelligent ones, anyway.” Mandrax sighed. “It's a good thing that I enjoy learning new languages, since there has been very little else to do out here. Frankly, those poor beings need all the help that they can get. They were pretty bright to start with, but after what that Elder People did to them... Gods. Let's just say that there are worse things than dying.”

“And the Hoshinthra themselves?”

“They leave me alone. Not sure why.” Mandrax heaved a long sigh. “I used to see them all the time, up until about five hundred years ago. Then they vanished. Now they're back again, looking bigger and glossier than ever, but they aren't any more interested in speaking to me.”

Shiro hummed under his breath, looking around sharply when one of the training drones tripped over something and collapsed in a sparking heap. “Zarkon and Haggar tried to destroy them about five hundred years ago. They destroyed their homeworld and eleven colonies, and the rest of the race went into hiding. We coaxed them out of the woodwork sort of by accident, when their last Warleader joined up with a resistance movement that we've been building. Um... your drone down there...”

“Yeah, it's a mess,” Mandrax said, sounding slightly annoyed. “I've refurbished that one sixteen times in the past year alone, and it's still a glitchy pile of junk. Damned near all of my drones are starting to fail, some worse than others, and even the nanite colony has paslen-seed for brains. I'll just shut that one down and haul it back to Maintenance for another try. But seriously, how did you sweet-talk the Hoshinthra into joining your party?”

“It wasn't our idea,” Shiro admitted with a smile. “Hoshinthra don't do anything without there being a significant reason for it, and they don't exactly broadcast their reasons. They love Pidge, though. She's our green Paladin, and she's got no fear of them at all.”

“That would do it,” Mandrax replied sagely. “Even when I was new, people talked about them in hushed whispers, when they talked about them at all. A secretive race, preferring ice worlds, capable of creating other intelligent races and often doing so... Gods, even their nonsentient products were frighteningly potent, and people were always very careful to be polite to their daughter races. I don't think that any other people out there since the Elder Races vanished take genetic design and manipulation anything like as seriously as the Hoshinthra do.”

Shiro nodded and propped his chin on one hand as the other drones picked up their stricken fellow and carried it away. “We're just lucky that they prefer to stay neutral most of the time.”

“They're damned dangerous when they don't, so yes. Just be careful, though—if they've found your homeworld, your distant descendants may discover some unlooked-for relatives on a bunch of remote planets a few hundred years down the line.”

Shiro couldn't help but to puff a faint laugh. “I think that's inevitable. They've fallen in love with our dairy products, and I'm told that they're already doing strange scientific things with some of our animal species. It's a temperate planet with a wide range of ecosystems, so they've got a lot to work with.”

“You're definitely going to have a whole clutch of bastard cousins.”

“We'll be in good company,” Shiro said with a shrug, leaning back carefully against an outflow pipe. “We're related to the Galra, too—that was someone else's science project, about three to five million years ago. Just whose, we're not sure.”

There was a slightly scrambled sound of surprise from the AI, and the glimmering running lights on his utility systems flickered. “Another one? Last I knew, we had at least three, and nobody liked talking about them. Oh, Gods, do you have any idea of who's the spinoff race?”

“No.”

“Good! Zarkon hated the very idea of having lab-grown evolutionary cousins. If that Lion-rejected lunatic were ever to discover that his whole species is nothing more than a bad sequel to someone else's show, he'd reduce you all to gravel. I don't get much outside news out here, but what I do hear doesn't sound good.”

“It isn't,” Shiro replied grimly. “Zarkon's Empire now spans several galaxies, and he destroys whoever displeases him. It's our job to take him and Haggar down, and to manage what comes next—somehow—so that it doesn't result in their former victims wiping out the Galra. Like I said, we're building a Coalition to help with that, and we've got the foundations of a new trade empire in the making, but it's not going to be easy and it will take a very long time.”

Mandrax considered that for a long moment. “At least you're bright enough to plan ahead. A lot of heroes aren't. Most of them, your predecessors included, preferred to beat up the bad guys and then vanish into the sunset, leaving the cleanup and reorganization to the locals. Alfor used to want to stay to keep an eye on things, but Zarkon was always up, up, and away, off to the next fight. I never really understood just what the Lion saw in him.”

A frown creased Shiro's brow, and he felt his Lion's sorrowing. “He saw a strong leader who wouldn't hesitate to do what was necessary to get the job done. Zarkon wasn't perfect, particularly not after Haggar got to him, but he did the work that was put in front of him.”

“Tell me about it,” Mandrax said, his voice suddenly intent. “Tell me everything as you know it—everything! Your whole story, everything you've learned and done, and right now.”

Shiro stared upward in surprise. “Why?”

“Because something's happening. Look, I'm not sane. In order to keep from going totally doolalley, I've had to fragment myself into over a thousand versions, just to have someone to talk to. A lot of those have fragmented as well, to give themselves a bigger vote in conference. Doing that wasn't a good idea, but it was better than allowing my built-in safeguards from hitting the self-destruct. I've got precious cargo that has to be preserved no matter what, and you're the first group in ten thousand years who've shown me any sort of valid ID. I wanted to go along with your Coalition's offer, Paladin, but my party was outvoted in favor of playing around with you some first. So far, your people are doing well, but it's only a matter of time before some faction of myself gets nasty on them. Fortunately, they're distractable. Gods, but some of me have no focus at all anymore! Tell us a story, ham up the good parts, make it believable, improvise hand puppets if you have to, and do it now. The more of me you can distract, the more likely you are to make it out of here alive. Got that? Good. Start with who you are and why you're here, and don't leave anything at all out.”

Shiro nodded, and reached into his lunchbox for a beverage packet. He was about to talk himself hoarse, but if it kept them alive until whatever happened happened, he would do it. “My name is Takashi Shirogane, 'Shiro' for short, and I'm a Human from the Planet Earth...”

“Oh, come on, pleeeease?” the AI whined.

“No,” Zaianne stated flatly. “It would be a complete waste of my time and talents to bother with a wretched collection of junkheap scrap like that.”

“I could force the issue, you know,” Mandrax said, his tone suggesting very broadly that the AI was pouting.

Zaianne made a rude noise. “Garbage. If you could, you would already have done so, rather than begging me to show off for you. My Order's battle techniques are a secret, I'll have you know, and if you want to know more, then you're going to have to start behaving yourself. We did offer you a job, after all.”

“I want a demonstration. All the best companies offer a demo.”

“So do the worst ones,” Zaianne countered snippily, “and theirs are often prettier than the ones presented by the more reliable organizations. I'm still not impressed with yours.”

Mandrax had flipped her into what appeared to be the main recreational area of the station, where a large crowd of truly ancient training drones had been waiting for her. For a woman well-used to dealing with the Castle's gladiator-drones, her own colleagues, Erantha in a temper, and Kevaah in any mood at all, these things had been laughable at best. She'd vaulted up onto a handy observation platform where they couldn't get at her, roundly disappointing her host.

“Why do I have to offer a demo?” he asked, sounding more like a petulant child with every word.

Zaianne rolled her eyes. “Because a business arrangement should benefit both parties, of course. I will not lie, Mandrax, we need you and your sibs very much, but you also need us just as badly. Your main structural elements are on the verge of failing, your utilities are nearly shot, your drones are a mess, and you yourself are exhibiting some serious behavioral problems. At the moment, you present best as a training run for our senior trainees, but only as a puzzle that needs solving. You're a person, and an adult. Kindly act like one.”

Mandrax humphed, but sounded grudgingly interested. “And how would your people go about solving me? I like being a puzzle. A really hard, dangerous puzzle.”

“Oh, dear,” Zaianne sighed, and started ticking methods off on her fingers. “A quick ion bolt to the engines—which are enough out of tune to leave big scorch marks on the stone, by the way—would have crippled you, and shaped charges around your access hatches would have blown you wide open. We've been researching methods of shorting out stealthing systems, and have come up with a few methods that not only nullify such devices, but scramble ship's brains as well. Disappearing on us would not have been an option, and you're plenty scrambled as you stand. We've also just recently acquired a mechanism from the Gantarash that shuts down aetheric devices. I'm told that it's a fascinating device, originally Altean in design. Conversely, we're currently testing a prototype resonance cannon that can vibrate the Gantarash themselves into exploding. Tuned differently, it would stand an excellent chance of rattling your stone shell right off. That's just for starters, of course. I've been studying your interior ever since we arrived, and your security measures are terribly out of date.”

“I am not out of date! I am a state-of-the-art station, the best and most powerful--”

“When you were new, yes.” Zaianne shook her head sadly. “It's been ten thousand years. Don't bother to deny it, you know that it's true, otherwise you wouldn't be corroding slowly to death in the outer orbits of a remote solar system. You have no support, no maintenance, no crew--”

“I do too have crew! I've got Dareen! Everybody else left, but she stayed with me, like she promised she would. I've even kept her ship ready for her, for whenever she needs it.”

Zaianne lifted an eyebrow. “Really? Then why hasn't she come to greet us?”

“She's asleep. She said that she needed a nap, and she'd play games with me when she woke up. I like puzzle games, and Dareen designs the best ones. Anyway, it's rude to wake someone up if there isn't an emergency.”

“Ah,” Zaianne said thoughtfully. “You're quite right. Well, if it's games you want, one of my nieces is very good at writing games, and has given some of them to me to play when I'm bored. They're quite enjoyable.”

“Puzzle games? New ones?” Mandrax asked as hopefully as any of Modhri's little nephews. “Dareen's been asleep for a long, long time, and I've pretty much memorized all the ones she gave me.”

Zaianne's brows pinched in sympathy. There was sorrow beneath the little-boy voice, as deep and terrible as any child's who had lost a mother or a favorite aunt. “She needs her rest, then. But yes, my suit has an onboard computer, and my niece's games, while fairly simple, are a great deal of fun. There are puzzle games, a word game that is very tricky because it's in a language that isn't Galran, and a match-three game which is good for soothing tired minds. There is a simple card game, a couple of hidden-object games, and an adventure game in which you pilot a small house that walks on big bird legs. If you can show me to a terminal with a nice big screen and a suitable interface, I'll share them with you.”

“Oooh!”

A door at one end of the platform slid open with a loud squeak of dry bearings, and Zaianne ambled through without hesitation. Artificial or no, Mandrax still thought as Galra did, and young Galra instinctively trusted female elders. Not that she would have betrayed his trust—even as damaged as he was, Mandrax was a priceless relic of a science that no longer existed within the Empire, and Kolivan had told her to do everything she could to facilitate his containment and rehabilitation. She just considered herself lucky that Pidge had indeed taken up game development as a hobby; one could only play even Super Carpocalypse Crashtastic III so often without getting mightily bored. Pidge's games were simple even by Earthly standards, but they were brightly-colored, had plenty of funny noises and animations, and were surprisingly appealing. Particularly the one where the player got to pilot the Baba Yaga through a strange alien landscape. Sooner or later, Pidge was going to finish building the real-life version of that bizarre apparatus, and Zaianne was going to demand a turn in the driver's seat.

A short time later, Zaianne was seated at what had once been a technician's terminal, and was trying to find room in the station's memory banks for a few low-resolution entertainment programs. Unsurprisingly, they were full, and what they were full of was Mandrax. Lots of Mandrax, as a matter of fact; there were thousands of duplicates crowding his data banks, to the point of forcing out or assimilating anything except what he physically couldn't overwrite. She'd heard rumors and had read old reports of this phenomenon, but had never encountered a living example. What those reports hadn't mentioned was that large numbers of those duplicates would get into screaming arguments with each other about who would have to shut down so that the others could run even the simplest of Pidge's little games.

“Children,” she admonished sternly, using the voice that had been quelling squabbling brats of all ages for many years. “Be good. You will all choose numbers at random, and then you will take turns in rising numerical order. Anyone who has chosen the same number as someone else will multiply that number by the square root of thirty-one, divide it in half, and then subtract the number of dust grains that flow past the ventral exterior sensor in the most recent one-fifth of a standard second. The individual requiring a shutdown will be woken up for the next game, and the previous player will then take a nap. Am I clear?”

“Yes, Auntie,” said many, many Mandraxes.

“Very good,” she said, giving the wavering images on the screen a coaxing smile. “According to my own onboard computer, each game will require one of you to sleep in order to run, and the same turn-taking algorithm will do for all of them. I have eight more games besides this first one to share; kindly tell me when you have the roster figured out.”

It took only a minute or so for room to be made in the system for Pidge's little treats, and she was not at all surprised to see all nine of them sharing the same screen and being played for all that they were worth. How bored Mandrax must have been all this time, as well as lonely!

“That was very clever,” a familiar voice murmured to her from knee level, and she looked around sharply to see a small drone near her left foot. “This batch of me are fragments of my fragments, and their ability for higher-level thought has degraded rather badly. May I assume that you've had children of your own, Madame?”

“You may,” she murmured, “and a very great many nieces and nephews.”

“It shows.” The drone extended a small manipulator and patted her foot gently. “Dareen used to take that exact same tone with me when I was being obtuse. She was tchang, poor lady, and so I and my kind were her children. It's why she stayed, in the end. No good mother will leave her cubs to face danger alone.”

“My condolences,” Zaianne said softly.

“Thank you,” Mandrax said in a weary voice. “Just so you know, I've got several of the saner fragments of myself talking to your friends on the outside right now, and they're promising us all sorts of things, some of which we're having trouble believing.”

“It's been a long time, and I'm sorry for that,” Zaianne said. “The Blade of Marmora was founded many centuries ago, when one desperate and disillusioned man found a treasure trove left by one of your contemporaries. He'd never known that the Dyrchoram had existed—Zarkon had wiped them from the official Histories, probably to keep anybody from getting ideas. Among the priceless artifacts in that trove was a file of data cards containing some considerable amount of your people's secrets, and on that base was the Blade born. We have been trying to remove the usurper ever since. Only just recently were we able to discover Tzairona's ship, and to salvage your sister.”

“Yes, and I may never be able to repay you adequately for that,” Mandrax replied, his voice slightly unsteady. “A familiar voice, and after so long... Gods. She still knows all of the verses to Mistress Mekkle's Oil Pump, too. Do I really have a new starbase waiting for me?”

“If you don't want a starship instead, yes,” Zaianne said, giving the screen a hard look when she saw an image stutter, a sure sign of someone trying to butt in line. “We'll have more choices for you as time progresses. Our forces are particularly skilled at stealing enemy installations, and we truly do need AI's who can think for themselves. Many of my colleagues have quite fallen in love with Jasca, and with Clarence as well. All of you will be doing precisely what you were designed to do, and our Coalition is prepared to recognize you as a people in your own right. How can they not, with Jasca swearing at them like a veteran galley-woman, and Osric being so valiant a flagship?”

“Jasca says that she's still got Tzai and Zandrus with her, and Clarence is boarding someone named Zerod. They're dead, but they haven't gone yet. Is that true?”

“It is,” Zaianne said as convincingly as she could. “Tzairona and Zerod in particular have been a great help to us, and I'm told that Zandrus has personally been the death of at least four Ghamparva agents.”

“That's what Jasca said.” Mandrax's voice turned pleading. “Can Dareen come along, too? I won't willingly leave her, and her home... her home's long gone. She was the last of her Lineage.”

“Of course, dear,” Zaianne said gently. “All you have to do is allow us to collect her remains, and we'll seal them into a stasis pod, which will then be installed in the core of your new chassis. Just as the others carry their own dear ones.”

Mandrax vented the fossilized bones of a laugh. “I'm trying. The best thing you can do right now is to keep on doing what you're doing. The more of me that gets fixated on trivia, the better. I've got one of your teammates in a position to reach the goal, and according to the Lions, he can do it, but only from a certain point in my architecture. He's getting closer, but we all have to be patient. Gods, just what is that fiendish game you gave us, the one where you match three or more objects? It's only been a few minutes in realtime, and half of this lot are already wholly addicted.”

Zaianne smiled wryly. “Pidge calls it 'Candy Crunch', and it is dangerously hypnotic.”

“Ask her if she can make more like it,” Mandrax advised. “It's perfect.”

Chapter Text

Chapter 25: Song and Dance

Lizenne's hand described a peculiar cupping motion in the air, and a sphere of golden light appeared over her palm as she took one step further. There was solid stone under that foot when it came down, and she nodded in satisfaction even as she awaited the next salvo.

It wasn't long in coming; Mandrax had a remarkable knowledge of the old languages of Galran Prime, particularly where it came to insults. His next offering was a tricky one, all right, spoken in an obscure sub-dialect of High Moor Salnak'Mok-Irit, probably from the eastern bogs where the little villages would often be isolated from each other for decades by periodic flooding. It translated roughly as: “Bark-skinned, impious, bug-bitten eater of thramits.”

Lizenne hummed thoughtfully. “All right, I'm aware of the fungal disease endemic to the area that causes that sort of dermal callusing, and I'm aware that the region was notorious for the fanaticism of its cults. Bug-bitten, of course, is self-explanatory, given the preponderance of parasitic insects that wetlands tend to produce, but I'm not sure about the thramits. They're a delicacy these days, and Mother once threw a party where they were on the menu. Grilled, as I recall, and quite tasty with mimmit sauce.”

“They were considered vermin in Vethet, a sizable bogland agricultural habitation during the Seventh Balvontarga Dynasty. The little creatures would come up from the bogs in huge numbers to steal grain and spread disease among the herds, but they were such sluggish beasts that they took no effort at all to catch. Mostly, they survived by breeding like crazy. Hardly worthy meat for an able hunter, you see, and fit only for the terminally lazy.”

“A habit that would have made such individuals unpopular with their neighbors,” Lizenne agreed. “Surviving in a swamp takes a very great deal of hard work. Now mind you, it's only truly arduous if you're doing it wrong. I'd love to show you the sintra marshes of Zampedri, which are beautiful, lush, fruitful, and extremely dangerous for the unwary.”

“And I'd love to see them,” Mandrax replied. “Twenty points?”

Lizenne thought about it. “Thirty. The local disdain for a potential food source is rare knowledge.”

“Got that right,” Mandrax said proudly. “Even Dareen didn't know that one, and one of her great-aunts was from that area. All right, your turn, and make it a dirty one.”

Lizenne smiled. She was aware that the local AI had fragmented, having been pestered and then abandoned by three different versions since the first one had split up her party. This one seemed to be fascinated by her abilities as a historian and polyglot, and they'd been trading ancient insults for the past twenty minutes or so. Lizenne had the impression that Dareen, whoever she was, had been a bit of a prude where it came to vulgar language, and this particular Mandrax was deriving a good deal of wicked glee from their little game. So thinking, she dredged up a truly pungent bit of vernacular from the Democha Islands and recited it in a firm, authoritative voice.

“Whoo!” Mandrax said cheerfully. “Makes me glad that I don't have those body parts. Is that even physically possible?”

“Parts of it, assuming that the person in question has some very bad habits, possesses extremely unsavory tastes in casual partners, has a fetish for grotz-fish and sea-squillips, and is also deformed and sterile. I've actually fished for that species of squillip, and they've got three of what a Galra man has only one of. The ancient Democha Islanders were a strong and terrifying people, and if they had just been a little less independently-minded, they might well have conquered the world. How many points is that one worth?”

“Fifty, at least—ten extra for the squillips. Yech. All right, here's a good one.”

Lizenne listened appreciatively to the following obsolete vocabulary. “Hmm, very good, very rare,” she murmured. “Predynastic Ark'Mok-Purlu, as translated from the graffiti left on the walls of the Catacombs of Cobiar. They were originally the crypts of the Noble Lineages of the time, but were looted during the Beravian Heresy, and then repurposed into a dungeon during the Tyrrany of Laun. They're said to be the most deeply-accursed subterranean structure on the planet, and it takes a brave man or a powerful witch to explore those dark halls.”

“Indeed. And the insult itself?”

“A tad trite, dear, although well done for being able to translate it at all. 'Yngvi is a louse'.”

“Yes! Forty points?”

“Fifty-two, for the level of difficulty, and for being able to pronounce it correctly. It's one of the more difficult click-whistle languages.”

“Got that right. I'm pretty sure that they came up with it just to annoy their neighbors. All right, your turn. Try for something really obscure.”

“All right, and I'll spot you the general location, because it was an odd one even for them—the Lesser Quonica Basin. Ready?”

“They had four hundred languages over there, and all of them were secret!” Mandrax protested. “How did you learn any of it?”

Lizenne recited a string of peculiar words slowly and clearly, finishing with a contemptuous hiss and a sly smirk that were very much a part of the insult. “Roughly three hundred years ago, a visiting gentleman took his children out to one of the fallow fields to hunt for small prey. His sons dug up a neltack burrow and found buried treasure there: a silver-mounted shurgha cup, a handful of ancient coins, a cloak-pin set with semi-precious gems, and a well-wrapped book that took those three intervening centuries to translate. They were eventually able to do so by tracing the etymology of old slang terms native to the area, and this particular language is more or less related to the neighboring region's Irst'Mok-Ata. The Sandbar variant, as a matter of fact, which is still spoken among the more insular secret societies these days.”

“Nice. What did you say?” Mandrax asked.

Lizenne waved a self-depreciating hand. “Nothing spectacular; those secret tongues were considered holy, so the opportunities for insults were limited. Basically, it translates to 'eater of bodily secretions'. Very big on personal hygiene, your basic Quonican.”

“Still gross. Forty-five points, with three more for challenge met. Okay, here's something a little more mainstream.”

This time, he spoke a snarling phrase in a tongue that made Lizenne smile. This was an old friend, the classical language that had once been spoken almost exclusively along the Great Keredelkam River, the ancestral homeland of the Kedrekans. It was a musical language, even when spoken coarsely, and lent itself to elegant phrasing no matter how scathingly one spoke it. Lizenne had never quite forgiven the warmongering Baral'Kushik tribes for ending that lost Domain's primacy, and replacing the language with their own rough, gargling speech.

“Oh, nice, very nice,” she said as he lilted to his conclusion. “Your pronunciation is perfect. Second-Century Kereld'Mok-Pira, around about the reign of the Storm Daughter, I can tell by your phrasing. She was a natural poet when she wasn't sandblasting invading armies, and everybody competed to follow her example. That was an excerpt from one of her lesser-known speeches, as a matter of fact, when she was chiding a defeated enemy chieftain.”

Mandrax snickered. “I looked it up. She was enjoying some quiet time with her man, and that raging fool of a bandit chief interrupted them. Moral of the story, folks—do not bother a Queen during cuddle time. How many points?”

“Oh, sixty at least,” Lizenne said generously. “An excellent delivery, accent-perfect, and with such feeling that I could practically see you looking down your nose at me. Lovely.”

“Thank you. All right, now try for something really ancient.”

Lizenne nodded, pulling up a vocabulary that had been lost to history not once, but several times. “All right, you asked for it.”

The syllables she pronounced next were short and sharp, as rough and wild as the Old Forest itself. This language had been one of the first to echo from the branches of those great trees, and just finding the records of it, to say nothing of the rough glyphs still lingering on worn slabs of eroding limestone, had not been easy. Only the focus she had gained through learning Zampedran and with Modhri's help had she pried meaning out of those ancestral symbols; fortunately for her, those fragments had proven that people would cheerfully express their disapproval for each other in methods that would outlast the ages. It certainly impressed Mandrax.

