The emergency alarm screams them awake in the middle of the third shift again.
Keith jackknifes upright, heart rabbiting in his chest. Below him, Otsazi lets out a pained groan and Tabuuk mumbles out a curse in the bunk across from him. He fumbles for the locker at the foot of his bunk and manages to have his pants on by the time the barracks lights flicker into the violet of the waking cycle. Ikhip is already on her feet, fastening her shirt sleeves over the thin bands of tattooing on her arms and the newer shiny scar tissue over her wrists.
"Another drill?" Ââdze asks.
Zhurrutap makes a low hum as she stands. "We drilled already last phoeb." Her head turns toward Ikhip.
Ikhip's lips thin, and she makes a sharp click. "There is no drill on the schedule this quintant."
"Damn," Tabuuk grunts.
"So it's real," Keith says.
"Or Command just felt like being cute," Tabuuk mutters.
Ikhip raps her knuckles on the doorframe. "Speculate later. We have five doboshes to get to stations."
A grim urgency overtakes the cabin, and they finish dressing and join the crowd filling the halls in under two doboshes. Pavîît Fifty turns off just ahead of them for Aft Right Engine 3 and they file in the door for Engine 4 under the foreman's shouts. Ikhip gives them all a steady once-over as they step through.
"Just like in drills. Keep your pairs, stay alert." She pauses and taps under her chin, the gesture quick and practiced, not like the deliberate way she salutes the officers. "Vrepit sa."
"Vrepit sa," the others murmur, Keith a half-beat behind them, before they disperse two-by-two to their stations.
The foreman treads past them just as Keith is reaching for the ladder into the upper catwalk. "No laziness and no screwing around," he thunders as he walks past, the heavy clank of his boots shaking the walkway. The soldiers that usually trail him aren't there and Keith wonders if they've been called away to other stations. "Prove your worth to the Empire."
He exchanges a glance with Zhurrutap. He can feel the tension settling in his shoulders, and a familiar electric awareness buzzing at the back of his head. He leans forward to put himself in range of her good ear. "Doesn't sound like a drill."
"No. It does not." She bends to check the readings at the lower edge of the monitoring station. "The engine pressures and temperatures are high. We are drawing at twice cruising rate."
He turns that over. "So the ship is in a burn."
"Perhaps. It could be other things. A fire. A malfunction in one of the other engines that must be compensated."
Something about her tone makes him pause, hand on the ladder. "Do you think it is?"
Her good ear flicks backward and she's quiet for a minute. "No. The feeds are even. A burn is more likely." She lowers her voice until he has to strain to hear her over the thrum of the pumps. "And we are close by the sector where we had our last engagement." She lets out a deep breath, shaking her head, and slides one of the screen's controls upwards with a decisive motion. "Questions later. We have work to do. Hak 8."
"Right."
He scrambles up the ladder, mind racing. What if it is an engagement? Is the Illuminating Vengeance locked in a fight while they're all buried in its depths monitoring engine pressures? Something sour turns in his stomach. A whole battle could be taking place right now. No one down in Deck Eighty-Six would see the enemy, or know what actions their commanders took, or even understand how the fight happened. The ship they're in may kill a thousand people in the next varga without any of them ever knowing it.
"Kîîth! Pressure?"
He hisses out through his teeth and squirms past a complicated knot of pipework to get to the main Hak line. "I see it. Twenty-two hundred."
"Good. Agip 10 and 12 next."
The next quarter varga is absorbed in a race through the engine room's maze-like catwalk as he runs to keep pace with the adjustments Zhurrutap relays from Technical. The foreman paces back and forth, diminished without his soldier entourage, bellowing at them to earn their keep. He doesn't stop to harangue anyone for not being quick enough or nitpick comms protocol, and he doesn't pay Keith any more attention than to scowl at him in passing. If he hadn't already been sure the emergency, whatever it is, is genuine, that would have been enough to convince him. But even without that evidence, the engine doesn't lie. The gauge numbers steadily rise as he reads them off, and the room grows swelteringly hot. The pumps roar as they fight to keep pace with the fuel draw, and the quintessence main running through the room's ceiling hums a ghostly note, so high it makes his back teeth hurt. He's sticky with sweat by now, fingers sliding along the safety rails, the pipes hot enough to burn if he brushes up against them.
"Kîîth," Zhurrutap calls out over the noise. He has to backtrack past a turn in the catwalk to see her through the dense jungle of pipes. She's looking up from her station, good ear twisted back and expression tense. "Gaat 11. The pressure is wrong."
