Hunk's hands shook where they gripped the handles of his cannon. He hefted it, squinted, tried to will himself to fire at the two enemy soldiers charging down the hallway toward them.

Hesitated.

Another weapon barked and two bolts of blue plasma streaked past him. One took the first attacker in the neck, the other his companion in the jaw, painting the hallway in twin sprays of crimson as they toppled forward under their own momentum to sprawl across the ground like puppets with their strings cut, unmoving in spreading pools of their own blood.

Hunk averted his gaze and tried not to be sick.

Looking away from their two latest kills had the unfortunate side-effect of resulting in accidental eye-contact with one of his teammates. The reptiloid shot him a frankly disgusted look for his reluctance before pointedly turning away and striding ahead down the hallway without so much as flinching when their boots splashed more flecks of blood onto the purple armor of the dead soldiers. The rest of their team, two Galra and two Balmerans, fell in behind the Velkwin easily, leaving the Yellow Paladin to bring up the rear as he tried very hard not to look down at the bodies.

He couldn't do this. Coming on this mission was a mistake. The moment Matt had said there would probably be a higher ratio of live soldiers to robotic sentries than they normally encountered, he should have insisted on being put up above in Yellow instead of on a ground team. Up there he could have been some use, instead of being down here doing nothing but holding his group back.

"Keep up, Paladin!" One of the Galra hissed over his shoulder and he hastily lengthened his stride to keep close behind the others. They'd already completed two of their three targets and were nearly at the last of their objectives. He couldn't wait until they could get out of here. Up ahead, the Velkwin peered around a corner and signalled a halt. Rapid handsigns indicated six enemies on the left side of the intersection, and designated the Galra and one of the Balmerans to take them out with their rifles. Hunk knew they should have been calling on him and his cannon as well, but they seemed to have given up on relying on him to take down soldiers in their way.

Not that he could blame them. His hesitations when faced with living beings as targets had already cost them a couple of minor injuries, and guilt flared in his chest whenever he looked at their tech's bleeding ear, but he still hadn't managed to fire a single shot so far during this mission.

It was one thing to shoot down robotic sentries. He could do that without flinching, leave dozens of them in sparking piles behind him when ship infiltrations went south. It didn't bother him. They weren't alive. But there weren't any sentries here, just live soldiers. Living, thinking beings with hopes and fears and dreams, who weren't necessarily evil, just doing their jobs. Even though these soldiers were their enemies, and would have killed him without a second though, he couldn't quite bring himself to pull the trigger on them. Even watching his temporary teammates take their targets down twisted his stomach ten times worse than any of Lance's maneuvers in the Garrison's simulators.

The shooting stopped and they moved off again, moving swiftly through two more crossroads before they reached their destination. The tech slipped inside, accompanied by the Velkwin, while the others took up posts outside the door. Hunk took the last place in the line, heaving a sigh. Just a few more minutes and then they could get out of here.

A crackle of static from his helmet distracted him. For a moment he thought he heard one of his teammates-maybe Keith?-calling out, but there was too much interference and the static vanished as quickly as it had come. Hunk tapped at the helmet uncertainly. He'd have to take a look at it when they got back, maybe something had been damaged when he'd attempted to spar with Ennan and ended up concussed right through the layer of protection. It had been working fine so far, but you never knew, and the last thing he needed was a mechanical failure at a critical moment.

"Something wrong?" One of the Balmerans was looking over at him curiously.

Hunk frowned and shook his head. "Just some, uh, interference on my coms. It might need some repairs, or there might be something in the walls messing with it. I dunno."

"Probably the latter." The other Balmeran put in, adjusting their grip on their rifle. "The blueprints indicated a type of metal that has shielding properties. Keeps us from using coms to coordinate our assaults, but also keeps the soldiers from calling for backup."

