In the Aftermath
Chapter 4 - A Meeting of Minds
The cargo ship pulled away from its docking port at the Crimson 12 space station and hovered for a moment in a way that reminded Lance of a lazy bumble bee. Then, without the usual pause required for the port master to give authorization, it rocketed away, like a very focused bumble bee. It was moving so fast that it might have been a danger to nearby ships if a smoky gray circle hadn't appeared in the space in front of it.
Lance throttled his shuttle's engine as the front of the cargo ship disappeared into the portal.
"Faster, faster!" shouted the Galra sitting beside him, "The wormhole is starting to close!"
"I'm on it," said Lance, doing his best to sound utterly confident, "I am an ace pilot, after all."
It wasn't an exaggeration, at least when he was in the Blue Lion. But the shuttle didn't have the lion's speed, power, or agility. Even worse, its interfaces were a mess of popup displays and Lance didn't have Blue's steady presence guiding his eyes to just the right controls. He'd manage to turn on stealth mode, but darned if he knew where the secondary booster was.
"You should have let me drive," fumed the Galra.
"Be happy I didn't leave you tied up back in the station. Ten minutes ago, you were shooting at me," Lance reminded him.
"What's a minute?" asked the Galra.
"Stop distracting me!" Lance shouted, "I need to find the boost thruster button."
"You mean this?" and the Galra reached past Lance to flip a switch. There was a roar as the shuttle kicked forward. The sudden G's pressed Lance into his seat and the Galra into Lance as the shuttle dove into the wormhole an instant before it closed.
"Still no signal?" Allura asked for the third time. It had been less than an hour since the shuttle had disappeared into the wormhole and the castle hovered just beyond detection range of the Datubuni Ring. Green and Yellow were set to launch, but for now their Paladins were waiting on the bridge.
Pidge shook her head and went back to her popup displays. The largest screen was running her original Galra signal scanning program, in case their enemy was picking anything up. Another monitor analyzed the traffic patterns in the Datubini Ring during the last melsher. A third was flashing through know solar systems. Pidge had a tall popup open to the Altean glactotopedia entry on the Apocrytean invasion. She also had a mostly hidden screen playing cat videos. Pidge snuck looks at it when she was feeling low.
"What were you thinking, Coran?" asked Allura, also not for the first time. "Authorizing Lance to go off with a Galra, of all aliens?"
"It was an Apocrytean," Coran couldn't speak the name without a visible shudder, "What else could I do? You saw the galls on the prisoners in the brig."
Allura didn't stop pacing, "And Keith," she turned to Hunk, "you're sure he's on the mercenaries' cargo ship?"
"The station feed was corrupted, Princess," said Hunk, "but that unconscious Picasso-faced alien sure looks like Keith's handiwork. And we know for certain that he's no longer on Crimson 12."
"Princess," pleaded Coran, "what are we going to do about the Apocrytean? What if she's a queen, and those galls contain her offspring? Do you have any idea how many there could be?"
"Well," said Slav as if someone had asked him, which they hadn't, "There's a great deal of uncertainty about the precise rate of Apocrytean reproduction. However, using the most comprehensive study by the Hemulin historian Asatolia, a single gall hatches in roughly two weeks, which results in at least 20 offspring. Since on average one in 700 are reproducing females and time to sexual maturity is two months, if she were to infect even one alien per quintant, in a year there will be nearly 20,000, in two years almost 500,000, in three years 13 million, in four years, 350 million, and in five years 9 billion. Of course, I probably underestimated the one infection per quintant."
It was odd how composed Slav was in the face of actual danger. As he spoke, Coran sunk to his knees and put his head in his hands. Allura gave Slav a look that could freeze a fire and scorch an ice cube simultaneously.
"I'm just trying to be helpful," explained Slav.
"It isn't working," said Allura and strode across the bridge.
"She's right," said Hunk, "this isn't working."
"I'm doing the best I can, Hunk" snapped Pidge, but quietly as not to arouse Allura's ire. "My system-"
"Not that," said Hunk, "I mean, as a team. This isn't working."
He sighed trying to find the least confrontational way of saying what he was thinking, but gave up and let his words spill out.
