Chapter – 14 Evading Zarkon

I don't own Voltron Legendary Defender. I'm just taking the characters out for a spin.

Allura nearly growled as her face twisted in anger. "Zarkon! How did he find us?"

Keith gazed at her. "That commander must have radioed him from Olkarion."

Shiro turned to face his team. "We need to wormhole now! Everyone to your stations. We've got to put some distance between Zarkon and us. This could be the fight of our lives."

The Castle shook from Galra fighter fire.

Hunk stated the obvious. "That's a lot of fighters."

Shiro stared straight ahead. "Allura, can you evade these fighters? We can't have them following us through the wormhole."

Allura nodded in understanding. "I can try."

As Coran activated the particle barrier, Shiro quickly examined their options. Voltron wasn't an option given his and Zarkon's fight over the Black Lion. "Keith, Lance, Adam, let's lay down some covering fire."

Four defense disks appeared at the rear of the ship that each person operated. Three matched the paladins' colors, while the fourth matched Adam's armor. Shiro and Adam's disks weaved around each other in a ballet of laser fire taking down Galra fighters.

Pidge craned her head as she acted as a spotter. "Lance, incoming twelve o'clock high."

Lance grit his teeth together. "Got it."

Before the Blue Paladin could fire, the red disk slid into the blue zone knocking Lance's disk out of the way. "Hey!"

"Sorry! Gotta be quick!"

Lance slammed his disk into Keith's. "How's that for quick?"

Keith growled. "You…"

The pair slammed their disks into each other.

Shiro released a quick sigh. "Knock it off, you two! Stay in your zones!"

Lance glared at the Red Paladin. "Yeah, Keith!" He glanced at his display. "Hey, you and Adam aren't in your zones."

Adam sighed. His cousin was a test in patience. "That's because Takashi and I are working as a team. Unlike the two of you who seem to make it a personal fight."

Shiro shook his head. "Keep calling out those fighters, Pidge. Hunk, how are the defenses holding?"

Hunk rubbed his eyes. He leaned down to gaze at the screen. "I don't know. Ten percent? Fifteen maybe? Everything's a blur. I have tired eyes!"

Shiro sympathized with the others. He hated that these children were in this situation, but right now, what they needed were hope and courage. "I know we came off an intense battle, but we've got to stay focused until we jump."

Keith asked, "And when is that?"

Coran turned to gaze at them. "They're still too close. We need to gain more speed!"

Allura spoke up. "I've got an idea! Hold on!"

Pidge gasped as she gripped onto her seat as the Castle dove for a nearby moon. "Allura, what are you doing?"

Allura focused on her task. "I'm going to use this moon's gravity to gain speed and put some distance between Zarkon and us."

Coran held tight to his panel as the Castle's speed increased. He turned his head to shout over his shoulder toward the Princess. "We're clear to wormhole!"

Allura closed her eyes and focused. The wormhole appeared in front of the Castle, and the ship flew in.

Lance frowned. "We got away from Zarkon, how come we're still on alert?"

Shiro needed an answer. "Coran, what's going on?"

Coran's response was something no one expected. "Oh, no! Teludav lens malfunction! We're about to exit this wormhole a lot sooner than we planned!"

The wormhole opened, and they appeared in what looked like an ice asteroid field. Lance stared out at it. "Whoa. Where are we? Looks like some iceberg graveyard."

Allura's breath rushed in and out of her body as if she'd run a marathon. "Coran, what's the status?"

Adam turned in his seat. He didn't like how the young woman sounded.

Coran stared down at his panel. "Checking that now. We didn't make it to our exit point, but we're several galaxies from Zarkon's fleet."

Adam kept his attention on Allura as she raised a hand to her head. He rose from his seat and was at her side when she collapsed. He knelt beside her and wrapped an arm around her waist to steady her.

He pulled his scanner out of his pocket and began to scan the princess, but Allura pushed it away. "I'm fine."

Coran stared at her. "Oh, no, you look exhausted." The former royal advisor knelt on her other side. "You must rest. You've been exerting way too much energy." Coran stood. "I'll go check on the main turbine and figure out what's going on." He screamed as he slid across the floor and slammed into the wall face first.

Keith blinked several times as his brain tried to comprehend what happened.

Lance flinched. "Are you all right?"

Coran pushed himself off the wall. "I'm fine. Look, I tell you what, I've probably hit a slippery spot on the ground there." He pointed down at the watery trail. "Someone wipe that up there!"

Allura turned around on her platform but still sat on the metal. "You're sweating. You might have a case of the slipperies."

Coran shook his head as he held up his hands. "What?" he laughed. "No! No, that's an old person virus, and I'm not old. I'm young. Well, young-ish."

Lance frowned. He figured he'd get a straight answer from Coran, so he turned his attention to Allura. "What are the slipperies."