"Really?" Hunk blinked. "I guess that makes sense, it would keep intruders from linking wirelessly from one system to the next, so I guess the advantages to the Empire outweigh the disadvantages. Explains the lack of robotic sentries, too, no way to transmit the control signal." Maybe he should try to get a sample of the material, it could be useful. For what he wasn't quite sure yet, but if he couldn't think of something Pidge definitely would.

The door whooshing open between the two Balmerans refocused his attention. The Velkwin stepped out and set off without a word, while the Galra technician fell into the middle of the group, slipping the precious datapad under the chest plate of their armor to keep it safe. Hunk sighed with relief. Time to get out of here. Hopefully without having to kill any more soldiers on the way. He took up position at the rear of the group, matching his stride to those of the taller aliens.

The tense silence was broken abruptly as they passed through an intersection, a loud burst of static in his ears startling an exclamation from him. One of the others tried to ask him a question but he waved them silent, listening hard.

"D-...-omeo-...-r me!"

"Keith!" Hunk hastily fiddled with the controls of his coms. "Keith, buddy, come in, what's wrong?" The static had cut out most of the words, but there'd been no mistaking the panic in the red paladin's tone, all the more alarming for the fact that he'd never heard him sound like that before. A stressed-out Keith normally sounded angry, not scared. There was another crackle of static before the connection went dead, and the yellow paladin swore, tapping the controls. "My friends are in trouble." Hunk said bluntly, directing his words to the Velkwin's questioning expression. "I need to help them." Interference or no interference, anything that could make Keith sound like that had to be bad news.

There was a moment's whispered discussion amongst the others, before the large reptiloid nodded. "Very well. We got this far without your assistance, I'm sure we can make it back to the transports just fine without you." With that cutting remark the others turned back to continue toward the exit. Only the two Balmerans glanced over their shoulders, a pair of silent nods wishing him good luck.

He took a deep breath, shaking off the insult, and studied his surroundings. The walls interfered with his coms. He needed to get closer to where Keith was if he was going to be able to hear him clearly. Pulling up his copy of the blueprints, he checked his position against the area where he knew Keith and Pidge's group was assigned. They should be somewhere to his left, which explained why he'd managed to get a brief signal in the intersection where there were fewer walls in the way. Squaring his shoulders, the yellow paladin set off in that direction.

Periodically he called into his coms, trying to reach his teammates. A few times he got flickers of static, but no more words. Checking around a corner, he grimaced as he spotted a patrol nearby. He'd have to backtrack to get around them. Two corridors later, he found his way blocked again, and made a noise of frustration as he detoured further.

"-ge, it's okay."

Worry turned to hope at the first crackle of static, loud like it had been when he first heard Keith's voice, then to dread at the tone the red paladin was using now. The other teen's voice was cracking and wet-sounding, as though he was speaking through tears. And was that the end of Pidge's name he'd been saying? "Keith, buddy, can you hear me? It's Hunk!" He called quietly, desperately hoping this time the signal wouldn't fade.

"Hunk?" No mistaking the relief in Keith's tone, or the anxiety. "Hunk, we need help, hurry, please!"

"I'm on my way, Keith, just hang in there. Where are you? What happened?" Checking around the corners, he set off at a steady jog forward again.

"I don't know, a maintenance closet somewhere. We got attacked, had to run, and I lost track of the turns. Our group's dead, there's patrols looking for us, and Pidge is hurt. Bad. Hurry."

The bottom seemed to drop out of Hunk's stomach. Keith, master of the downplayed injury, saying that Pidge was badly hurt? "How bad is bad, Keith? I'm coming as fast as I can, but I keep having to detour to get around patrols." Nevermind that he didn't know how he was supposed to find them if the red paladin didn't even know where he was in this maze. His stomach was tying itself in knots of worry as he tried to think of a solution to this mess.

There was a staticy pause before Keith spoke again, voice breaking. "...Really bad. A shot took a chunk out of her side when we were running, she's already lost way too much blood. She's conscious still, but I don't think she'll stay that way much longer. Hunk, I know you don't like shooting live soldiers, but detouring will take too damn long!"