"Coran should never have been leading the mission. He's knowledgeable and a great strategist, but he's not good under pressure, he barely managed to lead the space mall field trip. And without a strong leader we all fall into our worst habits. Keith runs straight into a suicidality dangerous situation, Lance takes off with some dubious alien, you bury yourself in your tech and I'm paralyzed with indecision."
"You're saying Allura should have been leading the mission?"
"Maybe," Hunk glanced at the princess, but she wasn't, thankfully, listening to their conversation. "But we need her to control the castle and she can't be in two places at once. We need someone on the ground, figuring out what to do when things go wrong."
"We don't have someone else, Hunk," observed Pidge, sounding more than a bit less defensive. "We only have each other."
"I know, I know," admitted Hunk, "I'm just saying we can't go on this way. If we don't find Shiro-" he stopped himself, "until we find Shiro, we need to make some changes."
888
It felt like they had been traveling in this wormhole for forever. Or maybe it was just the company. Lance glanced at the Galra who was still actively glowering.
Why were Galra so sensitive about their heights? All Lance had done was to casually comment on how much shorter he was than all of the Zarkon soldiers they'd faced and to ask if there was size requirements to join up. The guy had given Lance a full tooth snarl and hadn't said a word since.
The Blue Paladin weighed his options. On the one hand, his companion was rude, short tempered, and had at least two knives that Lance could see. On the other hand, Lance loved the sound of his own voice.
"So," he said, the latter winning out, "do you have a name?"
"Yes," said the Galra. Silence followed.
"What is it?"
"Mavalok," he said, still not looking at Lance.
"I'm Lance," he offered.
"I know that," said Mavalok.
"So, Mavalok," Lance tested out the sound of the name seeing, with satisfaction, the way the other tensed up, "who are you with? Some sort of rebellion?"
"In this universe, everyone who isn't with Zarkon is part of some rebellion."
Lance tried again, "So, what's in the sack?" It was a large and bulky backpack that the Galra had insisted on bringing it along.
Mavalok cut him off, "Look, I'm not trying to pry Voltron's secrets out of you, so why don't you extend me the same courtesy and keep your Earthling curiosity to yourself."
Lance mulled that over, but only for a few ticks. "You're pretty angry, even for a Galra. I mean, most of the Galra we meet are actively trying to kill us. But I've run into a few off the battle field, and they're much calmer." Mavalok said nothing, which made it their most enjoyable conversation to date. "Now Keith loses it sometimes, but in between, he's actually pretty low key. Of course, he's only part Galra, so maybe-"
"The Red Paladin is part Galra?" Mavalok's obvious interest gave Lance pause.
"I never said Keith was the Red Paladin," he replayed the earlier conversation, "and how did you know we came from Earth?"
Mavalok pointed to his bat ears. "Exceptional hearing coupled with a functioning brain. That Coran guy called your missing Keith the Red Paladin when he was talking to you and that Pidge guy, who, I'm guessing based on the fact that I'm not colorblind, is the Green Paladin. As for your planet of origin, you are some of the most wanted aliens in the universe. There's a price on your head and everything."
"Well," Lance reckoned he shouldn't be too surprised, "we did just take down Zarkon, after all."
"Then it's true?" Mavalok asked, "Zarkon is dead? There've been rumors based on fleet movements and radio silence. Everyone's been speculating if it was Voltron or a coup masterminded by the prince." For the first time, the guy looked excited.
Ooops, hadn't Allura said they were to lie low until they found Shiro? "Sounding a bit curious yourself, aren't you?"
Mavalok emitted something between a snort and a sigh, "Everyone wants to know about Voltron and the new Paladins."
Lance sensed Mavalok was willing to trade some information. Maybe not about himself or his organization, but something. "I might have a declassified story or two, but only if I get something equally interesting out of you."
Mavalok looked perturbed, but after a tick, said, "Like what?"
"Tell me about this P'Talaquos monster creature. And if these Apocrytean have been gone for more than 10,000 years, how does one just show up?"
Mavalok gave a single bob of his head as if to say it was a deal and then launched into a story.
