Chapter 33

A/N: once again, I just own the story, nothing else is mine.

/comms/

Bold is intercoms/videochats

Telepathy/dreams/flashbacks

"That looked like it hurt," Jaz grimaced as several large aliens practically trampled the Altean advisor.

"There you go, right over there. They'll get you sorted out," he muttered standing up.

"Was that the last of them Coran?" Allura questioned.

"Yep. A few hundred souls looking for a new home."

"A few hundred more soldiers in the fight against the Galra," Shiro smiled.

"If they can," Jaz said raising a skeptic brow. The Black Paladin turned to scold her when she was saved by the roar of a lion. "Hey, they're back."

They all ran over, as the Green Lion landed. Lowering her maw, the ramp lowered as Pidge, Darvah, and a taller copy of Pidge walked down the ramp.

Pidge smiled, picking up the mice as they ran to greet her. "Hey everybody, I found…"

"MATT!" Jaz exclaimed tackling the man. "YOU'RE ALIVE!"

"Nice to see you too Jaz," he smiled patting her back. "I see you grew your hair out. Looks nice, I like the silver highlight."

"Thought it was time for a change," she smiled. "Come on, let's introduce you to everyone."

"For starters," Darvah said taking the mice with a protest from Pidge, "meet the mice."

"Cute."

Katie grabbed his arm, dragging him over to the group, "Matt, this is Hunk, Lance, and Coran."

"Hi."

"Nice to meet you."

"Pleasure."

"And this is Princess Allura of Altea," Jaz said patting Allura on the shoulder.

Matt's eyes widened and his jaw dropped. "Whoa."

"It is so wonderful to finally meet you, Matt."

Matt stood gaping like a fish out of water for a moment, "Oh my goodness. You are so beautiful!" he exclaimed before taking her hand in a dramatic gesture, his amber eyes sparkling as he gave a smoulder, "It is my honor to meet you princess."

"Quiznak, Matt got hot," Jaz muttered under her breath and Pidge nearly choked on her laughter as she and Allura stood blushing hotly while Lance glared daggers at the new arrival.

Eventually, Matt's attention turned away from the Princess and his gaze focus on someone behind her. "Shiro?" he breathed walking through as they stepped aside. "It's so good to see you—sir!"

Shiro smiled holding out his hand and pulling Matt into a hug. "Pidge never gave up on finding you."

"Yeah, she can be pretty stubborn sometimes," he chuckled turning to look at his younger sibling as she grinned innocently.

"And I want you to know that all of us will help you find your father," Shiro continued.

"Thanks."

"Matt, this is the Castle of Lions," Pidge said motioning up to the ship.

"Whoa. Nice ship."

"Let me take you on a tour!" she exclaimed dragging her brother off.

"Hope he survives," Jaz snickered.

-.-

"Hey guys," Darvah and Jaz waved as Pidge brought Matt into the lounge.

"And this is the lounge! Where we just hang out!" Pidge continued on throwing herself on a cushion as Matt calmly sat down by them.

"Nice."

"How was the tour?" Darvah questioned.

"So cool."

"Hey Pidge, you know where I can store the explosives we bought?"

"You still have that?!" she exclaimed.

"What explosives?"

"It could be useful."

"You might want to ask Coran, Darv. That stuff's pretty unstable," Pidge winced scooching closer to Jaz and Matt.

"Ugh, fine," he groaned getting up. "I'll be back."

"And you still have to explain that hybridization thing to me!" she called as he left moving past Hunk.

"Hey guys, I made celebratory milkshakes for you two!" Hunk smiled walking in. "Just a little welcome gift to Matt from me and Kaltinecker. No big deal." He set down his tray once he passed them out, plopping beside Jaz on the couch. "Fun fact about Alteans, they don't get brain freeze. Coran and Allura just totally hoovered up their shakes in one slurp. I've never seen anything like it before."

"Curse Alteans and their stupid breain freeze resistance," Jaz grumbled glaring across the room as she held her steaming mug.

"Jaz, I told you not to challenge Lance to that race," Hunk chided.

"I still won didn't I?!"

"You had a brain freeze for half an hour," he deadpanned and she huffed. "So, Matt, what've you been doing since you got busted out of Galra prison?"