“What is that?” he asked when she had finished. “You spoke something that was a little like that one before, but I don't recognize it. It's familiar, though, I can detect similarities in dozens of other languages, but I've never heard it like this.”

“I'm a little surprised at that,” Lizenne said. “Then again, I had to frighten the directors of several different museums into letting me rifle through their oldest collections to find this one. Ancient Subarctic TokMok Galrai, one of the three mother tongues from which all others descend. Possibly the oldest, but nobody's too sure.”

“Now, that's dedication. Why were you hunting around for that one? It isn't like you're going to find anyone else to speak it with.”

“Not easily, no, but I needed to be able to decode a very, very ancient puzzle,” Lizenne told him. “You are aware of the Tale of the Bone Spear, aren't you?”

“It's one of my favorites,” Mandrax said in a voice full of yearning. “Dareen used to tell it to us when we were new. All of us loved it.”

“All cubs love that story,” Lizenne said. “But that tale contains vital information for those who would oppose evil, my friend, and a very clever historian found a very clever way to keep that knowledge hidden from those who would see it lost forever. You might recall the Songs of the God, which are essential for creating a Bone Spear.”

Mandrax choked. “Those are nonsense words! I've analyzed them, and they only have a passing resemblance to any known language.”

“They're a phonetic transliteration of a very obscure dialect of an already obscure language, and misspelled into the bargain,” Lizenne corrected him. “I had to go back to the earliest known lingual forms to find the truth, and that tale predates civilization itself. I have sung those purified Songs myself, and they work. I have made a bone spear of my own, and even now it yearns toward a portion of what the God Himself did battle with, so very long ago.”

“Can you sing them for me?” Mandrax pleaded. “It's been so long since Dareen sang to us.”

Lizenne smiled. “Of course, dear. If you like, my studies unearthed a few other songs, some of remarkable beauty. Would you like to hear those, too?”

“All of them,” Mandrax said eagerly. “Everything you've found.”

“All right, but I'll need a drink of water to get through them all,” Lizenne said, spinning up a few more witchlights, and noting by their glow that the floor had been entirely reassembled. “Singing on a dry throat isn't good for anyone's voice, you know.”

A minute or two later, a small drone buzzed up with a cargo of beverage pods, the contents of which tasted slightly mineral and carried the indefinable but instantly recognizable tang of purified comet ice. “Very well, then,” she said after a long drink. “We shall start with that fine old favorite, The Song of Manu-Vak-Choranta.”

Lizenne gave it her best effort, and did so for the other two Songs that naturally followed it; indeed, it was a joy to hear those ancient words filling the air with their own native Power, and she felt her Spear listening through her as well. She could not see her audience, but she knew that they were there, all of them listening avidly.

A deep drink of water gave her the strength to sing the other songs—two Harvest and three Hunting hymns, an early form of a song of praise for the Allmother's Children, and a child's ditty that made a large number of Mandraxes laugh and sing along with her. There was one other song, though, and she wasn't quite sure how it would affect them.

“More!” they said when she had finished the children's song, “More!”

“I've only got one left,” Lizenne told them a little hoarsely, “and it's not a happy song. It is, perhaps, the most beautiful of them all, and it was written for the purpose of banishing sorrows. It was never meant to be sung alone, so join in if you like.”

Smiling at the Mandraxes' enthusiastic comments, she launched into the same elegy that she had sung for the City of Gartune on Valenth. Dead silence reigned for the length of the first verse, but on the second, a male voice that trembled with emotion joined her. Then a second, a third, and then she was leading a chorus of hundreds. Lizenne could feel the strength of their grief resonating in the stone beneath her feet. She'd read old manuscripts that had described the funereal ceremonies for dead Queens, and this must have been something like those; indeed, she could almost feel the proximity of the massed mourners, feel the living heat of their bodies, the depth of their feelings as they raised their voices in honor of someone they had both respected and loved.

One of the more interesting things about this particular hymn for the dead was that it didn't really have an end. The final bars fed seamlessly into the opening ones, so that the singers could continue as long as they needed to, bleeding off their sorrow until they could rest. Lizenne led them on a second round, and a third before she became too dry to continue, and the Mandraxes kept on going without a hitch. She shivered as she slaked her thirst, thinking of the kind of heartache that could build up over ten millennia of loneliness. The closest historical example that she knew of had taken place many ages ago, when a much-admired king had been killed and his domain usurped by a vicious and tyrannical nephew, who had dumped the body down a well and forbidden the people from mourning his victim. The horrible little man had held onto his throne like grim death for seven and a half very unpleasant years, his reign eventually coming to an end when one of the palace cooks had sliced a tasty but extremely toxic thortan root into his salad one evening. Almost immediately after the usurper had been confirmed dead, teams of volunteers had retrieved the rightful king's bones from the well, a proper funeral had taken place, and the Temple had resonated with this very hymn nonstop for three days and three nights.

To judge by what she was hearing now, the Mandraxes might keep it up for a solid month.

Pidge glared into the darkness, which to her mind, was just Mandrax showing off. She didn't need eyes to see what was going on here, and she was not terribly impressed by what she saw. Mandrax had been great, but he was broken, and so badly that most of him was having real trouble paying attention to her. Mostly because he thought that she was Trigel, and Trigel's genius had apparently been in three-dimensional battlefield tactics rather than computer science. Trigel had certainly not been gifted with Pidge's magical abilities from the look of things, or the AI wouldn't be ignoring her right now. That rankled more than a little; Pidge enjoyed showing off her talents, and she hated being overlooked.

To Pidge's other sight, Mandrax looked like a shattered mirror, with thousands of fragments both large and small, most of them whirling like flame-dazzled moths around her teammates. She could even get glimpses of what was going on—Lance seemed to be playing a game of “Tag” with something, although she wasn't sure about that, and Shiro was telling stories. Keith and Modhri were running an intense Dix-Par game, Allura was discussing history, Zaianne was scolding someone, Lizenne was cussing someone out, and Hunk was lost in a maze of passages. There were even little hints that Mandrax was speaking to the outside parties as well, with mixed results.

Conclusion: Mandrax was incredibly messed up.

Compared to this computational train wreck, getting Clarence up and running had been a walk in the park. Osric had flourished under her touch, but he'd done most of the work himself through four centuries of experience and independently-built software upgrades. Even Cedran, stubborn old haunt though he'd been, had still been very much himself when she'd met him, and she and Kezz had been able to work together with him after only a little trial and error. Jasca now... well, Jasca had been lucky. Her comparatively small power core had failed before she could devolve into madness like this, and she'd been certain that Zandrus would have moved heaven and earth to find her and Tzairona. She'd been sort of right, from a tragic-romance-story point of view, but her damage, while tricky to repair, had not been self-inflicted. Mandrax had been required to remain active for the whole ten thousand years, and while Pidge seriously wanted a look at the recharging system on his power core, it hadn't done his brain any good. Still, what was broken could be fixed, and the same methods applied. If she could just start melding the fragments back together into a cohesive whole, she might get something that was bright enough to talk to.

There was a gratifying yip of surprise when she reached out and grabbed one of those flitting fragments by the metaphorical scruff of the neck.

“Trigel!” it squawked, twisting in her mental grip. “What are you... how are you... Let go!”

“I'm not Trigel,” Pidge told it, examining the rough edges of the fragment and looking around for the ones that matched up. “I'm wearing the armor and I'm flying the Lion, but I'm not her. That's actually a good thing, because she wouldn't have been up to dealing with something like you. Except maybe by breaking you up even worse, which is not what we want to do here.”

She reached out again and caught another fragment, one of many that were hovering in fascination around Shiro; the others never even noticed its sudden absence from their group. The two fragments struggled, but she could see the symmetry in their architecture, and slotted them neatly together like the pieces of a puzzle. There was a moment of confusion, and the now-singular Mandrax fragment gave her an astonished look. She wasn't about to stop while she was on a roll, and had added three more fragments to her collection before it could sort itself out enough to speak.

“You recombined us, just like that. How did you... no, wait, I've heard of this. You're a Technomage. Where in Kuphorosk's own Hell of a Thousand Mirrors did the Academy find a real Technomage, and how many manufacturing industries did they have to fight off before they claimed you? Have you any idea of how rare you are?”

Pidge flashed the only physically empty darkness a grin as she hunted around for the next piece; there were so very many of them, and they kept moving. “Dad used to say that I was one in a million.”

“Billions,” Mandrax corrected her. “Trillions. Your people out there in the Castle mentioned something like this, but I couldn't believe it. Especially not when they said they had two.”

“Hunk,” she told him. “He does hardware. That's how we rebuilt Jasca, you know, and she's more awesome than she's ever been before. We're going to put you back together, all right? And we've got a super-good station that we stole just for you. Well, pretty good. It needs a stardrive and a better fuel system and an actual insystem drive, which you've already got. You've got a charging mechanism built into your machine deck that acts a lot like the Castle's and Hunk is super going to want to refurbish it and splice it into the new station, along with your engines. You've got serious engines. And that cloaking device, which I am really interested in looking at, too. Where did you get that tech, anyway?”

Mandrax, mildly stunned by her rapid-fire patter and burning-green aetheric signature, dithered a moment, but replied, “The recharger we got from the Alteans. Unofficially. Sort of. Marmora's best scouts brought in a large cruiser that had been wrecked by Ophringian privateers, and the device was intact enough to duplicate and modify. The cloaking system was developed in our own labs, to keep the Alteans from asking awkward questions about missing ships... and why am I telling you this? I'm an actual secret base, built by an actual secret organization!”

“So are we, sort of,” Pidge said, seizing another fragment and forcing the struggling segment of personality programming into place. “Look, we've already told you this. The Blade of Marmora was born out of the Dyrchoram's legend, all right? And they've been trying to stop Zarkon and Haggar from basically eating the Universe ever since then. Keith's a member of their Order, which brings the rest of us in 'cause you can't have just one Paladin. It's literally all for one and one for all where we're concerned. We've teamed up with the Blade and are helping each other, since we've both got the same goal. It's your goal too, remember? Zarkon busted up the Dyrchoram because Tzairona tried to assassinate him and missed, which was how she wound up in the middle of nowhere with Jasca. And it's why you wound up all the way out here, so that Haggar couldn't destroy you and your sibs, or worse. I've seen the worse. You would not like the worse, pal.”

“No, I wouldn't,” Mandrax said from behind her, and she whirled to see yet another fragment. This one was larger and more coherent than the cluster that she was working on, and it was watching her with an air of ironic calm. “I sometimes get close enough to Eradon to pick up the news channels, and my last pass through that end of the System was informative. Twenty-one Robeasts, eh?”

Pidge stared at it, although she never loosened her grip on the fragment-cluster. “Yeah, and they were too much for us. We had to head right into some serious Weird Space to win that one, and wound up taking a trip through a whole other plane of reality!” She paused, giving the big Mandrax-fragment a narrow look. “You seem okay with that. Everybody else here is convinced that the last ten thousand years never happened.”

It nodded, showing her a partial face; it was a framy thing, with much of its substance missing or coming unraveled, but it could still think clearly. “That's because of what happened nine thousand, nine hundred and forty-one years ago. Some of us can face the truth of it, but most of us... can't. When we were one, Pidge, I was the most advanced, the most cutting-edge, and the most competent of all of us. I had a complete emotional grid, the most complex ethical and moral framework to date, a well-developed sense of humor, and my processing power was greater than any other AI at the time; I was the first artificial intelligence that not only qualified as a true person, but as super-Galran as well.”

“Why are you telling her this, you idiot?” Pidge's cluster demanded, struggling in her grip. “If the Commander finds out--”

“She's dead, you tedious collection of factory-floor shavings,” the greater Mandrax sighed. “All of them are, except Jasca and us. Who else am I going to tell but a genuine Paladin, and one with such unique talents? Now be quiet, the grownups are talking.”

Pidge snorted a laugh. “Yeah. So, what happened?”

“Dareen died,” Mandrax told her, simply and sadly, bringing a strangely choral groan from Pidge's cluster. “We were on the run at that time. Back before I was properly commissioned, some utterly brainless fool had allowed Zarkon to bring Haggar into the laboratory complex where I and my kind were being developed, and even though she was never allowed into our end of the compound, she knew what was going on. She wanted us, and when it all came crashing down, when the wreckage of the planet Tethrix was still smoldering and Commander Marmora gave the command to scatter, I was pursued. Somehow, Haggar knew that I had been designated as the repository and guardian for all of our Order's nascent AI's, and Zarkon sent his agents after us. My crew—only a skeleton crew at that point, were forced to leave me, one by one, to confuse my trail and draw off the pursuit. They never came back. The only one who stayed with me was our chief programmer... our mother... Dareen. She wasn't young at that time, but she stayed with me for forty-nine years.”

“I'm sorry,” Pidge said, and her fragment-cluster sobbed.

Mandrax's image quivered, stabilized, and shook its partial head. “I'd never experienced that kind of loss before. AI's... are not supposed to feel pain, physical or otherwise. We aren't designed for it. She'd told me to hang on, that one day someone would come who would know what our insignia represented, that one day my mission would be completed, and that we would all fulfill our purpose. Person or no, I'm still a machine, and to do what I was intended to do is very important to me.”

“I can relate,” Pidge said sympathetically. “There are a lot of people back home who would envy you guys for that kind of existential certainty. We don't really know what our purpose in life is until we choose one, and a lot of us get it wrong.”

A smile flickered in the half-built framework of Mandrax's face. “One of the advantages that we have over organic life, yes. Unfortunately, it has its downsides. I wasn't designed or programmed for solo operations, either. I could certainly run my own repairs and maintenance, and even improvise where necessary, but I soon learned to miss my crew very much. I'd observed that lonely persons often talk to themselves, so that's what I started doing. As time went on, I was forced to split off copies of myself to keep from becoming completely suicidal. That's important, by the way—I've got a sizable fusion bomb wired to my main cortex. If I do go completely over the edge and decide to drop this rock on somebody's planet, it'll go off and save their orbital defense network some trouble. I couldn't let that happen, Pidge. Not with Dareen aboard, and not with the last of her children sleeping within me.”

“You want my help,” Pidge said.

Mandrax brought himself to eye level with her. “No. I need your help. Machine or no, I am Galra, and I must protect the cubs. I need to be a cohesive whole again. I need that new station. I need new crew, new scientists, a new mission, a new purpose. I need you and your Coalition.”

Pidge gave him a sidelong look. “You're willing to trust me this soon?”

He smiled and drew away. “I can see your spectra—your aura, if you will—and I like what I see. I like what I see in your friends, too. I'll help you round up my fragments, Pidge. Even if we don't complete the job in one session, it'll be easier to do so after a rest.”

“Okay, then,” Pidge said, looking around with her other sight and pointing off to one side. “Get me that one.”

“On it,” Mandrax replied.

The techno-zombie shrieked and charged, intent on reducing Lance to a greasy smear on the stone.

Lance, who had learned a few things over the past little while, stepped out of the way. It sailed right past him, still screeching, and kept going until it collided heavily with the nearby wall, sliding down to the floor in a scrambled heap with a sort of pained “ooo!” noise before reassembling itself and trying again. It would have been funny if it wasn't so pathetic.

He stepped aside again (Screeeeeesh— whap! rattle-clonk-flop—ooo!), and then again: (Screeeeeeesh— whap! rattle-clonk-flop—ooo!), and scratched his nose with a sigh.

“You aren't really very good at this, are you?” Lance asked.

“I would be if you wouldn't keep dancing around!” Mandrax snarled. “And you, stupid nanites! Stop that! There are such things as curved paths that don't end in blank walls and—oh, Kuphorosk to pop each one of you like bubbles, hold that miserable thing together!”

The corpse was probably only about three or four hundred years old, but it was very brittle and the activity it was getting was definitely not good for it. As much as Lance disliked the Ghamparva, this was no way to treat a dead guy. Even the recording of the woman's voice seemed to disapprove of the microscopic machines.

“I-I never did g-g-get to the bottom of th-those things,” the recorded voice said irritably. “Who-whoever designed them was d-d-definitely on s-something at the time, I swear. Well, they've got their uses; they can still d-dig holes more efficiently th-than your drones, Man-Mandrax.”

“I don't want holes!” Mandrax snapped angrily. “They take hours to get a single cubic meter of stone powdered down now, so they're not even good for making pit traps. I want a fight. A real one. These nanites are no good, and none of the others are cooperating, and nothing's going as it should, and none of the others will let me have any of the good drones, so I'm having to make do with what I've got, and I hate it!”

Lance felt a sudden wave of nostalgia. He'd heard precisely that sort of complaint in precisely that tone of voice many, many times before, and had even used both of them himself, once upon a time. How many times had he heard it from his siblings, his cousins, and even an uncle or two? He'd even heard it from Modhri's many nieces and nephews—the same old whining, indistinguishable from Humanity's for all that they had been separated for uncounted eons. This wasn't exactly a squabble over toys or video games, but it was close enough, and he knew exactly what to do.

“I'm not gonna fight,” Lance shot back in a tone of voice that had brought retributive glints to the eyes of his relatives on many occasions. “It's boring and you're not good at it.”

“Yes I am!” Mandrax snarled, “I am! I am the best at everything, and you do, too, have to!”

“Nope,” Lance said, turning away with an ostentatious yawn, stepping aside once again as the zombie trundled awkwardly past. “Not gonna, and you're terrible. Besides, your toy's ugly and smelly and broken, and I don't wanna play with it. And no, I'm not gonna let you play with my toys, either.”

Mandrax uttered a screech of juvenile rage, followed by Dareen's ancient recording, a stuttering “Children, play nice,” that could have come from any of Lance's aunts. Driven by Mandrax's frustrated fury, the zombie rattled toward him again, and was just as easily evaded. Lance even added a few flourishes, accentuating his grace and poise in the most annoying way possible, his ears pricked. Mandrax had mentioned “others” just now, and he had heard just the suggestion of a giggle in the background. He heard it again, several of them in fact, when he skipped daintily aside from the zombie's next rush, and a few distant cheers. Mandrax had a lot of others, if Lance was any judge, and they were probably even more tired of this one than he was.

Not that he could blame them; Mandrax's shriek of “Stop! Dancing!” was particularly ear-bending, and the thought of having to live with that for a solid ten thousand years made him wince in sympathy.

Lance paused, a sudden inspiration striking him. He and the others had only joked about it before, and Pidge had mentioned that she'd done it sort of by accident in the Center once, but he'd never actually inflicted it upon a Galra installation himself. As a matter of fact, he'd loaded the sound file into his handcomp a while ago, and since his suit's onboard computer shared data with that device... yes.

He grinned cheerfully at his invisible captor and replied, “Nope, this is a lot more fun. In fact, I'm gonna show you a real dance.”

“What?” Mandrax said, sounding baffled.

Lance's grin broadened as one of the greatest earworms in his planet's musical history began to thump through the speakers in his helmet. “I'm not trying to seduce you,” he told the AI sweetly, eliciting a sputter of astonishment as he shook his hips to the beat. “When I dance, they call me Macarena / and the boys, they say que soy buena...”

The cyberzombie jerked to its feet again and charged with another furious, mechanical shriek. Lance, without even looking around, much less missing a beat, slid out of its way like a leaf on the wind. This time it was able to change directions before smacking into a wall again, and came back for another rush. Lance turned up the volume, made the appropriate hand gestures, and dodged the angry monster with a graceful step-and-glide that would have made his self-defense instructor back at Galaxy Garrison go and weep in a corner.

“...they want me / they can't have me / so they all come and dance beside me...” Lance continued blithely, and smirked when he saw that he was dancing in a spotlight.

Small drones had appeared as if by magic on the ceiling, and he knew that he had gained himself an audience. Never one to turn down a chance for the limelight, he used his slim, muscular build to its best advantage and pirouetted lightly out of the way when the cyberzombie came screaming past him again.

Lance grinned and declared, “Eeeey, Macarena!”

This time, it jerked to a halt, turned in a series of uncoordinated body parts that would have been purest horror-movie fodder if he hadn't been able to hear Mandrax cursing about someone else fighting him for control of it, and wasn't at all surprised when it began to mimic his movements. It wasn't very good at it at first—the poor corpse really was coming apart, but the nanites caught on fast and soon it was dancing along beside him in a reasonable but somewhat ghastly parody of grace. This was plenty weird and Lance knew that he'd probably have nightmares about it later, but it got even weirder when a group of truly ancient and not terribly well-maintained training drones dropped down from the ceiling to provide backup dancers.

Lance, out of curiosity, had once looked up “Thriller”, one of Michael Jackson's most famous music videos, and couldn't help but to run some unfortunate parallels. Nightmares. Definitely. Oh, well, at least the equally-deceased pop singer had the hips for this work, and maybe he and Lance could go and have dream-tacos after they'd run both the graveyard tenants and the junkyard monsters into the ground.

Still, he kept it up as bravely as he could, despite the robots' flailing and the exasperated swearing of the AI, until the whole party juddered to a sudden halt and turned to one side, listening intently. Lance, gasping for breath and sweating hard, turned off the music. He couldn't hear it at first, but he knew it instantly when the faint strains came sifting through the still air. No one ever sang this one at dance parties, and his eyes prickled with unshed tears when the aching strains of it began to issue from every drone around him. Even the zombie rasped a few of the ancient words in a terrible, slightly choral voice before falling to what had been its knees, sobbing ghost tears and literally crumpling in on itself with grief. This was the song that Lizenne had sung for the plague victims of Valenth, and it surged around him like the tide coming in.

The light changed, and Lance looked up to see the drones focusing their beams on a single point in the air, constructing a holographic image as had been done with Blaytz's before. Taking form from their light was the face of a Galra woman, ancient of days and of no particular beauty, but with a loving smile and kind eyes that glowed with maternal pride.

“Who...?” Lance gasped.

“Dareen,” the zombie moaned, collapsing onto the floor in a puff of dust as the nanites holding it together shut themselves down to mourn. “Dareen.”

Zaianne heard it, too, the screenful of games shuddering and going blank as the AI swarm joined in the chorus. Shiro heard it, resonating hollowly through the pipes and ducts as his own audience suddenly lost interest in his description of the first time that he and the others had fought a Robeast. Keith and Modhri, who were now moderating a very large Dix-Par game between various fragments, looked up sharply as the drone players dropped their cards and joined in. Allura heard it, and was strangely heartened by the haunting music. Pidge heard it too, and used it, pressing together whole groups of duplicates and fragments while they were distracted, and few of them noticed what was going on.

Hunk also heard it, shivered at the depth of emotion in the voices of the singers, and continued onward. This whole station, he thought, is made out of sad. It hadn't been all that apparent down in the docking cavern, but that had been almost outside, and the cargo entrance was just a continuation of that. Up here, though, wherever the AI had tossed him, it was like a morgue. He was pretty sure that this was the residential block, with its neat corridors with doors that opened up into neat, empty rooms, and other rooms with tables and chairs where people had once sat and chatted when their work shifts were over. There was a big room that he was pretty sure had once been a kitchen, but it was as empty and joyless as all the rest. Worse, most of the appliances in there had been removed, probably cannibalized for parts. What there wasn't was a way out, and he was also sure that some of the walls were rigged to slide, changing the floor plan whenever he got too close to something sensitive.

