As soon as she got the doors open Pidge was back on her feet, falling into step beside Keith in the middle of their group as she tapped her wrist computer to bring up the map of the base. "Straight to the end of the corridor, left turn, down three flights." She rattled off the instructions easily, picking up the pace as other groups around them split off toward their targets. Their teammates kept pace easily, a Galra, an Arusian, and a pair of crab-like insectoids apparently called Ch'meks. As one of the best techs assigned to this missions, Pidge had been given targets at the far end of the base under the assumption that she could make up for the extra travel time with her speedy hacking even with a third objective. She couldn't help but be flattered by their confidence in her abilities, and was determined to get the job done as quickly as possible. They couldn't afford delays or screw-ups.
"Silent alarms." Keith noted quietly. They'd already heard distant sounds of weapons fire as other teams met their first obstacles, but otherwise the only sound was their own footsteps ringing off the metal floor.
Before she could even nod or shake her head, their path was abruptly cut off by a pair of soldiers lunging out of a hallway ahead of them with their guns raised to fire. The first was taken down by plasma bolts to the head and chest from the Ch'meks' guns before they could even get a shot off, while the other only had time for a single spray of fire that went wide as the Arusian's battle hammer found their chest and folded them in half with a sickening crunch of armor and bone. Pidge refused to give the crumpled bodies a second glance in passing as they resumed their steady run down the long corridor. The clock was ticking.
The main corridor was long but they reached the far end without further incident, the remaining handful of teams following them down the steep stairwell before splitting off in different directions. Pidge's group loped steadily down the maze of hallways, following the construction blueprints Kolivan had provided as they headed for one of the large rooms near the far end. A few times they found their path barred by Empire soldiers, usually in ones and twos, and left them behind as slumped, bloody bodies against the walls.
When they finally reached their destination, Pidge huffed in annoyance. The blueprints did nothing to convey the sheer size of this place, and it had taken longer than she liked just to reach their first objective. Down here, there was no indication of the vicious fighting raging high overhead, but she knew it was there, and that the longer she took, the more of their fighters would not be coming home after this battle. She crossed immediately to the main console, noting the size of the stacks of data storage units to either side. There was no way they could pull all of this data, no matter how useful it would be. They would have to simply pull the data on the movements of almathium shipments and a few other things and hope for the best.
She plugged in her data tablet and got to work at the console, letting the rest of the world fall away as she concentrated. If any threats showed up, it was up to the other five members of her team, the two Ch'meks and the Arusian outside and Keith and the tall Galra inside, to protect her while she got the job done. Code began to scroll across her screen and she let out an appreciative whistle. "Fuck, even Zarkon's command ship didn't have security this tight on their systems."
The Galra snorted, adjusting her grip on her rifle. "Zarkon's command ship's systems do not contain the detailed dispositions of every ship, soldier, and slave in the Empire. Trepan Kev does." She regarded the paladin grimly. "You can get through it?"
"Of course I can. Just give me a minute." Her fingers flew over the keyboard as she muttered to herself under her breath. The defenses were downright impressive, but she refused to consider for even a moment that they might be more than she could handle. She prodded and tweaked, poking at holes and testing weak spots. The defenses were highly advanced, doing their best to respond to her attacks, but they couldn't keep up with Katie Holt. After several agonizing minutes she let out a growl of triumph. "I'm in. Everything's encrypted, but I should still be able to pull the files." Suiting actions to words she sent her connection diving into the data banks, pulling out everything that contained certain keywords, like almathium and the names of several highly-skilled engineers that Kolivan had suggested they trace, and dumped it all into the tablet. The upload bar crept slowly across the screen, leaving her tapping her foot impatiently. "Come on…"
Just as the transfer was finishing there was a shout from outside. "We have company!" Pidge cursed, yanking the tablet free and tucking it into her chest plate for safe-keeping as she grabbed her bayard and followed Keith and the Galra out into the corridor. The scene they found was one of chaos, one of the Ch'meks firing desperately to keep a cluster of soldiers pinned behind a nearby corner. The other Ch'mek was clutching their uppermost shoulder, the scent of blood and burnt flesh strong in the confines of the hallway as the Arusian wrapped a makeshift bandage around the area. All three were pinned in the recessed doorway by the return fire of their opponents.
The Galra snarled and lunged forward between them, bringing her rifle to bear even as she charged the enemy position. Keith kept hot on her heels, sword ready, and the Arusian and uninjured Ch'mek leapt to follow as Pidge took charge of their injured teammate. By the time she'd finished securing the bandage the scuffle was over, the other four spattered with blood and the Arusian limping where a laser had grazed their thigh. She looked them over with a surge of trepidation as she helped the Ch'mek to his feet. Two moderate injuries already, and they'd only completed one objective. Hopefully everyone else was having better luck than they were.
"Which way to the next target?" The Galra growled, adjusting her grip on her weapon. Her upward glance was a stark reminder that they couldn't afford to waste time worrying. Everyone who had volunteered for the ground teams had known exactly what they were getting into. The spent their whole lives going on mission they knew they might never come back from.
The green paladin hastily consulted her map. "This way." She pointed off down a side hallway and fell in step with the group as the larger alien took the lead in the direction she had indicated.
They were moving slower now, with the Arusian's injured leg holding them back, but they limped along with gritted teeth in the tense silence that surrounded the group. As they passed through an intersection distant shouts and fighting could be heard that had Keith glancing down the side corridor and the Galra's ears swivelling in response, but they kept moving without a word. Each team had their own job to do, and they simply had to hope that enough teams would get their recovered data out for them to find the Weblum's Breath and destroy it, even if she could see the tightness in the faces of the others at the knowledge that their friends and packmates were in trouble and there was nothing they could do to help them right now.
