**I do not own Voltron: Legendary Defender!
The next quintant was spent completing maintenance on the Castle of Lions. While Coran and Allura focused on rebooting and thoroughly cleansing the ship's systems (again, just to be safe) and transferring the information gathered from Sendak's memories to the Castle's databases for later analysis, the rest of the crew preoccupied themselves with cleaning. Taking a few janitorial drones with them, the group of humans split up into two groups: Pidge, Lance, and Hunk were in charge of tidying up the Green Lion's hangar and disposing of the Galran crystal as well as fixing the food goo machine, leaving Mari, Keith, and Shiro to tackle the laundry room and the swampy hallway.
Mari wrung out the soapy water from her mop into a bucket and paused as one of the cleaning drones zipped by to empty it. The little robot nimbly scooped up the pail of water, moving carefully so as not to spill it, and scurried off once more to dump its contents. The drones had certainly been making their chore go much faster than if she, Shiro, and Keith had been working by themselves. They were pitching in any way that they could, pushing the washing machines back into alignment against the wall, reattaching the washer lids, reorganizing the shelves, fixing the hangars, soaking up the excess water, and emptying the buckets. There were even a few that had started her laundry loads from yesterday, making sure that her clothes definitely got clean this time around.
Those things sure are helpful, Mari mused, slapping the mop back down on floor to sop up more water. Something bumped against her foot and she glanced down in surprise to see one of the circular drones gliding slowly across the floor like a little water-sucking Roomba. And sitting on top of it were the space mice, each of them squeaking happily as they mooched a free ride.
"Hey, you four could help, you know," she scoldingly teased and they chirped indignantly before the drone skated away. From the other end of the hall, Keith rolled his eyes and leaned against his own mop to stare at her with narrowed eyes.
"They're mice. What help are they going to be in cleaning all this up?" he said, gesturing to what remained of the flooded floors and causing Mari to frown.
"I was kidding, obviously," she muttered, turning her back to him as she continued to work. An almost inaudible huff of annoyance escaped his lips seconds later and she bristled. "You don't have to help me, you know," she said, pausing again to place one hand on her hip and glare at him.
"Well I'm not just going to sit around and do nothing while everyone else is working," he countered. "I'm not Lance."
Mari couldn't help but crack a smile at that one, and from inside the laundry room they could hear Shiro's sigh of disapproval, but he said nothing.
"What're you saying about me, Mullet?"
"Oh, speak of the devil," Mari mumbled as Lance turned the corner, a mop gripped in his hands and a scowl on his face.
"Nothing," Keith replied casually. "What are you even doing here? I thought you were helping Hunk and Pidge."
"Well I was until they started talking about a bunch of sciencey techy stuff. And I was getting bored so I thought I'd come help you guys," he admitted with a shrug. Then a wide grin spread across his face and he waved his mop at the two of them as he added, "Heh, I'm going to mop the floor with you two!"
He looked at the duo expectantly but Keith remained unfazed and Mari just stared at him, clearly unamused. "Ha ha so punny," she remarked dryly just as Shiro called out from the laundry room, "Not everything has to be a competition, Lance."
"Oh I know, I know. I'm just saying I could totally wipe the floor with you and Keith, both literally and figuratively," he said lightly, a sly smile playing on his lips.
"What, you mean like in a sparring match or something?" Mari raised a quizzical eyebrow at him.
"Oh yeah!" he grinned and nodded at her in confirmation.
"Are you joking?" Keith snorted under his breath and Lance whirled on him, his eyebrows furrowed in irritation.
"Hey, I've been training a lot lately! I'm pretty confident that I could take you two down in a heartbeat in a fight," he quickly defended.
"Yeah, maybe as a sniper," Mari said. "But definitely not at close range."
"Oh yeah? You wanna test out that theory on the training deck?" he challenged, beginning to poke her playfully in the ribs. "Let's go, Mari, just you and me! Mano a mano!"
"Lance, you don't want to egg her on," Shiro warned, poking his head out of the laundry room to give him a discouraging look.
"Yeah, don't start a fight you're going to lose," Keith added with a slight smirk.
"Oh come on!" Lance huffed. "I will not—WAAAHH!"
In one swift movement, Mari had nimbly used her mop to sweep Lance's feet out from under him. He fell on his butt with a solid splat and his cleaning tool flew out of his hands before it clattered to the wet floor next to him.
"Owww…" he whined before glowering up at Mari. "What the heck, man!…Woman!"
