VOLTRON SOLO SERIES: VOLUME 1
LANCE: ZERO GRAVITY

The GALRA EMPIRE is finished.
With their defeat, following
soldiers have been forced to
retreat into disclosed groups
under the radar of VOLTRON,
the hope of countless worlds.
These soldiers hide in shadow,
biding materials and time,
until the day they may strike.

Our heroes, the FIVE LIONS,
bravely defend and maintain
peace in the new world.
With the support of the
general public, they track the
last of the resistors, to
ensure they do not rise again.

Shiro, former leader of Voltron,
has been captured by a MERCENARY
SHIP full of Galra sympathizers.
The Lions, desperate to free their
friend, have staged an attack on
the ship to retrieve him...


Lance: Zero Gravity

i. put your helmets on


During missions like these, Lance always wonders why the bad guys take the hard way out of everything. Because this wasn't meant to be a hard mission.

When Shiro first brought it up, it was simple: go up, talk to the mercenaries, confiscate the weapons they were delivering to defeated Galra battalions, go home. And now that the whole Galra war business was over, Lance could return to his comfy bed, blast some music, and lie undisturbed for the rest of the night.

The leaders of the ship were supposed to be self-preserving mercenaries trying to make a few space dollars, not Galra and Galra sympathizers. Shiro wasn't supposed to get captured. The rest of them weren't supposed to narrowly escape with their lives, and they weren't supposed to stage a Voltron attack on a ship to get their leader back.

Keith's voice snaps Lance's mind back to reality. "Lance, are you seeing any fleets exiting any of the mercs?"

Lance stops his internal grumbling for a second to survey the area. The enemy cannons shoot at them non-stop and tenfold, but that's what makes it even weirder: other than the mercenary ships, there are no internal fighters that come out to greet them. The behaviour is typical for a carrier, with no real defense other than maybe a particle barrier, but during their brief period exploring the ship, Lance had counted fighters aplenty. He squints one more time, just to make sure his eyesight isn't going bad, but then calls back, "I'm not seeing anything."

"That's weird," Keith mutters half to himself, though it sums up Lance's thoughts pretty succinctly.

Lance's mind jumps from possibility to possibility as he does his best to dodge incoming attacks, but his hypothesizing takes the back burner in favour of staying alive. Luckily for him, despite where his loyalty truly lay, the Red Lion felt far smoother than Blue when it came to agility in general, and he skirts around them with less grace than Keith would've, but enough to keep him alive.

"The prison stronghold is in that ship." Pidge points out.

Lance's screen immediately creates a target that zooms and enhances the mentioned carrier in the corner of his dashboard in a light blue—no, red outline. It's a smaller ship, but heavily guarded. After learning just who they were up against, it seemed that not even a group of low-grade mercenaries wanted to take a hostage against Voltron lightly.

His mind jumps to the answer even before Keith can speak.

Even though they've located where Shiro is, they're still going to need to go and fish him out. Then, there are four lions, so Shiro's going to need to hitch a ride in one of theirs, and it isn't like all four of them can go in. The carrier isn't large enough, and it leaves the lions undefended. Keith would normally be their guy for inside work, but right now, Keith is a leader. He needs to be hyper-aware of the Lions in case something goes wrong, as an ace flyer and a leader, and the best way to do that isn't to have him rush into battle. In fact, the best answer is obvious.

When Keith's voice does carry over, it's after a long, hesitant pause, and even Lance can read how tentative and uncertain he sounds.

"I think I have a plan."

Lance smiles to himself, because he knows Keith is itching to run in himself, guns ablazing, to grab Shiro and to hell with the rest. The responsibility of the Black Lion weighs on Keith, and while the former Red Paladin doesn't seem to enjoy it, he accepts it. Keith pauses, choosing his words carefully. "We're going to need… someone to get in and out, fast."

"I'll do it," Lance says.

It isn't that he wants to. Oh, he would love nothing more than to be the one out back, diverting the attention of random fire, shooting a bunch of smaller ships down. But he knows Keith doesn't want to say it—he doesn't want to condemn anyone other than himself to any kind of risk, because that isn't how it worked with Shiro. But Lance—no, the Red Lion—is the best for the job, and Keith isn't stupid enough not to see it. Maybe it's because Keith's been with Red for so long that he knows.

Keith's reply confirms Lance's idea, and he asks, "Are you sure about this, Lance?" After another, shorter pause, he interjects himself with another less tactful idea, "I could go in, instead."

Lance would love nothing better than to come up with a quippy, self-assured response, but his heart won't stop thumping and even his smile, which he'd been using to comfort himself more than others, wavers. "The Black Lion should be out here, helping with a bit of everything." Lance explains, knowing Keith's already thought it up.