"The rumor is that salvagers exploring a ship wreck found the frozen body of some unknown alien. They thawed the body to sample the genetic material and discovered the gall, which was about ready to hatch. Just one of the Apocrytean larva inside was viable. Maybe they knew what it was, maybe they didn't but they sold it to a traveling carnival. The carnies named her P'Talaquos and put her on display in a cage. She was a real hit, made them a bunch of money and everything was great. Until the performance where she broke out of her cage and murdered and ate, or infected every carnie and unlucky visitor in attendance. Infected aliens become her slaves. She commands them through some sort of mental signals, and can even take over their bodies directly. By now she's infected hundreds, possibly thousands, and commandeers a small battalion of ships. It's believed that she located the abandoned home nest of the Apocryteans and is incubating the next brood."
Mavalok took obvious glee in the telling. Probably hoping to terrify Lance, or at least make him sick to his stomach again. But Lance had watched a lot of horror sci-fi flicks, and something wasn't quite adding up.
"Has any of this brood been spotted? Or is it's still just this P'Talaquos?" he asked.
"No one's seen them, but-"
Lance cut in, his brain worked better when he spoke out loud. " 'Cause, if the Apocryteans are sort of hive insect aliens, then there should be more by now, right? There should be drones and hunters and gatherers and ones to tend the nurseries, or, umm, alien incubators. All following their queen's orders, right?"
"I'm not sure-"
"Because, how long has it been since she started disappearing folks?"
"Maybe a year."
"A whole year? Something's not adding up. Even if she only infected 100 aliens … I not going to do the math, but there should be an army of Apocryteans spreading out over the universe already."
"You're being naïve, Earthling." Mavalok snapped back, "your race has never faced the Apocryteans. You have no memories of the horrors they have wrought. If you had been raised on the terrifying tales, seen the images of the destroyed planets and aliens in the final stages of infection, you wouldn't question the seriousness of an Apocrytean resurrection."
"Okay," Lance agreed, "But consider this. Isn't it also possible that maybe you're overreacting because these guys were such bogeymen when you were a child?"
"What's a bogeyman?" asked Mavalok.
"It's the creepy monster that, when you're a kid, lives under your bed and keeps you from going to sleep because you're convinced that in the middle of the night he's going reach out and pull you under." Lance added some dramatic gestures which had the desired effect of making Mavalok shrink back into his chair.
"Galra don't have beds," he protested, "We sleep on floor mats." Now he was just trying to sound tough.
"Okay, in your closet then."
"But … but there is proof that P'Talaquos is infecting and enslaving aliens. People have gone missing and then shown up with Galls on their necks. Your Coran saw them."
"Has anyone removed a Gall and split it up to see if it's filled with wriggling Apocryteans?"
"We've tried," Mavalok said slowly, "once. We rescued two infected Unilus. P'Talaquos's influence weakens over distance and so these Unilus were largely free of her control, enough to ask us to try to remove the galls. But when our doctor tried to cut out the first, she found it was bound up in the Unilu's nerves and brain. There was no way to untangle it, so she took the risk of cutting the connection. It killed him."
"How?" asked Lance.
"Slowly and painfully. His companion changed her mind about the operation. But her gall continued to grow and even without P'Talaquos's influence, she lapsed into a coma after a week. We put her into a healing pod but it couldn't stop the gall from killing her. The autopsy revealed that the gall's connections had disrupted, and even replaced large portions of her brain."
"And the galls, what's inside?" The more he learned about the Apocryteans, the more Lance was beginning to appreciate the Galra empire. Even Shiro's arm wasn't this creepy.
"No Apocrytean larva, but they might not have developed because of the distance."
"Or," a sudden positive idea came to mind, "P'Talaquos doesn't have a mate, does she? That means she can't reproduce, right?"
"Parthenogenesis," said Mavalok as if that explained something, "some alien females can switch to clonal reproduction if a male isn't around."
"That's effective," agreed Lance, "I suppose we'll see when we arrive - If we ever get there. This wormhole is super slow. No wonder the rest of the universe abandoned this technology."
"Instantaneous wormholes need to be powered by pure Quintessence and only the Altaeans are able to channel that energy source."
"Our lions can do it too," said Lance, "I learned that recently." Bet Slav thought he wasn't paying attention. Lance hoped that wasn't classified info. He needed someone to draw him up a list of proscribed topics.
"Well?" Mavalok broke his thoughts.
"What?"
"You promised to tell me about Voltron and the Paladins. I kept my end of the bargain."
That was true. He'd better keep away from the assault on Zarkon and his fortress, but maybe some of the stuff that happened when they first became Paladins would be okay.