"I was just saving us time," she shrugged innocently, a small smile forming on her lips. "See? Now we know that you'd absolutely lose against me, at least."
"We already knew he would though," Keith noted and Lance glared daggers at him.
"No, no! I just wasn't ready!" the Blue Paladin insisted, standing slowly and wincing as he rubbed his sore behind. "If we were on the training deck using our actual weapons, I'd definitely win."
"You won't be on the training deck in a real battle, Lance," Keith said in all seriousness. "And our bayards might not always be available."
"Yeah. Sometimes you might have to improvise," Mari nodded in agreement.
"What, by using a mop?" Lance scoffed, raising an eyebrow as his picked up his own and leaned on it.
"No, they're right, Lance," Shiro piped up, wiping his hands off with a towel as he emerged from the laundry room. "We can't always rely on our bayards to protect us in a fight. It pays off to be resourceful."
Lance sighed exasperatedly but grumbled out a reluctant "okay" before returning to work.
With the Castle cleaned and back to normal, it was time for the team to make their next plan of action. The following morning, everyone met on the bridge and gathered around Pidge's designated seat as she worked fervently to decode and analyze the pieces of Sendak's memories that had been stored on the ship's computers.
"Somewhere inside Sendak's memories we should be able to find the inside information that gives us the key to take down Zarkon," Allura said, biting her lip anxiously as she watched Pidge with wavering hope in her eyes.
"I know it was my idea to hook up Sendak to a memory extraction unit for interrogation, but…I don't think your father would approve of searching through an enemy's memories," Coran voiced his concerns as he cast her an unsure frown.
"I know," Allura admitted. "But we have to do everything we can to defeat Zarkon."
"Once we learn all his weaknesses, we can drive up to his front door and challenge him to a fight," Lance grinned confidently. "Winner gets the universe."
"Yes, because it is that easy," Mari rolled her eyes and Lance gave her a sour look.
"Would it kill you to have a little faith in us?" he said, tilting his head ever so slightly towards her and raising an eyebrow.
She stared at him for a moment, her expression deadpan and resolute. "I have faith that challenging the final boss head on like that will get us all killed," she provided and Lance scowled.
"Well, she's not wrong…" Hunk agreed hesitantly. "We can't fight Zarkon without some sort of plan. A plan that involves us winning and making it out alive, preferably."
"Precisely why we're doing this," Shiro nodded, gesturing towards their Green Paladin who was still hard at work. "Anything good yet, Pidge?"
"We were only able to salvage bits and pieces," she reported. "I haven't found anything from Sendak's memories that could be of any help to us. Not yet, anyways."
Keith sighed somewhat disappointedly and straightened, letting his arms fall to his sides. "We need something to work with," he said impatiently. "Right now, we don't even have a decent map of the empire."
"Who needs a map?" Lance dismissed him, crossing his arms over his chest. "After ten thousand years of conquering, I could probably fire my bayard at like, any random point in space and hit a Galra ship."
"If we could just find troop locations or supply routes, small targets we could hit-and-run, then we could start to free planets one by one," Shiro frowned slightly as he mulled over this possible plan of action.
"Boring. I want the big kaboom!" Lance exclaimed, curling his hands into fists and striking a pose that made Shiro's frown deepen.
"Zarkon's been building his empire for ten thousand years. We're not going to tear it down overnight with five inexperienced pilots and one support ship. Hitting him where he lives would be a huge mistake," he pointed out bluntly and the Blue Paladin deflated a bit.
"I thought you wanted us to be resourceful," Lance protested. "And the last thing Zarkon would expect is a head-on attack from Voltron itself!"
"I think you're confusing resourcefulness with flat out stupidity, Lance," Mari noted dryly and an angry growl rumbled in the back of Lance's throat as his eyes narrowed at her.
"Are you guys done?" Pidge intervened, casting them an irritated look over shoulder. When neither of them said anything, she turned back to her computer and proceeded, "Okay, I've cross-referenced Sendak's memories with the info I got from the downed ship back on Arus. Most of it was a garbled mess, but one thing kept repeating, something called a 'Universal Station'."
"Universal Station?" Hunk repeated, moving closer to squint at the foreign numbers and text flashing across her screen. "Like, the kind of station that controls the entire universe?"
"Well, we are translating it from Galra, so it could also be 'Galactic Hub'," Pidge said, casually pushing Hunk out of the way so she could look over the translated information once more.
"Or 'Space Base'!" Lance suggested with a sly grin and everyone was silent as they gave him unimpressed looks. "…What?"