Even as he said it, Hunk found himself boxed in once more, patrols of enemy soldiers between him and his friends. "Keith, c'mon, there has to be some way I can get through, just give me a minute." He thought of the trail of bloody bodies his group had left behind on this mission and gagged in spite of himself. He couldn't do this. He couldn't deliberately kill people face to face.

"Hunk, we don't have time! If we don't get her to a pod fast, Pidge is going to die. Do you understand me?! I don't-I can't-" He broke off suddenly with a startled exclamation, prompting Hunk to call his name in alarm. After a moment, Keith's voice returned, giving a slightly hysterical laugh. "I don't believe it. She did it."

"Did what?"

"Her aspect. Curiosity and courage unlock healing touch, remember? The wound's partly closed now. But it's still bleeding, and she's passed out and barely breathing. Hunk, please. You've gotta try. For Pidge. She'll never make it otherwise." Keith pleaded. In all the time he'd known him, Hunk had never heard him this emotional, this desperate. It was a side of the normally withdrawn Keith he'd never seen before, and it frightened him to the core as it drove home how truly critical the situation was.

The yellow paladin closed his eyes and leaned against the wall, taking a deep breath, then activated his bayard and peered around the corner at the closest group of soldiers, three of them. The cannon was a heavy weight in his hands. If he fired it, those three soldiers would die. If he didn't, Pidge would. His friend, someone he'd come to see as a second sister. He couldn't bear to lose her, but the longer he took to reach her, the greater the odds she wouldn't live long enough to make it to the safety of a healing pod.

...If she died, what would happen to the Green Lion? The two time-travellers had said Allura would be able to be a back-up pilot, but she would never be a proper fit for any of the Lions. It would impair their ability to fight, to form Voltron. How many lives would that cost? A minute's difference in battle meant thousands, maybe millions of lives saved or lost. Lives that were dependent on Voltron having true paladins in the cockpits. It wasn't just Pidge's life at stake, although hers was the one that weighed most heavily in his heart no matter what his duty to the rest of the universe as a paladin.

Hunk closed his eyes again, then opened them. He tightened his grip on the handles, and straightened, muscles coiling. "For Pidge." He whispered. For Pidge, and all those Pidge would protect in the years to come.

Then he moved, whipping around the corner and opening fire on the soldiers, his cannon roaring burning energy at them before they could even react. Then they were down, boneless bloody heaps spread across the ground and he was past them, moving at a dead run towards the far side of the compound with his gaze locked resolutely on the hallways in front of him.

As he moved, the world seemed to shift slightly. Nothing changed that he could see, but he knew, somehow, in a way he lacked the words to describe, that there was another group of four soldiers two cross-corridors ahead and one to the left, that there was a squad of six five corridors straight back and several other groups within ten corridors of his forward path, that his infiltration team-two Galra, two Balmerans, one Velkwin-were the last group out from this floor and were nearly at the stairs, and that there was one Human and one half-Human, half-Galra, the former so weak he could barely feel their presence at all, fifteen corridors ahead and three to the left.

Keith and Pidge.

Yellow roared in his head as he ran, opening fire at any soldier who attempted to intercept him. He recognized now, what he'd been trying so hard to ignore before. That this was a war, and people were going to die no matter what on both sides of the conflict. No matter how much he wished there didn't have to to be death, not everyone who deserved to live could be saved. But it was his duty as a paladin to try to control who died, and how many. Each of the soldiers he killed now might mean a million lives saved in the next year by Voltron, by the Green Lion, by Pidge. And he would choose that million innocent lives every time.

"I'm on my way, Keith, almost there. Just hang on." He panted into the coms as he swung around the last corner with his finger already on the trigger and blasted the large patrol examining a spatter of blood droplets scattered across the floor. Three shots cleared his path and he jumped over the broken bodies that had once been soldiers with a suppressed shudder, heading for the door partway down that he knew concealed his friends. Pulling to a stop, he dismissed his bayard and pulled the door open with fumbling fingers.