"I've been stationed at a listening outpost monitoring Galra radio chatter."

"You serious? Darvah was doing the exact same thing."

Matt chuckled, "I know. He told me. Hard to believe we were in the same rebellion doing the same job and we never encountered each other. I blame it on the fact we escaped at different times from different places."

"Dude, you should totally check out the Galra finder Pidge built. We used it to track down a Galra fleet and save a planet."

"Hunk made the locator that led us to the first Voltron Lion," Pidge countered, "and we just built an upgraded version of it to track Lotor."

"Wow Pidge. Dad would be so proud if he could see what you've done here," Matt smiled.

"Who wouldn't?" Jaz grinned. "Even Darvah's impressed. He said it was better than anything his people have ever done in the course of several million years."

"Really?" Pidge questioned, "I find that surprising since his father runs one of the biggest crime syndicates in the universe."

-.-

"This is a pretty sweet algorithm for locating Galra targets," Matt praised as he looked at the hologram, "within a statistically acceptable margin of error. And I love that you color-coded it, because what are we, animals?"

"Ugh, you two are definitely related," Hunk grumbled as he popped another piece of food in his mouth as Jaz and Darvah arm wrestled nearby.

"Hunk, using the Fraunhofer lines to track Voltron, and then the comet…I mean, that's genius."

"Oh well, yeah. I try," he said moving to pop another piece in his mouth only for it to bounce of his head.

"Real smooth man," Darvah called before yelping as Jaz slammed his arm down.

"I WIN!"

"YOU CHEATED!"

As they argued, Matt continued, "They say Fraunhofer was the greatest glassmaker in Europe and that when he died, he took all of his greatest recipes with him to the grave."

"I want a Fraunhofer glass."

"So stop fighting for a moment and check this out," Matt said smiling as his crewmates stopped mid-scuffle to look at him: Darvah pulling Jaz's hair as she was about to bite his arm. "This has all the revlevant data from my time with the rebels. I think if we plug this info into the setup you guys have here, it might fill in the gaps."

"That would make it almost exactly how it they're moving in real-time," Darvah said his three eyes widening.

"Exactly, it would be the best anti-Galra intelligence mining operation in this or any other reality."

"This one time we went to another reality. It was pretty lame," Hunk remarked.

"No kidding," Jaz grimaced, "that place sucked."

"Wait, you what?" Matt said before pointing to his sister accusingly. "You were in a different reality?"

"No big deal," she snickered snatching the datafile Matt held.

"My little sister…"

"Be proud man, she's got one heck of a future a head of her. Now let's get started on that program," Darvah said patting his shoulder.

-.-

"How much longer?" Jaz huffed from where she sat on the floor.

"I think we've almost got it," Matt said.

"Working out the final bugs now," Darvah muttered as his several arms typed quickly, "and…"

"We got it!" Pidge grinned as it went live.

"This is unbelievable. We're tracking Galra fleet movements practically live."

"I think I know a few tweaks we can make to extend our range."

"Hold on," Matt said walking over to his spot.

"What's up?"

"It's a scrambled message. I've collected hundreds of 'em," Matt informed. "I never crack 'em."

"Let me see," Darvah said stepping over, his robotic eye adjusting every now and then. "Well, whatever it is it's not a message. My eye would translate otherwise."

"I've run them through every decryption I can think of. I've spent days with numbers and a Galra language log."

"Can I have a look?" Pidge asked.

"Knock yourself out," they said waving it to her screen.

Katie frowned staring at it for a minute. "So it's not a common cypher or decryption, and it's not a language code…"

"Maybe it's just numbers?" Hunk offered.

Her eyes widened, "Maybe it's a frequency."

"A quantum signal broadcasting other frequencies to go to?"

"These are too high, more than three-thousand gigahertz. I don't know of any species able to hear that."

"Invert it," Pidge said typing quickly.

"Huh?"

She sighed, rolling her eyes. "For every wave we receive, there's only partial transmittance right?"

"Oh, right, yeah. So we figure the transmission coefficient…"

"And tune for the frequency of the reflected waves."

/Members of the Seventh…/

"Awesome!"

"Yeah!"