Shaking his head slightly at the Blue Paladin's comment, Coran headed over to his own control panel and began to type in commands. "I'm pulling up the location of your Universal Hub Station Base on our screens now," he explained as an unknown area of the universe appeared on the main display. There wasn't much to look at other than three planets of varying sizes and colors. The coordinates of this so-called space base revealed nothing special or suspicious in the slightest with not a single Galran ship or facility in sight.
"So...where is it?" Lance finally asked the question that was on all their minds.
"I don't know," Coran confessed, just as confused as the others. "Our long-range sensors are unable to find anything at those coordinates."
"Maybe he remembered it wrong," Keith shrugged.
"Or maybe we just stumbled across a top-secret base in Sendak's memories," Pidge prompted in all seriousness.
"Only one way to find out," Allura said grimly. "Let's go take a look."
Unable to directly wormhole to the location of the potential Galran hub without revealing the Castle's presence, Allura drove the ship as fast as she dared towards the coordinates. It took at least a varga to reach their destination and as they approached the largest of the three planets, the princess slowly and carefully steered the Castle so they could peek around the massive celestial body.
"We should be close enough to get a good scan, but far enough away to avoid being noticed," she affirmed as she brought the ship to a halt and let it hover just out of range of the planet's gravitational pull. Through the main window, the hidden Galran base came into view, the facility having been built into a giant chunk of space rock that sat directly in the center of the three planets.
"There it is," Shiro said in mild astonishment and the others were silent as they stared at the base with varying levels of awe.
"It appears the gravitation between the planets warps the electron emission spectrum enough to keep the facility off the deep space scanners," Coran observed as his computers analyzed the hub.
"So you can only see it if you really know where to look," Pidge mused, tapping her chin thoughtfully.
"This place must handle shipments from all over the Galra Empire," Shiro surmised, taking note of the multiple Galran warships pulling in and out of the loading docks.
"If this is some big airport where shipments come and go, why is it hidden?" Pidge wondered.
"There must be more to this than we're seeing," Shiro concluded.
"Then let's go down there," Mari suggested, gesturing to the bridge doors. "There's no point in just standing around here and staring at it from the outside."
"Agreed," Allura nodded. She immediately highlighted an upper portion of the hub on her screens and enlarged the image for everyone to see. "We'll need to enter here: the central control building."
Keith stiffened and blinked in surprise before turning to face her with a hesitant frown. "I'm sorry, Princess, did you say 'we'?"
"Yes. Mari and I are going with you," Allura confirmed simply as if this were obvious, and she folded her hands in front of her. "I've traveled through the Galra transportation hubs many times with my father before the war began. I know more about them than any of you. And Mari has been training very hard, her combat skills have excelled immensely. It won't hurt to have one more fighter accompany us, especially since we will be entering enemy territory."
"Princess, I'd rather you and Mari stay here," Coran started unsurely and Allura's brow furrowed in dismay.
"I've been left on the Castle for every mission so far," Mari huffed in irritation, her eyes narrowing as she crossed her arms over her chest indignantly. "I'd like some field experience for once, please and thank you."
"This is just an infiltration mission anyways, it shouldn't be too dangerous. We can handle ourselves if we get into trouble," Allura pitched in. "We're a part of this fight against Zarkon as much as anyone. We're going. Does anyone have a problem with that?"
She glanced around the room, daring someone to say otherwise. But Pidge, Hunk, Lance, and Keith remained silent, unwilling to meet her icy stare and opting to look elsewhere.
"Uh…" Coran whimpered fretfully and he looked desperately to Shiro for backup.
Shiro's dark eyes flicked to Allura and then to Mari. They lingered on her for a moment and she clenched her teeth as she stared back at him, her gaze unwavering as she silently pleaded for him to let her and the princess go with them.
Finally, Shiro sighed and flashed her a small and relenting smile before turning to Coran with a carefree shrug. "Fine. Suit up, everyone."
Their plan to infiltrate the Galran base was simple: everyone would pile into the Green Lion—the only lion equipped with cloaking thanks to Pidge's ingenuity—and they'd fly around the dark side of the nearest planet while Coran flooded the base's short-range sensors with a radiation burst, allowing them to remain undetected as they approached from behind. But once they got inside the hub…well, they would just have to wing it from there.
The Green Lion landed without issue on the rugged landscape behind the central control station and moving as quietly as a space mouse, everyone disembarked, keeping low to the ground as they hurried across the dusty space rock.