It doesn't make anything easier.

"I'll be fine," Lance replies, contrary to his beliefs. He tries to ignore the way his stomach flips and churns, because it's probably just the effects of zero gravity and is a symptom completely unrelated to the way his hands grip firmly on the controls, wrapping around the metal as his thumbs determinedly situate themselves to accelerate. "What, think I can't do it?" Lance asks, feigning boastfulness but listening intently for a word of denial to take solace in.

Instead of acceptance or denial, Keith's answers, "Just be careful." Quickly, he directs the others, "Pidge can guide you through once he's in. Hunk can help defend the Lion once you're inside, and Allura can fly out and take out the ships that are firing from a distance."

Lance, rightfully surprised by Keith's comment, is slightly more comforted by Hunk's enthusiastic, "Don't worry, I'll watch your back!"

Lance gives a nervous grin to himself and then engages with Red. If Blue felt like a catfish swimming through water, the Red Lion feels like a panther. Each jolt brings him closer as the Red Lion claws through as many ships as it can. It feels rough but deliberate, resolute but cautious. It felt like the bounding of a panther from one patch of land to another, edging closer to its prey. And if nothing else, the metaphor in Lance's head made him feel a little more badass.

It takes him no time at all to reach the ship, and he uses the heat blasters from Red to carve an opening through. He sticks Red's head through the freshly gaping hole, opening the maw of his beast to jump into the jaw of another.

His hand grips the gun tightly as he exits the ship through Red's mouth, and his first objective is to get as far away—or as hidden—as he can. The ship's interior is decorated in dark colours (like every other bad guy ship ever) but it lacks the purple signature light on Galra ships. It makes it easier to hide, but easier for enemies to come blasting out of nowhere like a horror movie. Along with it's differences, the ship is also much more run-down. Visible pipes and wires run along the sides of the walls, and even the interstellar insulation shows through the wall. Electricity runs, but there are wires sticking up all over the place, and sparks fly from them. With all the boxes on the floor, along with how shaky the ground is with what's going on outside, Lance has to be cautious.

He opts for turning the first corner he sees, but is quickly told that it's the wrong decision as he hears voices down the hall, shouting at each other. Going backwards to an unsafe location in a mission is always a bad idea, and he takes a quick nosedive towards the nearest boxes, clutching his gun closely to his chest.

It's fine, Lance, don't worry. Lance thought to himself. It's nothing you haven't done a million times over, back as a space cadet. Sneaking past guards is no biggie.

Lance takes a deep breath to calm himself, but another voice in his head interrupts him, answering his bouts of reassurance with an unsympathetic, Yeah, sure, except you don't know this ship inside out and a mistake means they're probably gonna blast more holes in you than a slice of swiss cheese, and that means Shiro's doomed too because you couldn't do it, you couldn't save him, and everyone's morale will be down and Keith will think he's a terrible leader for sending you in and everyone will think you just couldn't do it and they'd be right but it'll basically be all your fault.

You really need to shut up, Lance thought back at it.

I'm just trying to be realistic, the voice that needs to shut up replied.

When the thumping footsteps of the guards get close, Lance shrivels into himself as best as he can, inhaling sharply and holding his breath for extra invisibility. The guards pass right by him, and he catches sight of their backs as they run off. Like most haphazardly-strewn mercenaries, they don't belong to a single race. He briefly notes a Krie alien, Longor alien, and Palarian alien amongst the passing group of sentries. He breathes out an exaggerated sigh of relief as they round the corner to check out his closed-off Lion.

Keith's voice over his communicator is almost comforting, as serious and worried as it sounds. "Lance. Are you in?"

Barely above a whisper, Lance looks around to check for guards hearing his voice. When he determines the coast is clear, he replies, "Yeah, I am."

Pidge chips in this time. "Okay, you're going to need to go two halls down and then three to the right."

"My left or your left?" Lance asks, cautiously.

Instead of reassuring him, Pidge sounds exasperated and replies with her usual you're-an-idiot tone, "We have the same left, Lance."

In retrospect, Lance cringes, because Keith would never have had to ask that question if he were in, but he wasn't exactly in the place to be worrying about comparisons. He ran down the corridor, turning the corner at every out-of-place sound. His caution was necessary, though, as nine out of ten times the sounds are passing sentries.

When he turns the last left, he catches an insane amount of guards and has to stifle his own surprised yelp as he cuts his momentum off to jump back behind the wall. He counts at least fifteen, all in the same place.

Quickly and anxiously, he whisper-shouts at Pidge, "There is no way I can get through this hall. There's a ton of armed guards."

He doesn't hear back from Pidge for a bit, but her voice does come back to him, eventually. "I can't see another option. You're going to have to figure out a way through."