/…eleventh, twelveth, and fourteenth fleet. Assemble to rally point trox-lyte immediately. Engage target at coordinates in next transmission by order of Emperor Zarkon/

"Keith was right," Jaz scowled, "Zarkon's alive."

"Guys, the scanner," Darvah said pointing.

"I've never seen troop mobilization like this," Matt muttered, "Darv?"

"No. The closest was the last battle with Zarkon Voltron had, this is bigger."

"What are they attacking?" Jaz questioned raising a brow.

"That's just it. As far as I can tell, nothing," Pidge muttered. "There's no planets, no rebel ships, no Blade of Marmora bases. Nothing at all."

-.-

"Whoever they're attacking we have to help," Allura stated once they all finished explaining the situation to them all up on the bridge.

"I don't like it," Shiro disagreed. "We should be gathering intelligence, not diving into a fight without knowing why. Especially now we know Zarkon's still alive."

"We could go check it out," Pidge suggested.

Lance raised an eyebrow. "I think they'd probably notice us."

"Not if we're cloaked."

"You have cloaking too? Who are you?" Matt said as his sister grinned.

"I'm not sure it's safe for just the Green Lion," Shiro argued.

"I'm pretty sure I can upgrade Voltron with cloaking. We could all go."

Lance smiled, playfully punching her arm. "Were you just waiting for your big brother to show u[ before you rolled that one out?"

"It's something we've been working on for a while," Darvah defended patting Katie's shoulder. "Only problem is there's a few kinks we still work out."

"One of them being I can't pilot Green and operate the cloaking at the same time," she said smirking at Matt, "but if I had a co-pilot…"

"Absolutely. One-hundred percent, yes."

"Let's get to the lions."

-.-

"We're getting close," Shiro said as they flew towards the converging fleets. "Everyone get ready."

/Matt. Darv. Run the cloaking subroutine/

/Got it. Initializing cloak/

/Just warnin' y'all. Not sure how long this'll last. We need to make this quick/

/Alright/ Allura acknowledged, /let's take a look at who the Galra are attacking/

"Friendly fire?" Jaz questioned leaning over Shiro's seat in shock.

"Seems so," he murmured.

/What the cheese? It's Galra-on-Galra violence, again/

/Geez, these people just do not like each other/

/And I thought my people were bad/

"So are we helping or not?" Jaz questioned.

/Bay doors opening/ Pidge called and two small ships flew out from the ship being attacked. /Whose ships are those?/

/Lotor/ Allura growled.

"Lotor and Zarkon must be fighting for control of the empire."

"Or Zarkon's trying to eliminate his only threat to the throne."

/Guys, those ships are getting awfully close/

Voltron moved out of the way, then the cloak failed. /Uh oh. The trails from Lotor's ship drives messed with our cloaking spectrum/

/Looking for a work-around/

"Too late. Our cover's been blown. We may have to engage," Shiro said and Voltron dove back, weaving between the shots as the Galra ships opened fire. "Jaz, shield! Hunk, use your bayard!"

"Just keep it steady," she growled. Sliding into a firm stance, Jaz began to spread her hands, a narrow light forming in her palms as a larger one formed in front of Voltron. "I'll keep it low till Hunk fires."

/Got it!/ the Yellow Paladin called slamming his bayard in. the massive cannon materialized on Voltron's shoulder, firing off dozens of beams into the incoming fleets.

"We should leave now!" Jaz said raising the shield.

"Right," Shiro agreed turning Voltron around. "Let's get outta here."

/Guys, I'm picking up a transmission/ Darvah called.

"Play it."

After a moment, an image of Zarkon appeared on the screen, only now he seemed to be wearing some sort of helmet over his entire head. "Attention, citizens of the Galra Empire. From this day forwards, my son, Lotor, is to be regarded as a fugitive criminal of the empire. All citizens are authorized to use deadly force to stop him or any of his soldiers. I repeat, Prince Lotor is an enemy of the state. Engage with extreme prejudice. Kill on sight."

"Well, that sucks," Lance breathed quietly, saying what they were all thinking.

A/N: alright, so this kinda ended up being a filler chapter more than anything. I did my best, but this wasn't one I felt particularly invested in, so…here we are. As usual, I love hearing reviews and a look forwards to hearing from y'all in the next chapter.