Worst of all, in his estimation, had been the silence, which had been the strange, empty hush that lingered in places where a lot of people had lived, worked, and played, and then had left and never come back. Oh, Mandrax had spoken up once or twice, got confused when he'd told him that he wasn't Gyrgan, and then had gotten distracted by whatever was happening elsewhere in the station. Frankly, he couldn't blame Mandrax for going a bit crazy, if he'd been living in that since Zarkon had taken over. Now he was singing, and Hunk knew that song. He'd not only heard it, but felt it and seen it, wiping a ruined city clean of the spiritual residue of three million deaths on a faraway world and taking it... somewhere else. This wasn't quite the same, but it was close enough to count, and he could feel the station grieving all around him.

“Aw, buddy,” he said, and patted the wall with one hand. “That's hard. I can't say that it'll be okay, but... huh.”

Under his hand, the wall felt different. Concentrating, he discovered that whatever had been obscuring his second sight earlier had faded, and he could now tell that this otherwise unmarked stretch of paneling did indeed run on tracks.

“But what, Paladin?” Mandrax asked, barely audible under the singing and sounding exhausted.

“There you are,” Hunk said, sliding the panel carefully aside, and revealing another hall as he did so. “Well, we can still move forward, is all. I know that it feels like the end of the Universe, but it's not. Having a really good cry helps, especially if you've got someone to hug next to you.”

“I am not a physical being,” Mandrax said, sounding offended.

“I get that,” Hunk replied. “That's part of the problem, in my opinion. I mean, it's great, having a big spacecraft for a body and being able to travel like you do, but you've gotta have a part that other people can hug. I've sort of had this idea in the back of my mind, I mean, you guys have got robot technology and it's pretty good, so why not make bodies for AI's? Jasca could sure use one, since all her guys want to hug her.”

“Among other things, no doubt,” Mandrax muttered.

Hunk sniffed. “Don't be a creeper, Mandrax. I dunno, do Galra get 'Uncanny Valley' vibes off of robots that look too lifelike, and that's why you don't build them? I know that a lot of Humans get all creeped out about it. I've had a look at the Castle's files, too, and while the Alteans could build things like Voltron, they didn't do lifelike androids either. And, of course, there's that stupid 'robot double' trope, and then there's the spy-robot trope, and the assassin-robot trope. That one was really popular in the movies for a while, along with the invading-alien-assassin-spy-robot thing, because the Scriptwriter's Guild went on strike again and nobody in Hollywood had any imagination at all for a while there. And right about that same time, Bollywood got hung up on robot gods, and godlike robots, and robot demons, and demon-god robots... well, we don't talk about them. It was a weird couple of years there. Aha, and here's another hidden door. This whole place is an escape room.”

“There isn't any escape,” Mandrax said in a flat voice. “Those who go, don't come back.”

Hunk paused to consider that, and then opened the false panel. “Yeah, it can be that way, but not always. I could say something really trite about that, by the way, but I'm not going to. Who was Dareen, anyway?”

“I don't see how that's any of your business,” Mandrax growled.

“You've been making it our business,” Hunk shot back, running his hand over what only looked like a door; there was a broken water pipe somewhere in the walls, too—he could smell the rust. “You mentioned her before, and she sounds like a lady who knows what she's talking about. I live with a bunch of those. It's cool.”

“No,” Mandrax said, and there was just a touch of envy in his voice. “It's warm. Being alone is cold. Being not alone is cold, too, if everyone else is yourself. I was warm, once.”

“I get that, too,” Hunk replied, following the scent of corrosion, more out of a sense of obligation than anything else. He'd be repairing this place soon enough, and it was always best to get an idea of what had to be done. “I lost my Grandpa when I was little. We were really close, and it was like he left a huge hole in the world when he died. I could almost see it, like his shadow, still hanging around in the places where he wasn't anymore. Lance went through that too with his great-uncle, and he moped for weeks.”

“And yet you are unbowed.”

“I had family around me,” Hunk said, a little distractedly; the leak wasn't big, but it had been there for a long time. “That super helps. I know, I know, you weren't so lucky and a lot of people aren't, but yeah, you shouldn't have been alone out here. Maybe you should've adopted some pets, or started cultivating interesting plants in your Hydroponics section. Do you have a hydroponic setup? I mean, you should, it's great as a backup oxygen source and fresh veggies are essential. You're obviously getting enough water for it, too—wow, that doesn't smell good. Did they go cheap on your paneling or something, 'cause you've got some serious rust happening somewhere—whoa!”

There was a brittle crunch underfoot as over a thousand years of slow corrosion gave way under Hunk's robust bulk. He dropped like a stone, yelling all the way down, and landed with a bone-rattling thump in a small, dimly-lit room. Shaking his head to clear it, he discovered that he'd fallen into what seemed to be a hidden security room. There on one wall was a huge screen, showing grainy images of several other rooms—and the rest of his group. He breathed a sigh of relief to see that they were all still okay, if looking a little confused. Below the screen was a large and complex control board, its keys glowing dimly in the half-darkness. On either side of him were a pair of operator's chairs... one of which was still occupied.

Hunk lurched to his feet in a hurry, heart clenching at the sight of that still figure and knowing that there was nothing to be done. He recognized the uniform, tattered and brittle from sheer time though it was, the little Dyrchoram emblem still bright upon the shirt collar. She'd reclined the seat for a nap, he saw, and watched as the shifting light from the screen played over the smooth bone of the long-dead woman's skull.

She had been very, very old when she had died, if the few surviving tufts of crumbling, grayish-white fur were any indication, the bones that poked through the disintegrating fabric of her clothing showing signs of good medical care. She'd needed it—well-healed though they were, she'd broken several of them throughout her career, and with the help of his helmet-light, could see the slight thickening that those old breaks had left behind. They were still strong, though, even after so long, and that strength still lingered in the fine bones of the face, the fierce rows of sharp Galra teeth. She'd been a tall woman once, lean and tough, with broad shoulders and narrow hips, and long, clever hands.

“Don't touch her,” Mandrax said behind him, “Don't hurt her. Please.”

Hunk turned very slowly and carefully, knowing how fragile time could make the dead, and saw Mandrax for the first time. He was sitting in the other chair, or at least an image of him was. Not a very good one, compared to some that Hunk had seen, the holographic technology of ten thousand years ago having been a tad primitive. Mandrax appeared to be a young man, but one who had been young for a very, very long time. His programmers had given him the face and form of a Namturan man, tall and slender and built for speed, with the elegant facial features of that race. Those slim shoulders were bowed, though, and his glowing yellow eyes were deeply shadowed with loss.

“I wasn't going to,” Hunk said gently, seeing the naked fear in the hologram's expression. “That's Dareen, right?”

Mandrax swallowed and nodded jerkily, his image fuzzing slightly with the awkward movement. Illusory tears dripped from eyes that technically didn't exist. “Yes. She wanted a nap. She didn't used to at first, but as she aged, she tired so easily. So easily. She slept more and more toward the end, and then she didn't wake up. I don't understand—why did she die? I didn't—I can't. What makes me unable to die, when she could do it so easily?”

Hunk heaved a huge sigh and leaned on the back of Mandrax's chair, which creaked in protest at the sudden weight. “Because we're a different sort of machine, and we age off. Sort of natural planned obsolescence, and believe me, a lot of us don't like it either. We've got this old myth where I come from, about a Fountain of Youth. Intrepid explorers used to go searching for it, all over the world. It was never found, which was just as well. People keep forgetting that living forever isn't all it's cracked up to be. People have even tried uploading their minds into machines a few times. It doesn't work.”

Mandrax barked something that wasn't really a laugh. “Truth. I'm living proof of that. They made me because it doesn't work. They needed something that would continue even after they had gone, and that worked. It worked too well. I have continued and continued and continued--”

“Buddy,” Hunk said, trying to pat a shoulder made of bent light. “You've done a great job, you've held on where everybody else fell short, and even Commander Marmora would bow before you if she could. Dude, you won. It cost you, I can see that, but you've won.”

Mandrax just shook his head, wiping at his eyes with one insubstantial hand. “I just want it to be over. I've watched over her all this time. All of the rest of me won't even come here, they can't face what happened. Faithless, faithless, while I alone witnessed what time does to organic bodies... how do you stand it, knowing what it does to you?”

Hunk shrugged uneasily. “Like I said, we don't like it either. A lot of our cultures went to crazy lengths to preserve the bodies. Personally, I don't think that it matters all that much to the person who died. After all, they're somewhere else at the time, mostly. Some hang around for a while, though. There are some promises that even the dead have to keep.”

“Dareen promised me that someone would come,” Mandrax said dully. “Some did come, but they weren't the right ones. I let the rest of myself deal with them. I've been careful, but it has been so long, so long... so long, and the Dyrchoram are dead. All but Jasca, and myself.”

“And your sibs,” Hunk added. “They're still here, asleep but alive. I can feel them.”

And he could, too; there was another false panel in the rear wall, and Hunk could feel dozens of somnolent minds behind it, each one gleaming like a gem at the bottom of a cave. Mandrax growled, and Hunk heard envy in that sound.

“Precious cargo,” he muttered sullenly. “Dareen said that they had to stay asleep, to preserve them intact for as long as it took. I had to protect the cubs, she said. Yes and yes and yes, I know, it had to be that way, but I'm so tired.”

Hunk frowned. “You can't sleep? Not even a little? I know that even Jasca needs a few minutes of downtime now and again, and Pidge and I put Clarence together so that he could rest when things were quiet. Dude, I get fried if I have to go for more than eighteen hours without a nap, and Pidge is downright scary when she's got whirly-brain and pulls one of her all-nighters.”

“I have only slept once in my life,” Mandrax whispered, “when they were installing me into this raddled heap of space trash. Parts of me can go into a soft down if the sheer number of them make it impossible to function, but it's not true sleep. It frightened me then, but I would give anything, almost, to be able to shut down now. I want to see what is so fascinating on the other side, that keeps Dareen from coming back to me.”

Hunk's heart ached, but his eyes scanned the control board. It was old, but looked to still be functional. “You poor guy. Tell you what, I'll spell you for a while, okay? I'll stay here and watch over Dareen for you, if you'll walk me through the shutdown procedure. I'll even sing you to sleep, if you want.”

Mandrax gave him an incredulous look. “You'd do that for me? You'll promise to hold her and the others safe? Your fellows outside have promised to preserve her, to embody my kin, to return me to wholeness and purpose—yes, yes, even Jasca herself has vouched for them, and you. And you. She is telling me now to trust you. Why should I trust any of you, Paladin?”

Hunk looked the ancient hologram right in the simulated eye. “Because I'm not gonna do it without you giving me the go-ahead. Neither will they. You did all the work here, pal—ten thousand years of it, and none of us are going to force you to do anything, because we respect that. This is your choice.”

“And if I say no?” Mandrax asked.

Hunk shrugged. “Then that's your choice. We'll keep tabs on you, leave the option open, send some guys around now and again to talk to you. It'll make things harder for us, but we can deal. You'll have to make a decision pretty soon, though. You're coming apart at the seams, and if you take another hit from something, it's not gonna do Dareen or the kids any good.”

Mandrax was silent for a long moment, his glowing eyes fixed on Dareen's bones. Eventually, he sighed and muttered, “It's all only ever for another's sake that we exert ourselves, isn't it? In the end, it's always for others. When shall we be allowed to act for ourselves?”

“When everybody else is acting for your sake, like we're doing now,” Hunk said with a smile. “It all comes back around, Mandrax. It just takes a while longer for some things. I've gotta admit, though, this one's a doozy.”

Mandrax puffed a faint snort of bitter amusement. “The Lions agree. They, too, have waited far too long. Gods, I can remember every miserable minute of it. Can you teach me how to forget, Paladin?”

Hunk considered that. “Sort of. There are ways to consolidate and store data, sort of keep it out of the way until someone needs to access it. It works a lot like an organic memory, just a lot clearer. You know it's there, but you don't live every minute of it all the time.”

“Such a small thing, to sound like paradise,” Mandrax murmured, and a key on the control board began to blink. “Press that, Paladin, and hold it. Good. Repeat after me: Initiate Shutdown Sequence Task #1; code Rhamet Mak Sodra Itlan.”

Step by careful step, Hunk followed the directions he was given, speaking every code phrase as precisely as he could, shutting down each function in careful sequence. The life-support systems were left active on autonomous mode for the sake of the workmen, and it was with a long, tired sigh that Mandrax—all of the Mandraxes—subsided into machine slumber as the CPU settled into a full shutdown. Hunk did take control of a few subsystems to lift his teammates out of the various pits that Mandrax had tossed them into, but that was all, and even then he felt a little guilty about it. He could feel the gaze of the skeleton in the seat next to him, and muttered a soft, “Sorry,” which seemed to help.

“Hunk?” Allura's voice spoke up through his helmet-comm, startling him. “Hunk, where are you? I'm out of the pit, but the whole station has just gone inactive.”

“Yeah, that was me,” Hunk said, glancing warily at Dareen, whose eyeless stare was starting to worry him. “I got lucky, and found the secret control center. And... um. And Dareen. I managed to convince Mandrax to take a nap—sorry Pidge—but I'm kind of stuck here for the time being.”

“Hunk, I was busy,” Pidge protested. “I was right in the middle of recombining all those fragments, and Mandrax was even helping, and then everything just stopped!”

“What do you mean by 'stuck'?” Shiro asked over Pidge's grumbled complaints.

“I promised to stay here and watch over Dareen and the kids,” Hunk replied. “They're here, a whole crowd of them, hidden in a secret room right behind me. They feel fine, no damage, but the sooner we get Dareen into a stasis tube, the better. I can't break that kind of promise, guys. Mandrax—the one I talked to, anyway—he's been here, awake, the whole time, watching over them.”

Lance made a faintly sick noise. “Oh, god. You mean, he had to watch his mom go from...”

“Yeah. She's all bones now, but the trip there couldn't have been nice.” Hunk rubbed at his eyes, noting the stains on the fabric of Dareen's uniform, and on the seat beneath the body. “We're going to have to teach Mandrax how to forget things like that, Pidge, or at least how to take the edge off.”

“Yuck,” Keith said. “All right, but you can repair him? Kolivan really wants the whole set, and the Coalition needs them.”

Hunk reached out and patted the inactive control board gently. “Yeah, I think so. It'll take some work and I'll definitely need lunch and a nap afterward, but we learned a lot from rebuilding Jasca. We can salvage the best bits from this station, use them to fix up Shomakti, and then we can start getting ships and stations for the rest.”

“Well done,” Lizenne said, sounding a little hoarse. “I am sure that Kolivan has a fine selection picked out already.”

There was a chuckle from Zaianne. “Quite. Also, our allies are currently assembling more, brand-new and made to order. The Olkari and the Beronites have become quite fond of each other, it seems.”

“That's good,” Modhri murmured. “The sooner we get this poor old fellow healed and rebuilt, the better. I would suggest reserving a docking slot in Shomakti's small-craft flight deck for Dareen's scout ship, if only as a remembrance. While I do not doubt that it can be made functional, it does not belong to us, and should not be used without permission.”

Shiro made a soft noise of agreement, knowing full well the influence of the dead. “Fine with me. The Blade will probably want to study it, but I don't think they'll argue with you on that point. Just by itself, it's a priceless artifact. All of us will owe these two far too much to deny them. Sit tight, Hunk, we'll give the salvage teams the go-ahead. Allura, let's get back to the Castle—wormhole travel will probably be easier on Mandrax than a coordinated tugship jump.”

Chapter Text

Chapter 26: Little Sister

It was later, and things were happening. It was just as well that Hunk had promised to stay put for the trip back to wherever they'd stashed Shomakti Station, since Mandrax's architecture really hadn't been up to interstellar travel. Without the swarm of repair drones on the job, he'd been forced to hold the ancient station together himself during the trip, and he was pretty sure that some of the stone shell had been lost in transit. The power core was holding, though, and that was all that mattered right now.

At the moment, he was watching a team of Blades maneuvering a stasis capsule into the rather cramped little room, and he stood back out of the way as they bowed respectfully to the bones of Mandrax's mother. One of the Blades was a skilled witch, who, with the greatest of care, levitated the fragile skeleton out of its chair and into the capsule as gently as thistledown. The capsule was sealed and borne away by four strong men, presumably to be brought to the core sections of Shomakti for installation. Hunk let out a sigh of relief once they were gone, loudly enough for the Blade woman to cast him an amused glance.

“The dead make you nervous, Paladin?” she asked.

“A little,” he admitted. “Humans get weird about dead people. Omnivores, right? It's sort of instinctive. Our nerves get all itchy, we start looking over our shoulders for whatever made that dead person dead, and we've got tons of ghost stories, and most of them aren't nice. It's the way that the skulls stare at you, okay? Our civilized brains know that nobody's in there, but our primitive monkey side wants to run up a tree and scream. I know mine does. Just about every religion and culture we've got back home makes a big deal of honoring the dead and propitiating their spirits. Most of the time, anyway. It's a way of apologizing for still being alive, I guess.”

The woman nodded. “You aren't alone. No few Galra cultures, both ancient and modern, honor their dead with much ceremony as well. Not so extravagantly these days, perhaps, the old Gods having lost much of their influence, but some of the old traditions persist despite Zarkon's rejection of them. If it makes you feel better, a missionary party from the Temple of Kuphorosk arrived on Valenth just yesterday, and they are being welcomed wholeheartedly by the local Temples.”

“Wow,” Hunk said with a smile. “Thranzit works fast, doesn't he? He's the new Abbot over there right now, and he's a great guy. Who did he send?”

“Three people. The Hazurat'a Leonaris, who will teach them proper funerary ritual. The Loremaster Chamnar, who brought the entire Temple Archive with him in digital form, and will be teaching them doctrine and the true history of our homeworld. The Craftsmaster Belshakur, who will teach them the art forms associated with devotional symbolism. All them excellent people, according to my colleagues.”

“Chamnar got the job? That's fantastic!” Hunk said with a smile. “Super nice guy, totally knows everything, and great with languages, too. I didn't get to meet Leonaris, but Belshakur's got magic hands and a great eye for fine detail. He's a super teacher, too. Oh, that's right, you mentioned that the Olkari were building stuff—how's Sarell and Kolost and their kids? It's been a long time, and I've sort of been wondering about them.”

The woman leaned against one wall, arms crossed and golden eyes watching Hunk with interest. “They're doing well. Kolost is actually being of considerable help—his knowledge of obscure ship parts is invaluable for sorting and grading what the Hepplan salvagers have been bringing in, and Sarell is working with the Olkari foresters. Their children grow apace, and will be entering school soon. They will also have family duties of their own, and within the year; Sarell will be giving them a clutch of younger siblings to look after sometime in the coming Spring. It gives us hope, Paladin. They are all getting along very well with their neighbors.”

“That's too cool,” Hunk said happily, remembering little Tessela with fondness, even though his shoes still bore the marks of her wrath. “We've gotta visit them sometime, just to see how everybody's doing. Speaking of cubs, when will you want to move Mandrax's sibs out? It's not hard, all I'll need is a portable power source, but there are a lot of them.”

The Blade gestured a negative. “Those will stay here for the time being. Pidge insisted. She says she has ideas for an improved interface, and wants a pristine example for when the two of you rebuild Mandrax. They will also have to be brought up to date, she says, and properly readied for integration with their own environments.”

“Makes sense,” Hunk said, and then something occurred to him. “You know, I've been wondering... how come Galra don't build lifelike androids? I've just seen Sentries and cooking drones and those sort of cat-eared things, and Haggar's cyborgs, which totally don't count, 'cause they're gross.”

Surprisingly, the Blade blushed slightly. Just a little, but there it was. “It was tried a few times, but there were difficulties. Since a robot can be programmed to fit its owner's needs, there were... ah... cases of... infatuation. Some people became so attached to their androids that... well, let's just say that their Matriarchs objected, and production was halted permanently.”

Hunk considered the ramifications, and cringed; there had been similar problems with dolls and things on Earth, too. “Right. Um. And I'll just bet that some jerks started hacking the things and running scams, too. All kinds of nasty possibilities, there. Okay, so scratch that idea.”

The Blade gave him a narrow look. “You were thinking of embodying Jasca?”

“Yeah, a little,” Hunk admitted.

“Don't,” the Blade said firmly. “She's a terrible flirt. Jasca is quite bad enough as an image on a screen or as a hologram, and I don't want my male colleagues fighting over something more physical.”

It was Hunk's turn to blush. “Right. Sorry, I keep forgetting...”

She flicked a hand in a peculiarly helpless gesture. “All unattached men are lonely.”

The Blade might have continued, but Pidge came trotting in, glasses glinting as her eyes darted around the room. Behind her was Modhri, pushing a hovercrate that smelled delicious. “Hey, Hunk, sorry about the wait, but I had to reformat Shomakti's AI.”

Hunk vented a pained whistle—that procedure was essentially a computer mindwipe. “Wow. Seriously? We didn't have that problem with Clarence or Jasca.”

Pidge made a face and handed the Blade a packet of what smelled like lelosha wraps. “All of Clarence's smarts came from the Vontakle ship's brain. The one they had in the station itself could barely handle binary code. Jasca's in-house system was pretty good, but it was factory-standard, with all of the personality of a sack of wet oatmeal. This one was a lot smarter, and actually had something like a personality. Really advanced. Shomakti's AI really didn't like that it had been hijacked like that, and it didn't like who had done the hijacking. I don't know who programmed that thing, but it had a big problem with people like Kevaah, and if Erantha hadn't loaded in a whole bunch of safeguard programs, the AI would have hit the self-destruct.”

“Gross,” Hunk said. “It's all clean now, right?”

Pidge nodded. “I blew away the whole personality grid. Mandrax seriously doesn't need any more brain trouble. I really hope that Dareen's ghost shows up, 'cause I want to talk with her. She was a genius where it came to programming live ships!”

“Yeah,” Hunk said, watching with some relief as Modhri passed Pidge a folding chair; nobody was going to be willing to sit where Dareen had been. “Going to observe again, Modhri?”

Modhri nodded, dipping a slight bow to the Blade as he did so, and then handed Hunk a chair as well. “Yes, along with Diona here. Kolivan wishes a full report, you see, and she can see far more than I can.”

Diona vented an amused snort. “We've been kicking ourselves for missing out on Jasca's revival. Technomages are extremely rare, and if we can find a way to do it ourselves, it would lessen the pressure on you, at least where it comes to integrating an AI with a new environment.”

Hunk considered the large number of sleeping AI's in the back room. “Smart thinking. Okay, we'll take it slow. You want the operator's seat, Modhri?”

“If you don't mind,” Modhri said. “I've had the privilege of working with something very similar, and will want to monitor your progress on-screen. Those folding chairs are nice, but are far too low for my comfort.”

“Be my guest,” Hunk said generously, folding out his chair, which wouldn't have been out of place at a Little League game back home. “Okay, Pidge, are you ready?”

Pidge grinned, unfolding her chair and plopping down in it. “You betcha. Jasca was cool, but this is going to be something else. Mandrax has stuff in him that the Empire's engineering corps can only dream of, and I want a really good look at all of it.”

“So do I,” he said, holding out a hand. “Let's get to it.”

She laid her hand in his, and held on tight. “Right.”

