Chapter summary: In which Keith encounters three more lion-ships, tangles with yet more people out to catch him, and really wants some answers.
Notes: Thank you to everyone who left a review! You're all amazing, and I hope you enjoy this chapter. ^.^
It came back to bite him.
Keith dragged a hand down his face with an aggrieved groan. "You've got to be kidding me."
Unfortunately, when he looked again, it was still there. Mocking him. WANTED FOR GRAND THEFT, DESTRUCTION OF PROPERTY, AND DISTURBANCE OF THE PEACE, the alert read in blocky print. LAST SIGHTED AT IAKETHA STATION. WARNING: ARMED AND DANGEROUS.
A brief glance at the numbers prominently displayed made him cringe. "Well, that's going to bring down every bounty hunter in the universe down on my head," Keith groaned again. The Empire, after realizing he'd stolen Red, had put a price on him that would make anyone rich for the rest of their lives. Someone had reported him from his fight at Iaketha Station a few standard days previous, too, which only made things worse.
Turning his tablet off, Keith set it aside with a sigh. "We're gonna have to lay even lower than before for a while," he said aloud, stretching out his legs.
Red's metallic ear pressed solid against Keith's back as he watched two of the planet's five moons rise into the night sky. A distant galaxy yawned overhead, stardust glittering silver-bright. The entire image was remarkably picturesque, the sort of thing that people put on advertisements for getaway vacations or displayed in galleries. Keith could appreciate the beauty of it, nothing but open skies and unpolluted air.
The planet that he and Red were on was uninhabited due to its ridiculously aggressive wildlife and lack of any natural resources that could conceivably make a profit. The atmosphere was so thin that Keith had to wear a suit every time he went out, but there was enough fresh water to live off of and some of the slightly slower creatures were surprisingly tasty. He and Red had skirted around any settled systems, giving them a wide berth for fear of discovery. Luckily, Keith had stocked up on enough supplies to last them months, maybe even longer if he rationed properly and hunted for himself as much as possible.
At the moment, they were holed up in a cave located high up on a mountain that jutted out from a forest of dark green trees. From their vantage point, they would be able to see anybody coming for them before they were detected themselves. On the horizon, a dark shape wheeled and dove, visible only as a silhouette that blotted out the stars. Though the night was cold, Red radiated warmth, enough that Keith could probably fall asleep right then and there.
That was probably a bad idea, though, so Keith convinced himself to get up and climbed back into Red's cockpit instead. Behind the pilot's chair was his sleeping bag, small and worn but serviceable. Keith stripped out of his armor before sliding in, placing it neatly to one side. Outside, he could see the open skies and watch the shining moons, but inside, all he heard was the comforting hum of Red's machinery.
"You'll keep watch?" he mumbled, already dozing off. Red was warm around him, comfortable and soothing. His eyes slipped closed as he let go, releasing his hold on consciousness.
Keith fell asleep to the rumble of his lion's assent.
Two planet-days later, Keith was in the middle of eating his dinner with Red's systems on standby when the cockpit lit up crimson and a video screen popped up directly in front of him.
Across the line, several people shrieked. Keith choked on his ration bar, randomly hit buttons to try and turn it off, and only succeeded in making the video expand to twice its original size.
"Holy crow, it's a Galra, why is there somebody in there why is there a Galra in there?!" Keith heard one of them wail. "That's it, we're all dead, they've already captured the lion–"
Keith fruitlessly tried to push more buttons, even though he was still coughing on a chunk of ration bar and cursing himself. If only that translation software had worked, everything would've been so much easier. "Red! Red, what the zannek is going on?!"
The lion did not answer. Keith suspected she was laughing at him.
On the video screen, a woman with white hair and dark skin marked in crescents under her eyes pushed her way to the front. "Who are you?" she demanded, leaning in close to the camera. "What are you doing in the Red Lion?"
Keith ignored her, hissing in frustration when he managed to turn the cabin lights off but nothing else. Given that it was pitch-black outside, this left the video screen and a few other diagnostic holograms as the only sources of dim light in the cockpit.
