Published October 9, 2017

"Giants in the Sky"


If an enquiry thus carefully conducted, should fail at last of discovering the truth, it may answer an end perhaps as useful, in discovering to us the weakness of our own understanding. If it does not make us knowing, it may make us modest. If it does not preserve us from error, it may at least from the spirit of error, and may make us cautious of pronouncing with positiveness or with haste, when so much labor may end in so much uncertainty. ~ Edmund Burke, A Philosophical Enquiry into the Sublime and Beautiful


It was hard for Pidge to judge whether the task of saving Allura was less daunting or more daunting than the task of saving her family. Allura's case was different from the Holts' because hers had fewer unknown variables. They knew where to find her. But they also knew she was in the worst hands imaginable, and that saving her would be more dangerous and difficult than anything they had done so far. Even so, Pidge wanted to go sooner rather than later, since putting it off would give Zarkon more time to prepare for them.

Shiro was the only one whose attitude was even more urgent than her own. It was obvious that he felt guilty about Allura's capture. Pidge thought that was a little hypocritical, considering Shiro had done basically the same thing for Matt. (She wondered briefly if Matt felt guilty about Shiro's sacrifice to save him.) On the other hand, she understood his fear of losing someone so close. They had become friends and allies right away, but in the past weeks they had become like a family. And most of them had already lost people close to them, and did not want to experience such a loss again.

Of course things had to fall apart—literally, at some points. Somehow, someone—Zarkon? Haggar?—did something that tore Voltron apart.

Then, inexplicably, the particle barrier went down. Pidge was bewildered, and guessed that the others were too, but they did not question it. Allura was quick to make a wormhole, but then the witch did something that compromised the wormhole's integrity. The hangar doors opened, and the lions fell out, becoming separated once again.

It was like a bad dream. Pidge remembered Matt complaining about nightmares involving driving a car when he was getting his license. She used to have similar dreams about losing control of a ship she was piloting. Neither Pidge nor the Green Lion could control where they were heading. When they came out of the wormhole, they entered a place that had no gravity but lots of debris clustered together. They crashed through many layers of discarded junk, and eventually they banged against something big enough to stop them.

They seemed to be unharmed and out of immediate danger, but the Green Lion was out of energy and would need time to recharge before they could do much. Pidge remembered what her father had taught her about wilderness survival, and what her instructors had taught her about space: if you get lost, the best thing to do is wait for people to find you, but make yourself easier to find.

Shiro had not waited around to be found. When no one came looking for him, he came back. But maybe that was not a fair comparison, because they did not know exactly how he had made his way back to Earth. Pidge wondered if Matt and her father were waiting to be found. If so, she was not the one they would be expecting to find them. They would expect Shiro or some Garrison agents to rescue them. What would her reunion with them be like? Would they be glad to see her, or upset that she had left her mother and placed herself in danger?

It only took a few minutes for Pidge to realize she was incapable of sitting around idly. Her curiosity led her to explore, and her creativity drove her to find ways to amuse herself.

She was glad to see that the only life forms around were harmless, even friendly. She could not understand them when they tried to communicate with her, but they seemed to comprehend her when she spoke of her friends. She decided to make models of them out of the trash, to show the fuzzball aliens what they and their team dynamics were like. After weeks of living together, Pidge felt she knew them well enough to imitate each one's demeanor. It was the kind of thing that would have made Matt laugh.

Discovering the remains of a satellite gave Pidge an idea. The Galra had been able to detect the Blue Lion's energy on faraway Earth, and the Blue Lion had been able to find its way back to the castle. She could not locate the castle now, but maybe the Green Lion could send out similar energy to lead the castle to it.

Pidge had never built anything of such an immense size before, even after finding the lions and moving into the castle. Only the lack of gravity enabled her to move such massive objects, and the fuzzballs helped her keep control as she guided them into place. They reminded her of Gunther, when he learned a helpful skill. It was almost fun!