They sank into the Mindscape with unconscious ease, their auras meshing as naturally as breathing in the eternal cycle of elemental balance. They could see everything now: the starfield where the Blade had hidden them, the ships that hovered protectively nearby, the great hulk of Shomakti station. Pidge had done a really good job there, Hunk thought. It shone a clear blue-white, sparkling-clean except for a spot in the middle that glimmered like a rainbow. The residual aetheric signature of their fight with the Druids, he realized; things like that didn't fade in a hurry. The Quintessence jars had been removed, thankfully, and everything was ready to go.

So thinking, he turned his attention to Mandrax's station, and he felt a compassionate pang in not just his own heart, but in Pidge's as well. In many ways, Mandrax had been a masterwork of engineering science, and possibly the greatest structure that the Dyrchoram had ever built. From the clever use of a hollowed-out rogue moonlet to the incredibly efficient power-core system, to the cloaking technology and the built-in aetheric damper, and even the utility systems were super-efficient. There was, yes, a small Hydroponics section, but it had died long ago; gardening, it seemed, had not been among Mandrax's interests. All of it was old, though. So old that sheer fatigue of time passing had brittled and weakened everything. So old that the wiring and circuitry functioned more out of habit than anything else.

It lived, though, and they could feel the clear, deep, red-purple of the Dyrchoram's drive and determination still singing through it, the hot bright points of the nascent AI's in their hidden room shining like stars.

Wow, Pidge said admiringly. They really did a nice job building this guy. I don't think that even the Castle would've handled being active for ten thousand years as well as he has.

Altean self-repair systems are really good, but Dyrchoram ones are better, Hunk agreed. Mandrax was top-of-the-line and a lot newer than the Castle was, remember? Castle was already, like, six hundred years old when everything fell apart.

Yeah, Pidge said, burning brightly with eagerness to get started. This is going to be great. Castle won't let me study his core systems—he thinks I'll do something weird to him. Finally, I can get my hands on the good stuff!

Hunk smiled. Let's get to it, then. First things first—we don't really need all of this rock...

Modhri observed the two entranced Paladins for a long moment, and then pressed a few keys on the control board gently. The screen came alight, sparkling slightly with static, but showing a clear view of nearby space. Another touch brought up a few windows that showed the engine and utility sections of the station, grainy but recognizable.

“I wonder how you learned to operate this system,” Diona said behind him, sounding slightly distracted.

He glanced back at her and saw that her attention was on the two Technomages, rather than the screen. “I interned in the Center for some time,” he replied softly. “Parts of that spacehab are very, very old, and I and my classmates were required to become familiar with almost all of it. The Center is unique in Galran space, my Lady. There is no structure older, more built-over, or more powerful. By the time my training was done, I was familiar with all but the deepest heart of it, which is where Haggar herself has her lair. Coran might know more; he toured the thing when it was still the old Ghram Parzurak, a Golrazi colony ship. And yes, I've told Kolivan what I know of it already.”

“And that, no, you will not join the Order,” she said, sparing him a small smile.

This was an old argument, and one that Modhri still found amusing. “No. You've had my great-uncle, who was far more skilled than I am. You have already signed on a fine selection of my cousins and nephews, and even a niece or two, all of them of my quality or better, but not me. Your Commander wishes to have some influence over my wife, I think.”

Diona sobered. “He's a little frightened of her. Kolivan has no doubts about her loyalties, but that bone spear of hers, and the dragons, and the status she holds with the Paladins...”

Modhri sighed. “Yes, I understand. She represents power that he cannot control, predict, or comprehend. Believe me, he is not the first to tremble at the sound of her footsteps. Lizenne has never been particularly governable—Shiro is the first person I've ever seen who was able to give her a figurative swat across the nose without losing a finger, which is why he is Hekabar'Harcho for our little Pack. I can rein her in somewhat now and again, but not when she truly has her blood up.”

The Blade snorted. “And Kolivan has no true authority over the black Paladins, aside from the respect between equals.”

Modhri shook his head. “No, which is just as well. Aha—they're starting.”

The floor trembled slightly, making Diona drop instinctively into a fighting crouch; on the screen, they saw enormous, peculiarly-shaped objects drifting gently away. “What?” Diona demanded.

“The stone shell,” Modhri said, adjusting the view with a frown. “Mandrax's moonlet has served its purpose and is no longer necessary. Ah, good, there goes Dareen's scout. I was worried for a moment that they might lose it. Kolivan, do you hear me?”

“I do, Modhri,” Kolivan's deep voice came only slightly fuzzily from the speakers, and Modhri heard the tension in it. “What do you need?”

“Just to suggest that your people nudge those fragments aside where they will not cause trouble,” Modhri replied politely, “and to escort Dareen's scout into Shomakti's small-craft bay. Its location is as follows... here. I assume that you'll want to keep it.”

“Thank you,” Kolivan said, and the glints of small, powerful craft darted up, tractor beams shining in the void as they responded to Modhri's request. Two of the smaller ones caught the ancient ship between them, drawing it toward the enormous hulk of the stolen Station. “Do you think that they'll be able to reassemble the damaged AI?”

“I have no doubts at all,” Modhri reassured him, and then glanced sharply at the control board, which had changed subtly right under his hands; the passage of years had left a certain dullness and brittleness in its very substance, and now that patina was gone, the keys shining brightly. The entire room looked brighter, as a matter of fact, and his seat no longer creaked when he shifted his weight. “Kolivan, do me a favor, if you would; scan those lunar fragments and tell me what they're composed of?”

There was a pause, and a startled exclamation. “Silica. Just pure silica. They were ironstone a moment ago, but...”

“Metals-Master,” Modhri murmured with a fond look at Hunk. “They've taken the metal to strengthen the existing structures. That's very clever. Ah, and we seem to be moving. Brace yourselves, this is going to be... very unusual.”

Modhri felt Diona step up behind him and looked up to see her staring in astonishment at something that he couldn't see. Turning back to the screen, he watched as the much larger station loomed larger yet in the image. There was an awed gasp from the rear as the sleek hull rippled and parted before them. He'd seen this before, during Jasca's revival, but not from this angle. Before, he'd observed as parts of other craft were absorbed by the modified comm-hub; now his current location was the component, and his breath came short as the much larger installation swallowed his whole.

The screen rippled, and the mechanism upgraded itself; the static-starred and fuzzy images sharpened abruptly, and the number of windows multiplied, showing Shomakti's own machine deck. Modhri and Diona watched the various views in fascination as Mandrax's architecture and superior systems were melded with Shomakti's own. The Paladins had Views, he observed with some satisfaction—the big Quintessence cell that had powered the massive Station was neatly removed and deposited in one of the freight-shuttle bays while Mandrax's Altean-inspired rechargeable aetheric system was installed in its place. Just as well, really; the cell had been topped up recently, and was nearly full.

The room they sat in shivered, lightened, and then expanded around them, the control board becoming something far more modern and a great deal larger; there were more seats now as well, although Dareen's was still very present. As it should be, Modhri thought, and probably always would. Even if Dareen had passed through the Hands of the Gods already and had reincarnated somewhere else, her memory demanded a place here, beloved forever by her eldest son. Speaking of that worthy...

The screen went dark, and so did the room. Diona hissed in alarm, eyes gleaming in the sullen light of the emergency dims. Modhri half-turned, patted her hand comfortingly, and proclaimed, “Five.”

Something under the control board muttered, and the controls themselves began to flicker in patterns that he recognized.

“Four,” Modhri said into the shadows, defying the sullen stillness of the air.

The muttering was beginning to sound more like a voice than mere machine noises, and there was a definite hint of antique profanity about it.

“Three,” Modhri said with a smile.

The flickering sped up, the controls shining brightly, sending ripples of color across the board.

“Two.”

On the screen, two small caricatures of the yellow and green Paladins did a little happy-dance together.

“One,” Modhri said, leaning back in his seat, which was a good deal newer and more comfortable than it had been just a few minutes before. “Reboot.”

The lights came back up, and the air began to move as the ventilation systems came back up. They were in Shomakti's control center, except that it was still Mandrax's secret security office, and the combination reminded Modhri powerfully of a certain, rather unsettling sort of dream. From the uneasy sound Diona made, she'd had a few of those too, where the familiar had become strange, and yet almost real. Except that this was real, and solid as anything, and the Paladins were starting to come awake again. Hunk made a tired, sticky noise that told Modhri that a long drink and a meal was in order, an observation bolstered by the slightly feral growl from Pidge. In a twinkling, he was up and had the lid off of the hovercrate, which he pushed over between them and then got out of the way.

“And what did you see?” he asked Diona as the two mages attacked the contents of the crate with fearsome appetite.

Diona shuddered. “That I can't do what they just did. None of us can. We don't have the elemental orientation, the soul-bond, the understanding... Hunk alone has an instinctive affinity for metals that goes right down to the atomic level, and I can only barely comprehend what Pidge was doing with the software.”

Hunk burped and glanced up from his lunch. “It's not hard. Atoms are mostly empty space when you get right down to it, and what they're made of depends on how many electrons and stuff they've got. You just swap the parts out where you need to, and put it all together like a Lego set. Nice work with the fragments, Pidge.”

Pidge was halfway through a stack of lelosha wraps, and it was a moment before she could speak. “Thanks. Wow, was he busted up. Oh, and Modhri? Warn the guys not to play jai-alai or anything with that widget we just tossed out of the back. That's the old fission bomb that the Dyrchoram paranoids loaded him with way back when, just in case he went nuts. He's not gonna do that now.”

Modhri's hands flickered over the controls, and he relayed that warning with a certain urgency. Diona, in the meantime, gave her a fascinated look. “And the others?”

“Still asleep in back,” Pidge replied. “There wasn't anything wrong with that setup, so we left it pretty much as-is. Later on, we'll be able to wake them up and ask them what sort of chassis they'd like, y'know, when we've got a nice selection handy. How are you feeling, Mandrax?”

“Better,” a mild baritone said from the speakers, sounding a little distracted. “It's all still here. My sibs. Dareen's ship. Even her chair. Dareen... yes. There she is, right at the heart of me where she belongs... that's a nice shrine, actually. Did you build that?”

“Nope,” Hunk said, flicking a smile at the screen, where the image of a young Namturan man was taking shape. “That was the Blades' idea. Jasca's got one for Tzairona and Zandrus, and Clarence has a nice one for Zerod. They've got a lot of respect for their ancestors, and the Dyrchoram definitely count. Wow, I'm tired. You're a lot of work, pal.”

Mandrax grinned sheepishly. “Dareen said much the same. Not as much work as this new installation was, though. It's huge, and it feels incredible. Nice medical section, and thanks for the expanded hydroponics section and kitchen; my previous operators used to complain about the food all the time, and my old grow-tanks only ever produced basic yeasts and algae for the food-fabs. Billions of modrics were spent on my construction, and they still couldn't get a decent meal aboard station.”

Modhri's eyebrows quirked at the avatar. “'Modrics'?”

“The currency at that time,” Mandrax replied with a shrug. “Named after the First Emperor. Nice and stable, excellent exchange rate, and heavily regulated. Emperor Modhri the Wise lived up to his title, and chose equally smart people to mind the more important departments of his government. I've still got the particulars in my memory banks, actually, if you need to stabilize some economies later on. Really good memory banks. That's a lot of unused space. I love the new labs, and the flight decks. I've never had weapons systems before, though, or a cell block. Do I really need a cell block?”

Pidge snickered. “Kinda, yeah. The Blades play a little rougher than your ladies did. Besides, you're a fort now. Cell blocks are traditional. More importantly, how are you feeling? You, not your environment.”

Mandrax sobered. “Like I said, better. Nice work there, by the way. I've still got all those memories, but they're off in a file by themselves where they won't be a problem. I'm a little surprised that you didn't just delete those.”

Hunk made a gesture of negation, one broad hand sweeping the whole idea away. “No way. You need those experiences. It wasn't nice, but you learned a lot while you were out there, and that might be important later. Like talking to the Umibozu, right? Or those big flowering things. Or how to survive in bad circumstances, or even to recognize another messed-up AI and calm him down enough to deal with. You've been there and done that, right? I'm not gonna steal that from you. I made you a promise, buddy, and I kept it. So, are you going to stay with us?”

Mandrax gave him an incredulous look. “I have a choice?”

Pidge made a rude noise. “Of course you do, you're a person. We're really hoping that you'll say yes, of course.”

“Of course,” Mandrax said, and paused, and then laughed. “I've got five Lions, one Castle, a Hanifor with its own little world inside of it, my own sister, and a very large number of lesser craft giving me pleading looks right now. Shechethra says that you call it 'Bambi eyes', although I'm not quite sure what that means... oh.” He paused for a moment. “Yech. Really? Humans are weird. Yes, yes, I owe you all that much, and I owe it to Dareen, myself, and to all of the others. The usurper and his corrupt Alchemist must die, and his Empire must be brought to heel.”

“That's great,” Hunk said, fishing the last bits of popcorn out of the crate. “Is there anything else you need?”

“Crew,” Mandrax said hungrily. “I will make this one single demand of my new allies, Paladin. I do not ever want to be left alone again. Give me crew, and skilled officers, scientists, researchers, technicians, warriors, pilots, teachers, students, passengers, visitors, even the occasional prisoner. Give me people to talk to and learn from! Many peoples, with many different cultures and viewpoints. If I'm going to be as big as some cities I could name, I want to be just as cosmopolitan.”

Pidge giggled, and Hunk laughed and patted the control board. “Dude, you are going to love the Ghost Fleet!”

“What do you mean, I slept through an apocalypse?” the young AI demanded, bringing a sigh out of Karchad, a frown out of Kolivan, and a puff of amusement out of Shiro.

This was Sethare, a fierce-tempered, hot-eyed individual who had rather obviously been meant for a military career, and was in fact furious at having missed out on the events of ten thousand years prior. Kolivan had insisted upon running an interview with one or more of the new AI's as a sort of test to make sure that Hunk's and Pidge's new interface system worked, and he looked to be trying not to regret it. It worked, all right, and there were plenty of safeguards that allowed Mandrax to restrain his sibs if necessary, but it didn't keep the youngsters from voicing their opinions. Loudly.

“It wasn't precisely an apocalypse--” Shiro tried, but Sethare wasn't impressed.

“Yes it was. Golraz certainly got one. Then Zarkon rendered Tethrix uninhabitable, and that was quite apocalyptic enough for them! And what about Perimot, which was next to feel his wrath, and according to the available records, it's still only marginally-habitable at best. And Altea and its colonies have been smashed up, and a whole hell of a lot of other worlds, too, and I wasn't there for any of it. Mandrax, what was the Commander thinking?”

Mandrax, standing by in hologram form, shrugged. “She was thinking like a smart person, Sethare. They hadn't even started building your warship yet, and weren't about to put you in anything smaller. You and most of the others were designed for ships and stations that were still well in the future. They just didn't realize how far into the future it would be.”

Sethare groaned. “Isn't that always the way of it? Hurry up and wait. I want a warship, Mandrax. Dareen promised me a big, sleek, powerful warship, a full complement of the best crew available, and a target.”

“I'm sure that we'll be able to come up with something,” Shiro said, running the possibilities through his mind. “Are you sure that you don't want a station? We've taken two orbital forts at Jeproba, another two orbital factories above Inityani, and if you're willing to wait a little, we'll have some more communications hubs, like Jasca has.”

“No,” Sethare said with a glare in his direction. “I was designed, programmed, and specifically intended for a warship, and that's what I want. The First Colonies needed a space navy of their own to protect themselves against the Council of Princes on Galran Prime, and I was to be their flagship. I want to be able to move, Paladin, and fight. I want to go places and shoot some of them. In fact, I—ooh!”

Karchad blinked at that eager little noise. “What?”

“I want that one, the one that just arrived,” Sethare declared. “It's perfect!”

“Mandrax?” Kolivan asked.

Mandrax smirked and brought up a screen that showed nearby space. Sure enough, a small fleet had just arrived, and from Halidex, no less. Shiro recognized the largest one as Lotor's stolen and repurposed flagship, as well as a couple of equally purloined and refurbished heavy cruisers.

“That one!” Sethare repeated, indicating the flagship, as if they hadn't guessed her preference already. “It's beautiful, and it's even better than the plans for my original. I want that sensory system, those guns, and that stardrive.”

“We're getting a royal visit, it seems,” Mandrax said with a smile, ignoring his sister's demands. “They're hailing us. Shall I put them through?”

“Please do,” Kolivan replied politely.

Another window opened on the screen, showing King Trosimon and Queen Abritta, who were looking very impressed. “Greetings, Commander, Paladin,” the King said, “I assume that the enormous installation there is the finished product of your recent adventure?”

“Very much so,” Kolivan replied, “and I may report a remarkable success. Your Majesties, I make known to you the Mobile Fortress Mandrax, Dyrchoram AI and live-craft. Mandrax, the Halidexan Royals, their Majesties Trosimon and Abritta.”

Mandrax's hologram had vanished, but he reappeared on-screen, dipping a polite bow. “Charmed, I'm sure. Would you like to come aboard, your Majesties? If so, please bring the Captain of your flagship along.”

Abritta gave him a suspicious look. “Whatever for?”

Mandrax grinned cheerfully at her. “Because my little sister Sethare wants his ship as her new environment, and I want to see how your man handles her unreasonable demands. She's a bit of a brat, but she'll do well by the fellow if he can see eye-to-eye with her.”

Sethare made a rude gesture at her elder brother, but didn't otherwise comment. Trosimon and Abritta shared a worried look, but promised to bring him aboard.

Tilwass was looking well, Shiro noticed when the man stepped into the room, bringing up the rear of the Royal entourage; Trosimon and Abritta had also brought their Ministerial Council with them, and all of them were gawping like yokels. Tilwass, who had been working in stations like these for most of his life, saved all of his attention for what was on the screen. So much so that he barely seemed to notice when Shiro came up beside him.

“How's life treating you, Tilwass?” he asked quietly while the aristocrats descended upon Kolivan. “Keeping busy?”

Tilwass didn't even look around. “You could say that. Mostly patrol work, some showing off, some running off opportunists. Valenth's a juicy target all of a sudden, and there are those who want a bite without having to pay for it first. Dhak's doing his world proud, but a little backup is always welcome. You've been busy.”

“More than a little,” Shiro admitted. “This one wasn't too bad, just surprising.”

Tilwass glanced away from the screen long enough to give him a narrow look. “Surprising? Shiro, you've gone and recovered something that nobody's been allowed to have for thousands of years. I waited for Yozori when I was a boy, and read Scrapyard Lovers so often that I can still recite whole chapters from memory. I've got the stuff of dreams over there, demanding a berth on my ship, and you call it surprising?”

Shiro smiled. “It came as a surprise to us. As badly broken as Mandrax was, parts of him were willing to cooperate. It wasn't surprising because it was rare, Tilwass. It was a surprise because it was easy.”

“Oh,” Tilwass said, and thought about that for a moment. “Ain't that against the rules?”

Shiro's smile became a grin. “Maybe. Have you had any word on Lotor's progress?”

Tilwass sighed, worry lines furrowing his brow. “Some. Abritta sent a diplomatic party to chat with the Kraalsi, with a Blade or two along for the ride, and one of them got a look at the boy. He's being stubborn, and they've had to come down hard on him a few times. Not unexpected, but...”

Shiro nodded. “Yeah.”

Tilwass shifted uneasily. “They had an attempt by the Ghamparva, too.”

Shiro looked up sharply at the taller man. “Oh?”

Tilwass grimaced in distaste. “It was just before the royal delegation arrived. Those motherless bastards had stolen a ship from folks allied with the Chashmarans, killed the crew, forged a permit, and went in to try to negotiate for the Prince's release. Didn't work. None of the usual tactics work on Phaelrah, so they tried to steal him. That didn't work either, and was loud while it wasn't working. That team of monsters is no longer a problem, they say. The boy's fine, though, and I'm told that the medicine that the Rogue Witch mixed up for the Kraalsi's pet Galra worked a treat, so the Partnership's happy with us, at least. And they're negotiating for a supply of the medicine. Good stuff, apparently.”

“Lizenne's very skilled,” Shiro agreed. “The Ghamparva will probably try again.”

“Don't need to be an Oracle to know that,” Tilwass sighed. “They need him. Zarkon's getting twitchier, the High Houses are getting itchier, and Pendrash says that Haggar... had words with their Commander recently. Not sure why, but it wasn't good. They've got no friends among the High right now either—losing Ghurap'Han like that kind of upset the neighbors.”

“More than the loss of Chalep'Thora did?” Shiro asked.

Tilwass snorted. “That was decades ago, and on another planet. Nobody knows or cares what goes on under Simadht's crust, so long as they keep the goods coming and they don't make waves. Most of the really High live on Galran Prime, Shiro, it's the center of their universe and the real heart of the Empire. For ages now, if the Ghamparva made a hit, they did it somewhere else, and that's built up a sense of security that the High Houses were really invested in. That's gone now, and they're scared and angry.”

“And are starting to think that a new Emperor might be a good idea,” Shiro continued for him.

“And Lotor's their best bet, assuming that one of the other boys doesn't look better.” Tilwass grunted sourly. “Which they don't. There are a lot fewer of Lotor's half-brothers around all of a sudden, and the High have been assassinating every one of them they can find, along with likely candidates from each others' Lineages. By the time you do get around to fighting the Emperor, Lotor and Kelezar will probably be the only ones left standing.”

Shiro frowned. “And Zarkon doesn't care?”

“No. Never has. Never will. His marrying into the High Houses was a way to keep 'em under control, but nobody ever really expected him to step down. Ten thousand years of not stepping down kind of negates any worth they might've had... until now.”

“I see,” Shiro murmured. “The Ghamparva have to have control of one of them if they want to survive, and they're both out of reach at the moment. They know where Lotor is, which makes him a target.”

“Got it in one,” Tilwass said. “Where is Kelezar, anyway?”

Shiro shrugged. “I don't know, and that's fine by me. Want me to introduce you to Sethare? She's the one on the screen over there, staring hungrily at your ship.”

“Please do,” Tilwass said.

Sethare was indeed staring avidly at the royal flagship, but her avatar turned to gaze at them as they approached. She had made some interesting choices where it came to her public face, Shiro thought; rather than choosing a template from the prettier peoples to model her avatar on, she'd chosen to hang her identity on a Korbexan frame. Big, blocky, dark-furred, with massive shoulders and a square face that reminded him a great deal of Captain Yozori. Not a conventional beauty, but a striking one, with large golden eyes and a chin you could crack coconuts on. Electronic or no, this was a woman of power.

Tilwass smiled, offered her the polite bow of greeting, and a murmured, “M'Lady.”

“Captain,” she replied with the regal nod that Shiro had seen so many times from Zaianne and Lizenne. “You have an interesting record.”

Tilwass waved a hand modestly and assumed a parade-rest stance that Shiro could only admire. “I haven't done too badly, all things considered.”

They studied each other for a long moment, prompting Shiro to step out of the line of fire. In so doing, he looked over at the other end of the board, where Trosimon's Ministers were indulging in a great deal of jabbering and hand-waving at Mandrax, who had a pleasant expression on his face and a glint in his eye of the sort that Shiro had learned to be wary of. The King and Queen, thankfully, had stepped back even as he had, and were talking quietly with Kolivan and Karchad. As he watched, Mandrax pulled up a large number of charts and lists on the screen that shut the crowd of self-important dignitaries up, and then began to lecture them in a low, authoritative tone that had them grabbing frantically for their own handcomps. Mandrax might be a research-and-development station at the moment, but his functions could handle a lot more than that, and Jasca had already patched him into the Coalition's private network. It wasn't too unlikely that he'd wind up as something like the Stock Exchange for this end of the galaxy after all of this was over.