A bipedal alien with yellow and white armor yelped, jumping back. "Holy crow what just happened?"
I turned the lights off, genius, Keith snarked to himself, trying to figure out how to turn them back on. For some reason, even though he repeatedly pressed the exact same button again, they stayed stubbornly off.
Red was definitely laughing at him, Keith decided. She had to be doing this on purpose.
"Red? Any ideas?" Keith asked, only half-expecting an answer. The lion was outright helpful only when she felt like it, which, in his limited experience, seemed to be rarely.
She did not reply, but there was a vague sense of uncertainty beneath the amusement.
Keith swallowed. Well, that was all he needed to know.
Meanwhile, the strange woman was still talking at him, a fierce scowl slashed across her face. "Answer me, Galra!" she ordered, and her tone was so reminiscent of Keith's old army commanders that he bristled on reflex.
"Screw you," he snapped, baring his teeth as echoes of Half-breed, runt, useless, run another punishment lap rang in his ears. More curses piled up in his throat but he bit them back, focusing instead on sweeping up the provisions scattered across the cockpit before he could take off and fly away.
"Damn, those eyes are creepy," the smallest of the aliens muttered. "Hold on, guys, I'm going to see if I can track the signal."
Keith went stiff. Track the signal? They were searching for him. Oh, that was not good. He didn't know who these people were or what they wanted, but he had a feeling that they wouldn't hesitate to take Red from him and toss his body into open space. At least they didn't seem like more bounty hunters, though. He already had enough of those to deal with.
"Red? Any time you want to cut them off would be good," Keith urged, falling back into the pilot's seat with his hands resting on the controls. He wasn't entirely sure why the call was even still on, but given that he was positive a communication's line shouldn't have been that complicated to turn off, she had to be keeping it open for a reason.
Around him, the lion rumbled, and Keith felt her rise to her feet. He grinned as the lights flickered back to life, the video screen vanished as if it had never been there, and his view of the stars outside returned. "There we go."
Without further pause, Red leapt into the air and they left the deserted planet behind. Keith didn't know how those people had managed to contact him or what they wanted, but there was no way he was sticking around to find out. Not when they made even Red a bit nervous, and definitely not when he knew from their expressions that they would probably hate him for being Galra.
Hopefully, their call had only been a fluke, and it wouldn't happen again. Somehow, though… Keith didn't think he was that lucky. He had a feeling that he'd be seeing those strangers again, and probably sooner than he'd like.
Zannek.
Keith relaxed his grip on the controls as he watched the planet shrink behind them, smaller and smaller until it was just a shining pinprick like any other star. "Hey, Red. Any ideas on where to head next?"
An image appeared in his mind's eye, and Keith's face broke out into a grin. The coordinates that Red displayed on a holographic screen were remote, unsettled, and generally out of the way.
Perfect.
The planet they landed on half a standard day later was all desert canyons and dust-dry air, the terrain some bland shade of yellow-orange-brown as a grey sky cringed away from clawing rock formations eroded smooth by the wind. Keith and Red hid themselves in one of the canyons, crouched on a ledge just under the surface and partially blocked by a low overhang.
According to Red's scanners, there was water in the caves below, so Keith went to go check it out. Getting into the tunnel system was easy, but actually navigating it was… rather less so. By the time Keith had gotten to the underground pools, found that they were guarded by highly territorial reptilian creatures, and hastily beat a retreat back, somebody else had found his lion first.
Keith froze. Standing in front of Red was one of the aliens from the video call, dressed in blue and white armor that was an exact copy of the sets that he'd seen in Red's cargo bay. The alien was staring up at Red with their hands on their hips, while Red gave off a sense of being distinctly unimpressed. The alien hadn't noticed Keith yet, but Red was broadcasting a wary sort of vague irritation in the back of Keith's mind, and she knew he was there for sure.
Silently, thanking his dark armor, Keith crept through the shadows of the cavern until he drew level with the blue alien. From there, he could pick up on what the blue alien was saying, and it was baffling.
