I have no heart, just ice and stone
Made up of nails and teeth and bone.
And I know exactly what I'm for
To hurt and destroy and nothing more.
And if it's true that I was made
I still don't know if I can change.
~Beth Crowley "Battle Cry"
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Hic Sunt Palatini
This Lotor dream moved beyond unsettling and degrade into nightmare.
He was walking away, snowy white hair falling down his back. She hated him. She didn't hate him at all. Around them were the blue gray walls of a space ship. She knew they were in outer space because beyond Lotor, in a wide helm's window, lay strange constellations, bright motes of light without the twinkle of atmospheric interference in an ebony sky. No, not strange. She knew them all. Her father had taught her their names. The Wanderer. The Fire Witch. Caliavan the Wise.
She followed him, heart heavy. Her feet refused to move, because…evil and fuck that guy! He looked over his shoulder and his face was Matt's, shadowed features as familiar as her own. "Wrong," he said. "Something's wrong with you."
"What?" At this she hurried to catch up. But hurry is impossible in dream space. Matt wore his hair long and tied in a queue. Now it was white again. Lotor.
He stopped. She caught up and craned her neck to see him. He was so tall. No, not as tall as she remembered.
"You're not worthy of me. You never were." Arrogant pleasure radiated from his handsome features; he knew he hurt her.
She hated him, but the words stung. Like a dying campfire, despair smoldered in her belly. Anger, too, because, he was evil. When had she ever cared what he thought?
"No better than me," he said. A smile, glacial on his mouth. No, it was a familiar smile, slightly crooked, and more than lot flirty.
Lance watched her with cold, lifeless eyes. "I'm too good for you." That more than stung; it cut her to the core and the quiet despair flared into grief.
"I was too good for you," said her mother. The whites of her eyes were crimson with shattered blood vessels. Katie's heart stopped; the pain unbearable. "Your love is death."
"Mom, no!" She reached and her mother vanished.
The dark blanket of sky with its constellations had been replace with a dim corridor. Once more, Lance stood before her. He was young, no scars on his face; his beautiful hand undamaged. His eyes were ice blue and clouded. Blood and purple bruises dominated his olive-skinned face. A rivulet of blood ran from his mouth as he began to speak. "You don't deserve me."
"I know," she said. "I'm so sorry."
"No!" Katie threw off the dream and the covers and lurched up.
Squeak. Squeak. Squeak. Gears on the exercise bike protested softly as Lance, her headphones over his ears, pedaled away. The smell of breakfast, bacon and eggs, filled her nose. She'd overslept again.
Lance cast a sideways glance her way, attention caught by her sudden movement. His long legs worked the pedals for several more rapid revolutions, before he slowed abruptly.
Feet still moving, he turned again, eyes widening, noting her expression. He stopped and pulled off the headphones. "What's wrong?"
"Nothing," she said. She couldn't, however, school her face to match her denial. As he approached and sat by her, she stared at his face. No blood. No bruises. Not a teenager anymore, but his features were still youthful, aside from a few lines around his eyes. Keith hadn't aged much either, a consequence, she assumed of his Galra heritage. Seeing this in Lance, she wondered if Voltron had changed them all.
"Hey, are you—?" He set his hand on her back and she flinched. He pulled his hand back, confused.
"Dream," she admitted. "Bad."
He nodded imperceptibly. "I have those. Wanna talk about it? It helps."
"No." And then her mouth ignored its own directive and told him about the dream. As much as possible, because it made no sense when spoken aloud. Out loud, it sounded stupid.
"Lotor, huh?" He shuddered and made a funny "Yuck" face that almost got her smiling. Almost. Despair still suffused her emotions like toxic sludge. "Could be worse. Could have been Zarkon."
She managed a smile, for his sake. "Is that worse?"
"He's uglier."
That generated a genuine laugh. He was right. Talking helped. Talking to him, anyway. She met his eyes and then did the stare-at-his-hands thing. He is too good for me.