Allura leaned forward, gazing at Coran. "It's a common Altean virus that occurs later, in life. It's not harmful and usually only lasts a couple of days, but it causes one's body to secrete extremely slick fluid."

The Paladins cringed.

Adam shook his head at their reactions. He sighed. "Guys, look, it's not that unusual. Or have you forgotten about how women go through menopause on earth?"

Lance shuddered. "You would have to bring that up. I still haven't forgotten how your mother wanted to kill me."

Adam barked out a sharp laugh. "She wouldn't have if you didn't steal the candy that my dad bought her."

Lance placed his hands on his hips. "I was hungry."

Adam glared back at him. "You have a death wish."

Coran frowned at Adam and Lance. "That sounds like a strange thing for the females of your planet to go through. But it's a good thing I don't have the slipperies."

Allura smiled at the royal advisor. "Coran, it's nothing to be embarrassed about."

Coran glared back at her. "I'm not embarrassed because I don't have it!" He turned to walk away but didn't move because of the pool of sweat under his feet. "And now, I'm going to leave because I've got to fix the main turbine!" He increased his speed until he fell on his behind and slid forward. "Quiznack!" he shouted as he went sliding down the hall.

Shiro now had to decide what to do next. He knew his team was tired, but they still had things to focus on. "All right. Since Zarkon has no idea where we are, this is the perfect time to focus on our next step. Maybe we can find that secret group, the Blade of Marmora. Pidge, where are those coordinates?"

Pidge groaned as she stared at her screen. "Wait, hang on." She blinked her eyes, trying to clear the grit out of them. "I'm so tired. My brain's not working."

Lance groaned. "Yeah, neither is mine."

Adam rose from the platform and moved over to Shiro's side. "Takashi, you can't push so hard. They need to rest."

"Maybe, but we still need to find more allies, and this is as good a time as any."

Adam shook his head. "Takashi, they're still young. They don't have the stamina that we do. Keith is close, but even he is tired. He's not going to say anything because he wants to be just like you."

Before anything else could be said, Coran's image popped up on the main screen. "Hello, all. I've checked the engines."

Pidge muttered. "That was fast."

"Well, I slipped right down," Coran groaned as he fell but managed to pull himself up again. "I mean, hurried down. Anyway, the good news is the Galra fighters did minimal damage. I flushed the turbine, and it's fine. The bad news, the teludav, or wormholer, as you Earthlings call it, is in bad shape. Several scaultrite lens-stones of the magnifying beam generator uses a crystal to convert Altean energy into usable fuel. That supplies the power needed to wormhole. Well, anyway, I need to remove the cracked lenses and readjust their trajectory temporarily until we can replace them. I'll also need to divert power to make up for the lost energy anyway. It's going to take at least a quintant."

Shiro nodded, now his hands were tied. "All right. We'll hide the ship and get some rest while Coran comes up with a work-around. Tomorrow, we'll be sharper and refocused."

Adam was drawn to a noise coming from the kitchen. He peeked in to see Pidge sitting on the counter while Hunk carried a tray he'd pulled from the oven.

Pidge stared down at the large mixing bowl on the counter. "I thought you were exhausted. Why are you making cookies?"

Hunk rolled his eyes. "Because baking clears my head, Pidge. Okay?" As he sat the tray down on the counter, he leaned forward. "I thought you were gonna help Coran with the wormholer."

She picked up a package off the counter and stared at it. "One mention of the slipperies and he got all sensitive about it and kicked me out. I hate not being able to read Altean. What is this stuff? She turned her head to stare at Hunk. "Are you sure you're making food?"

Hunk lifted one of the sky-blue cookies and gazed through it at Pidge. "You're gonna try and tell me that these aren't cookies?" He stuck it into his mouth and bit down. The pain that shot through his mouth caused by the so-called cookie nearly caused him to cry. He gazed up the younger paladin. "Okay, I might have overcooked them."

Pidge hopped off the counter and began to walk away without saying a word to her fellow paladin.

Hunk called out to her. "Wait, where are you going? You don't want to wait for the next batch?"

Adam passed Pidge as she left the kitchen. He gazed at Hunk. "How about a quick and easy snack to lift everyone's spirits?"

Hunk cocked his head. "Like what?"

Adam smiled at the teenager. "Maybe some ham croquettes?"

Hunk grinned. "Oh, yeah. Lance's mom taught me how to make those. I can make those."

The door to the bridge opened, and Adam walked through. He shook his head as he saw Shiro at his station. "I figured you'd still be here."

"Someone needs to keep an eye out for Zarkon."

"I know Takashi, but why does it always have to be you?"

Before Shiro could answer, the door to the bridge opened again, and Princess Allura stepped through. Shiro craned his head as he gazed at her. "What are you doing here?" he asked as he rose to his feet. "You should be resting."