"So you're the Red Lion, huh?" The alien had a masculine voice, and had to crane his neck to peer up at Red. "You're smaller than I thought you'd be. Where's that Galra, though? Pidge said you were empty, but we should probably get out of here before he comes back."
Keith narrowed his eyes as Red's mood spiked with offense. Taking a quick breath, Keith didn't wait to hear any more before he dashed out of his hiding spot to cannon headlong into the alien. The alien let out a satisfying yelp of shock as Keith sent them sprawling, and while Keith's fall was controlled, the alien's most certainly was not. In one smooth motion, Keith rolled back to his feet and sprinted for Red.
"Hey! Get back here!" Keith heard the alien shout behind him. "Pidge, Hunk, I need backup! The Galra's back!"
With a jet-propelled leap, Keith was snatched up in Red's jaws and back in the pilot's seat in record time. Whirling, they leapt for the exit– only to be blocked by two other lions, similar in design to Red but different sizes and different colors. The smaller one was painted green with some sort of shield on its back while the larger one was painted yellow, hulking and even more massive than Keith had ever imagined.
Keith cursed. Pushing the controls, Red exploded out of the cavern and bodily shoved the other two lions aside. Growling, Keith threw them into a sharp climb, making for open space. A screen appeared to show the other two lions in pursuit, and then–
All Keith saw was blue, blocking his field of vision before he and Red were tackled out of the air. They landed hard, skidding across the top of a plateau before Red could get her feet back under her. The third lion– colored like that other alien's armor, and Keith was sensing a pattern here –was larger than Red as well, but not as gigantic as the yellow one was. It pounced, snapping at Red, but Red spat a plasma blast to keep it at a distance. She couldn't back up without walking off the edge of the plateau, and the other three lions had them cornered.
Keith decided that it was time to make a strategic retreat.
Firing off plasma blasts to keep the others at bay, Red blasted straight up to escape the planet's atmosphere within the space of a heartbeat. She was faster than the other lions, Keith realized. Noticeably faster. That was good; Keith was smart enough to admit that he couldn't fight them all at once and hope to win.
Dodging around shots that zipped past by a far too narrow margin for comfort, Keith pushed Red toward the asteroid field that stretched out in the distance. He'd try to lose them in there, and if that didn't work…
Well, he'd figure that out when he had to.
"Come on, come on," Keith urged, willing Red to even greater speeds. Closer, closer, almost– "Yes!"
Out of the corner of his eye, Keith saw the yellow lion drop out of the chase the instant he and Red hit the asteroid field. Doing a roll to avoid another asteroid, he watched as the blue lion attempted to physically knock a nearby asteroid out of the way, but was nearly crushed by the chain reaction that it caused. Smirking when that lion fell back as well, Keith saw that it was only the green one– the smallest –left.
Ahead, there was a cluster of asteroids too close together to fly between. Red used them as stepping stones, leaping from rock to rock and even sprinting up the side of one to slip between a pair before they smashed into each other. Despite her size, Red twisted and spun and blew through the field like it was nothing but open air.
Soon, even the green lion had dropped out of the chase. With fierce satisfaction curling in his gut, Keith waited until they were out of sight completely before he mentally nudged Red, asking her to open up another wormhole– and they were gone.
Equal parts confused and curious, Keith desperately wanted answers. He had no idea how those aliens had found him, but his initial plan of quietly circling around to the Endonirn System was shot to hell if they could track him. Or was it Red that they were tracking? And how? Neither he nor Red had any bugs on them; Keith had checked.
"Red? Who were those guys?" Keith asked, frowning. They'd had lions as well, clearly designed along similar lines as Red. Maybe they were Red's original owners, and wanted to take her back?
Keith's grip tightened on the controls. Well, they were too late. Red was his, and no strange aliens were going to separate him from her.
His lion purred in agreement. Warmth blazed along their mental connection; a sense of mine and us permeating their bond.