"Stay close to me." Shiro had barely uttered the order, but it had been loud enough to be heard by his intended listener. Mari raised an incredulous eyebrow at him and she opened her mouth, fully ready to tell him she wasn't a baby and could take care of herself blah, blah, blah. But his jaw was set and the worry in his eyes mixed with the absolute solemnity of his expression made her hesitate and she zipped her lips, opting to nod silently in understanding. This mission was fairly low-stakes and involved intel-gathering only, but it was her first one. She had to be careful and take her brother's instructions seriously lest he decide to exclude her from any future missions. No, she couldn't afford to screw up this time.
With the loading dock void of any battle cruisers and with a handful of sentries scattered about, the team snuck into the main building through an unguarded door using Shiro's Galran prosthetic. Pidge pulled up the blueprints of the facility they had acquired from the Castle's scans and they quickly made their way to the central control room where Shiro promptly knocked out the only Galran on duty while Lance and Hunk took out the remaining two sentries. Then Pidge sat in front of the control panels and got straight to work as she and Hunk began hooking up her laptop to the base's computer systems.
"How's it look out there?" Shiro asked Keith and Lance who were on watch.
"All clear," Keith answered from his side of the room.
"Same here," Lance confirmed as he continued to peer out the windows.
"This shouldn't take too long," Hunk announced as he plugged in one final cord. He stood up and stepped away from the panel, relocating himself to sit on the broken sentry that laid on the floor next to Lance.
"We'll have all the information we need in a few minutes," Pidge said, typing commands into her laptop as a series of images and codes popped up on screen. "Hunk and I have made some improvements since the last time I tried to download Galra info. We should get a nice, clean translation immediately. Hunk had a great idea about how to do it."
"Yeah, yeah, yeah," Hunk grinned excitedly. "Do you guys remember when we studied algorithms at the Garrison, and Mr. York told us that joke about the ghost learning symbolic logic and innumerably infinite sets?"
"Boring!" Lance groaned.
"Right, yeah, totally, it was boring," Hunk easily brushed off the Blue Paladin's disinterest before continuing. "Anyway, the joke goes—"
"Hey, guys, sorry to interrupt, but I think we got company," Keith quickly intervened and everyone crouched down as a dark shadow loomed over them from the exterior of the building. Another battle cruiser had approached the hub and it was docking right in front of them.
"Should we leave?" Mari whispered as she and the others hunched around Pidge.
"Not yet. We just need a few more seconds," Pidge muttered, her fingers flying even faster across her keyboard.
"Stay low," Shiro instructed them. "We need this intel."
Suddenly the control panel blinked and beeped with an incoming message and Pidge gasped. Everyone quickly ducked out of the line of sight just as a flesh and blood Galran soldier popped up on screen and looked around the empty control room expectantly.
"He's still looking," Lance hissed after a few tension filled ticks. "I think he's waiting for a signal or something."
"I got it," Hunk assured them quietly and he crawled out from his hiding spot under the control panel, dragging one of the broken sentries with him. Grunting softly, he propped the dead robot up in front of the screen and maneuvered it like a puppet, making it give the confused officer a wave and then a thumbs up to confirm the ship's entry. Hesitating for only a moment, the Galran gave the sentry a funny look before nodding in confirmation and ending the transmission.
"Nice job, Hunk," Lance complimented as everyone squirmed out from under the panel.
"Thanks," the Yellow Paladin beamed and the two exchanged a high-five, with Hunk using the sentry's broken arm.
"See, now that's being resourceful," Mari said, giving Lance a pointed look as she jabbed a thumb towards Hunk.
"You're not gonna let this resourceful thing go, are you?" he scowled back and she shook her head no.
"Not until you do something clever like that."
"You shouldn't expect so much from him, Mari," Pidge chimed in with a huff of laughter, her eyes still glued to her screen and her fingers never faltering in their work. "Or rather, you can't expect that much from him."
"Hey!" Lance began indignantly, but everyone quickly turned to shush him as a reminder to keep his voice down.
"Okay, download complete," Pidge continued, steering them back on track and ignoring Lance's grumbles of offense behind her.
"What's it say?" Keith asked.
"Nothing. This place doesn't have any useful information," she replied, not even trying to hide the dismay in her voice. "Just a schedule of the ships coming in and out."
"Well, I guess this mission was a bust," Lance sighed. "But hey, at least you got to get out in the field for once." He gave Mari a teasing smile and a small nudge in the ribs and she gave him a dry look in response.