Allura stepped onto her platform. "I cannot sleep. Zarkon is out there searching for us." She started to bring up her holographic screen bringing it up with her hand.

Shiro grabbed her hand, stopping her. "I know how you feel, but you have to step away for a while. It's what's best for everyone."

Adam leaned forward and whispered low enough for Shiro's ears. "Pot calling the kettle black." He wanted to say more, but the klaxons began to blare, and the Castle shook from Galra fighters attacking.

Allura's eyes grew. "We are several galaxies away. How could they find us so soon?" She brought up the particle barrier and brought up the image of the engine room. "Coran, are you there?"

"I'm here!"

"Zarkon is back! What's our status?"

"Wormholing will be a problem. The lenses haven't been readjusted! I don't know if the Teludav will generate enough power."

Allura gazed at the older man on the screen. "Do everything you can!"

Lance and Keith ran onto the bridge. Lance plopped down into his chair. "They found us again. How is that possible? That doesn't seem possible!"

Pidge jumped into her seat and was closely followed by Hunk.

Allura wasn't brushing off Lance's questions, but now wasn't the right time for a discussion. "Right now, we must figure out a way to get out of here."

Keith threw out his suggestion. "Or we can stay and fight. Now's our chance to form Voltron. Enough running!"

Allura shook her head. "It's too dangerous."

Shiro decided he needed to step in before Keith lost his temper. "Allura's right. We can't take on Zarkon and his entire fleet. Remember what happened at Zarkon's command center. We wouldn't have escaped if the Blade of Marmora hadn't shut down the shield."

Coran stopped in front of the camera, projecting his image onto the main screen on the bridge. "The turbine's up. I'm still working on the wormholer." He screamed as he fell again. "I think I'm realizing now that I do have a case of the slipperies. I'm sorry I yelled at you, Pidge. I may need your help after all."

Pidge nodded. "I'm coming down."

Shiro turned to the others. "Let's clear a path."

Keith, Lance, Adam, and Shiro all used the disks to fight off the pursuing Galra fighters. The Red Paladin studied his screen quickly. "Lance, there's a fighter advancing on your six!"

"Thanks for the heads up! And you've got one going for the lower barrier."

Keith growled at the fighter's image. "Not on my watch, you don't." As he blasted the offender, he threw a compliment toward the Blue Paladin. "Good eye!"

Adam smiled. He was pleasantly surprised that both the Red and Blue Paladins were working together instead of fighting with each other.

Lance smirked at his screen. "Okay, buddy, your mine." Before he could fire, his controls for his defense disk disappeared. "What's going on. I lost control of my defense drone."

Keith was still using his. "I got you covered." But his controls also disappeared too. "Uh, I don't got you. There must be a system failure."

Shiro and Adam's controls also disappeared.

Pidge's face appeared on the screen. "Nope, that was us. We're diverting power from non-essential systems to get the wormhole generator working."

Lance stood up and shouted at the screen. "Shooting bad guys is pretty essential."

Hunk added to the compounding problems. "We lost secondary controls! Thermal regulator's offline! Oh, no, there goes the particle barrier!"

Coran's image came up on the main screen. "Okay, try it! We should be able to make one small jump… I hope."

Allura closed her eyes and focused. A wormhole appeared in space in front of the Castle.

Shiro called out from his seat. "The wormhole is open!"

The Castle entered the wormhole, but the jump was as Coran predicted shorter. Adam rubbed at his temple. He felt a migraine coming on.

Lance, Keith, and Hunk all sagged from exhaustion and boredom. Even Allura was just as tired, but she didn't try to let it show. She rubbed a hand over her forehead.

Shiro frowned as he voiced his thoughts out loud. "Zarkon keeps finding us. It's like he knows how to track us down. Maybe he planted some kind of tracking device."

Allura, following his train of thought, ran a scan of the Castle. "Well, from what I can see, there's nothing on the ship. The Castle would have detected any tracking devices and alerted us."

Shiro gazed at his screen. "Until we figure out how he's doing it, we should assume that he could show up at any minute. So stay alert."

Snoring reached their ears when Hunk shot up out of his chair. "Oh, man! Oh, what's going on? What are you guys doing?" He looked around, realizing everyone was staring at him. "What are you looking at?"

Keith smirked as he stared at the Yellow Paladin. "You woke yourself up snoring."

Hunk ducked his head down. "My bad."

Adam shook his head, trying to clear it. He rubbed his forehead; his brain and thoughts seemed muddled. "I must be tired," he muttered.

Shiro brought up an image of the engine room. "Coran, what's our status? Any good news?"

The older Altean skated around. "There is a bit of good news. I'm finally getting used to these slipperies."

Shiro forced himself to control his temper, which even he found was wearing thin. "Any good news about the Teludav?"