Lance's hand, warm and comforting, was on her back again. This time she didn't flinch. Nor did she resist when he enveloped her in his arms. She could feel his caution in the hug, and she reassured him by giving herself to the safety of his solid, warm embrace. A segment of her brain churned out error codes, desperate to maintain the fortress around her heart. Shut up, she thought. Just let me have this for a few minutes. This, unlike the thing with his legs last night, didn't scare her, because it was so obviously kindness and not flirtation.
"Just a dream." His voice, soothing, resonated in his chest. "You know what dreams are? The subconscious taking a shit and flinging it against a wall to see what sticks."
She pressed her face against his chest, breathing in his scent, made stronger by recent exercise. He smelled a bit like guava; her guava-scented body wash. Thief, she thought, too annihilated by the dream to tease him aloud.
"I think my subconscious is right."
He held her for a few minutes, one hand stroking her back. When he spoke, she realized he'd been thinking over what she'd said. "I've always known you were out of my league, Pidge. And I did ghost you for years. It's me that doesn't deserve you." His arms tightened around her. "Your mom knew you loved her. You were a good daughter."
He released her enough to lift her chin to meet his gaze. "You really need to forgive yourself. Trust me. I've been there."
"It's not that simple."
"Sure, it is." He offered her a very cocky Lance grin. "You forgave me, right?" She nodded. "Forgiving yourself should be easy."
He was starting to get that look on his face again. Like he might kiss her. And the atoms that made up Katie Holt were vibrating with the atoms that made up Lance McClain. He leaned in….
The proximity alarm went off.
Lance straightened, licked his lips and laughed wryly. Athena's making like a chaperone.
"Now?" Pidge's tone matched his thoughts exactly.
"Get dressed. Have some food. I'm on it," he said, heading for the cockpit.
Pidge arrived a few minutes later, a plate of breakfast in hand. "What?" she said, noting the look on his face.
"A Shrike. No registry info." He picked up her glasses from where they sat on the dashboard and handed them to her. She put them on.
"Mercs or pirates," she stated, shoving a huge forkful of eggs in her mouth.
"Yeah." He did a cursory check of shields and noted their fuel levels, including Quintessence.
"Definitely bearing down on us." She gulped down a few more bites of breakfast, her eyes unfocussed as she studied something on her HUD. "Nearest asteroid is seven clicks away. No other ships in the area."
He gave her a dark smile. "You piss anyone off recently?" Amusingly, she actually considered this for a moment. "No. You?"
"I've been a saint." Pidge snorted at that. "You ever flown against a Shrike?" he asked.
"Once," she said. "With Matt. We were in an Archangel. More firepower, but not as maneuverable as Athena."
"It's the firepower that concerns me." The Shrike was closing, meaning they were willing to burn a lot of Q to get to them. That could be an advantage. Maybe.
"What's your experience with Shrikes?" she asked.
"I've flown them. And flown against them," he said. "Against, in Bear Troikas." Bear Troikas were the ships favored by most mercenaries; some pirates as well. They were cheap and like their smaller hopper cousins, hard to break.
Shrikes didn't have Athena's grace and speed. Their formidable reputations came from their railguns. Like their avian namesakes, they came on hard and fast, with a blitzkrieg attack rather than prolonged engagement. Railgun munitions ran out faster than lasers and plasma. Surviving against a Shrike in a smaller ship meant getting them to expend all their ammo before they blew you to space confetti.
Her top front teeth bit her lower lip, and Lance found the action sexy, even under the circumstances. "Bears handle like, well, bears right?" He nodded. "But they're well armored."
"And I'm a good pilot," he said, without his usual bravado. "My guess is they're hoping to score a Zephyr, so they're not inclined to outright destroy us." He didn't voice his concern: a Shrike against a Zephyr felt like overkill. Pidge probably knew that.
"My thoughts exactly." She opened the tactical screen on the console and pointed to a control he hadn't noticed. "Countermeasures. Obviously for homing weapons, but they'll provide some protective cover against rail guns. Especially with my mods."
Lance let out a low whistle. "Smart. I didn't think of that." He had already set a bearing for the asteroid. "Should we burn Q or wait?"
"Let's wait. I'd rather meet them with ample fuel reserves." He concurred. It was her ship, her call. He was glad to be flying with Pidge, someone whose experience matched his.