"On it."
He finds his way back to Gaat and counts down to Valve 11. He reads the gauge, curses and reads it again to be sure he has it right. "Sixty-eight hundred." Below, he watches past a junction of pipes as Zhurrutap bends to her station and shakes her head once in a single, abrupt motion.
"Too high. When I tell you, throw the relief."
"Shit," he mutters under his breath. He finds the handle for the relief, doublechecks it. "Ready."
"Wait for my signal."
He gives an affirmative and tightens his grip on the valve. He can see Ââdze on the catwalk across from him, ducking his head to get past a low bend of one of the main feeds. Below, he can hear the foreman shouting indistinctly somewhere at the very end of the room, and Ikhip's steady voice cutting through the engine's noise.
"Now, Kîîth."
He braces and hauls back on the handle. There's a solid thump from the pipe, and he watches carefully as the pressure dips, calling it out until it settles.
"Good," Zhurrutap finally announces. "Gaat 15."
"Going." He lets out a breath and turns back for the central walkway.
The lights flare into blinding brightness just as he hits the corner.
There's a chorus of startled exclamations below him. Keith stumbles, disoriented, his vision swimming with afterimages. The searing glare of the quintessence main feed battles with the achingly bright light suddenly saturating the room. Even through his inner eyelids, everything is washed out and fuzzy, contours and edges hard to discern. His eyes water, and a dull pain begins to beat at his temples. The stark shadows where the light doesn't manage to reach are impenetrable. The effect is a little like a strobe, turning the room into a confusing labyrinth of blinding black-and-yellow. An uneasy feeling stirs in his chest.
"What was that?" Ââdze yelps.
"Regulator blew maybe?" Tabuuk offers.
"Regulator," Zhurrutap says decisively. "Comms are down."
"Khet eat my shadow."
There's a waiting pause, and then Ikhip's voice breaks through the room's noise. "Foreman-sa?"
There's no response.
A second or two of disquieted silence passes. "Where is he?" Otsazi asks.
"He was heading towards Hak," Tabuuk says. "He should be jumping down our throats by now."
Ikhip's clinical, level voice cuts through the air again. "Worry about it later. We need to replace the regulator if we are to do our job. Zhurrutap?"
"Kîîth, you are closest. It is a panel on the wall, one level up from you."
"Got it."
He feels his way back along the walkway to the ladder, half-blind. The thought flickers through his mind that he wouldn't have had trouble once - the painful strain in his eyes as he navigates between bright and dark regions is new. He shoves it firmly out of his mind as he hoists himself up to the catwalk's upper level and takes a second to get his bearings. He finds the end of the walkway quickly and feels for the seam of the panel in the wall. When he pries it open, he's met with a row of mechanical switches labeled with words he doesn't recognize, lit blue and yellow with indicator lights. He squints at it through his blurry vision for a second, trying to glean any meaning from it, but it remains stubbornly inscrutable. He half-turns to call for Zhurrutap.
Below him, there's a creak and the muffled echo of a footstep. Someone swears quietly.
All the hair on the back of his neck goes up. Otsazi and Tabuuk are on the other side of the room, and he'd seen Ââdze on the catwalk across from him. Zhurrutap and Ikhip are still at their stations. The foreman is nowhere to be found. He drops silently into a crouch, peering down into the deep shadow cutting under the Hak main artery.
"Quiet, Alilla. You want them to hear?"
The words are just barely audible, a near-whisper almost lost in the thumping roar of the pumps, but it's enough for him to pinpoint where they're coming from. He shades his eyes against the glare, staring into the darkest part of the shadows below. He blinks, eyes adjusting, and takes in a long, slow breath.
There are three people lined up single file on the catwalk below him. They're suited up for vacuum, but it's clear at a glance that they're not galra. They're round-bodied, bowlegged individuals with three digits to a hand, the same kind of people he remembers from the rebel group he and Pidge raided the Illuminating Vengeance with all that time ago. The one in the back of the line shifts, and he catches a glimpse of a sash around their arm in the same colors he remembers.
It's the same group. The realization crashes through him like lightning. These people know Voltron. They know how to contact the castle. If he can just get them to listen to him, they could get him home.
The one in the front digs in the satchel at their hip. "Won't matter too much. They're not going to see anything in this light. Pretty soon we're not going to have to worry about it."
"Don't let your words run ahead of your feet. We can't screw this up."