Lance grimaces, uncertain. If he were a little more skilled, he could just run in, sword in hand, like some knight of the round table. But Lance isn't stupid enough to think he can take them on all at once, and especially not with the Altean Broad Sword.

He looks around, and sees no guards, obviously, since it seems they've all stockpiled in the corridor. However, while he looks around, his eyes fall onto the boxes next to him. He looks at its packaging, and as he bends over, he catches the white label.

con, Unit 525. To N. Tron. Extreme Light Emission, May Cause Blindness.

Lance praises every deity he can think of for the label being in English out of all things, because while the contents of the box certainly don't contain what he needs, it's something that he can make do with. He surveys the scene a little more and sees the light up above, almost metaphorically popping above his head as the idea takes form of a grin on his face.

The guards stand idly until they hear a nearby crash. Along with the sound, the light in the hallway goes out. Many of them immediately put up their weapons, assault rifles turned towards the darkness in the hall.

They look back and forth between each other until a guard in the front motions for a few others to go forward with them. Their rifles have a small flashlight on them to view the general proximity in front of them, and they stalk out into the darkness.

As they look around, they see nothing out of the ordinary, and one of them even begins to ask a doubtful, "Just a bad bulb?"

The guard beside them isn't convinced though, as his light scans over the fallen lightbulb. He finds it odd that the string is still attached to it, and the broken end looks cleanly cut. He turns to look around, and notices an open box, too. Beside it is even stranger, as he catches a small tuft of brown hair sticking up from behind the—

Before he can finish the thought, a brilliant strobe light explodes, and surprised yells are heard from the guards caught in the blast. Lance imagines it's something like walking out of a long movie at the theater, where you are temporarily blinded, except that he might have actually blinded them with how bright the light was. Dazed shouts are heard from the guards who had been watching intently, and the bright light fills the corridor. They don't even register the body that bursts past them, since they all knock each other around in a blind stupor.

Lance rushes past them, his paladin visor completely darkened, and he makes his way with one hand tracing the wall for guidance. Once he's an adequate distance past, he begins to laugh into his communicator, and eagerly shouts. "Did you see that, guys? Holy cow, I didn't think—man, that was cool!"

"Good job, Lance," Keith says, "but don't lose track of the mission."

Lance gives a cockier laugh this time, his nerves finally calming down. "Ha! Don't tell me that wasn't the best thing I've ever done—ow!" His gloating falls short when the ship suddenly lurches, and he runs headfirst into a wall, falling back for a second. He sits up quickly and returns his visor to normal, picking up his bayard on the ground next to him. He can almost hear the eye-rolls on the other side.

"We're not retelling that part later." Lance deadpans, getting up and continuing his path.

Lance smells something strange, something burning, but before he can track what it is, Pidge speaks up. "Okay, now you're going to run by a few more doors, but you're going to need to turn left at the next intersection. After that, five corridors down you're going to have to turn at the end of the hall, and Shiro should be in the third door to your left. It's... pretty far, actually. You'll need to hurry, too. One of our attacks hit the ship, so you have around twenty minutes. You'll be passing by an infirmary, at least three storage chambers, the emergency escape…" Pidge trails off at the end.

Unfortunately, Lance isn't able to make it that far.

When he turns the first left, he manages to take a few steps before a guard appears from another intersection, like a horror movie jumpscare, and Lance doesn't have enough time to hide. The guard fires two shots. One misses, and he can hear the shot reverberate off a metal object behind him, but the other one hits him right in his shoulder pad—a fatal shot, if he hadn't dodged.

Lance grimaces, ducking behind a corner. He clutches his right shoulder, biting his lip hard enough to draw blood. He's got to stay silent, and keep his mouth shut for once. As he's shot, he hears his team's worried shouts and questions, but can't reply.

"Lance, are you okay?" Allura asks, her voice coming graceful and elegant over the comm, blinding him to the ripping pain in his arm for a second. He desperately wants to smile, and comebacks build up in his head—I'm fine, princess, how're you?—Aw, are you worried for little old me?—Maybe next time, I could've gotten a kiss for good luck—but they fall short. He doesn't risk being discovered.

"You might've gotten past the earlier guards, but you're not going to be getting past me that easy." The guard says, and a shot skims past the corner Lance hides behind. He's got to figure another way out of this, but he didn't grab any strobe light bombs from earlier. His arm screams when he holds the sword, and he doesn't even want to imagine properly handling a rifle. His adrenaline might be able to get him through, but…

Despite what Lance thought would come through the communicator, Keith, sounding very panicked and serious, suddenly shouts, "Lance, mission's off. Get out of there, now!"