As it turned out, Pidge had done the right thing by not sitting around and waiting. Allura found her energy beacon mere seconds before Coran would have disappeared from existence in a timeloop. Once the castle was back on a stable plane, they were able to lock onto the other lions, which apparently had disappeared in pairs: Shiro and Keith were together, and Hunk and Lance. They went after the two eldest first, since Allura said Shiro had been injured in the battle and might not be able to control his lion. When they found him with Keith, he was badly hurt, both from his fight with Haggar and from a scuffle with carnivorous animals on the planet where he and Keith had crash-landed.

Once Shiro was secure in a healing pod, Pidge set to work on finding Hunk and Lance. Fortunately, they also found a way to make themselves easier to find: she detected an energy beacon from a planet made mostly of water and ice, and when Allura sent her there through a wormhole, she located the Blue and Yellow Lions on it. They came out partway so the Green Lion did not have to plunge into the depths. Lance would not shut up about the adventure they had, with mermaids, if his story was true. Hunk corroborated it, but Pidge did not fully believe them until Coran and Allura showed her some evidence from the castle's historical archives.

They all waited outside Shiro's pod when the healing cycle neared its end. It was the first time all seven of them—or eleven if they counted the mice—had been together since they split up to infiltrate the Galra transportation hub. How incredible to think that had been just a few quintants ago! Shiro seemed restless in his unconscious state, as though having a nightmare. Pidge wished, and suspected that the others also wished, that they could reach out and reassure him that everything was okay. The poor guy had been through so much, he shouldn't have to relive his past traumas or imagine future trials.

When Shiro woke up, he was not as happy or relieved or grateful as they might have expected him to be. He was all of those things, but his attitude was still clouded with some kind of negative emotion. Even though they were all present and safe and reunited, he seemed … worried. Anxious. He waited patiently as everyone besides Keith debriefed him on what had happened during their separation, and he accepted a meal Hunk threw together to get his strength back. Once everyone had their turn, he explained what was on his mind.

"I wasn't just dreaming when I was in the pod. I was remembering. I remembered how I escaped. One of the Galra soldiers helped me. He set me on the course to find the Blue Lion, and left coordinates in my arm to find him again."

The other paladins and the Alteans could not have been more bewildered. It was the first time any of them felt any measure of skepticism toward their leader—at least since that first day when they became a team.

Pidge agreed to examine his Galra arm, but mostly just because he was the leader and she wanted to help him get some peace of mind. She did not see it at first, and mildly asks whether Shiro's vision might have been a dream rather than a memory. Shiro was positive. When Allura objected, insisting that the Galra could not be trusted, Shiro glared at her—an uncharacteristic behavior, considering how respectful he always was toward her—and said, "Your father must have trusted them once. Zarkon was the original black paladin, wasn't he?"

Pidge, Hunk, and Lance were shocked. Once Keith reminded them of the evidence, Pidge felt stupid for not having figured it out herself. But until she had not known there was anything to figure out. Allura had said that Shiro's bayard was lost with its paladin, making it sound like the paladin was dead and the bayard was missing. Allura and Coran's secret was even more disturbing and mind-blowing than Pidge's. How could they have told the Earthlings about the lions and Alfor and Zarkon without mentioning that Zarkon had been Alfor's ally? Pidge could hardly believe they would withhold such pertinent information from the new paladins. If they had known, they might not have risked getting so close to Zarkon, since that gave him an opportunity to take control of the Black Lion.

Both Shiro's claim and Allura's confession disrupted the paradigm they had all been forming, either consciously or subconsciously. They had believed that all Galra supported Zarkon and would do anything to help him further his Empire. Pidge had understood Haxus's declaration about victory and death to be the philosophy of the Galra military, if not the whole Empire.