She studied his face, obviously deliberating a decision. "I think you should fly again. Age before beauty and all that."
"Hey!" he said with faux indignation. "I'm only two years older."
"Whatever, viejo. Keep us alive."
In hand-to-hand combat, Katie could best Lance every time. She knew it. But combat in space required a different tactics, more poetic, less of a brawl. And she had to concede that Lance probably had the finesse she lacked.
She stood behind the pilot's chair, arms crossed on its top, head on her arms. Only a fool welcomed this kind of situation; a foe that could match them in armaments, armor or speed. Especially in the black, where one mistake could lead to a fatal tour of the space's vacuum. But a hot sizzle of anticipation warmed her limbs. The flow murmured in her blood, scenting conflict.
She pushed it aside, wanting to do this on her own terms, her own brainpower.
It's an edge. Take it.
To distract herself, she flicked Lance's cowlick. Once, twice, thrice. He craned his head back at her and grinned. "Stop it."
"Stop what?" She blinked, innocent.
He stared at the tactical screen. "Stop making me feel like the adult in the room."
She tilted her head, enjoying his smile. Flick. "Are we there yet?"
"There? You mean, Valhalla? Keep distracting me and that might happen."
She chuckled. "You do the Nordda thing? I thought you were a Gaian."
"I am, with a dash of Catholicism. You?"
"Pantheist."
"Let's pray we meet none of our deities today."
"Hic sunt palatini," she replied.
"Latin, cool." He shot her a grin and flirty wink. "Hic sunt palatini. Our battle cry?"
"What do you think?"
"That's our battle cry. Yup."
Her heart skipped and she started to put a hand on his shoulder. But touching him right now, when her body was alive with the coming conflict, when she wasn't afraid of anything, including the idea of "Pidge and Lance," was fraught with too much danger.
Instead, she clenched her hand in a fist and whispered, "Hic sunt palatini."
The Shrike reached them two clicks from the asteroid. Pidge opened a com and hailed them. "Unregistered Shrike, this is Athena. Do you copy?" No response. Lance found the radio silence worrisome. Typically, pirates or hijackers looking to score an expensive ship or payload would try the old "Surrender now and no one gets hurt" routine before risking their potential swag in a battle.
"I repeat, this is the Athena. If you don't respond we will assume you have hostile intent."
Lance breathed in through his nose and exhaled through his mouth. "Hostile," he said, seeing the first sign of gun ports opening. Pidge dashed away, back to the aft guns. He thumbed on the fore guns and expanded the tactical screen, adding a readout of munitions and shield status.
Riding on instinct, he jogged Athena to the right, then left, and risked a quick Q sprint toward the asteroid's cover. A good choice, as the Shrike fired a volley of lasers, probably saving the rail gun ammo. Or testing him.
Even with the Shrike firing on Athena's ass, he evaded fire without stressing shields. The screen bloomed with laser fire and then the inevitable railgun fire. "Here we go." The shield display rippled with impact.
"One round of countermeasures," said Pidge through coms, anticipating his question. "But just one. Enough to get us to the asteroid."
He plugged in a targeting solution behind Athena and released a cloud of flack. As he watched, the cloud coalesced and the railgun fire eased. "How's that work?"
"I modified them to form an electrostatic net."
"Cool."
"Won't last long."
Their ad hoc shield failed before Athena reached the asteroid. More explosions flared on the shield display and Lance pushed the hopper's agility to its limits. Note to self: if you survive this, tell Shiro he should make starfighters. The little hopper handled with an almost sentient awareness; with a fluidity he hadn't encountered since flying Lions. His efforts paid off. Shield loads dropped.
Reaching the asteroid, he slowed enough to keep the rocky mass between them and the Shrike for a few seconds at a time. The Shrike's pilot, of course, recognized the obvious tactic and countered, regularly changing speed and direction. Railgun salvos chewed at Athena's shields.
Athena lunged forward with a burst of speed and he angled her at the Shrike's belly. Shrike shields were notoriously weak at the lower cargo door. He got in a few good blasts before the Shrike rolled and pulsed more ripping fire at Athena.
A shield blipped red on the tactical screen. "We're about to lose an aft port shield."