Stifling a sigh of disappointment, Shiro straightened and turned to the others. "Let's get back to the Castle," he decided, but Allura was quick to stop everyone from retreating.
"Hold on. Pidge, do you know where that ship is headed?" she asked, pointing to the cruiser outside that had just landed.
"Um…It looks like it's scheduled to be here for about a half an hour, then head off to Central Command," Pidge relayed as she sifted through the newly obtained and translated files.
"That's where they have the information we need," Allura concluded. "I'm going to sneak aboard that ship and get it for us."
"What?" Lance exclaimed incredulously. "No way!"
"Are you sure that's a good idea?" Mari raised an uncertain eyebrow at the princess.
"How would you even get in?" Keith questioned.
"I'll be fine," Allura tried to reassure them. "And I'm going to walk right through the front."
Taking a step back from them, the princess took off her helmet and closed her eyes in concentration as every inch of her normally mocha colored skin took on a lavender hue and she grew at least a foot in height. When she was finished, she was towering over all of them with a pleased smile on her face.
"Wow," Mari blinked twice in surprise as she took in Allura's new appearance. "That's awesome!"
"Thank you," the princess beamed proudly.
"How the heck did you do that?" Hunk asked.
"The Alteans are a chameleon-like people who can blend in with the local populations," she explained. "It's the ability that's made us great explorers and diplomats throughout our history."
"So, can you turn into, like, a balloon?" Lance blurted out curiously.
"How many different colors can you be at once?" Pidge chimed in.
"Aren't you afraid you'll rip your pants?" Hunk wondered.
Allura hesitated for a moment, her expression one of slight confusion as she pondered how to answer their blunt inquires. Finally she replied, "No, just one at a time, and I will need a change of costume." Then nodding to the unconscious Galran soldier in the corner she added, "I can use his uniform as a disguise."
"I can't let you go in there alone," Shiro intervened before she could get ahead of herself, and Allura visibly bristled
"Excuse me? I do not need your permission," she scoffed and her eyes narrowed dangerously as she stared him down. The others looked to the Black Paladin curiously, waiting to see how he responded and mentally preparing themselves for the argument of a lifetime between their noble leader and their stubborn princess.
"It's too dangerous," Shiro stated firmly, his expression remaining unfazed by the daggers Allura's fierce gaze was sending his way. "I'm going in with you."
"You will stick out like a Choferiak's nose," she rebutted in disapproval.
"You're going to need that nose, Princess," Pidge took the opportunity to back up their leader. She lifted up his false arm and waved it at Allura. "Shiro's hand is made from Galra tech. It's the only thing we have that will allow us to interface with their systems and gather intel, remember? I can monitor the download remotely from here."
Allura's frown deepened and she looked like she wanted to protest more, but she ultimately sighed and relented, "Fine, you can come."
"Uh, you guys better hurry up if you want to get on and off before the ship leaves for Zarkon central," Hunk warned, peering out the window nervously at the Galran ship.
"How are you going to get Shiro on board?" Keith asked and Allura and Shiro exchanged a hesitant look that implied they hadn't thought that part through yet.
The group was quiet for a moment as they individually brainstormed yet another infiltration plan. Suddenly, Lance brightened and their silence was broken as he snapped his fingers.
"I've got it!" he announced and before anyone could question him, he hurried out the door and disappeared down the hall. A few ticks later, he returned with a hovering cargo bin in tow.
"Where'd you find that?" Mari asked, tilting her head towards the crate as he brought it further into the room.
"Saw it sitting against the wall on the way in," he explained, an excited grin spreading across his features. "Shiro can hide in here and Allura can bring him on board."
"This is a transportation hub, so it's not likely to arouse suspicion," Pidge nodded slowly in approval. "Lance, that was actually surprisingly ingenious of you."
The Blue Paladin beamed triumphantly. "I know right?" he gushed with a slight laugh before giving Mari a sly look. "See, I can be resourceful, huh?"
She rolled her eyes at him but didn't try to hide her smile as she drawled lightly, "Okay, I gotta admit that was good thinking of you."
"Nice work, Lance," Shiro agreed, casting a small nod his way. Then addressing the team as a whole, he said, "All right guys, let's get to work."
**Please feel free to leave a comment/review down below! They are much appreciated & encourage me to keep writing this fic :D (Oh, and the more comments/reviews I get for this chapter, the sooner I'll upload the next one, which has already been written out and edited, I might add ;D ).
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