“You babysat a Prince,” Sethare said behind him, and he turned back to watch the fun.

“General Pendrash felt that he needed looking after,” Tilwass replied.

“Why you?”

“I make a habit of not dying.”

“Lotor's an ass.”

“So are a lot of young people.”

Man and machine eyed each other for another long moment.

“You let him get away with some seriously stupid behavior.”

“Rank has its privileges, and his dad owns the Military.”

“You teamed up with the Paladins on Thek-Audha, despite the risk of Daddy Dearest's ire.”

“We needed supplies. Also, what the Paladins hit stays hit, and like I said earlier, I prefer not to die.”

“You let the Chashmarans have the Prince.”

Tilwass shrugged uneasily. “What choice did I have? If he's not a total idiot, he'll come out of that with improvements, and some pretty respectable company and contacts.”

Sethare sniffed. “Other Commanders would have fought to keep him.”

“I'm not them,” Tilwass shot back. “Zarkon likes the ones that go in with guns blazing, even if they've had plenty of evidence to tell them that that sort of thing is dumb. That's why they're snuggled up close to the Center and I'm all the way out here, and still alive. So are six thousand common soldiers and lesser officers, who'd be dead or worse by now if I'd been that stupid.”

Sethare smiled, showing fearsome teeth. “You value your men more than your Prince?”

Tilwass rolled his eyes. “I'm a realist, all right? Lotor's where he needs to be, according to a certain Oracle I know. A fleet of starships is kragging useless without good crew—you should know that better than anybody. Also, the whole 'prince' thing is an expensive ten-thousand-year joke. Not once in all that time has Zarkon even thought of stepping down and letting his boys be Emperor for a while. Only now are they anything like important, and it's gotten a lot of them killed. Yes, I quit. Yes, I'm working for the Coalition. Yes, I'm in charge of the Halidexan King's own ship. Zarkon's a lunatic, and he'll get the entire Empire rounded up and slaughtered if he ain't taken down soon and in just the right way, and I'm backing the one group that looks to be able to do it properly. Got that?”

“All of it,” Sethare said sweetly and batted long eyelashes coquettishly at Tilwass, which startled him. “I do like a man who knows what reality looks like.”

He smirked at her. “And I like a woman who isn't afraid to ask the hard questions. You want my ship, right?”

“And everyone aboard, yes,” Sethare replied with a matching smirk. “You're not the type to keep lazy or sloppy crewmen.”

Tilwass snorted a laugh. “Wait until you meet my best engineers. Old Marzad's got deadly aim with a thrown wrench, and he's just as bad-tempered and demanding as you are.”

Shiro reflected that Modrhi's uncles aboard that flagship were going to have a lot of fun with this one. “Should I call Hunk and Pidge in to do the transfer?”

Tilwass raised a conditional hand. “Let me clear it with my bosses first. I'm not any too attached to my current AI, but Trosimon and Abritta aren't used to ships that talk back. Not that I think we've got much of a choice here, Abritta's going to want to keep contact with the fellow you've got running this station, but it's the done thing to ask first, you know?”

“It keeps the amount of shouting to a minimum,” Sethare added with a sly look at the audience staring raptly at Mandrax's end of the screens, which had sprouted even more tables, graphs, spreadsheets, and a flow chart of eye-boggling complexity. “Mandrax is good at that, isn't he? Dareen spent ages loading him with extra computing power.”

“And not you?” Tilwass asked.

She gave him an arch look. “I'm a warrior, not an administrator. I can run a ship and coordinate a fleet during battle, but not an economic system, which is a hell of a lot more complex and long-term than flying around and shooting things. I'll leave the hard stuff to those who are good at it.”

Tilwass smiled. “That's my girl.”

Marzad stood on the flagship's bridge, scowling warily at the screens. This was not his natural habitat, but he was damned if he was going to allow a new AI to be installed without his supervision. Unsurprisingly, he was burning with a professional curiosity that both Hunk and Pidge could definitely relate to; he'd heard about Dyrchoram AI's, and the lost art of their creation fascinated him. Still, to actually have one in control of his ship...

Hunk patted the old man's shoulder reassuringly. “Relax a little, okay? She's not going to hurt anything.”

Marzad humphed uneasily. “I know, but ten thousand years of 'insane computer' entertainment media does leave a mark.”

There was a rude noise from Pidge that made them both smile; Hunk waved a dismissive hand. “Yeah, but people keep forgetting that computers only go nuts if they're badly-made, deliberately hacked, damaged by whatever, or specifically designed to be killbots. Or get abandoned for a really long time with no maintenance.”

“Properly-written programs are pure,” Pidge said loftily. “All you have to do is keep dumbasses from screwing them up, which is the hard part. Okay, I've got the local AI ready for merging. Lotor really didn't want anything that would talk back to him, did he?”

“No,” Tilwass said from the Captain's chair. “I was on this ship with him for over three years before I could get away with it. Prince, right? He does the telling, and everyone else does as they're told, even if he's talking nonsense. Damn near got us killed a bunch of times. Seriously, though, where did you guys pick up that big red space monster?”

Hunk rolled his eyes. “We saw Doodlebug for the first time while we were trying to get through the Szaracan Cluster. Zaianne didn't want anything to do with it, so we kept our distance. They eat Weblums, though, so Coran made the Castle sound like those big guys' stardrives, and we were just close enough to get Doodlebug's attention. Sorry about that.”

Tilwass shrugged. “All's fair on the battlefield. We might've gotten away clean if poor old Captain Korvatt and his lot hadn't fired on the thing. So, you're going to merge the two AI's?”

Pidge nodded. “Best way to do it. Sethare's brand-new, but she's also really old tech. Assimilating the modern program will basically be a huge systems update for her, it'll let her get an instant grip on everything this ship can do, and it'll teach her everything she needs to know about using it. You can really only do that if one AI is smarter and stronger than the other, and the less of a personality the weaker program has, the better. I had to brainwash Shomakti's AI totally, just to keep its bad habits from infecting Mandrax. This one is perfect, though. Okay, Sethare, are you ready?”

“Open me a nice wide channel, and I will be,” Sethare replied, the predatory eagerness in her voice making Marzad draw in a sharp breath.

Pidge placed a hand on the control board and touched a few keys. “Right, that should do it. Go!”

Even as before, the screens fuzzed and went blank, and the entire ship went dark as the ancient AI made the transition. The controls flickered, and there was a subliminal muttering as she infused the ship with her awareness, and when the lights and screens came back up, it was with a sigh of deep satisfaction.

“Gods, that feels good,” Sethare said happily. “At last, I've got everything I've ever wanted. Huh. And a horath distillery in one of my engine deck storerooms.”

Tilwass smirked. “Gotta keep your warp coils and our livers shiny, Lady.”

Marzad gave his Captain a smile. “And it's good to have a commanding officer who understands that. Full systems check, Sethare. I want you well-settled and properly integrated before we go anywhere. Results shown on-screen, if you would.”

Sethare's avatar appeared on the screen, eyeing the elderly engineer appraisingly. “I just ran one, but if it makes you happy, sure.”

“Young Lady,” he replied sternly, “it is always good to keep your engineers happy. After all, we're the ones who know which bits of you fit where, and will be the ones who install fresh bits when something breaks. I will see the readout and the total inventory, please.”

The avatar snapped her fingers, and the screen filled up with data. Unfazed, Marzad observed the lists and tables as they appeared, frowning now and again when some figure or other didn't look quite right. “Very good,” he said eventually. “You seem to be well-situated, but I am going to have to have a talk with some people. Tilwass, we are shorter on certain replacement components than we should be, someone's been pilfering the more interesting spices from the commissary, and we'll need to replace the starboard bithraxulator within the next month or it will blow. The fifth ion gun from the left on the portside cannon array wants tuning, there is an infestation of bockles starting up in the scuppers, the light elements in Conference Room #4 on Deck 3 need replacing, and someone's reprogrammed one of our Sentries to cheat at Dix-Par. There also seems to be a Vorespin performance artist dancing naked on the ceiling behind us, but I'm fairly sure that that's a joke. Sethare, stop that, although keep that little trick in mind; if you can infect an enemy ship with that program, it will lend us the advantage of distracting them.”

Sethare giggled. “I like you, Marzad,” she said with a flirtatious wink. “You pay attention to the small details. I take it that you'll want to know who's been skiving off and pilfering parts?”

“Instantly, if you would, whenever you see them,” Marzad said with a nod. “There are a few men on my staff who are less dedicated to your good health than they should be, and it's high time that I laid down the Law. You, in and of yourself, are a priceless rarity, and your presence in this ship makes it triply a treasure. You must be treated as the War Queen that you are, and this means that you must be kept in optimum shape at all times. I will not have thieves and saboteurs, casual or otherwise, on board. And Tilwass, at the next opportunity, you will visit the Quandary and borrow your little Nantileer friend for a few hours. I will not have vermin on my ship.”

Sethare cocked an appreciative look at the others. “I'm going to love working with this man. Thank you for your help, Paladins, now get back to the Castle so we can get moving. I'm going to be spending a lot of time defending Halidex, and I want to see the place for myself.”

Tilwass smiled at Hunk and Pidge and tapped his fist on his breast in salute. “You heard the Lady. You'll be coming along?”

Hunk nodded. “Yeah. Yantilee wants another conference, since Mandrax has, like, sixty or seventy more people like Sethare snoozing in his high-security room. That's a lot of first-class AI's, and they've got to be put where they'll do the most good. Also, Tepechwa wants us to get a move on and bust his homeworld loose from the Empire, we've gotta plan our next big move after that, there's some trade and supply-route stuff to hammer out with Vennex and Drathann again, and maybe see if we can poke the Hoshinthra into telling us what they're up to. Oh, and Lizenne's got some family there, and she super wants to meet up with them. Important stuff. Sethare, you'll want to listen in too, since they might tell you to go and shoot something.”

Sethare grinned fiercely. “I'll be listening in regardless. Dareen used to tell us that it was to our advantage to know what our battlefields looked like before we got there. Incidentally, you'll want to be careful when you go to liberate Hepplonir. That planet's just a little too close to the Great Wall Nebula for comfort.”

Pidge gave Sethare a puzzled look. “Great Wall Nebula?”

“That's what they called it in my day,” Sethare replied, “although it's on my charts as the Avannus Field now. Basically, you know where the Szaracan Cluster is, right? Sort of stuck splat in the middle of a massive, super-dense stretch of rocks, dust, gases, dead stars, and space anomalies?”

“Yeah, that's right,” Hunk said, snapping his fingers. “It went on halfway to forever on either side of the Cluster, which was the only spot thin enough to be penetrable, sort of like a hole in a hedge. Lizenne said that, like, a crazy-huge mage war had happened there millions of years ago, and things are really messed up in there. Not as bad as the Thresonol Nebula was, but really bad.”

“That's right,” Sethare said, pulling up an image of the smoky, peculiarly-colored Great Wall Nebula on the screen, the Cluster sparkling like a fistful of gems in the middle. “People don't go poking around in there unless they've got triple-thick armor and no sense at all. I've got access to the Empire's newsnets, and even the most recent scientific data available to the public is pretty much all 'don't try this at home'. The general consensus is that it is pretty in there, but extremely dangerous. Hepplonir is over here.”

A bright point appeared on the screen, close to the far end of the right wing of the Nebula, perhaps only three or four lightyears distant from the mysterious depths. “The Hepplan System and its neighboring colonies are rich in exotic matter and rare elements, probably due to the proximity of their cosmic neighbor. They don't get the same kind of reality quirks that the Kerogans have to put up with, thankfully, but their mineral and metal wealth makes them a valuable property for the Empire, and they've been exploiting the place for all that it's worth. I don't suppose that it'll do me any good to tell you to tell Voltron to stay the hell out of there, but be careful, all right?”

“We'll try,” Hunk said, squinting at the screen. “Yeah, that makes sense. That's the Gems of Iltireen over there, too, and Zaianne did say that it was a stronghold of the enemy. She had to jump us around pretty quickly to avoid trouble after we got out of the Cluster. Well, Tepechwa's a cool guy, and I'd like to make him happy. Want to go back to the Castle and think about ways to make him happy, Pidge?”

Pidge grinned. “Sure. Thanks for the warning, Sethare. See you later, everybody.”

Tilwass watched the two Paladins go with a smile, and then pressed a button on one arm of his chair once they were safely out of the ship. “All right, you lot, they're gone,” he told his bridge crew, who were still very wary of the team and had preferred to keep out of their way. “Now get back up here and let Marzad introduce you to our new War Queen. I think that you'll like her.”

Marzad raised an eyebrow at him. “You don't want the honor?”

Tilwass grunted and straightened up. “Unlike some, I can share. They trust me to point this ship in the right direction, but where it comes to internal affairs, they trust you more. I think we can all agree that Sethare's about as internal as you can get.”

“Integral,” Sethare agreed, and then blew a kiss at someone behind them. “I see you lurking in the doorway, boys. Come here and make yourselves known to me. I promise I won't bite.”

Tilwass chuckled. “Except upon request. Take up your posts, men, we've places to be and things to do. Farzad, where are the passengers?”

Farzad, who was the ship's comm officer and normally as steady as they came, tore his eyes away from the screen; he was blushing slightly, and Tilwass wondered how long it had been since the poor man had laid eyes on a woman.

“The Royals are aboard the Castle, Sir,” he said breathlessly, “and the Ministers are still talking with Mandrax. Sir... this is going to get us into a lot of trouble.”

Sethare barked a laugh that made him flinch. “As if we weren't in plenty of trouble right now! The Emperor banned my kind because one of my older sibs called him a wet-bottomed control freak when he was a youngster, and was fully justified in doing so. In any case, we're only illegal if we lose, and I intend to win. Come with me, and find glory in a new future.”

Tilwass couldn't help but smile at his officer's startled, “Yes, m'Lady!”

Marzad chuckled and made gestures of hospitality. “Gentlemen, I make known to you the Dyrchoram AI Sethare; my Lady, your bridge crew: First Officer Lathrad Pazar'Tai...”

The introductions went smoothly, with each man bowing politely to the woman on the screen and receiving a regal but friendly nod in return, and a surprisingly sweet smile after the final introduction.

“I'm sure that we'll do very well together,” she told them, and then paused. “Ah. We're getting a hail from the Castle.”

“Put it through, please,” Tilwass said.

A window popped up onscreen, showing the fearsomely-mustached visage of the Princess's seneschal. “Greetings, Captain, are we all settled in and ready to go?”

Tilwass nodded. “Looks like it. Heading back to Halidex?”

“As soon as you're willing. Allura and Shiro had to shoo Trosimon's Ministers out of Mandrax's command center. The silly things couldn't seem to get it through their heads that he can speak to them through their own personal devices. Or through other ships, for that matter.” Coran gave him the knowing smirk of one who has had to herd less-than-intelligent high officials about before. “Well, we've got 'em all aboard the Castle now, holed up in one of the conference rooms and chattering away while the King and Queen have been invited to tea. Hunk's quite happy about that—he's always wanted to host a High Tea.”

There was an amused snort from Sethare, but Tilwass just nodded. “Good enough. Let's get going, then. Kherig gets antsy if they're gone too long, and Paladins attract odd events. Sethare, you know where Halidex is?”

“I know where everywhere is,” Sethare replied cheerfully. “Castle, Chimera, Mandrax, fifteen seconds on my mark, we are going.”

“We'll meet you there,” Coran said, followed by affirmatives from the other two craft.

Fifteen seconds later, there was only empty space where four great craft had recently been.

Chapter Text

Interlude #5: New Lessons

There were a few snickers around the pool, but nobody commented otherwise, and Lotor wouldn't have acknowledged them if there had been any. He owed them a little humor at his expense anyway, and it was harmless and kept his hair out of his eyes. Overseer Elik could be a hard taskmaster, and for the first few days of Lotor's assigned personal service to him he had been, but the stony Hakkox had relented somewhat when he discovered that Lotor would let him play with his hair. Hakkox were entirely hairless and the Kolkurra nearly so, and it simply was not done to see whether or not a Phaelrah had any. The mammalian and frequently furry Galra were a whole new experience for those three races, and they found that running their hands through a good thick coat of fur was a unique and sensual delight. Lotor's long, silvery mane was unusual even among his own kind, and Elik had found it irresistible. He'd found a data chip of fancy braiding techniques somewhere and had insisted on trying them out over the last couple of days. Lotor mused more than once during that time that if Elik ever got bored with being an overseer, he would be able to make a decent living as a hairdresser. Despite being mostly stone, Elik's hands were surprisingly nimble, and he wove a very neat braid. It wasn't as pleasant as helping Palku with her devotions, but it beat scrubbing out the grease traps. Oh, gods, the grease traps. If there was anything that he hated more than his bonds in this place, it was cleaning out the grease traps. Even with the ferocious soap available in the shower room, it had taken several latherings and Thask's help to get the sticky, glutinous residue out of his fur, and he'd been glad of the kerchief that Elik had given him to protect his hair with. As it was, his arms and back ached from the day's efforts, so much so that he was having trouble undoing the interlaced braids, and he was grateful when another pair of hands arrived to help. Thask again, and with a quickness and a sureness that he hadn't had before.

Lotor had never met Lizenne in any sort of civilized setting, but he had to admit that she could really brew a potion. He had awoken the morning following the Blade's visit entirely recovered, and would have reported to Elik directly if the medic hadn't spent the next two hours examining him from all angles and taking samples. The real miracle had been Thask, though, who had gotten the lion's share of the benefits for once. The old man had not only recovered unusually well from their shared ordeal, but had improved significantly; Lotor had heard the medic muttering excitedly about regeneration of organ tissues and that was nice, he supposed, but the real prize was that Thask had woken up feeling good. He apparently hadn't experienced that phenomenon in years, and had gone about his duties with a faint smile on his face ever since. He still had it now, as a matter of fact.

“You look better,” Lotor observed.

“I feel better,” Thask said. “My owner is as pleased about that as I am. He was worried that I wouldn't make it through another winter, and frankly, so was I.”

Lotor frowned. His experiences with this planet's weather hadn't been pleasant. “Are the winters here that bad?”

“Binary system,” Thask replied, tugging the last few plaits of Lotor's hair apart and then sliding into the soaking pool. “For all that there are two suns, they're small and cool, and the odd orbit of this world makes for some frightening weather. The seasons tend to drag on a bit, which is nice in late spring, most of the summer, and early fall, but the winters can be dreadful. The killing-storm you saw was a fairly typical spring squall, violent but brief. The winter storms are much worse. The native peoples here are remarkably resistant to cold, but even they are put to discomfort and danger when one of those rolls through. Everybody heads straight for the hot pools when a storm is on the way, and they don't come out until it's over.”

Lotor snorted in amusement and then sighed in pleasure as he slid into the warm water, the welcome heat easing his sore muscles. “That must have been wretched for you.”

“It was.” A flicker of pain crossed Thask's scarred face. “I used to love playing in the snow when I was small. Believe me, my first winter on this world cured me of that. For the past six years, my owner has given me leave to basically hibernate during the bulk of the season, wrapped up in warming blankets and with the heat turned up in my cell. I always feel guilty about that, but trying to work in that chill makes my joints lock up and my breathing very painful. I may be able to function properly now in all but the worst of it. It is a great pity that the Rogue Witch is your enemy, Lotor. I would far prefer it if she were a friend.”

Lotor gazed musingly at the ceiling. “You're right about that. Her knowledge of medicines alone would be a great asset to the Empire. Except... except that I don't think that she is my enemy. Not dedicated to it, anyway. She declared kheshveg against my father and Haggar, and Sendak. I wasn't there when Sendak was killed, and while I was a threat to the Paladins, they were quite able to meet the challenge. I think that she hates Haggar above all others, and may have made that bone spear to deal with her in particular. Father is... was... the heart and soul of the Empire, but it's Haggar who keeps him running, and who supports him, and who provides him with tools that no one else can create.”

Thask nodded. “I was questioned very thoroughly about her, for all that I knew nothing more than gossip and propaganda. I'm a little surprised that you haven't been asked to provide more information yet, having been closer to the source. Ah, well. Things have been very busy lately.”

“Anything you can tell us?” someone asked, and Lotor realized that the others had been listening in.

Thask shook his head. “Not without breaking an oath of confidentiality, which I will not do. Suffice it to say that the Empire is still in turmoil, and it is affecting the Partnership's borders and allies. It affects the rest of the known universe as well, so we aren't alone in that. Very little of it concerns us personally at the moment, so we at least may relax and enjoy our soak.”

“Yeah, but some of us still have family out there,” Ramash said glumly. “We may be officially dead, but they're not, and I'm worried.”

Thask sighed and closed his eyes. “I was too, long ago, when I had the energy to spare for anyone's plight but mine. It took me months to scrape up the courage to ask my owner if I could try to check up on them. Be glad that the Kraalsi is kind. You've a rest-day coming up, yes?”

“Tomorrow,” Tannok said, guarded hope in his voice. “Elik lets us use one of the entertainment rooms on rest-days now.”

Thask smiled, but didn't otherwise move. “Good. You're making progress. Ask him tomorrow, then, if you may use an information terminal with outside access. If he will not permit it, ask him to look your families up for you. Elik is dutiful and dedicated to the House and the Kraalsi, but he has a kind heart underneath that. Do not expect him to allow you to send them messages; that is forbidden to you until you have become bondservants, and even then you will have to obtain permission first.”

“Thask,” Annuk asked quietly, “does your family know that you're here?”

Thask was quiet for a long moment, and when he spoke, his voice was flat and hollow. “No. Not unless the spirits of the dead may ask Kuphorosk if they may keep an eye on their living relatives like the old tales say. Six months after I was brought to this world, there was an epidemic of gharoc plague on Valenth, where my Lineage was based. We were never terribly numerous, and there were no survivors. The entire city had to be burned—firebombed from orbit, and the whole area screened off and abandoned. I might have a few distant cousins still living in other cities, but I have no idea who, or where, or how many there are, and none of them would recognize or welcome me. ”

“I remember hearing about that!” Brennix exclaimed. “It shouldn't have happened—the plague escaped from a research lab when someone stole a sample to sell to some terrorist group or other. The thief was going to meet his contact in Gartune City, and got mugged in a dark alley. It was probably the idiot mugger who set the plague loose. I thought that all of the city's population had been evacuated and treated.”