"We got in. The hard part's over. We just get rid of the ones in here, set the payload, and get out before it detonates."
"Have a care for your pride. Remember, this is for Yinnu and Tennimi."
His thoughts catch and drag like a ship running aground at the mention of a detonation, and his mind races, trying to think of some way to get their notice that won't immediately get him or them killed. But his attention snaps back down as the person in front - Alilla? - unfolds a slender tube, leaning it against their shoulder to flip a sight up and out.
"The big one up there. You got a line?"
"Yeah. I can take it out." They put their eye to it and take aim at Zhurrutap.
Zhurrutap, who's never been anything but kind to him. Who taught him numbers and glyphs and ordinals. Who jokes with him on shift and likes to tell him how the ship works and stood up for him when she didn't have to.
It's not even a decision, just a horrified, adrenaline-fueled certainty when he jumps the railing.
Keith slams into Alilla from above with enough force to knock them flat. The impact shocks through his bones and he barely registers the startled shouts of the other two and the sudden confused clamor from the rest of Fifty-One. Alilla lets out a high wheeze under him and the weapon rolls out of their fingers. Keith twists to lash a foot out at it, hears it clatter off the edge of the catwalk. "Stop! Don't-" he starts, desperately trying think of what he can say that will make them listen.
Alilla growls and flings him backwards with a shocking amount of strength. He gets his feet under him barely in time to catch the railing on his arm instead of his spine, avoids a wild haymaker from the rebel on his other side with only centimeters to spare. Belatedly, he realizes just how bad his current position is, pinned between Alilla on one side and the other two rebels on the other side of the narrow catwalk.
There's a noise somewhere behind him that might be his name, a sudden ringing of footsteps pounding across the metal floor. The rebel in front of him reaches for the weapon on their belt. "Fucking sneaky piece of shit."
He lunges forward, manages to get a hand on their wrist before they can complete the motion and yanks them forward into a stumbling fall. "Just listen-" he cuts off in a ragged choke, his knees buckling under him as Alilla lands a blow like a hammerstrike to the top of his shoulder. Their other hand clamps onto his collar. He twists, trying to get the pressure off his throat, drives his elbow viciously backward. He feels it connect, hears a gurgling exhalation over his head, but the grip on his collar only tightens and he's wrenched backwards. He stomps down on whatever he can reach, tries to ram his head back into his captor's face, but the rebel in front of him has regained their footing. They slam a fist into his stomach. His vision goes half-black as he retches, trying to gasp in air.
The catwalk shudders under him. "Get the fuck off him!" Ââdze's voice, half-snarled. There's an impact behind him that staggers his captor sideways and the hand on his collar loosens. Alilla makes a choked, gasping noise as they're hauled back. Keith wrenches himself free and stumbles a pace forward.
"Damn it, Baelu, get rid of it now, there's more of them coming," growls the rebel at the end of the line.
The rebel facing him snarls and reaches for their belt again. Keith darts forward, trying to shove them off-balance before they can draw, but a heavy hand seizes his arm and the momentum brings both of them down to the ground. Behind, he can hear Ââdze shouting something, Zhurrutap's voice drawn out in a menacing rattle, a heavy, wet-sounding thunk. Something shakes the catwalk further down the line, but he can't tell if it's the third rebel getting ready to kick the shit out of him or someone else from Fifty-One. Everybody is shouting now, the noise bouncing off the pipes and the metal walls. The rebel under him shifts their weight, tries to roll and pin Keith up against the railing, but he digs his elbow into them and drops his entire weight onto their gut. It wins him a hacking cough and he tries to wriggle free, but his opponent whips their arm up and seizes his ear. They yank his head hard sideways and he feels something tear. The pain is blinding, and for a second, he can't do anything but choke on the rattling hiss that crawls out of him.
It's all the opportunity the rebel needs. He's slammed backward down onto the walkway hard enough to force the breath out of his lungs. His vision goes black at the edges and something cold and round presses up against the base of his throat.
"I'll take one of you with me, at least," the rebel snarls.
This is it, he thinks dazedly. This is what's finally going to do it.
"Kîîth!"
The whole catwalk jolts under a terrific impact. The rebel's weight abruptly leaves him, thrown aside. He has barely an instant to register the muzzle of the weapon dragging sideways down and away from his throat before something white-hot punches through his shoulder. Something makes a terrible, wet noise through the ringing filling his ears. He gulps for air but can't get anything. The last thing he feels is the press of the catwalk under his shoulder blades and the sudden, thick smell of iron.