Against his better decision, Lance shouts back, "I'm fine! I can do this!"

It gives away his position unfortunately, though, and he hears the guy charge at him. He rolls out of his corner, bayard transforming into his rifle halfway through, and he manages to shoot the weapon the guard holds. The guard, successfully disarmed, lunges at Lance. While it happens, he hears the paladins shout.

"Lance, buddy? It's not about you, it's that you've just got to get off that ship, really, really fast. I know I said I'd cover you, but I… you need to get out. Shiro will… he'll be fine! But you need to get to your lion, now." Hunk says, and Lance is surprised. He wrestles the guy on top of him for his own gun.

"Get out of there, Lance." Allura confirms. "The mercenary ships have turned on their own carrier. All their cannons are pointing at the carrier, and we cannot lose you—"

Just as Lance begins to understand the scenario, the guy rips Lance's helmet right off his head, rears his fist, and punches down. Lance jerks his head far enough to dodge the first one, but the other one nails him, hard. The guard tries to go in for the knockout, but is suddenly knocked out cold by a blast. Lance looks in the direction of the shot, and another guard stands, lowering the smoking gun.

Lance is confused, but the ship suddenly shakes, and the new guard runs over to Lance and grabs his hand, yanking him up.

"What—who are you?" Lance asks, still unsure whether the person is friend or foe. It isn't unusual to make allies in the least likely of places, and it seems to be the case for this alien.

He can't see their face, as they're dressed like every other guard in the ship, but they sound panicked when they say, "We've got to get you out of here. This ship is going down—they're going to kill us, all of us."

Lance furrows his eyebrows, but the alien stops in front of a panel, and quickly enters a four-digit code. The door slides open, revealing an escape pod, and the alien shuts Lance in.

"What—why are you helping me?" Lance asks them as they fuddle with the controls, trying to enter the coordinates with shaky hands.

"I… I didn't know, I didn't think—I am not going to be the reason for Voltron's destruction." They say, shakily and panicked. "I've spent my entire life… I'm not… with this, Voltron will survive, I'm not going to be a part of…"

He isn't sure what they're trying to say, but somehow, he knows they're sacrificing a lot for his own life. He suddenly shouts, "Wait, no! I have to get my friend, the Black Paladin! His name is Shiro, white hair, scar across his nose, the leader of Voltron!"

Both of them hear a crash behind the alien, and he sees the alien stop entering coordinates. The alien presses their helmet against the glass of Lance's pod, hand resting on top of it, defeated. Their voice is shaky, and so full of despair that Lance immediately knew it would haunt him for a long time. Their voice cracks as they say, "I'm too late."

As they give their—what Lance comes to realize, final words—he sees an explosion bursting down the hall.

A lot of things happen very quickly. The alien sends him a small, hopeful smile before they're engulfed in flame, and Lance barely has time to register the explosion and duck below before it hits, incredulous force and heat slamming against the side of his pod.

He's launched with more force than he's ever used to ride the Blue or Red Lion, and his unprotected head hits the other end of the ship. Lance sees stars fly by out the window, like a million water striders streaking across the surface of a pond, tracing long white stripes across the night sky.

He thinks, for his final moment of lucidity, Looks like I messed up after all, and then blacks out.


Yes, the chapter titles correspond to Space Oddity lyrics. I felt it was fitting. Also, the beginning of the chapter was supposed to imitate the Opening Crawl in Star Wars. This is the only time you'll see it, though, so cherish it should you enjoy it.

So the 'universe' is the same, but different, yeah? Basically, it takes place after the Galra War is over, and all six paladins are considered members of Voltron (with Shiro, Keith, and Lance alternating positions). That being said, just like Germany after the war, it's illegal for the Galra to rebuild their army, but there are always people still trying. That's why they were on the mission-they were trying to stop the mercenaries, thinking that they were just doing the job they were paid for, but it turns out the leaders were pro-Galra. Although it's being written like a Post S8 fic, I'm actually writing this at the end of season 7, so. Can't promise any accuracy.

I may or may not have made this because I wanted each character to get a little more appreciation/development, Lance especially being one of them. I almost titled it a character study for that reason, honestly. They kinda did some characters dirty. I want to write this with a Lance-ish vibe, where it's funny and adventurous and heroic and everything we didn't get in the main series (at least... so far). It'd be nice if I could write a piece that people could see being canon + a recommendation. I'm also planning on adding other characters to the Solo Series, but I'm not sure who should be next. I'd love to hear your suggestions!

Hope you enjoy! I'm looking forward to hearing thoughts/comments/ideas in the story. I like it so far, and I've got a wild ride to write. Feel free to comment!

(Crossposted on AO3)

#SSB