"Well, for starters," he began, "Pidge is a girl. Not that you're the first person to make that mistake."
At first Keith didn't realize he was conscious because his mind felt no connection to his body.
Everything was numb. Like he'd somehow managed to fall sleep as to cut off every bit of circulation, even his face felt heavy and bloated. He shifted position - that's when the pins and needles set in. From his fingers and toes, up his limbs, to his nose, lips and eyelids. He would have screamed but his lungs didn't seem to have air.
Keith pulled his body in, balled his hands, and squeezed his eyes shut in an attempt to drive the painful tingling feeling away and reconnect with his physical self. It didn't work.
Something like a dream was awakening in his brain, pushing his sense of self farther away. Light and noise disappeared, and with them the memory of a world with colors and shapes and sounds. Words were unfolding in his brain, narrating a story that felt both like a memory and a real-time experience.
Once there was a small little-thing, went the words. In her head was an empty space. Somehow, she knew that there should be orders, work, duties in that space to guide her. But nothing came from inside. Instead, from the outside, there was a sharp-switch that burned where it touched. The sharp-switch told her to stop. Stop that movement, stop that hum making, stop consumption, stop resting. She soon became fluent in the sharp-switch language.
The little-thing's world was constrained. She could turn and lie down. But when she reached forward, when she tried to grasp up, the was a barrier. Where she brushed it with her body, it would tingle. And if she tried to hold it, her body would burn. It was good that she was small. She only reached out when the sharp-switch prodded her to do so.
Once a quintant, after the sharp-switch told her to stand back, a thing that smelled of weak and thin chemicals would be placed by her feet. This was sustenance to be consumed. She consumed, but she did not enjoy the consumption. That empty space in her head taunted her with an almost-memory of chemical smells from a different sustenance, a sustenance that she craved.
Beyond the barrier of her space, there were other things: chemicals that swirled, hums and vibrations that undulated, and something else. This something wore chemicals and made noises but was more than that. Somehow the little-thing knew these other things had filled spaces inside them. Inside each thing was a pulse. Sometimes, when the sharp-switch was away and her mind was quiet, she could separate the things and make out the pulses as they moved near and far, but never so close as to make contact with little-thing's barrier.
Over time she became aware of the pulse's differences and similarities. There were patterns to them. Unlike the barrier, which was to be avoided, or the sustenance, which was to be consumed, the pulses simply existed.
Some pulses were strange and new. Some pulses seemed to appear again and again. One pulse always arrived just before the sharp-switch. She learned that one well.
One quintant, there came a pulse that was wholly different from any pulse she had sensed in the past. The pulse came near, nearer than all other pulses, save the one that arrived before the sharp-switch. It passed through the barrier and placed a new chemical at the little thing's feet. It was a sustenance like none that she had ever consumed, but the empty part of her brain knew it and she consumed it quickly.
Later, it seemed like the pulses were sharper, their chemicals and sounds more tightly bound to them. Now she could easily separate them from each other. The sharp-switch also changed. It had a hum and from the hum's pitch, she knew where on her body the sharp-switch would strike. Just like she knew that the unique pulse with the strange sustenance would come again.
Again and again, the pulse passed through the barrier, leaving the sustenance. With each consumption the empty space in her brain filled until one quintant she awoke with new understanding.
The barrier was made of bars that formed a cage. While the bars burned, there were spaces in-between that did not. The sharp-switch was yielded by a pulse that moved the sharp-switch back and forth. One end of the sharp-switch, the part that connected with her skin, was painful. The other end, the part that connected to the pulse, was not. The sharp-switch couldn't pass the bars. Before the pulse could use the sharp-switch, it had to lower the bars of the cage.
The next time the pulse lowered the bars, but before it could use the sharp-switch, the little thing reached out and severed the connection between the sharp-switch's safe end and the pulse.
Oh, what a high-pitched hum the pulse made then. The little-thing could touch the outside shell of the pulse now. It wasn't hard like the bars. It was soft and bendable and so simple to snap apart. And after the snap, there was no pulse. All that was left was the chemical smell of sustenance. She consumed the sustenance. It didn't fill the space in her brain, but it was made of interesting and new chemicals.