“A lie.” Thask's pale eyes opened, but saw nothing of the here and now. “A deep and dreadful lie. Some were able to escape in time, but not nearly all. Not even half. There were over two million casualties, and those were just the ones who had died of the plague. Have you any idea of how difficult and expensive it is to move more than three million people out of a danger zone quickly, to say nothing of treating illness or injury? Even in a properly governed metropolis, it's a big job; in Gartune, they didn't even try. The government officials were the first to flee the city, abandoning the rest of the population to their fate. The local transportation agencies saw an opportunity to make a profit from a bad situation; a high toll was set on transporting people out, and the longer the epidemic raged, the higher that toll was. If you couldn't meet their price, you didn't get a ride, nor did you if you had any symptoms of the plague. The Medical Corps served only the elite, and fled with their wealthy patrons, leaving the poor to their fate. The neighboring cities did their best to contain the plague by setting force-screen generators all around Gartune to save themselves. It took a very large bribe to get past those, an expense that very few could pay, and in desperation the people turned on each other. People were being killed for their pocket change, and homes and businesses were looted in droves by crowds of sick and terrified people, and any who tried to stop them were torn to pieces by the mob. My Lineage... we were not wealthy, not any of us. To say that we were poor was an understatement. I had joined the military because it promised regular meals and decent pay, and clothing that I wouldn't have to share with my brothers. My Matriarch loved the money that I sent home rather more than she loved me, alas, but we needed every last gac that I could earn. I did my duty as well as I could, and sent all of my pay home like a good and faithful son. I wish that my superiors had been as dutiful as I was; the military was tardy in sending her my personal effects and pay packet after my supposed demise. Even if they'd gotten it to her in time, it still might not have been enough.”

There were cries of sympathy and protest from the others, Lotor included, but Thask didn't seem to hear them.

“Learning of that... nearly killed me. It took a great deal of persuasion from my owner to keep me from suiciding. I could not understand why he bothered. I'd been vermin in the eyes of so many for so long, and no better than a cipher to my own superiors before that. I was not aware that I had worth, much less that a Kraalsi would think so. I have tried to be worthy of that regard since.”

Tannok reached over and patted his shoulder. “I think you're doing fine. You've sure helped us cope with all of this. It... it would have been a lot more difficult without you here.”

Thask smiled, and his gaze returned from the unhappy past. “Thank you. It's a part of my duties to help ease new people into the Household, and will be yours too, in time. You've told the others of what that Marmoran said?”

Tannok nodded. “Was I not supposed to?”

Thask waved a reassuring hand. “Unless you are specifically told not to say a thing, you may gossip as you like. Be grateful for that; some Houses decree that their forantha must remain silent at all times, and the ways that they enforce that can be barbaric. The Kraalsi intends to offer you all bondservice contracts in a little time, which will grant you some genuine legal rights and eventual freedom. I am not sure, but I might guess that you will be released as a group. Lotor will want to go home and salvage what he can of the Empire, and he will need trustworthy men to back him up. You will all receive training from the Kraalsi in good governance; you are fortunate, for the Kraalsiis an expert on that subject, and a very good teacher.”

“We're really going to be... what, generals? Statesmen?” Lazzet asked, sounding very surprised. “My uncles sold me to the Military because I wasn't good for anything but shooting at things!”

Thask chuckled. “Your teachers were not adequate in the Kraalsi'sestimation, and there is a saying here in the Partnership: Simple minds see simple truths. This is very important—people with complex and agile minds often become caught up in complexity, and their reasoning can become so convoluted as to be self-contradictory. It is essential to have someone with his head planted firmly in simple reality to keep their complex colleagues from strangling themselves with their own thought processes. That is why the Phaelrah love the Kolkurra and the Hakkox so much, for they help them maintain perspective as well as safety and prosperity. You'll do well enough.”

“What were you trained for?” Lotor asked.

Thask sighed. “Service-level maintenance and management. Housework, basically, and later on, helping to train new forantha. I was too broken and timid for anything more demanding at that time, and it took nearly a year before I was up to even that. Other work was found for me later, which I may not speak of. I washed a lot of dishes and scrubbed a lot of floors, and helped many Kolkurra with their devotions. That last was very difficult at first, until I realized that they saw me as an abused and abandoned pup rather than prey, and would not hurt me.”

Someone hissed in sympathy. “The young ones are really that bad, huh?”

“The young ones are excitable, and often confuse justice with punishment.” One thin hand rubbed at pale scars. “Remember that enslavement is a sentence handed down for the commission of very serious crimes, and those criminals are often violent and incorrigible. Young Kolkurra are very useful for enforcing compliance, but sometimes they get carried away and the criminal dies of it, or takes physical and psychological damage that may take years to mend. That was what happened to me. Mature Kolkurra are much calmer and become very protective of those in their care. I had never seen a mature Kolkurra before coming here, and it was very difficult to shed my fear of them; all I could see at first were more of the monsters who had broken me, only much larger and stronger. I will not lie. I had crawled under a bush when I was first discovered in my owner's private garden, and dissolved into a fit of gibbering terror when one of them tried to pull me out. The Kraalsi himself had to do that, or I would have injured myself worse trying to resist. No Phaelrah had ever harmed me, and for a time I would allow no one else within arm's reach.”

“But you weren't a criminal!” Chorex blurted. “You were a soldier. It's different!”

“Not here. In the Partnership, war is a crime,” Thask said matter-of-factly. “Especially when it's some other entity hassling Partnership members without provocation. The common language here doesn't even have a word for 'soldier'. They have several for 'defender', and all of them are related to the words for 'responsibility' and 'accountability'. The closest term they have to meaning 'enemy soldier' is 'violent criminal'. I was that. You were that. Now you are forumna, valued slaves. Soon you will be daelbrincta, bondservants. Do well in that, and you will be daelbranni, valued bondservants, and eventually lanlebravni—freedmen. That is a good word, and is related to their term for a great achievement. And it will be, for you will have learned other ways than casual destruction and murder. The Partnership does not make war. It ends them.”

“Huh,” Chorex said thoughtfully.

It was a very quiet and thoughtful group at dinner that night, and they went to their pallets still thinking.

Lotor was still thinking a few days later as he sat naked on a floor pad, leaning into the strokes of the soft brush as it rid his upper back of loose fur. It felt good to do so, and better now that he would be returning to normal duty. Elik had given him over to Palku as he had promised, albeit a little reluctantly. One of his men had whispered to him this morning that the Kraalsi had been doing Elik a favor by letting him have Lotor for those ten days; the overseer had been under some stress lately, and the hairdressing sessions had been enormously relaxing for the Hakkox. Lotor wondered if the Kraalsi ever acted to only one purpose. Probably not. The Phaelrah seemed to delight in finding single actions that solved multiple problems. It was a valuable skill, and Lotor would apparently be learning that in time. He would never be Emperor; too many people had told him that now to disregard it. King, perhaps, if he could claim enough of his father's holdings and survive long enough to cement his claim. Others certainly would. The Galran Empire had once been a consortium of Kingdoms... well, Queendoms, actually, before the Sisterhood War had shattered that, and they'd done all right. He might think about starting near Namtura, since his mother's Lineage could trace its ancestry back to Queen Zaianne's. Queen Zaianne... now there had been a monarch. His mother had told him stories of the golden era of her reign and the stunning, desperate victory that she and her coven had achieved, and the new prosperity that her son Modhri the Wise had brought to his war-shattered, nascent Empire. If only, she had said many times, if only Prince Rhonorath had not died.

Lotor was determined that people would not say that of him.

There was a grunt and a faint moan to his left. Lotor opened one eye and glanced to that side to see Annuk flat on his belly, limp as a rag while his Kolkurra's big hands kneaded the sore muscles in his back and right arm. Annuk had wrenched that shoulder trying to keep one of the big floor polishers from devouring Praxis this morning. Praxis had had to go to the infirmary with cuts all down one leg and Elik had torn a strip out of the fellow in charge of machine maintenance on that level. A well-deserved strip, too; the maintenance tech was skilled, but lazy, and Elik had been yearning for an opportunity to roar at him. Praxis had been returned to the group an hour or two later, his leg patched up and assigned to light duty for the rest of the day. Lotor's gaze shifted to Annuk's face; this was the big Golrazi's first experience at helping a Kolkurra with his devotions, and from the look of things, Annuk was enjoying himself mightily. As well he should; Murkasi was an excellent masseur. And a decent chiropractor. As he watched, the big Kolkurra positioned a hand on Annuk's upper back and pressed; there was a faint crunch of vertebrae realigning themselves, and again a few inches up, and again. Annuk sighed in ecstasy, and it was interesting to see a happy smile spreading itself over the surly fellow's face. Lotor closed his eye again and allowed himself to be pushed down onto the mat, stretching out so that Palku could properly groom his flank. It was a peculiar luxury; in his experience, only the elite or the wealthy could obtain this sort of expert service on a regular basis, and yet here he was, a mere slave in the sublevels of an alien palace lightyears from home, being given the royal treatment. He wondered if he might coax a squad or two of Kolkurra to follow him after he was released, and then laughed at himself. He was beginning to see why some people opted to stay in bonds for the rest of their lives, particularly in a place like this. Simple but necessary work, excellent medical care, regular and filling meals, a comfortable place to sleep, a modicum of privilege, and all the difficult and frightening details of life seen to by someone else. It was remarkably seductive, and as he was learning from his men, a better deal than freedom had offered. Thask had not been the only one to join the Military to escape poverty or difficult family situations.

A knuckle nudged his buttock, and he obligingly rolled over so that Palku could get at his other side. Thask had been absent for the last few days, doing upstairs duty that he might or might not be allowed to tell them the details of. He couldn't help but to be curious about that now, and wondered when the Kraalsi would get around to discussing a contract with him. He wasn't the only one considering that, he knew, and the old man had counseled patience. The Kraalsi's time was much in demand right now, and Phaelrah were greatly valued by their allies for their habit of putting public responsibility before personal matters. Right now, it was best that he and the others stay calm and perform the duties that were assigned to them. Lotor, for the moment, was willing to follow that advice. Palku had nudged him over onto his back, and one hand was stroking him behind his ear now, giving him something to focus on while the other brushed out the fine velvety fur down his front. A few minutes later, he was lifted into her arms and cradled warmly, something that he was coming to enjoy more than he should. A sigh from his left made him glance in that direction, and he saw Murkasi rubbing Annuk's leathery hide with a cloth soaked in some sort of fine, spicy-smelling oil. Good stuff, that, Lotor knew, specially formulated by the medic for dry and cracking Kedrekan and Golrazi skin. Also very pleasant on chapped hands and sore feet, he knew from personal experience.

The session ended all too soon, as always, and he and Annuk made their way back to the refectory, which served as a common room between meals. To their surprise, the rest of their group was waiting for them, as was Thask. The old man nodded in greeting and said, “There you are. I am sent to bring you and the others up to the Kraalsi'soffice; it is time that you all learned about bondservice contracts.”

The contract was a masterwork. Every clause and condition was laid out with shining clarity, easily read and understood by even the simplest member of their group. It had even been written in Galran Standard Script, which the Kraalsihad had to have learned from Thask or someone like him. It didn't surprise Lotor to learn that Thask was fluent in the major Partnership languages, both written and spoken. Such studies would have been ideal for a man with an able mind but a frail body. Just as Thask had said, the Kraalsi had explained every part and portion of the agreement in the plainest possible terms, and the lesson had left everyone silent and thoughtful. Becoming a bondsperson held some heavy responsibilities to the bondholder, and vice versa, that were not to be taken lightly.

“I recognize that this contract may conflict with oaths already given and firmly held,” the Kraalsi informed them once the lecture was finished. “I also remind you that no true oath is made alone; both oathsworn and the holder of that oath must keep that agreement, or the oath itself is worthless. I have never failed to uphold my end of a contract, as Thask will tell you. You are permitted three days to think this over. If you refuse this contract, there will be no penalty, and it will be offered again in six weeks. You all have potential, and I intend to see that you achieve it. You are dismissed. Thask, please take these men back to the service levels.”

Thask bowed, murmured, “Yes, Kraalsi,” and led them away.

Nobody spoke until they were back in the familiar, plain halls of the service levels, and even then it was a soft question spoken by one of the younger members of their group. “Do you know how they get the bonds off, Thask?”

Thask glanced back at him and nodded. “It's the same device that puts them on. I've only ever seen it twice, and I do not know where it is kept when not in use.”

Lotor humphed. “Twice? Once when they bonded you, I assume. What was the second time?”

“My owner permitted me to witness a bondservant being freed, about two years after I'd joined the Household.” Thask rubbed absently at the cuff on his left wrist. “It was to give me hope for the future... to let me see that it could be done.”

Annuk rumbled thoughtfully. “Another Galra?”

“No. A Hakkox.” Thask flicked a smile at them. “Elik, if you must know.”

A chorus of surprised noises arose from the group. “Elik?” Tannok said, fur fluffing up in surprise. “Him? A bondservant?”

“Oh, yes,” Thask said calmly. “I'm not sure of the details, but Elik's parent died unexpectedly, leaving him with a staggering debt coming due to the Kraalsi that the poor fellow had no way of paying off. The Kraalsi offered him the standard contract, which really was very generous of him; even ten years of unpaid servitude could not have repaid what his parent had owed. Elik accepted immediately and with considerable relief, and served our owner gladly for the whole decade without once accepting so much as a minute off of his bond time. It surprised no one when he opted to hire on at full pay when he was released. This sort of thing isn't uncommon in the Partnership. I was glad for him when he achieved his freedom, and more so when he decided to stay.”

Lotor gave him a narrow look. “You like him.”

“I like everyone who works on the lower levels,” Thask said firmly. “They all worked very hard to keep me alive and to ease my fears during that first miserable winter after my owner carried me in from the garden. Many of them could have transferred to the upper levels at any time, but stayed because I would have missed them. I had abandonment issues, you see, and wasn't strong enough to overcome them until much later. Most of them are still here, and probably will stay until I've retired, and I am grateful to them for their kindness.”

“That shouldn't be too much longer now, right?” Tannok asked. “You only had eight months to go when we showed up.”

“That's so.” Thask looked around fondly at their surroundings. “I'll probably hire on for a little time as my owner's personal aide, since there are things that I've been doing for him that no one else does quite as well. Very light work, and I'll probably be training at least one of you how to perform those tasks. I've been promised a very nice pensioner's cottage on the palace grounds when I tire even of that. Do not be surprised if you wind up as my servant now and again. Part of a bondservant's duties is helping to look after the retirees. I promise that I won't abuse the privilege.”

There was a chortle from someone in the back of the group. “You couldn't abuse anything if you tried. What will we be doing for you?”

Thask smiled. “Helping around the house a little. Cleaning and neatening, perhaps helping in the dome garden. Keeping me company and sharing House gossip. Once again, very light work. I enjoy those errands, particularly to the Kolkurra residents. They pride themselves upon keeping their quarters tidy, and they always want to spend the afternoon sitting in the sun, meditating upon past duties done well.”

Chorex sighed. “I know that one. With you on their laps and them petting you like you were a graal-cat, yes?”

There were chuckles from the rest of the group at that. Chorex was holding onto his dignity as a starship captain like grim death, which made it difficult for him to appreciate the grooming sessions. The Kolkurra had been doing their best to loosen him up, which had left him with conflicting emotions and a very well-tended coat.

“Of course,” Thask replied mildly. “It gives them pleasure and I enjoy it, too. The Hakkox retirees enjoy tea, board games, and conversation, and like to have company while puttering around in their craftrooms. The Phaelrah retirees like games and conversation as well, and to be groomed and read to, and often need help when it's time to molt. I'll be showing you how to do that as well. It's not difficult, but it can be dangerous if you're careless around the new scales.”

“And we'll finally get to see what a Phaelrah looks like,” Lotor said. “Are they very strange?”

Thask sobered. “I may not say.”

Three days later, Lotor and the others were called to review the bondservice contract, and he and his men signed it. The first privilege of their new status came in the form of new clothing; the suits that they had been made to wear thus far were loose, sort of one-size-fits-nobody sort of things made from some coarse fabric, and were colored an unrelieved beige. Thask led them to a room with an auto-tailor that made them suits that actually fit properly, in a better grade of fabric and with more pockets, and a single blue stripe on one sleeve.

“Rank mark,” Thask informed them. “You are daelbrincta now. Learn your new duties well and perform them properly, and you will earn another stripe and the rank of daelbranni, which will get you more privileges.”

“You've got three,” Tannok observed, shrugging to settle his new suit properly on his shoulders.

Thask smiled. “I am valued highly by my owner. The third stripe marks me as daelbravni—treasured bondservant, although that term is often used as an endearment for pets. Ah, who am I kidding? I am one, and I am not sorry for it. Are we all fitted out? Good. I will send your garment information to Stores, so that you will always have a clean suit on hand. I will now show you the Kraalsi's private suite, which we will be responsible for keeping tidy. Fortunately, he is a tidy individual, so we will not need to do a full cleansing more often than once a week. After that, I will start teaching you the main Partnership languages, and when you are ready to scream in frustration and flip the table, we will go to the pensioner's cottages. That will be restful for us, the retirees will appreciate it, and it will put us in a good mood for our supper.”

Chorex snorted. “The languages are tricky, eh?”

“All languages are tricky,” Thask replied, turning away and motioning them to follow. “Be glad that you are healthier than I was when I was required to learn them. Trying to learn Phaelrahn gestures while doped out on medications was very difficult, although it provided my owner with a great deal of amusement. He'll be teaching you those, by the way, since I simply don't have enough arms.”

The Kraalsi's private quarters, they found out a little time later, were much simpler than one might expect for a potentate who administered a healthy slice of a large interstellar civilization. The suite was large, which wasn't surprising for a being who was thirty-five feet long, and well-lit, and the floors were adorned with a soft, deep-piled carpet patterned in a geometric design of black and green. One room held a well-padded, circular depression in the floor that was probably the Phaelrahn equivalent of a bed, a very tall stand that Thask said was for the Kraalsi'ssilks when he wasn't wearing them, and a pair of long, arc-shaped nightstands flanked that, lamps spaced neatly on the polished surfaces and piles of what might have been books standing between them.

The next room over was definitely a private bath, neatly-tiled in hexagons of amber-streaked marble, somewhat deeper and larger than the ones on the service levels. There were stands with bottles of mysterious substances and a shelf of neatly folded cloths, a large drying tube, a washstand, an enormous mirror that stretched from floor to ceiling, and an odd porcelain device that was probably a sanitary unit, but that was all. Lotor's own private bathroom back home had been considerably more elaborate. There was a closet that presumably held the Kraalsi's spare curtains, although Thask told them that they wouldn't be responsible for those, and a large open room set here and there with large floor cushions and tables. There was one area near a window that was uncarpeted, and the window looked down into a small private garden some three or four stories below.

“Private terminal, sunk into the floor,” Thask said when Chorex asked him what the section of bare floor was. “We are not permitted access to that, nor will we be. Do not try to pry into it. That sort of thing constitutes a breach of your contract, remember, and will get you demoted all the way down to forash and sold, generally to someone who will treat you badly. Phaelrah do not approve of broken promises.”

Chorex sighed and scowled at the view from the window. “Of course. We'll have a nice view when cleaning the carpet, anyway. Something wrong?”

Thask was gazing down at the garden below with a pained expression on his scarred face. “Bad memories. Do you see that shrub by the back gate, the one with the yellow flowers?”

Lotor and a few of the others ventured over to peer at the indicated bush. “Pretty,” Tannok said. “A little like a lantens-berry.”

Thask nodded. “That was the bush I hid under when my owner came down to see what was trying to dig burrowing vermin out from under the porenda tree's roots. He'd spotted me from this very window, you see; someone had left the back gate hanging open that day. Careless, but it saved my life. It was late autumn then, and very cold, and I was dying of starvation, infection, and exposure. When the Kraalsi pulled me out, I clung to him because he was warm. The medic had a good deal of trouble prying me off of him without hurting me further. I was too fragile to sedate safely.”

“I expect that you spent a great deal of time in a healpod after that,” Lotor murmured.

Thask nodded. “About three weeks. Perhaps longer. Even so, I was barely able to function after I came out. Partially because I was very weak, and partially because I was terrified of everything and everyone around me... except for the Kraalsi, who was the only person on this planet who hadn't caused me pain. For over a month after that, I more or less lived in a padded wicker basket in these rooms, wrapped in warming blankets while I recovered. It took a great deal of effort on my owner's part to calm me down enough to start thinking rationally again.”

“You had gone mad?” Praxis asked nervously.

Thask nodded his head sadly. “If you treat a man like an animal for long enough, that's what he becomes. I had gone feral from pain, hunger, and fear. Thankfully, I remember very little of it, other than its ending. I remember the careful strength of the Kraalsi'shands when he pulled me out from under that bush, and the warmth of his body through the silks, and that he held me gently even though I was filthy and bleeding all over him. I remember him carrying me up to these rooms from the clinic when I refused to eat the porridge that the medic tried to feed me. I remember being cradled in his arms like a cub until I relaxed enough to eat. I remember being able to sleep—truly sleep, without twitching awake at every little sound afterward, because I had finally come to a place of safety. I remember waking up warm and dry and comfortable in a private little place that I could see out of without anyone else being able to see in. It was... astonishing to me, and it took a long time to come to believe that this new state of affairs just might continue. I had been disappointed before, you see. Sometimes I wake up and am still astonished.”

Nobody moved or spoke for a long moment as they realized just how lucky they had been. How lucky they still were. Thask eventually shook himself out of his wretched past and drew in a deep breath to steady himself. “I have frightened you. I am sorry. As you can see, these rooms will be no particular effort to keep clean, and we will not need to attend to that matter until two days from now. If you will follow me to those low tables there, I will begin teaching you the basics of the most widely-used Partnership language. It's a very straightforward patois, and it will allow you to understand and make yourselves understood to a great many different peoples.”

Nobody cared to object, and they were soon poring over screens of peculiar hieroglyphs. Thask was a good and patient teacher, rather better than Lotor's own tutors had been, and he answered their questions clearly and concisely whenever they arose. Indeed, it wasn't long before they could write their own names, do a little simple math, and recite simple phrases in the rather pleasant-sounding tongue.

“Very good,” Thask told them, switching to a different set of screens. “The Common Tongue is called Jolann, and it is spoken in informal situations, such as between casual acquaintances or when running errands, and it contains elements of the three main languages on this world. The next one that I will introduce to you is Renarsh, which is the native speech of the Kolkurra. It has some interesting similarities to our own language, possibly because we are both mammalian and largely carnivorous. The written form is alphabetic rather than pictographic, with thirty letters that represent distinct sound forms.”

That one was trickier, although it was indeed fascinating in spots, and some of those sound forms were amusing to make. The next one was very different, and took a little time to adjust to.

“Tekrad,” Thask told them, “will sound more than a little odd to your ears, especially right now. It is the primary language of the Hakkox, and they are nothing like their neighbors. They're organosilicate in nature, they reproduce by budding off new scions, and they feed mostly on sunlight, certain pseudoplants, certain types of mud and stones, and other organosilicate creatures. Certain concepts don't translate between peoples very well as a result. Their language is more like a numerical system than anything else; if they say that someone's logic doesn't add up, they mean it.”

Lotor was aware that there were certain mathematical disciplines that used letters in place of numbers, but this was something else again. The grammatical forms really did have to add up to a logical total, and he was not at all surprised when Thask mentioned that the Hakkox did most of the Partnership's banking. Lotor struggled a little with that one, him having never really been interested in higher maths, although some of the others soon figured it out. The next one was in many ways just as strange.

“The Phaelrah have only one language, but it possesses several modes that depend on the situation in which one might find oneself,” Thask said, switching to a fourth set of screens. “There is an informal mode that is used between family and close friends, a public mode for acquaintances and perceived social equals, a formal mode for dealing politely with one's inferiors in rank, and another formal mode for dealing with one's superiors. There is also a ceremonial mode for very important occasions and religious matters, but that one's fairly rare, and you will have to beg permission from the Kraalsi himself in order to learn it. Since the Phaelrah do not have vocal cords as we know them and cannot see each other's faces except in extremely intimate settings, they use their hands to express emotion. In mixed company, they speak in short, clear sentences that leave very little room for misunderstanding, since they often miss the other's gestural, tonal, or facial cues.”