"Thanks, girl." Keith took off his helmet, ears unflattening. "Who were they, though? They knew your name–" he remembered the blue one saying, So you're the Red Lion, huh? as if Red Lion was a title, not a description, and wasn't that interesting, "–and they were flying other lions. Like you, but different colors."
A heavy silence fell. Red seemed… uncertain.
After a long moment, there was a feeling like a resigned sigh, and Red broadcasted a single word: Voltron.
All the hairs on Keith's neck stood up. Red had never spoken directly to him like that before. Not only that, but the word had seemed to carry a weight to it, a significance, echoing inside his mind. Voltron, Voltron, Voltron.
Keith swallowed. "What's that?"
Another pause. Keith closed his eyes, and as if that was some sort of signal, Red began to share… memories?
Yes. Memories, Keith realized, as he was made a spectator in a parade of scenes that displayed the other lions fighting together, tearing through ships like so much scrap, combining to form a mechanical giant whose strength was unmatched across the universe. Keith caught fragments of the lions' pilots, all in that color-coded armor, laughing and yelling and battling side by side. Everything was going well, triumph and glory and peace– until things took a decidedly darker turn.
Oh, Keith realized as he watched armies clash, war descending upon the universe like a vengeful god. This is– this is the formation of the Galra Empire!
Voltron's team was ripped apart from the inside, the lions scattered so that Zarkon could never find them. Keith felt Red's pain at the passing of her previous pilot, rage at the oath-breaker who'd cut them down, and then–
The images faded.
"Ten thousand years," Keith breathed. "Oh. Oh." He looked at the dashboard in front of him with new eyes. "No wonder all your systems are in Old Galran. You're ten thousand years old." Keith pressed his back against the seat, staring out at the empty moon outside without really seeing it. "Then, the other lions… they're the rest of Voltron."
Red hummed. She still seemed uncertain, as Keith received flashes of two other aliens in yellow and green armor that appeared to be the same species as the blue one.
"You don't know them," Keith deduced. "Because it's been so long, and they aren't the same pilots that you remember."
Pride suffused their bond. Smart, Red told him.
Keith ran a hand through his hair, trailing claws down his scalp. "Thanks, I guess? Is there any reason you're using words now?"
A flicker of humor. Could not, before. Now, I stronger. She showed him an image of the other lions sunning themselves, recharging through solar power. My Paladin. Our bond grows strong; you hear me now.
Red's mental voice was echoing, layered with a sound like crackling flame. Keith rested his hands on the controls without grasping them, taking in the new information. "So, you can speak to me know because we're more in tune with each other or something?"
Agreement glowed. Keith ducked his head, grinning, happiness coiling in his chest.
Except. Thinking back to the other Voltron Paladins (because that was what they had to be, there wasn't any other explanation), Keith's grin slipped away. "What are we supposed to do about them, though? They want you, not me, and–" Keith had a sudden, horrible thought. "I mean, if you would rather go with them, I can't stop you, and it would be your choice anyway–"
NO.
The mental growl made Keith shudder right down to his bones, teeth snapping shut. Red's vehemence shocked him. Would she really choose Keith, the half-breed, the runt, over the lions that had been her pride?
My Paladin. There was slightly less force to it that time, the words less deafening. I will not give you up.
"...Thank you," Keith said, voice full of wonder, and meant it. Red was all he had; without her, he would've been long dead. Giving her up, even if by her own choice, was something that he hadn't wanted to contemplate. To think that she would actually choose him, when nobody else ever had before… "Thank you. Thank you."
Red purred. Keith, despite himself, let out a relieved laugh.
They'd figure out how to deal with the other lions when the need next arose.
"Okay, what the quiznak was that?" Lance demanded the moment they reached the bridge, pulling off his helmet. "How did that Galra beat all three of us?"
Allura pinched the bridge of her nose. "The Red Lion is the fastest of all the Voltron Lions," she said, terse. "It seems that, whoever that Galra is, he at least knows how to fly."