Shiro's account did answer some questions Pidge had been nursing since Shiro returned to Earth. It explained how Shiro escaped after his year of captivity, and how he knew about Voltron, and how he ended up in just the right location to find the Blue Lion. If Shiro's memory was genuine, this Ulaz was responsible for bringing the paladins together. Because of him, they had been able to save Earth from a coming Galra attack. He had given Pidge her first opportunity to search for her family beyond Earth's limits. Those were immense, unrepayable favors, which meant they were in his debt. But the possibility of finding allies was an even greater reason to look for him.

The fact that he infiltrated the Castle and attacked them, even dragging Pidge down the hallways by the end of her bayard, made them all raise their already heightened guard. Even when Shiro confirmed his identity and Ulaz willingly surrendered, they were more mistrustful than before.

Pidge remembered her old fears concerning the authenticity of Shiro's memories. This time, however, she voiced them. Hunk tried to point out flaws in this hypothesis, but then realized that his arguments actually supported rather than refuted it.

Surprisingly, Shiro did not budge. It was not the first time he had put personal feelings before pragmatism—he had done that when Pidge wanted to look for her family among Sendak's prisoners, and when Shay was used as bait for a trap, and when Allura was captured. Those were situations in which someone's life or safety were at stake, which made it understandable, even justifiable. This, however, it was the first time Shiro insisted on taking a risk when they were not certain about the facts of the situation. They did not know whether his memory was reliable or his supposed ally trustworthy. He was putting a lot of faith in his mind and his emotions, either of which could turn out to be wrong.

The revelation of the gravity generator amazed Pidge more than any invention or phenomenon she had ever seen before. It did not even appear to be magical, or whatever it was proper to call the energy in Allura and the Altean technology and the Balmera. It was just technology, manipulating the environment in a way she had never thought possible. Seeing it was a humbling experience, especially after her recent work of genius, realizing that she was not nearly as smart as this Slav of whom Ulaz spoke. It also made her want to meet Slav and other members of the Bade of Marmora.

Ulaz also revealed how they had escaped during their most recent battle: someone from the Blade of Marmora was working on the inside. Which meant they might have people in the right place to help find her family. Since Ulaz had been able to free Shiro, maybe someone could do the same for Sam or Matt.

The request came forth from Pidge's lips before she could stop it. "If you have people on the inside, can they tell me where my family is? They were taken the same time Shiro was." It was a bit of a risk, letting a Galra know that she had a personal connection to the Empire's prisoners. She did not want Zarkon and Haggar or anyone working for them to know she had that kind of vulnerability—it had been bad enough when Sendak blackmailed her by torturing Shiro.

Ulaz was not exactly sympathetic about her loss, but he showed a willingness to help. But before he could finish sending any potentially useful prisoner records, Keith asked a question about his giant knife, and then a new adversary showed up to attack them. Pidge let go of her thoughts of her family, and of any trust she had been willing to put in Ulaz.

As it turned out, they had misjudged him. Ulaz flew to the rescue, entering the robeat and opening the gravity generator from inside. He was like Samson, destroying the building that housed his enemies while he himself was still inside. The outpost disappeared, along with their one contact with the Blade of Marmora and any information they might have had about the missing Holts.

It was not a defeat—they lived to fight another day; but it did not feel like a victory, because they lost a valuable ally and all he had offered them. It might have been a case of "two steps forward, one step back." Shiro insisted that they would find the Blade of Marmora, but only after they figured out how Zarkon had found them.

Pidge took him at his word, and started new projects: checking all of the castle's systems, and collecting and analyzing data on Galra locations to predict where they were most likely to be.


Music: "Giants in the Sky" from Into the Woods by Stephen Sondheim.

Author's Note: The new Garrison Trio fanzine Space Cadets, about Lance, Hunk, and Pidge during their time at the Garrison, is featuring a short story I wrote! All proceeds will be donated to the Trevor Project. You can check out the Garrison Trio tumblr and twitter. Both printed and digital copies and additional merchandise are available for preorder through Tictail until October 19.