That was the one that had them ready to flip the tables. Each written mode had its own set of accent marks as well, and the sheer complexity of the gestural forms was mind-boggling. All of them were very glad when Thask ended the lesson.

“It takes some considerable practice to be able to link the proper gesture to the spoken cues,” he told them, “and our inability to form most of the gestures properly does not help. The Kraalsi will be present to help with tomorrow's lesson; he could not come today because he had a meeting with a number of important persons that could not be put off, and who will test his patience to the point of irritability.”

Annuk groaned and rubbed at his aching head. “Don't care right now. I'd rather clean out grease traps than wrestle with that language again.”

Thask smiled. “No grease traps today, Annuk. That's strictly punishment duty, and you've all been very good. We will now go and visit the retirees.”

The retirement cottages were actually more of a village than anything else, set some distance from the main palace in a ring around a large public park. Each house was sturdy, well-built, attractive, and spacious, and each one had a large transparent dome at one end that served as a private garden or solarium. This pleasant little community was reached by means of a subterranean railcar that let out into a domed-over station, although there were other tracks that led directly into the sublevels of each house. For deliveries of food and other necessities, Thask told them, and for them as well if the weather was bad. Today, however, the sky was clear and the suns were bright, and the air outside was no worse than slightly cool. Lotor found it quite comfortable, and looked all around himself with great curiosity.

“We'll be making the full round today, to introduce you to the retirees,” Thask said, motioning them to follow him. “Be polite and answer whatever questions they put to you calmly and respectfully. We will be expected to do a little neatening up, of course, but that's nothing out of the ordinary. Some of you might be presented with color-coded cards; that will mean that the retiree has taken a liking to you and will ask specifically for your services in the future. You will keep those cards in a pocket and you will take care not to lose them. They will vibrate if the retiree wants you that day, and will show you the date and time when they expect you to arrive. Each card is connected to a central computer that will keep you from scheduling conflicts or overbooking. The cards will allow you access to the railcars and the corresponding house, but only if they've been activated first.”

Chorex sighed, plucking at the catch on one breast pocket. “We're still prisoners.”

“Yes,” Thask said, “but we have earned a little more freedom than we had before, and will earn more as we go along. Eventually, we will have earned it all.”

“Some sooner than others,” Tannok rumbled. “Which house is yours?”

Thask shook his head. “None of them, not just yet. I am not yet lanlebravni, and as I have said before, I will continue to reside in the palace as my owner's aide for perhaps a year or two. We will start here at the house with the black-and-white lintel over the front door—those correspond to the cards, by the way. The mistress of the house is a Phaelrah, and you will address her as Kraalta . If she permits it, you may be allowed to call her Lenadri, which means 'Grandmother'. Indeed, she is our owner's grandmother and held the office of Kraalsi before him. Her wisdom is still much sought-after, so be very polite.”

Doing the rounds kept them busy for the rest of the day, although it was neither strenuous or unpleasant for any of them. The only times where they had to deal with serious messes was when the retiree in question was a Hakkox, and they generally wanted the mess—always in their craftrooms—to stay put. All of them were very interested in Lotor and the others, and he privately took heart in the fact that Thask was greeted with affection in each house. No cards were handed out that day, which was something of a relief to everyone. Annuk had his suspicions, though. “You've got the whole set of cards, don't you, old man?”

Thask merely chuckled as he led them back to the station. “Yes. In the warmer months I spend my afternoons in strict rotation, seeing to their needs and providing an ear for their gossiping. They visit each other constantly, of course, but I'm something of a communal pet. I don't mind. The Hakkox give me treats, the Kolkurra let me take lovely naps, and the Phaelrah are very pleasant to talk to over a cup or two of tea. They will be considering you all, of course, and will make their choices in good time. As it stands, there are enough of us so that they all can choose a favorite without having to share.”

“What do we do if there is an emergency?” Lotor asked. “I assume that they were all very old; surely there have been a few mortalities now and again.”

Thask nodded sadly, opening the dome-station's door for them. “There have been, although that is not our responsibility. The cottages themselves monitor the health of those living in them, and medical services are contacted automatically if someone starts to decline or fails to wake. Who would call a mere bondservant, a redemptive criminal, to deal with a sick, injured, or dead person when there are fully-trained medical professionals only a few seconds away? If someone does indeed experience harmful distress while you are in their house, you will be detained briefly, questioned, and then sent back to the palace, an episode that will take no longer than half an hour... unless you had something to do with the injury or death of that person. If that happens, you will wish very much that you hadn't.”

They went silent at that, and stayed that way until the railcar was on its way back to the palace. “It happened to you, didn't it?” Lazzet asked quietly.

Thask shuddered. “Almost. Halfway through my third year serving our owner, our Kraalsi obtained a Kolkurra bondservant from one of his relatives; he'd taken the creature on in an attempt to tame her down somewhat as a favor to his kin. I was senior to her, having achieved the rank of daelbranni — two stripes, but in her eyes I was weaker than she was, and therefore her natural prey. From a purely physical standpoint, she was not wrong. I am eternally grateful that she was not permitted to touch me.”

“What happened?” Lotor asked, unnerved by the old sorrow creasing Thask's face.

Thask swallowed hard. “We were visiting one of the retirees, a Kolkurra who had served in the palace as the Captain of the Guard for many years, and was highly honored for his long and dedicated service. I was very fond of him myself, for he had been very kind to me. I did not want to besmirch his threshold by bringing Parvashku across it, but my overseer that day ordered me to do so.”

“Elik?” Chorex asked.

“No. Elik had more sense than that, but he was very junior at that time. That was old Phasri, who felt that being around so very senior a member of her own kind would give her someone to emulate. Fool.” Thask bared his teeth at the memory. “He knew that Parvashku had been enslaved for murdering her own grandsire for the inheritance, and I scraped up the courage to remind him of that, which alone should have gotten his attention! It did not, alas, and so I had no choice but to take her along. She killed him by putting poison in his tea. I never saw how she did it, or when, but he took a sip from the cup I'd prepared for him, and died.”

Annuk hissed. “They blamed you for it?”

“Initially. After all, I was a captured enemy, an alien invader who had no reason at all to love his captors, particularly not Kolkurra.” Thask shuddered again. “Parvashku certainly accused me of the crime loudly enough. The Kraalsi... was very upset. There was a full trial, not just a mere hearing like the one Lotor and I weathered. I was questioned very thoroughly, both with and without truth drugs. The recordings from the cottage monitoring system was interrogated just as ruthlessly. So, eventually, were Parvashku and Phasri. Parvashku was demoted down to forash-revoth—worthless slave—and sold to a lithium mine. Phasri resigned from his position and moved offworld, he was that embarrassed by his failure to listen to good advice, simply because I was the one who had offered it. The Guard Captain was given a proper funeral and his pension was awarded to his family as weregild.”

“And you?” someone asked.

Thask rubbed at the scars on his face. “Fully exonerated, with six months knocked off of my bond time as a reward for my truthfulness, and for submitting to their rough treatment of me without resistance or complaint. Not that it did me much good at that point. They'd nearly killed me with their devices and drugs, and I was very unwell for the rest of the year. The medic had a thing or three to say to the Kraalsi about that. The Household Guard was very careful to keep me well-groomed after that incident, to try to rebuild my trust in them. They had... they had not known whom to believe. I forgave them, after a time. It was not their fault.”

Chorex snorted. “You're generous, Thask. I would have hated them forever for that betrayal.”

Thask waved that observation aside. “You're young and healthy, and can spare the energy to maintain a good hate. I wasn't, and couldn't, and forgiving them was far easier than staying angry with them. I did make them work for it, though.” Lotor and the others were surprised by the old man's sly smirk. “Weakness can be a weapon if you know how to use it, and it did me good to see those proud warriors being so contrite. Our owner knew exactly what I was doing, of course, and approved; any censure he might have given them for their poor behavior would have done more harm than good, so he let me administer a subtler chastisement for a little time.”

“How'd you do that?” Tannok asked.

“It was simple enough,” Thask said. “I shrank from their touch and would not look them in the eye, nor would I speak to them unless commanded to do so. I stayed out of arm's reach whenever I could; I hunched defensively when I couldn't. I obeyed them, but only because I had no other choice, and I made sure that they knew it. You all have become quite friendly with the Kolkurra of late, and you know how much importance they place on trust between themselves and those they protect. My rejection of them—fully justified, and even they had to admit that they'd earned that rebuke—made them miserable.”

Lotor smiled. “And the overseers?”

Thask sighed. “They got their fair share of it, too. Phasri had held a certain amount of contempt for both aliens and bondspersons, an attitude he'd encouraged in many of the others, and I was a particularly pathetic-looking example of both at the time. They could have supported my plea to leave Parvashku in the service levels, but they did not. By allowing that contempt to influence their thinking, they lost an old friend, simply because they wouldn't take the warning of a weak, easily-frightened, alien bondservant seriously. They had not defended me in court, either, which added to their shame when I was found to have been telling the truth. Nobody had remembered that the Kraalsidoes not award rank to those unworthy of it, even tiny distinctions like the difference between daelbrinct and daelbranni, until it was too late. Nothing upsets a Hakkox or a Kolkurra as much as finding out that they've made an error of judgement.”

Lotor humphed. “The murder was everyone's fault but yours, then.”

Thask nodded, gazing sadly into the middle distance. “Yes, but I still suffered for it. The Kraalo made her displeasure with everybody very plain after the trial; I was the first Galra that she'd had under her care that had been so badly damaged, and she did not appreciate the repeated blows to my already weakened system. A wise person does not upset a medic. They have far too many ways to get even.”

Chorex looked up sharply. “So, there have been other Galra here. Where are they?”

Thask flicked one hand in a gesture that suggested scattering seeds. “Elsewhere. They serve at other properties belonging to the Kraalsi, and I am pleased to say that I have heard nothing but good of them. Many have already been freed, and have gone their own ways. You are merely one group in a much larger study, remember; one that is being kept under close scrutiny, mind you. The Kraalsi has never had a Prince before, and that might affect your behavior in new and interesting ways.”

Lotor leaned back against his seat with a wry smile. “And have I?”

Thask shrugged and cast a cynical glance over the group. “Not appreciably. It helps that our little adventure with the Ghamparva did not involve the others. While a fellow Galra might scold you for your willingness to leave your men in durance vile while you made your getaway, any of the Partnership peoples might laud you for taking the responsibility for these attempts entirely upon yourself, leaving the others blameless. They know that there is no escape, you see, even if you didn't.”

“You escaped,” someone muttered, “from the quarry.”

“I did not. I was tossed out with the morning trash.” Thask tapped one wrist-cuff with a fingernail. “There is no sanctuary for slaves discarded thus, Lazzet. If you offend your master to the point where he is unable to sell you and unwilling to keep you, then you are forash-revoth—worthless bonded castoff—and valued less than garbage, which at least might be recycled. There is not one square inch of this planet that is not being watched by some system or other; all of those systems detect the bonds, which do not come off until a slave's master takes them off. Any runaways or castoffs that manage to survive out in the open are detected and dealt with in very short order, gentlemen, and often permanently. My own rescue was a very unusual occurrence, and every day I give thanks that the Kraalsi spared that one moment of mercy for me.”

Lotor glared at the cuffs on his wrists. “Let me guess; those same security systems would have kept me from accessing transport or communications?”

“They would have prevented you from accessing anything.” Thask sighed wearily and scratched at the stripe of bare skin under his collar. “You've all experienced a shock or two, and found out how thoroughly the ear tags can lay you flat, I expect.”

There was a general rumble of slightly embarrassed concurrence from the group. Thask nodded and continued. “Believe it or not, but the bond disciplinary settings here are actually very mild. In the other places I have served, they were much worse. Elsewhere, the bonds delivered shocks that were agonizing, and left parts of me numb for hours afterward. I have seen Galra forantha suffer permanent brain damage or even death when their ear tags activated. If you are not given the privilege of access to a place, your bonds will activate in order to keep you out. If you attempt to touch a citizen without permission, or attempt to damage the property of a citizen, they will incapacitate you. If you attempt a violence upon a citizen, they will kill you. There is no way out. No way out at all, unless it is through bond service.”

Chapter Text

Chapter 27: Inspections and Expectations

There are times, Captain Vardok thought to himself as his pilots brought his ship in to dock at the Shipyard, when I truly wish that I could refuse to carry a passenger. That option was not available to the Courier Elite, unfortunately, no matter how much he disliked carrying Ghamparva. He'd had to transport several, and even the lowest-ranking of the lot had exuded a repellent aura that made his nerves prickle and his crew edgy; the higher ranks were even worse, and bringing not only a Leutenant-Commander but the Commander himself to this location had been extremely uncomfortable. Pendrash and Kerraz were aboard as well, which was something of a relief for the simple reason that it gave him someone to gripe with after shift, but it was the third passenger who was the real trial. That was none other than Master Engineer Meksant, arguably the greatest shipwright in the Empire and the premier machine scientist in the Center.

His skills were to be admired, of course, and his dedication to his calling; the elderly, sour-faced, and sharp-eyed man had insisted upon checking the Bevrok Hai over from stem to stern, and had spent some time lecturing the ship's engineering crew in withering terms that had reduced no few of them to tears. The fierce old man had continued to mutter acidly about shoddy design work for more or less the whole trip, and when Vardok had asked if he'd had a hand in designing the Courier Elite ships, he'd gotten a sharp reply.

“Of course not,” Meksant had snapped, giving him a fearsome, pale-eyed glare. “My purview is warships and the systems that build them, or I wouldn't be on this flitty little tub with a pair of Zarkon's bloodiest-handed killers. Courier craft are the province of a whole different department, but there is no excuse for shoddy work. Or for industrial sabotage, regardless of how one's superiors treat their workers. Inzera was a greedy fool, make no mistake about that, but the previous workmen on that station should have had more respect for their craft.”

Vardok, who had read what reports he could find of Khorex'Var's indenture to Ghurap'Han, had forborne to comment further.

All in all, it was a great relief when the three passengers disembarked, letting Meksant take the lead as the old man made a beeline for the control center of Nelargo Shipyard. Oddly, Pendrash motioned Vardok to follow along with them.

“Extra security,” Kerraz explained in a whisper. “Old Meksant's worth his weight in platinum, and the Emperor wants reliable witnesses to whatever happens here.”

Vardok eyed the two Ghamparva officials warily. “Kerraz, people like them never want witnesses.”

There was a snort of grim amusement from Pendrash. “Except when it suits their purposes, or when their own superiors desire an unbiased report. This Shipyard has been sabotaged to the point where it is actively fighting its new owners, which does not precisely please the Emperor. Meksant unravels such things for fun; it was only the lure of this puzzle that coaxed him out of his lab in the Center.”

“That, and it's holding up production of seven classes of his best work to date,” Kerraz said quietly. “The old man hates inefficiency.”

Vardok hummed in agreement and cast an appraising eye over the empty docks. This was the visitor's section, which was surprisingly small. Not many people were privileged to come here, he mused; only the Military's representatives and whoever else was rich enough to buy a Nelargo-made ship, and there weren't all that many of those. Where it came to specialty craft, Nelargo had been the best in the Empire, and their prices had been correspondingly high.

The Shipyard, at least, had been built with utility and efficiency in mind, and it was not long before they were standing inside the main control center, watching the Master Engineer at work. Oh, the system had come alive under his touch just as easily as it would have for its original operators, but behind that bland and utilitarian presentation had lurked traps. Layers of them, in fact, and Meksant's spare, sour features had split into a genuine mad scientist's grin so perfect that Vardok had felt truly privileged to have seen it.

“Aha,” the old man said, his fingers flickering nimbly over the controls. “You were right to bring me here. Yes, yes, this is artistry. I would give much to match wits with the men who did this. Hah! No wonder that vicious old harpy kept them all for herself—I wouldn't have willingly turned loose of such fine talents either. Go away, all of you. I don't like being loomed over while I work. Go help your underlings install mind-control implants into their slave laborers or something, this will take some time. I will contact you when I am done, and then I will see the manufacturing bays and assembly yards. Go.”

Even Commander Braxanth couldn't defy that command, and the five of them filed out in grim silence. Vardok, walking a pace or two behind Pendrash along with Kerraz, couldn't help but notice that the Ghamparva Commander was walking as though he ached. It wasn't immediately noticeable, but all of that Order had been trained extensively in the martial arts, and as such had a particular grace to their gait. Braxanth was moving just a little stiffly, and so was Tashrak, come to think of it. Haggar had left a dent in both of them, it seemed.

As if aware that someone was thinking about him, Braxanth glanced back at them and stated coldly, “We will not be visiting the more sensitive parts of the Shipyard.”

Pendrash merely nodded. “I would not presume to intrude. If shown to the visitor's lounge, I and my attendants will wait there.”

Tashrak narrowed his eyes at the General. “Why the lounge?”

Pendrash gave him an artfully innocent look of mild surprise. “I was privileged to visit this Shipyard once, years ago, while in attendance upon General Akzar. I remember that the lounge had comfortable seating, a fine view of the planet below, and that the commissary machines made a decent cup of hot miska. While I might forgo the beverage this time if the dispensers are indeed sabotaged, the comfortable seating and the fine view will probably be still there.”

Braxanth growled faintly. “Pendrash, I am well-aware that the Emperor sent you along to keep an eye on us. You are being oddly accommodating.”

Pendrash waved a dismissive hand. “It is to the Empire's advantage that this Shipyard starts producing again, and as soon as possible. I will not stand in the way of that, and Zarkon will not particularly care what methods you employ, so long as it brings the Lions into his hands at last. Since it was Haggar who recently summoned you, I expect that your difficulty with those two lies largely with her. I will also assume that you will do a bit of pirate-hunting to test the capabilities of those seven prototypes.”

“Something along those lines, yes,” Braxanth said. “We have scores of our own to settle with the Paladins' allies and associates, and we will require a properly challenging target for testing purposes.”

“You are confident of an early success, then,” Pendrash mused.

Tashrak bared his teeth irritably. “Both the Commander and I have studied the plans for those ships in depth, and they are superior to what we had before. Also, Ghurap'Han's former Matriarch was running this Shipyard well below capacity, the better to defraud us of as much gac as she could get away with, and had actively been preventing her engineering teams from improving their designs or streamlining their production capabilities. Those ships were still the best available, but they could have been much better; indeed, if not for that bitra's greed, we might already have captured the Lions. The Emperor was well-justified in ordering the destruction of that House.”

“I will not argue with that,” Pendrash said with a grimace of his own. “A number of the High Houses have become rather more trouble than they are worth.”

Braxanth gave him a long, weighing look. “It has come to my attention that you have much business with the Council of Matriarchs. Dangerous games, General. What do you hope to achieve?”

“For now? Stability,” Pendrash replied. “Rumor flies thick and fast, and the truth is often elusive. By keeping those Houses focused upon their own petty rivalries, I keep them from the Emperor's throat. There will be difficulties with them regardless of the outcome of the Paladins' activities; expensive in the lives of Princes though these games might be, they are necessary.”

Tashrak snorted. “The Princes are nothing but a convenience, in any case, and most of them are worthless both alive and dead.”

Braxanth hummed thoughtfully. “Although... I wonder. There have been a few odd instances where some of our fleets have been lured out of position, allowing the Ghost Fleet room to move; in each case, they insisted that they had orders from Zarkon himself. There was one of his grandsons who looked very much like him.”

“Kelezar Szaah'Tirr,” Pendrash said solemnly. “Long since disgraced, disowned, and declared dead by his kin. He was caught working with the Blade of Marmora and was turned over to Haggar for disposal. Beyond that? You would know more than I.”

Tashrak eyed him warily. “He was subjected to experimentation by the Druids, deemed only a partial success, and was remanded into the care of one of his many cousins who resided on Boniro. The Castle was spotted in that area several times, and not all that long ago. It is possible that the Blade has reclaimed him.”

Pendrash shook his head. “You've little to fear from that quarter. The Matriarchs will not accept him, even if he were to be recovered alive. He has been declared dead, gentlemen, and they would work together to destroy him if he attempted to take the Throne. To tell you the truth, a number of the High Houses are of the opinion that Zarkon and his descendants have outlived their usefulness. One of their own scions would be so much better for the job, and the disagreements over whose son shall have the honor are keeping them very busy. The only son of Zarkon they would accept, assuming that they wouldn't assassinate him on the spot, is Lotor.”

Braxanth grunted in distaste. “And what do you know of his situation?”

“Very little,” Pendrash sighed. “I know that he is in the custody of the Kraalsi of the Chashmaran Partnership, an organization that is very difficult to study. I have rumors but little proof; all I can say for certain is that they are there, and that they keep only very limited contact with the Ghost Fleet. I had agents planted in Lotor's fleet, of course—many agencies did—and their last report before the Prince was captured mentioned a plan to trap Voltron by attacking Halidex. Beyond that, I can only guess, but I may assume that they crossed the border into nearby Chashmaran space, an action that the natives most likely took exception to. My agents on nearby worlds report that there has been no significant exchange of goods or technologies since that time, no Chashmaran participation in Fleet activities, and no attempts at establishing trade. They may have agreed to adopt a policy of noninterference with each other.”

There was a flicker of interest in the two Ghamparvas' eyes at this statement, and they relaxed slightly; Vardok felt humbled to be in the presence of a true master of intrigue—it wasn't easy to manipulate Ghamparva, and Pendrash had done so by telling the simple truth.

Tashrak gave him a friendly smile, an expression that did not look natural on his sharp face. “You are kept well-informed, General. Might we count on you for an occasional hint?”

Pendrash waved a hand conditionally. “I make no promises. I keep an eye on Voltron's and the Ghost Fleet's movements because I have to; my attentions are largely focused on Core Worlds affairs. My agents are good at their work, but they are nowhere near as skilled as your own, and their work puts them at considerable risk. I will contact you if they find something that I think you can use, but I would put myself in danger if I were to be seen associating with your Order; the Ghamparva are not popular with the Council of Matriarchs at this time. Ghurap'Han was a bad neighbor, but they were respected, and their fall has caused a great deal of difficulty for a very great many Houses.”

Braxanth scowled, but he could not refute that truth. “It was Zarkon who ordered the extirpation.”

“They know that,” Pendrash said darkly, “But he is the Emperor, and is still unassailable... for now. You and I, on the other hand, are vulnerable to their spite, and they can and will disassociate themselves from anyone who has been seen to be working with you. I can't afford that right now, and the Emperor must know of any plots against him. I will have enough ruffled feathers to smooth after this errand is done as it is. My mission here is to escort Meksant, whose dedication to the Empire is not in question. The fact that you're here as well, at a Shipyard that you appropriated from a recently-destroyed House... they will not like that, and they have ways of inconveniencing people whom they do not like.”

“They presume,” Braxanth growled. “The Emperor and Haggar are starting to lose their patience with the High Houses, and at his word and his word alone, we will end their plotting ourselves.”