Nothing could have prepared him for the sight that met his eyes. In the light that fell into the small space through the open doorway, Keith stared up at him with wide eyes that were rimmed in red, tears streaking his cheeks in mute testament to his despair at his inability to help their friend. One shaking hand held his bayard in a defensive position, ready to attack the intruder, while the other rested carefully on Pidge's messy mop of ginger hair in silent comfort. The injured green paladin was stretched across the floor of the closet, her head in Keith's lap and looking much too pale and tinier than Hunk had ever imagined she could be. Bloody fingerprints mixed with tears on her cheeks, and he could easily see the blood pooling on the floor around the wad of fabric that her limp hand still held to her side. She was so still that for one terrifying moment he thought he was too late. Then he caught the slight rise of her chest-too slight, she was fading too quickly-and he could breathe again.

Keith uncoiled from his defensive posture as soon as he realized who it was who had entered, bayard dropping to his side as his breath hitched in a hoarse sob of relief. "Hunk. H-How did you find us?"

"I'll explain later, buddy." Hunk promised. Once he knew the explanation himself. "Let's take care of Pidge first. Can you carry her and still keep up with me?" He asked anxiously. If Hunk had to carry her, that meant close-quarters fighting all the way out, multiplying the likelihood of one of them getting badly hurt. He sighed in relief as the red paladin immediately gave a sharp nod. Together they gently slipped Pidge's helmet back on as a precaution before arranging her carefully in Keith's arms. Had their youngest member always been so small, so fragile? God, she was only fifteen, she shouldn't be out here fighting for her life in an alien military base. But their green paladin had always been a driven person, ignoring the potential consequences to herself in her pursuit of her goals, and once she knew her missing family were out here no force on Earth or off of it would have ever been enough to keep her feet on the ground. All they could do now was try to get her out of here alive.

Once Keith had a secure hold on Pidge, Hunk moved back to the door and peered around the edge into the corridor. The same strange sense that had guided him to his friends' hiding place told him that there was another patrol headed their way, so they needed to get moving. "Come on. Stay close and follow me." He ordered quietly, reactivating his bayard and setting off at a steady lope. A glance back over his shoulder confirmed that Keith was keeping up easily, Pidge's tiny form not seeming to weigh him down in the slightest.

As they ran, the yellow paladin reached out with this new life-sense-it had to be an aspect, that's the only explanation he could think of, but he'd figure it out later, right now getting out of here was what mattered-using it to guide their path and anticipate threats. Two Galra soldiers on the right up ahead, out of sight around a corner. He turned and fired as he moved into the intersection of the corridors, and they vanished from his ability to sense them as they dropped into unmoving heaps. Keep moving. His teammates were long gone, but he remembered where they'd been relative to where he was now and headed that direction to get to the stairs. Pidge was so faint behind him, almost indistinguishable against Keith if not for their differing species. They had to hurry.

He took out three more patrols on their sprint to the stairs. Hunk could feel Keith's eyes on the back of his head each time he opened fire on living soldiers without so much as flinching, but explanations would have to wait. Up the stairs, moving a little more slowly, and out onto the main level of the base they had come through originally. They came out of the stairwell with Hunk's cannon blazing at the dozen soldiers he knew were waiting for them and took them by surprise before they could even raise their guns.

The walls and floors on this level were bloodier and lined with still forms in purple and black Empire armor, a testament to the rebels that had had to pass through to get out with the precious data they'd acquired. He stretched his senses out as far as they would go, but couldn't sense anything but Galra. They were the last ones to leave.

Several more times, soldiers blocked their way, and each time Hunk cleared the path. One life for a million, he reminded himself with each shot. Their lives for Pidge's. Then they were out of the base and sprinting for the Lions. Green greeted them with a shriek of relief from close by where her claws had left deep gouges in the rock in her efforts to reach her paladin, and Red and Yellow met them halfway with their ramps already dropped in response to their paladins' distress. Hunk heard Shiro yelling, asking questions, but they were running out of time.