"Yeah. See that." Pidge sounded terse. "I've got an idea."
"Care to share it with the class?"
"Just do your thing, Tailor."
"The kid who called himself Tailor crashed a flight simulator."
"He was pretty good with real spacecraft. Cut the chatter and buy me some time."
Eyes on the failing shield icon, Lance nevertheless grinned. Pidge sounded very Pidge.
He pulled Athena up, hit reverse thrusters, turned hard, and flew headlong at the Shrike, throwing everything at the fore shields.
"What you doing? Trying to out-crazy them?" muttered Pidge.
"No comments from the cheap seats." He set Athena spinning in the barrage of fire and then dove, making another run at the Shrike's underbelly. Scoring a solid hit on the cargo door was probably unlikely, since he was multitasking, aiming while evading plasma fire. And Pidge, busy with something, wasn't firing the aft guns at all.
A few of his blasts hit home, softening up the target, though. Seconds later, he was out of the Shrike's blind spot and taking hard fire. Time to scurry back to the cover of the asteroid. Tail to the Shrike, Athena's shields started to splutter.
"We just lost that aft port shield," he said, unnecessarily. She may have been outgunned, but Athena moved like a hummingbird. He set her in downward swoop, reversed thrusters at the apex of the move, and swooped down backwards, tracing a jagged line. Lather, rinse repeat, he traced a hard-to-target line in space.
It worked for a several seconds. Enough for Pidge to get the lost shield up again. "Nice," she said, "But if Hunk were here, he'd be lubricating the cockpit with vomit."
"That's my signature move. Call it the shark's teeth." Because even Athena couldn't handle the stresses the move put on her structure for too long, he straightened the little hopper out and went back to playing hide-and-seek behind the asteroid.
The Shrike's pilot was losing patience because it zoomed at them, obviously burning more Quintessence. Lance fired a few Q bursts himself to keep the larger ship off their ass, but the weakened shield spluttered and then died. "Aft port shield gone."
"Uh-huh." Athena rocked, taking hits on the vulnerable spot. Seconds later, another aft port shield flared brighter, doing the work of two shields.
"Time for countermeasures, right?"
"Not yet. Almost done." She had that dreamy, making-science tone.
Another shield cried out a crimson warning. "Pidge, we're getting pummeled."
"You're doing great. I trust you. Just a few more seconds."
Lance faced the Shrike and did the Kamikaze move again. This time, as he dove under their attacker, he reined Athena in hard and pounded the cargo door with angry fire. Top shields quivered under angry fists of the Shrike's plasma guns, but held. He reversed thrusters and almost matched the Shrike's speed, keeping in her blind spot.
The maneuver kept them out of rail gun fire, but also meant the Shrike wasn't expending rail gun ammo. And it was Hel-ish hard to fly backwards, matching the Shrike's maneuvers.
Wise to his strategy, the Shrike's pilot accelerated and spun away. Lance whipped Athena around, but they were already getting nailed by rail gun fire. Two top fore shields blipped bye-bye and died.
"Make for the asteroid," said Pidge. "Hard for it. No evasive maneuvers."
He pointed Athena at the asteroid, but protested. "We'll get shredded like cheese."
"I'm putting more energy into aft shields."
"Engines are slowing."
"We're fine. Just fly."
They weren't fine. The hopper's structure began to shudder with impact. He spun Athena on her longitudinal axis to minimize the damage, but they couldn't do this much longer. "Pidge…."
"Target the asteroid."
"The asteroid?" What the Hel? He did it anyway.
"Fire. On my mark."
Athena bucked in his hands. "Easy girl." He reversed the spin. Once twice. Again. But the shields were near extinction.
"Three," said Pidge.
All but one aft shield cut out. "Two. One."
Lance's finger trembled on the trigger. Trust her. Trust her. The last shield died.
"Fire." He fired. Instead of laser fire, a cloud of countermeasures flew at the asteroid. It took Lance a second, but he worked out what she was doing. He pulled Athena from the line of fire, hit a burst of Q, and darted away.