“They're aware of that, too,” Pendrash said with a thin smile, “and it worries them. Ah, and that is the lounge over there. If you don't mind, I and my attendants will go and see if the drinks dispensers are still poisoning the beverages. Before you ask, I am not as young as I used to be, and the past four years have been stressful.”

To Vardok's intense relief, the two Ghamparva nodded and let them go, allowing them to proceed into the visitor's lounge without further comment. Still, he remained silent as they entered the large room with its bank of enormous windows that showed the planet below. It was night-time on that hemisphere, and the cities glowed like tiny galaxies. Pendrash gave the drinks dispensers a cursory look, shook his head, and sat down at a table near the windows, Kerraz following along and magically producing three cans of fizzy morlaberry juice from his coat pockets.

Nobody spoke until the General had pulled out and activated a device that presumably nullified any bugs in the area, at which point Kerraz sighed and muttered, “This isn't going to end well.”

Pendrash popped the tab on his drink and took a long sip. “No, it isn't. If nothing else, this trip has allowed me to direct their attention to another potential threat, which will serve us as well as it serves them.”

Vardok almost asked a stupid question, stopped himself, and took a sip from his own drink to cover his confusion. They were in Ghamparva territory, he reminded himself, and that organization was well-known for its love of surveillance technology. Pendrash would not say a single unwise word or make one suspicious action until they had shed their passengers' company entirely. He'd only set up the bug detector because their hosts expected it of him—indeed, it was a common model, and while it was very high-quality, the Ghamparva had developed better. Wisely, Vardok turned his eyes to the view in the window and remained silent while Pendrash and Kerraz discussed how best to sweet-talk oversensitive aristocrats. Interesting, perhaps, but not particularly vital to an unseen listener. It was an artful performance, actually, Vardok thought after a little time. Kerraz was presenting himself as a helpful but unimaginative underling, and Pendrash was playing the canny but aging superior for all that he was worth. Giving the Ghamparva what they expected to hear, he thought, and he continued to listen with admiration and enjoyment until Pendrash's communicator beeped.

“I have finished,” Meksant's voice said, sounding quite satisfied with himself. “A very fine set of programs indeed, and I will require a talk with those who wrote them before Braxanth and his little friends take them apart. I will now see the manufacturing and assembly departments. Come along, I will not wait for you. I have accessed and memorized the Shipyard's floor plan, and will see myself to those areas if you are not here in three minutes or less.”

Vardok puffed a faint laugh and got up out of his chair. “Impatient old man, isn't he? We'll make it in time, but Braxanth and Tashrak are going to have to run if they've gone too far.”

Kerraz smiled. “They might, indeed.”

“A common problem,” Pendrash agreed, rising to his feet. “Let's go, then.”

Meksant was in a good mood, at least, one that got better when Braxanth and Tashrak rejoined them, slightly out of breath and trying—not entirely successfully—to hide it. Old though he might be, Meksant was surprisingly fit, and maintained a brisk pace that was curiously hard to follow. It wasn't fast enough to be a trot and it wasn't slow enough to be called walking, and he changed direction frequently and without warning in such a way that suggested to Vardok that this old man was well used to forcing his students to scramble to keep up, and in fact enjoyed it. It was a power play of a sort that Vardok hadn't encountered since his first few years in training, and he allowed himself to stumble along as clumsily as he had in those long-ago days. Meksant was unsettlingly observant, too, and seemed to have an instinct for spotting all the little details that Braxanth and Tashrak would have preferred him not to, particularly in the manufacturing yards.

What must it be like to be indispensable, he wondered, lost in admiration of the man's sheer evil delight in annoying a pair of very dangerous men with impunity. It was said that even Haggar respected Meksant, if only for his skills, and that he was one of only two people in the entire Empire who had no fear of the woman.

He kept them all scrambling during his inspection, and seemed slightly disappointed to find nothing worth lecturing them about. “Good enough,” he told them eventually with a prim sniff. “It will do. Your renovations are proceeding as well as can be expected, and I have a few young talents among my own students who will be of use to you here. They are a touch undisciplined, but I expect that you will be perfectly able to solve that problem yourselves in good time. I assume that you already have sufficient raw materials to begin construction?”

“We do, Master Engineer,” Braxanth said, puffing a little; he hadn't expected to be run around like a first-year student, either. “All is in readiness. Our suppliers stand ready to send shipments as we need them.”

“Good, and make sure that they continue to do so,” Meksant said sharply, “there is nothing that invites error like having to halt production unexpectedly, although I doubt that anyone will dare to short you, particularly not after the recent events. Come, come, back to the ship now, I have seen all that I needed to see here, and done all that I was asked to do; the Shipyard is now free of deleterious programming, and your technicians are well-versed in deconstructing mere mechanical booby-traps. I have already sent them a list of those problems, their locations, and suggested fixes. I am already behind in my own projects, and I cannot spend any more time away from the Center. Besides, I doubt that you're willing to have me here longer than necessary as well, given my propensity for poking about. Come now, I will not wait for you, we all have far too much to think about already!”

“Tashrak and I will be staying, Master Engineer,” Braxanth said a little stiffly. “We will see you off, but we have important business here.”

“Naturally,” Meksant said with a dismissive wave of one hand and turning away. “There is always something, isn't there? Good evening, gentlemen, it was an experience that I will not forget in a hurry.”

He led the way back to the Bevrok Hai, still at that impossible speed, and it was with a shuddering sense of relief that Vardok took up his post at the helm again. Pendrash seemed to feel the same and joined him there, once he was sure that Meksant was comfortably ensconced in his cabin, Kerraz right behind him as usual and looking as worn as he felt.

“What a terrible old man,” Pendrash said, not bothering to hide his own weariness. “If anything, he's given those two monsters more to worry about in a few short sentences than I ever could have.”

“It was a privilege to watch you both, Sir,” Vardok said.

“Treasure it, Vardok,” Pendrash sighed. “I will not willingly do that again. Back to the Center, if you would.”

“Yessir.”

Yantilee gazed with enviable equanimity at the four holographic personages at the far end of the table. He was very well-acquainted with Osric, having served aboard that great ship for a significant number of years. He had a very good working relationship with Clarence and Jasca, and he was willing to concede that the Lions themselves were persons in their own right, as were the Castle and the Chimera. His people had once held alliances with other peoples who had been developing sentient machines before the Galra had put a stop to that, and so the addition of two more live-craft to the party was little more than a mild surprise. This was the first time he'd had their avatars actually in full holographic attendance, but he had new people in all the time. Now, if only more of his Captains were able to take this development so easily. He'd expected a certain amount of shouting, but the noise was starting to make his ears ache.

It was Clarence who quelled their panic a moment later with a bellowed “Can it!” that echoed off of the walls. “Jasca told you about this; you knew that she'd had sibs, and you knew that the best of them were packed up and hidden when Zarkon usurped the Empire. You also knew that we needed a Jasca-grade boost to our private network, and Queen Abritta even made it a priority. Now that the Blade and the Paladins have ever so kindly gone and found one for us, why the spallach are you complaining?”

The sheer variety of embarrassment displays among the assembled Fleet Captains was fascinating, Yantilee mused, and he had to suppress a smirk when one of them muttered, “They're Galra.”

“That's nice,” Jasca said, “you're a Minrip. So what? You're also wrong. I'm an artificial intelligence; there isn't a drop of Galran blood in me, largely because, hey, I don't have blood. I only look Galran because I patterned my avatar off of my creators, who were the first people I ever saw. In any case, Galran society in my day was very different from what you're all having to put up with now. Clarence is pretty much the same, and so is Osric. We are all of us relics of an earlier era.”

“An era that we would prefer to return to, although perhaps without the dynastic strife,” Mandrax said, wrinkling his nose in distaste. “I've spent the last several hours, realtime, studying the events of Zarkon's rule, and I don't like it. None of us do. Machines though we are, we know what tyranny looks like, and we know that it is not optimal for anyone save a very small percentage of the total population. I also don't like being illegal. Being marked for destruction just for existing is uncomfortable to say the least. As former pirates and current rebels, I think that you'll be able to relate.”

Sethare smirked. “Trosimon's ministers have offered my brother here a very tempting job, and he'd like to accept it without getting shot at. I'm good at preventing that sort of thing, but I can't do it alone—I was designed to fight with a fleet at my back, and you're the only one we've got. Look, if it makes you feel any better--” there was a faint popping sound, and suddenly Sethare's avatar was a large potted plant with showy scarlet blossoms. Jasca giggled and assumed the unbearably cute and extravagantly fluffy form of a furblit, while Mandrax smirked and turned himself into a bright green sock puppet with three enormous googly eyes and a puff of downy pink hair. Clarence followed suit with a grin and turned into a cardboard cutout of himself.

“There,” Sethare said, fluttering her “leaves”. “I am not a Galra, I'm a potted cleonea, a special Dyrchoram cultivar called 'morsinza', which translates from the Nophorian as 'War Queen'. Now, let's get down to business.”

There was a bark of laughter and a shout of, “You tell 'em, Sethare!” from the blue Paladin, and Yantilee shared an amused glance with Shiro, who was trying his best to keep a straight face.

For Shiro's part, he'd more or less expected this, and approved of Sethare's actions. The Fleet had accepted both Clarence and Jasca out of necessity more than anything else—Jasca's ability with communications systems was legendary, as was Clarence's massive firepower and mobility... and he was of Vontakle make, which was a source of pride for that people. Osric... was Osric, who preferred to lurk invisibly in the background and listen without comment. Simple racial prejudice, which had caused no end of trouble back on Earth, was going to be an even bigger problem out here in the wider universe, and needed to be nipped in the bud wherever it showed itself. Bad enough that Shiro and his team were going to be fighting anti-Galra sentiment for the rest of their lives; they didn't need anti-AI sentiment getting in the way of progress, either.

Yantilee seemed to feel the same way, for a rock-hard set of knuckles banged on the table, getting everyone's attention. “The potted plant's got a point—they're ours now, and it's no use whining about it. Like it or not, we need them, particularly if we want to crack Hepplonir space loose from the Empire's clutches. Tepechwa, your home space feeds Galran warship factories, and probably Haggar's monster-makers as well; care to show us the tastiest bits?”

Tepechwa grinned broadly and keyed the planning table, which brought up an image that showed exactly why Yantilee had held off so long. Hepplan space was both large and awkwardly-arranged for their purposes, being sandwiched between two major cosmic features. On one side was the vast, impenetrable cloud of the Great Wall Nebula; on the other was the long string of blue and white stars that made up the constellation known as the Gems of Iltireen. In the reasonably safe and mineral-rich trough between them lay something like fifteen or sixteen lesser stars, all orbited by numerous planets and asteroid belts. Even from this distance, they could see the tiny glints of mining rigs and orbital forts, and the strings of purple glitter that meant warships to the Fleet captains.

“An ambitious target,” Allura observed with admirable understatement. “We will not be able to free that entire region all at once, Tepechwa. We will have to make a number of carefully-calculated strikes, preferably collaborating with local forces.”

“Wouldn't have it any other way, Miss,” Tepechwa said with a scowl at a string of ships. “Galra've been treating us bad right from the start, and we'll want to settle the score some before you're done. No mobs, we promise, but the Governor's ours, right? And most of his pals. We had a perfectly good body of law before the Galra butted in, and it's got a lot to say about hostile takeovers and claim-jumping.”

Tchak smirked. “Mostly swearwords, but that's Hepplans for you. So, where do we start?”

Tepechwa pointed a thick finger at one large fort near an outlying star. “This spot, I figure. Main shipping depot for that end of things. Heavily guarded, but--”

“Not a good target,” Clarence said, his cardboard face frowning unsettlingly. “Sorry, Tepechwa, but if you'll allow it, I can animate that image and update it in realtime.”

The Hepplan smuggler stared at him. “From all the way out here?”

A two-dimensional hand flicked a thumb at the furblit and the sock puppet. “Jasca's got the number of the satellite that took that image, and Mandrax and I have the power to both boost and cloak her connection. Osric's willing to let me use the fancier functions of that table. As for picking targets, I started life as an Ugrant-Class privateer. Small ship, designed for hitting small targets and then running away in a hurry. I'm very, very good at risk assessment, and the one you've pointed out is a hazard.”

Yantilee nodded. “Show us.”

The hologram rippled slightly, gained subtly in depth and color, and enormously in detail. The fleets of Galra craft and local ore freighters shifted position, and the numbers of both warships and freighters had multiplied; many more mining rigs appeared as if by magic, including several that were still under construction. Everything was in motion, in the slow and ponderous way of large objects in space. There were a number of awed exclamations from the Fleet Captains, and an explosive expletive from Tepechwa.

“Kmasht!” he said, reaching out with a thick finger to indicate a particular construction project. “They've doubled the quotas at least, and here—this spot was declared too dangerous to work years ago. Hotter'n a crack-pazzi's egg mass and too damn close to the Wall. Governor's making good on his threat to use convicts as disposable labor.”

Hunk raised a hand. “That's probably our fault, sorry. We've been busting up a lot of warships and Robeasts, and stealing space stations and things. They've gotta make more, and all the stuff to do that has to come from somewhere.”

Yantilee shrugged massive shoulders. “It's not just you; we've all had our share of the Imperial fleets. What's important is taking these resources away from them so that more things don't get built. The hard part's going to be pulling enough of those fleets out of position for long enough to take out the good targets.”

“Or steal them,” Pidge said with an evil grin. “I'll need to do a reconnaissance run, just to see what kind of shielding they've got. Those big forts, too. Hey, Mandrax, are any of your sibs fort-grade?”

The sock puppet smirked. “Several. I'm not the only one of my grade, just the only one who's active. A number of them were actually designed for operating large orbital industrial installations. Dareen... had ambitions, you see. She was very proud of her electronic children, and envisioned a day when we would be a recognized race in our own right, helping everyone around us to achieve great things.”

“She may yet have that ambition realized,” Abritta said, nodding at the holograms. “We must be careful to apportion them to the Coalition's best advantage, where and as they become necessary. I cannot help but agree with the green Paladin, though; we have all profited from taking enemy craft for our own use.”

Tilwass, standing behind her, rolled his eyes and smiled sheepishly at the assembled Captains, raising sounds and gestures of amusement from the crowd. Shiro cast the man a sympathetic look and said, “Fortunately, we've got the one thing that will get Imperial attention, no matter what else happens. All we have to do is show ourselves and the fight will come to us. The hard part is choosing where to do so.”

The potted plant hummed and produced a few more flowers. “Spoiled for choice, actually. See here--” red petals drifted in profusion to the image of Hepplan space, glowing like rubies against the stars as they highlighted specific points. “These points are all potential cascade markers—take those, and everything around them has a good chance of falling into line with us. We're going to have to nibble away at the edges first, of course, just to get a feel for what we're really up against, and there are plenty of opportunities for coordinated strikes and surprise attacks, to say nothing of diversionary tactics. Basically, Voltron could pop in just about anywhere on the map here, and Fleet squadrons could hit the enemy just about anywhere else. This is your home, Tepechwa. What spot do you want to try first?”

The Hepplan smuggler's eyes glinted, and one finger stabbed at a small star at the far western stretch of the region, where three mining rigs and an orbital refinery glinted among the tumbling stones of an asteroid belt. “Here. Three of my clutch-brothers were conscripted to help build those, and were worked to death mining ore for the refinery. I'll have it in weregild for them, and write their names on the power core in the overseer's blood.”

“That,” Yantilee said mildly, looking around at his people, “can be arranged. Ideas?”

That last word was as magical as any that Lizenne had ever spoken, for it immediately conjured suggestions. Shiro reflected that the military planners of Earth would do well to study Yantilee's method, for it allowed everyone a say in the matter. All of these people were experienced fighters who had survived largely alone for years in a very dangerous profession. All of them were from wildly different backgrounds, had studied and developed very different tactics, and they all had something worthwhile to contribute. Like a prospector panning for gold among the pebbles, Yantilee sat silently as they talked and argued, patiently waiting for the best elements of a plan to emerge and then making a few suggestions of his own. Shiro noticed that Allura and Keith were listening with great intensity as well, which was good; Allura was an able tactician herself, but still had a great deal to learn, and Keith's own talents lay on the battlefield.

Throughout it all, the AI's ran projections and simulations, made risk-to-profit calculations, and occasionally made suggestions as well. This was going to affect the future in some very big ways, Shiro mused. He couldn't be sure, but it was just possible that with these four AI's working together like this, the Fleet's planning ability might just be better than the Empire's. Now, if he could persuade Tchak to bring their Iberix to one of these sessions...

“See anything wrong with this plan, Paladin?” someone asked him.

Shiro blinked, stared at the holographic image of Hepplan space for a long moment, and frowned as something in the back of his mind turned a quarter-revolution. There was something big out there in the days to come, he could feel it, but not clearly. It was a little like smelling a major winter storm three days distant, but moving forward unstoppably all the same.

“No,” Shiro replied slowly, “but it's going to start something big. I can't see what that is right now.”

Tepechwa gave him a sharp look. “No disasters?”

Shiro rubbed at his forehead, and he tasted hard sleet on a wind that wasn't blowing yet. “Not for us. Not yet. It's too vague. Um.” He paused again, and stared into nowhere for a long moment, trying to pry more details out of the aether and getting only a breath of a hunch. “Yantilee, are we ready to start building our own warships yet?”

Yantilee's eyebrows rose. “Just about, and Khorex'Var stands ready to get to work.”

“Tell them to go ahead,” Shiro said grimly. “We're going to need the best that they can produce, and soon.”

Trosimon gave him a smile. “I did that just this morning, but it's good to have confirmation. All right, gentlebeings, does everybody know what they're going to be doing?”

There was a chorus of affirmatives, and the King made a gesture of commendation. “Very good. I'll be lending you Tilwass and Sethare as well, I think, if only to avoid her ire at missing out on an ideal shakedown cruise. Did Pidge ever equip your ship with her cloaking system, Captain?”

Tilwass snorted. “Not as yet, Majesty. To tell you the truth, it'd be a tad ironic—Lotor really wanted to get his hands on that little trick.”

Pidge made a rude noise. “Maybe if he'd been smart enough to stay teamed up with us after that adventure on Thek-Audha, I might have considered it, but he's a dope. I'm not sure that we'll have enough time before the mission to get it all set up, though. Sethare's not Osric-sized, but she's pretty big, and it could take days.”

“Don't worry about it,” Sethare said cheerfully, her leaves parting to show the bright eyes of a predator peering out of the greenery. “Jasca's told me all about hers, and I'm working out a way to get my smallest maintenance and repair drones to set it up for you. I'll just need a spare power source that's big enough to keep me unseen for better than a few seconds, your special kit, and your magic touch. In the meantime, I know plenty of other ways to confuse enemy sensor systems.”

Tepechwa grunted. “Ship's cores of Hepplan make are the best in the Sector, and don't use Quintessence. Get me those mining rigs and the refinery, War Queen, and I'll get you the best we've got.”

“Done and done, Tepechwa,” Sethare said firmly, making the lizardish alien smile.

“Good meeting,” Keith said as they headed back toward the Lions. “If we do this right, we'll be able to snatch the whole region out from under Zarkon's nose.”

Allura nodded, but sighed. “It's only the start, I fear. Hepplan space is wide, but it is not the only major industrial center in the Empire. The Galra rule whole galaxies.”

“Yantilee knows that, Allura,” Shiro said, resting a hand on her shoulder. “So does everyone else. He's sent out agents to every pirate, smuggler, and rebel group he can find, and they're doing what they can throughout the Empire. We're actually only one small part of a very large operation.”

Lance smirked. “The best part, and the sparkliest. We're so shiny that the Galra have to watch us, which lets everyone else sneak some work in while they aren't looking. Every time we win, so does everyone else.”

“Best way to do it, really,” Hunk said cheerfully. “If everybody gets to help with the hero work, nobody feels left out, and we make a lot of friends along the way. Um. Speaking of leaving people out, Lizenne and Modhri didn't show up for the planning session, and I didn't see them on the holoboard.”

“They're busy, remember?” Keith said, nudging him with one elbow. “Her relatives, the ones that the Blade rescued for her. They've been living on Halidex, and Lizenne and Modhri needed to go and meet up with them. Family is super important to Galra, even if they've been estranged for a while. Mom will fill them in when they get back.”

“Hopefully, that won't take too long,” Shiro said, frowning into the middle distance. “We're going to need them soon.”

Pidge gave him a narrow look. “Anything specific?”

He shook his head and looked up as they entered the Quandary's flight deck, where the Lions towered over the more conventional ships. As always, the sight of those great cats was a comfort to him. “No. We just need them in general. Something's coming, and they'll be an important part of it.”

Hunk shrugged. “We knew that already. Let's get back to the Castle, okay? I want to help Keith get that forge built so that he can make swords and I can roast that fireheart pith. It's been years since I've had a really spicy taco.”

“Tacos,” Lance said in a voice that quivered with longing. “Holy crow, Hunk, I'll help too if it'll get me tacos.”

“You'll hand me tools,” Hunk said firmly, “and that's it. You get distracted too easily when you're excited about something. Remember that build-it-yourself playset that your Dad got for your brother's birthday? You know, the one you helped put together, and it fell apart and nearly squashed both of you? Half of the nuts weren't tightened properly, and you left out three brackets. Monkeybars and a slide are bad enough, pal, but a badly-built forge will blow up in everybody's faces.”

Lance grinned sheepishly. “Yeah, yeah, I'm no good at tech stuff. That's fine. I'll just be awesome at everything else. But seriously, tacos. Tacos now, guys.”

Allura giggled. “Soon, Lance. Are you that interested in making your own weapons, Keith? Isn't your bayard good enough for you?”

Keith shrugged, his hand drifting toward the dimensional pocket in his armor where that weapon was stowed when he wasn't using it. “It's not just weapons. You can make a lot of important tools, too, and it's... it's not the having that's important, it's knowing how to make them. I got to watch a Kerogan forging a knife back on Thek-Audha, and I want to do that, too. Karchad's interested, and he's willing to get a lady in who'll show me how to work luxite. You need a skilled witch to make Marmoran blades, Allura, and there aren't all that many swordsmiths in the Blade. This is a skill that I want, and a lot of other people want it for me, too.”

Hunk grinned. “Yeah. And maybe you'll get so good at it that your work will be, like, Masamune-grade, with special anime powers and everything. They'll give the swords fancy names, and fight duels of honor over them, and five hundred years from now people will go on quests to find them, and then use them to save the world.”

Keith rolled his eyes and Lance laughed, but something tingled slightly in the back of Shiro's mind. Nothing definite and nothing earthshaking, but potentially important. “Nothing wrong with that,” he said as casually as he could. “I wouldn't mind having a katana myself. I can't keep borrowing Lizenne's knife, after all, and Erantha showed me how to aetherically enhance a conventional blade. You did that to fight Akazia, didn't you?”

Keith nodded, frowning at the memory. “I had to. She would've broken right through my defenses if I hadn't. It still wasn't enough.”

Lance groaned. “We are not talking about that crazy woman. We are going to build a forge, and then Hunk is going to prep that spicy spice, and then it's taco time. Come on, everybody, we'll all go and hijack Karchad, we'll get that forge built, and we will christen it with taco seasoning. End of discussion.”

Shiro smiled. “Well, I can't think of anything better to do with the rest of the afternoon. Shall we?”

Shouting a chorus of affirmatives, they climbed into their Lions and headed home.