"No kidding." Hunk crossed his arms. "Did you guys see how he got through that asteroid field? I thought he was gonna crash for sure!"
"Yeah, same." Pidge's brow was furrowed, fingers flashing across holographic keys. "Allura, you said that the lions choose their own paladins, right? Is there any way the Galra could've, I dunno, hacked their way in or anything?"
Allura pursed her lips. "As far as I'm aware, no. But I can't say for sure; technology has certainly changed in the past ten thousand years."
"That guy hits pretty hard, though. I'm going to be bruised for days," Lance groaned as he rubbed his shoulder. "He's small for a Galra, though. I think he might actually be shorter than me."
Coran blinked. "Really? That's strange. Galra as a whole are significantly taller than Alteans."
"Well, that one wasn't," Lance grimaced. "Came out of nowhere. One second I'm standing in front of Red, the next– bam! He was like a ninja or something!"
Allura and Coran both tilted their heads to the side, giving him a quizzical look. "What's a 'ninja'?"
As Lance tried to explain, with gratuitous gesticulation, Shiro turned to Hunk and Pidge. "What do you guys think? This Galra, did Red choose him or did he just steal her somehow?"
Light played across Pidge's glasses. "Well, remember when we kinda accidentally called him? I've been combing through the recording of the video, and I noticed something weird." Said recording was brought up, and Pidge tapped to pause it near the beginning. The frame froze on a comical shot of the Galra's shocked expression, yellow eyes blown wide and part of some sort of greenish bar hanging out of his mouth.
Examining it, Shiro couldn't help but think that the Galra seemed just like a spooked cat, all puffed-out fur and unsheathed claws. Difficult to be scared of, and certainly nothing like the militant Galra soldiers that he'd known. "Pidge? What's the point of this?"
"This is the clearest shot we have of his face before he turns the lights out." Pidge opened a second screen. "Here, I ran a search. Get this: he's a wanted criminal by the Galra Empire. His bounty is millions of GAC, whatever that is. And, as far as I can translate, one of the big things he's wanted for is theft." A smirk. "Gee, I wonder what he stole."
Lance, apparently done with his crash course on ninjas, peered over Pidge's shoulder. "Okay, but that doesn't mean he's Red's Paladin, right? I mean, come on! That guy clearly didn't know what he was doing! Look at how he was mashing buttons everywhere!" Lance tapped the screen to play the recording, and the team watched as the Galra visibly panicked, flailed, and somehow turned the cabin lights off.
Allura paused it. The frame stuck on an image of the lion's cockpit glowing red, the Galra only a dark outline with yellow eyes gleaming. "Be as that may, he was still to pilot the lion well enough to escape from us."
"Yes. If the Galra have truly managed to break into the lions, that would be quite worrying." Coran stroked his mustache. "However… Pidge, let me see that bounty again?"
"Yeah, sure." A few taps brought it up again. "Here."
Coran leaned in close. "It says he's a traitor. Interesting."
"Wait, really?" Hunk rubbed the back of his neck. "So, like, he was part of the Empire but went rogue or something?"
"Seems like. I'm not sure how much a GAC is, but this is flagged as a high-priority bounty. The Empire really wants him dead." Coran zoomed in on the image, which appeared like it had been pulled from some sort of ID card. The Galra had a mulish expression, ears flattened and lips half-pulled back in the beginnings of a snarl. Angry cat rather than spooked cat, Shiro thought.
"He might be our only shot, though," Shiro said, tearing his eyes away to address Allura. "He doesn't seem like he's working for Zarkon, and as they say, the enemy of my enemy is my friend."
Allura raised a brow. "That's an… interesting way of seeing things."
"It's an old Earth saying," Shiro replied. "And, at this point, I don't think we have any better choices."
"You do have a point," she conceded. "I'll have to warn you, though. The Red Lion is the most temperamental and volatile of the five; it requires a pilot that relies more on instinct than skill alone. Capturing them will not be easy."
A resigned silence fell.
"Yeah," Lance sighed. "Somehow, I didn't think so."