The railgun hail didn't follow. Instead, it hit the asteroid in a bright shaft of cutting fire, drawn to the countermeasures, many of which seemed to be burrowing into the asteroid's surface. The Shrike turned, following them, but their targeting was useless. "You made…," he searched for a descriptor, "a railgun ammo well. It's pulling in all their fire."
"Yup."
Lance laughed. "Holy crow, woman, I love you." He set a course that put the Shrike between them and the asteroid. When the Shrike fired on Athena, their deadly barrage turned back toward the asteroid. The hilarious bonus being that much of it hit the Shrike itself. "Gives new meaning to the phrase 'friendly fire.'"
He reversed course again, trajectory, the Shrike. "Hic sunt palatini, motherfuckers."
"Lance." Pidge's voice had an admonishment in its tone.
He ignored her, bearing down on the Shrike.
"Lance," Pidge said, "You don't need that on your conscience. Besides, disabling the Shrike requires less munitions then blowing it to bits. Never know what else we might encounter. And we're still days out from Titan."
She was right. A ship in pieces, bodies spaced, would probably send his PTSD into overdrive. And, really, disabling the Shrike could just as easily be a death sentence out here in the black. It only took a few minutes of Athena darting around the Shrike's tender underbelly, staying out of the railgun's borked targeting, to cut through the cargo door and crispy-fry the crucial controls within.
"Good job, Tailor."
"Just earning my keep. Do I get a raise?"
"Extra garlic knot rations. I think Athena likes you."
"All the ladies love the Tailor." She huffed in amused irritation and he could almost hear her eyes roll. He put Athena back on the Rinconada-to-Titan course. "You good?"
"Yup. Just making some quick fixes."
Because, of course she was. Battle lust still surging, another emotion twined in his blood: self-doubt. He watched as the shield health indicators changed from failed to functioning in a matter of minutes. Damn, she was wicked smart! He'd known plenty of battlefield techs, but none as sharp as Pidge. He suddenly knew why Keith's name triggered old insecurities.
Because Pidge belonged with someone like Keith. Both had shrugged off the trauma of Voltron and built something great: Keith with the Blade of Marmora; Pidge with Legendary Defenders and now on her own, developing cutting edge solutions in agriculture. I'm just the farm boy from Cuba turned thief and merc.
What could he offer a woman like Pidge?
"It's great, except for the problem with the humidity sensor," said Lance. "It resets after a rain, and stays in rain delay, even when the soil moisture drops below the critical level. Landex has sent six patches, but none have worked. The only way around it is hard reboot." He handed Katie a capacitor node.
They were in Athena's main access panel, a glorified closet. Her early quick fixes would hold in a pinch. Now, with the Shrike long gone, she righted the wrongs inflicted on her best girl. Lance was helping, his assistance consisting mostly of handing her tools and parts. Athena's schematics were up on her glasses, but she hardly glanced at them. She already knew the little hopper by heart, every nut and bolt, every mechanical and electrical component.
"I can fix that," she said, referring not to Athena, but the malfunctioning auto-irrigator on the McClain's farm. "For…the price of a homecooked meal and the rain on my face." She grinned at him. She was pretty sure she was flirting. As best as Katie ever flirted, which wasn't well.
A small, guarded smile on his face, he replied, "I can definitely arrange the meal. My parents would love to see you. The rain? That's out of my hands."
She installed the new node, a little stung by his demeanor. He'd been oddly mopey after their success, in a way annoyingly reminiscent of the way he used to sulk over Allura. It was just as well. In the wake of the battle, she'd been filled with reckless energy, the kind of crazy that made her want to use his body as her playground. The bad-decisions governor that kept her from eating a dozen peanut butter cookies at once or kissing a man who could ghost her again was malfunctioning big time.
"I've seen that bug before. Landex's engineers assume the problem is with the humidity sensor. It's not. There's a glitchy variable block in the cognitive segment of the AI's hydraulic pressure module. The problem arises when the AI's adaption alters the wrong block chain."
"That easy, huh?" Some of the weird caution in his mien gave way to typical, Lance-ish charm. "You are amazing."
"Thanks." She tested the connection and finding it solid, shut the junction box. "Hit the switch." She indicated a sub-main in the primary switch panel.