"Go!" He ordered, shoving Keith toward Red. He didn't see any of the Icebringers standing around, Shiro and Lance must have already loaded them into the Lions for the return journey. "We'll cover you!" Keith nodded, disappearing up his Lion's ramp, which snapped shut behind him. Hunk sprinted into Yellow's waiting airlock and threw himself into the pilot seat, seeing Red launching herself skyward as his screens activated with Green as close on her tail as the slower Lion could manage.

Out here, he could feel the assorted lives crammed into Yellow's cargo hold, could feel Black and Blue close by with their similar payloads and their Human pilots. Red was a blur streaking away from them under full power with two lives, one strong and one so terrifyingly faint, and Green not far behind her. As Yellow soared upwards with as much speed as his thrusters could provide, Hunk could sense the chaos that was the battle around them, Galra soldiers mixed with robotic sentries mixed with the thousands of species of the Icebringers, and the huge deposits of life that were the ships on either side of the fight.

It was overwhelming and yet not at the same time. To his eyes the battle was a confusing blur of thousands of ships weaving around each other too fast for his eyes to follow and further obscured by a blizzard of laser fire. It only took moments for Red and Green to vanish from sight. But this...whatever it was could easily follow the Red Lion's upward path toward the far-distant Castle of Lions. And it could see the thick cluster of Empire fighters headed right for them as she streaked through the center of the battlefield.

Yellow roared and Hunk didn't hesitate. He punched up the controls for the mouth cannon and let loose a massive blast toward the attacking ships that ripped a hole through their ranks, then a second that finished off most of that cluster. Then Red was through the worst of the chaos, her ion boosters giving her speed that no Empire ship could ever hope to match, and the yellow paladin turned his attention to getting himself and his other two teammates home safely.

The sense was a godsend, allowing him to feel the enemy ships coming before they emerged from the crush of battle to open fire on them. The first time he ordered Shiro to open fire on his three o'clock, he was met with confused hesitation and questions-but only for a moment before the dozen fighters emerged from the shadow of a debris cloud with their guns blazing as they dove toward the Black Lion. Shiro stayed silent after that, and followed Hunk's instructions to protect himself. Lance started to speak, once, then cut himself off before Hunk could even begin to guess what he might have been trying to ask. From the tone, however, he suspected his friend was wondering about Pidge. He knew the other two would have seen her cradled in Keith's arms as they made their mad dash for the Lions.

The moment Yellow's claws hit the hangar floor, the call was already going out over the coms for the resistance forces to retreat. Reinforcements had been sighted and would be here within minutes. It took only moments for the Alteans standing by at the teleduv controls on each ship to power up, and the enemy reinforcements were still hot spots of life on the far edge of Hunk's ability to sense them by the time the view outside the hangar changed from distant stars and retreating Icebringer fighters to the swirling indigo of a wormhole.

Hunk sagged in his chair, pulling his helmet off and wiping the sweat from his forehead with the back of his hand. They had made it. Or at least, he and Shiro and Lance and Keith had. Without thinking, he reached out again, mentally searching for Human life signs in the hangar amid the press of bodies just starting to leave the Lions. He easily found one...two...three...and after a few more seconds' searching, four. Shiro, Lance, Kurogane, and Alejandro. He allowed himself a sigh of relief at that. Those two had lost enough without one of them losing the other as well.

With that sharp reminder, he reached deeper into the Castle, looking for the signatures of the medics who had been brought over for the fight to be ready to treat the non-critical injuries among the infiltration teams. In the nearly-empty ship, they were easy to sense and he found them almost at once. And off to one side of them, an Altean that must have been Coran, and a full and half-Human close together. Keith and Matt.