With no barrier in front of her, she moved forward, out of the cage. Now she stretched tall and wide like she never could before. She was no longer a little-thing, she was big-thing, larger than any of the small pulses before her. They darted about, colliding with each other and making high-pitched hums. They were quick, but not so quick that she couldn't reach out and snap them. Sustenance fell around her, she would save the consumption for later.
She was looking for one particular pulse, the one that had entered her cage. She found it standing still, waiting. The large thing climbed over the sustenance and made her way towards the pulse.
The pulse made clicks and whistles that meant nothing to the big-thing. The pulse held out a long narrow object that hummed, but not as the bars or sharp-switch had hummed. Warily, the large thing took the object. And suddenly, all the empty spaces in her brain were filled. They told the big-thing what she must do.
A random pulse raced past her and she reached out to it with the object's sharp end. It poked into the pulse, but did not destroy it. Instead, it pulled back a bit of the pulse into the big-thing.
This bit was as delicate as a single strand of silk but through that connection flowed information. Colors and shapes and sound and vocabulary and ideas penetrated her mind, revealing the world she had lived in but never comprehended. P'Talaquos stood still marveling at it all.
P'Talaquos. It had been her name all along. Now she knew. Now she understood.
"You are a monster," said the pulse who P'Talaquos now recognized as a woman, "and the last of your kind. Your mother, and all the mothers who came before her, your father and all the fathers who came before him, they were all obliterated. Your siblings were struck down before they could crawl out of their hosts. Once your race, the Apocryteans, swarmed across the universe, devouring everything in their path. No one was safe. They lived in terror of your race, passing that fear down generations. They stuck you in a cage to parade about as a safe nightmare, so the masses could laugh and gloat and congratulate themselves for being on the winning side of an ancient war. Can you bring back your race? No, never. But with my help, you can bring back the terror. Would you like that, my monster?"
P'Talaquos heard these words and let out a sound. It was different than the pain sound she made when the sharp-switch hit, or the high whine when she begged for sustenance. This new sound meant yes.
"Yes," she said, using the mouth of the creature she had connected to, "I will be the monster. Show me my enemies and how to destroy them all."
Deep within P'Talaquos a new voice whispered, "No. Stop. This isn't who I am."
He reached deep into his memories. There was the desert at night with a million stars filling the sky. There was the sound of a woman's voice singing. There was the stale odor from his father's cigarettes and the fake flower smelling spray that Mandy tried to cover it up with. There was the movement of his arm, shoulder and leg together the first time he managed to throw Shiro to the ground in the dojo. There was the whoop of happiness he let himself make when he first navigated the Red Lion through the tight space of an asteroid field.
He was Keith Kagone, the Red Paladin. His body was his own again. He felt his fingers and hands and toes and legs and arms and face and lips. Felt the cold metal floor of the ship, the binding on his wrists and ankles and the stench of the aliens and rot. But while it felt marvelous, he knew P'Talaquos was experiencing it through him and he shuddered.
"So quick, so quick," came P'Talaquos's voice in his head, "usually Galra are slower. But you are only part Galra and part … Earthling. I've never processed an Earthling before. Nor a Paladin of Voltron, how delicious an experience this will be."
Keith opened his eyes, already knowing what he would see: an enormous nightmare insect that sent shudders down his spine.
P'Talaquos held the posture of a praying mantis, sporting the armor of a scorpion and the pointed head of a hornet. She had no eyes, just a mass of antennae or whiskers that ran along her face and neck. Her mouth was a hole with some sort of soft membrane cover that fluttered open and close.
Besides her four legs, she had three more appendages that sported crab like pinchers, not hands. In one was a staff with intricate carvings and a sharp point at the end. The part of his brain that was processing P'Talaquos's senses could see a thin bright line extend from the tip of that staff to his neck, just below his ear. Instinctively he shook his head, desperate to snap it.
"That never works," chuckled P'Talaquos's voice, "I've infected so many and no matter how far they run, what medicines they take, the connection remains. Through it I can do this."
Keith felt his neck jerk sideways, straining to stop it. "Strong," observed P'Talaquos, "the best are the ones that try to resist. Soon enough they submit. But look, we've arrived. Home."
Keith felt the ship exit wormhole space. He also felt P'Talaquos's attention shift, felt her consciousness thin. So, he thought, you can't control all of us at once.
"And clever too," the voice was fainter, but still authoritative. "I think you should sleep now." And he did.