Coran stopped skating and shook his head. "I'm afraid not. The last jump overloaded the lens-stones. Now, even more of them are broken. I'm going to try some readjustments to change the beam trajectory. Until then, wormholing away will be impossible."

Pidge pulled up some information from the bridge, checking the Castle's immediate surroundings. "Hey, there's a giant metallic storm ahead of us. I think we can hide in the eye of the storm. It should give off enough interference, so we can't be traced."

Shiro nodded. "It's worth a shot."

Allura flew the Castle into the eye of the raging maelstrom. Things were looking up. "Brilliant, Pidge. We're essentially invisible to any radar, radio waves, universal scans, or any other known technology."

Klaxons blared.

Allura gasped. "No."

Pidge appeared on the main screen. "I don't know how he found us, but it wasn't with normal instruments."

Allura gazed at her instruments for a moment. "It's me. It's been me all along. That's how they found us on planet Arus." She groaned as the Castle was shaken by heavy fighter fire.

Adam gazed at Shiro. "Zarkon's trying to flush us out into the open."

Shiro nodded and stood to face Allura and the other paladins still on the bridge. "It doesn't matter, Princess. We're in this together. We're going to get out of this together."

Hunk gazed at Shiro. "Uh, how? We're trapped."

Shiro smacked his thigh with his human hand and drew his mechanical hand into a fist. "We need to form Voltron and go through the storm."

Lance gasped as he jumped up from his chair, his eyes wide. "The storm? What are you, nuts?"

Hunk jumped to his feet. "Yeah! What do you mean? Yeah, why would we do that?"

Shiro fought to keep a cool head. "It's risky. I know, but it's our only chance. We have to go through the storm, then lure Zarkon's ship away, giving Allura some time to get it into open space."

Adam nodded. Even though his brain seemed to be a muddled mess, he could see where Shiro was going with this and decided to spell it out for the rest of the team. "The fighters will follow Voltron into the storm. Only living Galra pilots might have the experience to get out of the storm while the sentry pilots ships will be ripped to shreds cutting down or even eliminating all fighter presence."

Allura gazed at Adam, considering his words before shifting her gaze back to Shiro. "Then, what?"

"Then, we wormhole away." Shiro turned back to the main screen. "Coran, remember how you said getting this Castle to wormhole is impossible? Well, I need you to do the impossible!"

The Paladins left the bridge and suited up quickly. They flew the lions out of the Castle and formed Voltron. As the giant mechanical warrior went into the storm, the fighters gave chase.

Adam looked up from his screen. "The fighters are being ripped apart."

Allura pressed buttons on her holographic screens. "How's it coming, Coran?"

"For this to work, each remaining lens-stone will need to take the equivalent of five beams! There's no way it can hold that kind of power! The whole thing will explode!"

Allura gazed up through one of the overhead windows and watched as Zarkon's command ship moved away from the eye. She didn't hesitate to fly the Castle out of the storm.

Voltron tried to fly away but was caught in the grip of a tractor beam. Zarkon was again fighting Shiro for control of the Black Lion.

Adam jumped up from his seat. "We've got to do something to help!"

Allura nodded. "My thoughts exactly." She flew the Castle around the command ship, firing the primary weapon into it. Explosions blossomed throughout the lower sections of Zarkon's ship. "Paladins, now's your chance. Get out of there!"

She didn't have to tell the Paladins twice. They disbanded and flew back to the Castle.

The Paladins sat in the cockpits of their lions. Keith frowned. "Why haven't we wormholed yet?"

Coran's voice came over their comms. "Because we can't! We're missing several scaultrite lens-stones!"

Pidge replied. "Wait, did you say scaultrite? I've seen that somewhere before. I think Hunk was making some terrible cookies from that stuff!"

Hunk growled.

The Paladins gathered the cookies and took them to Coran, who examined them. "Unbelievable! These cookies do have trace elements of scaultrite."

Shiro leaned in close to Coran. "Will they work?"

"They might be able to hold for one jump, but we'd still need several people physically holding them. And, if the trajectories were calculated just so… we might make it out of here."

Coran arranged the Paladins in the Teludav as Allura flew the Castle, trying to evade Zarkon's command ship. Coran contacted the bridge. "They're in position."

Allura concentrated, but nothing happened. "Coran, what's happening? Zarkon's right on top of us!"

"The stones aren't reflecting properly! I need something to shine them up with!" Coran rubbed the back of his gloved hand across his forehead. He gazed at how it shined. "Wait a second. I think I've got it. Hit the wormhole in ten ticks!"

Allura began to count down from ten. Adam leaned forward in his chair. He crossed his fingers and silently hoped this worked.

Allura got down to one, and she closed her eyes and concentrated. A wormhole appeared, and the Castle dived into it.