For a brief moment, his heart seemed to seize up in his chest as he tried and failed to sense the weak, flickering lifesign that had been Pidge as he'd last sensed her. No. Please no. They couldn't have been too late. They couldn't have lost her.

Then he felt it, a third signature, so faint that it was nearly eclipsed by Keith and Matt right beside it. But it was there, and slowly, almost imperceptibly, it was stabilizing.

A sob tore itself from Hunk's throat and he buried his face in his hands. She was okay. She was going to make it. The sight of her on the floor of the maintenance closet burned behind his eyelids. She'd looked so small and so pale, with blood standing out in vibrant streaks on her skin...he didn't think he'd ever forget it, no matter how hard he tried. Tears rushed down his cheeks as his chest heaved painfully with the force of his sobs. He wasn't even sure why he was crying, knowing that she was safe, only that he couldn't stop, could barely breath as he gasped for air between ragged cries. Yellow was rumbling in response to his distress, trying to calm him, but he could barely feel the Lion's touch in his spinning head.

Unexpectedly, gentle hands wrapped around his and pulled them away from his face, but tears blurred his vision too much for him to make out more than a dark shape in front of him and if they were speaking, his pulse was roaring too loudly in his ears for him to make out the words. Then the same hands were quickly tugging off the chest plate of his armor to make it easier for him to breathe before one wrapped around him to rub slow, steady circles on his back, while the other ran long fingers through his sweat-damp hair. He buried his face gratefully into the person's shoulder, clutching at their clothes desperately as he fought for control over his mind and body and let himself be gently rocked in their arms.

He wasn't sure how long it took for the buzzing in his ears to subside enough for him to recognize the sound of someone singing softly in his ear. Lance. The Cuban was singing in flowing Spanish, a tune that he'd mentioned once he would often use to help his younger siblings or cousins when they were upset or scared or sick, and that he'd used to help Hunk a couple of times both back at the Garrison and out here in space when things got to be too much and breathing exercises weren't helping enough. His familiar voice was immensely comforting as the blue paladin slowly brought Hunk out of his breakdown.

If Lance noticed that Hunk was now aware of his presence, he gave no sign of it, continuing to rock the yellow paladin gently as the words rolled easily off his tongue. Hunk closed his eyes again and focused on pacing his breathing to the rise and fall of the song the way Lance had showed him the first time he'd done this. Little by little the full-body trembles reduced to a slight shaking in his hands and the ringing in his ears faded away to nothing. Even his breathing had mostly evened out by the time the blue paladin finally stopped singing, easing back a bit to regard him worriedly. "Better?"

"...Yeah." Better. Not good, not by a long shot, but better than he had been before.

"Good." Lance's relieved smile didn't quite hide the creases of anxiety around his blue eyes, or the restless fidgeting of his hands adjusting his armor once he finally pulled back from the embrace. "You okay to go see Pidge?"

Hunk drew in a shaky breath. That sense, whatever it had been, it seemed to have finally stopped, had told him she was still alive and probably in a healing pod. But he needed to see her with his own eyes, to be sure. "Yes. Please." He whispered.

"Okay. Come on, buddy, let's go." He accepted Lance's help in getting to his feet, still more unsteady than he realized after the way his breakdown had drained him. "The others already went on ahead, but I had a feeling you needed me." The blue paladin slung a supportive arm around his waist, guiding him toward Yellow's ramp with an occasional sideways glance to check that he was still doing alright.

Hunk felt a deep surge of gratitude. "Thanks, man. I did. I couldn't…" He hated breaking down like that, and they could and did go on for hours if no one was there to help him come out of it. That Lance had come to help him even though he must have been worried for Pidge and wanting to reassure himself that she would be alright spoke volumes to what kind of person the blue paladin was, and just how lucky Hunk was to have him as a friend. He took a deep breath. "Thanks."

Lance gave him another small smile as they stepped out onto the hangar floor. "Anytime, buddy. Come on, let's go see how she's doing."