He reached, a few inches about his head and toggled it on. "You're using me for my height."
"You asked for it. Growing so tall."
He pointed finger guns at himself. "This isn't tall. This is normal height, chaparrita."
In the closet's tight space, Katie's cells called out to Lance's. Suddenly, she needed to run her hands down his tall torso, sneak fingers under his shirt and find warm skin beneath. Blushing, she began stowing tools back in her kit. "I have a solder gun and I'm not afraid to use it."
His retort was cut off by a grumble from his stomach. She chuckled and eyed his abdomen. "Is there a timer in there? Goes off every hour?"
"Ugh!" He brushed fingers over a blue mark on his cheek. "I'm always hungry." He took a step backward. "I'll get us some lunch."
"Pancakes!" she blurted, sexual tension making her silly and jittery.
"Pancakes?" His face did the beautifully bewildered thing.
"In space there is no day or night. Hence, meals are just meals. Pancakes!"
His lips pulled back in a big grin. "If that's the case, it's five o'clock in an infinity of somewheres. I need a beer."
She jerked her chin in the direction of her bunk. "No beer. But I've got a bottle of wine in the left-hand storage bin under my bed."
"Pidge's secret snack chamber?"
"Not anymore," she said ruefully. Her stash of emergency cookies and chocolate also lived there.
"Wine and pancakes." He tugged her sleeve. "You take me to the very best restaurants."
He'd just handed her fodder for a million, snappy lines, but the expression on his face was so soft, her neurons melted. With exacting movements, she replaced tools in their storage slots. "That, um, was some spectacular flying, Tailor."
"Thanks." With another tug on her sleeve, he turned for the galley.
It was happening again. He had obliterated all sense of up and down, left or right, leaving her dizzy with emotion. She'd had it all worked out: Lance McClain was supposed to be an incorrigible flirt who would never, ever turn that charm on her. Because Lance would probably rather kiss a rabid, Robeast with raging halitosis than Katie Holt. It was all there, in the Lance database she'd put together years ago. (Seriously. She had a database, because how else could a socially awkward girl cope with being thrust onto a team with bunch of cool kids?)
Except her database, with its datapoints adding up to Lance the callow playboy, was hopelessly outdated; a poor excuse for resisting his charm. He was, at least, slightly interested. Even Katie knew when someone was about to kiss her. She didn't, however, take his "I love you," seriously because those three words, uttered in battle or sex were meaningless.
Her updated Lance data described a man-still chronically flirty and an incongruous mix of goofy and sensual-who had matured into someone fundamentally decent and compassionate. Someone too kind for mercenary work. Someone who deserved a sweet farmgirl or a space princess with a heart of gold.
Someone who, inexplicably, was behaving as if he wanted a peculiar woman who understood machines better than people and who sometimes went into berserker mode. And that last datapoint was breaking her brain. Sure, she'd spent most of her teenage years fantasizing about the day when he realized she wasn't one of the guys. Fantasy by definition, however, meant impossible or highly improbable, and possibly dangerous.
Dangerous to who? Her?
As she stowed her toolkit, she fell into the habit of covert Lance observations. Watching as he made the weirdest lunch of peanut butter pancakes with a wine chaser, his face still so quiznaking soft and relaxed. And happy. Because being kind made him happy and that truth was so endearing, she knew why he was dangerous. Because she could fall so deeply in love with him there'd be no turning back.
And if he discovered that she was nothing like a space princess or a farm girl and moved on? If that happened, he wouldn't simply break her heart—he'd obliterated it.
And what if it went the other way? Could she break his heart? Teenage Katie had obviously stomped all over his feelings. Adult Katie tried hard to be less caustic, but other people's feelings still lost relevancy when she was blinded by a flash of brilliance. Her equilibrium wobbled again, shook by the power she might have over him. She didn't want that power; didn't want to risk doing something obnoxious and breaking him more than he'd already been broken.
Maybe, "just friends" was best. Maybe dream Lance had it right. He was too good for her.
Translation:
Hic Sunt Palatini: Here be Paladins. A play on "Here be Dragons."
Viejo: Old man.
Chaparrita: Shorty
Thanks for reading this far!