The second set of computers went off without a hitch, and more quickly than the first now that she knew the trick to breaking through the security, but the eerie silence inside the base made the hairs on the back of her neck stand up. This wasn't right. It should have been harder than this. Where were all the guards? They hadn't seen more than two dozen so far, all regular soldiers, and even split between intercepting all the different teams, in a base this size there should have been more. They should have gotten swarmed in the time it took to deal with that group back at the first computer room.
Keith obviously was thinking along the same lines as his head turned this way and that, sharp dark eyes studying distant corners and listening carefully. "Let's get to the last one quickly and get out of here." He said quietly, peering once more over his shoulder in the direction they'd come from. She could see the tension in every line of his body, in the way his hand tightened around the grip of his sword as he set off down the hallway again toward their third and final target.
As they passed through another intersection in this Galra-made maze, they only had an instant's warning, a gleam off a rifle barrel in the darkness far to their right. Then their Galra companion was shoving her and Keith forward with a barked command to "Run!" as a dozen shots lanced through the open space where the two corridors met. Chancing a glance over her shoulder as she broke into a sprint, Pidge saw the limp, bloody forms of the Arusian and one of the Ch'meks-the uninjured one, she realized, glancing at the shoulder of the one still with them-sprawled unmoving across the floor behind them. Then her view was obscured by a dozen Empire soldiers in dark armor that served as terrifyingly effective camouflage in these dark hallways as they came around the corner in pursuit of the remaining four hunters and their group was forced to make a sharp turn to get out of the line of fire.
They took the next two turns at a dead run, the sounds of pursuit drawing closer over the rasp of their own heavy breathing. The Ch'mek snarled something furiously to themselves that didn't translate, hefting up their heavy rifle with a grimace of pain. "Go! Get data, get out!" They ordered, digging in their heels as they spun to face the oncoming soldiers. "I delay them! For you, for Dalmatai, for pack! H'ressyan kaa H'ress sh'ra!"
There was no time to argue, and even if there had been Pidge knew there would have been no convincing the alien. She'd seen that look before, in desperate fights like this one, every time a friend or an ally or a stranger made a last desperate stand for the sake of others. All she could do was join the Galra in yelling "Good hunting!" over their shoulders as they made another sharp turn out of sight of the imminent encounter. The noise of rifle fire and muffled shouting echoed behind them until they were no longer in earshot.
Pidge swallowed hard against the lump in her throat and forced herself to keep running.
They finally reached the third computer room and Pidge threw herself at the console with desperate haste, fingers fumbling with the connecting cable as she made a loud sound of frustration. She finally got the cord into place and slapped it down beside her as she booted up the computer, fingers flying to access the system and get them out of this place before they lost anyone else.
The computer snarled a warning at her and she cursed. The security parameters on this one were different from those on the other two, a wise precaution but a delay they absolutely did not need right now, with three of their team dead and a dozen skilled Empire soldiers breathing down their necks.
"They're not playing anymore." Keith commented, startling her into looking up at him across the room as her fingers stilled for a moment in confusion. The red paladin's gaze wasn't on her, however. He was turned toward one wall, looking back the way they'd come. "The soldiers. They probably send rookies out first after intruders, and then if they can't deal with the problem quickly enough then the more experienced ones go out to clean up. Different armor, stronger weapons, better skills."
Their last remaining teammate hummed in agreement, peering out through a crack at the edge of the door. "Makes sense. They were not expecting a large coordinated assault. But now we are outgunned as well as outnumbered. How much longer, Green Paladin?" She turned her yellow gaze toward Pidge, who jumped.
"Um...not sure. The security's even tighter on this computer than on the other two, with a different firewall set-up. It's taking me longer to get through." She glared at the screen and changed her line of attack against the shifting code of the system defenses. "I'll have it in a minute, though." She promised firmly.
The three of them fell into a tense silence broken only by the clatter of Pidge's fingertips over the keyboard set into the console and the green paladin's quiet muttering to herself. With her lips pulling back over her teeth in a silent snarl of frustration, she drove a piercing shaft of code toward a weak point in the firewall and finally, finally found herself through. Instantly she started going through the files for what they needed, and was shocked to see how many there were. "Jackpot, guys. Over ten times as many relevant files as on either of the other two systems."
"Transfer them quickly." The Galra warned quietly, ears twitching toward the door. "I don't think we have much longer."
Grimacing, Pidge nodded as her eyes tracked the upload bar on the tablet. More files meant a longer transfer time, and she could already hear the distant footsteps of approaching soldiers, no doubt alerted by her efforts to break into this computer. They seemed to clack against the metal floor in time with her racing heart as she counted down the long seconds until they had what they needed as the progress bar spooled upward with agonizing slowness.
It hit 100% and even as the word 'complete' flashed across the screen she yanked the tablet free and shoved it under her chest plate.
In the same moment the door blasted open under heavy fire, the too-familiar crack of Empire rifles echoing deafeningly off the bare walls.
Keith grabbed her hand, pulling her toward the door as the Icebringer Galra leapt ahead of them with a furious yell that was nearly drowned out by the crack of her own rifle firing as fast as it would go.
Pidge was aware of confused shouts and the crack of gunfire. The silvery flash of Keith's sword and the green glow of her katar. The iron stench of plasma-burned metal and the copper reek of blood. The sharp tug of flesh giving way under her blade and the steady pull of Keith's hand on her own.
Then they were through the press of bodies and running.
They plunged headlong down the hallway as laser fire streaked past them, diving into one side passage and twisting up another with the soldiers hot on their heels. There was no time to wonder if their last teammate was with them or lost like the others, no time to keep track of the many turns and changes of direction they were making in order to check them against the map later. Only the ache of her heaving lungs and the burn of her muscles and the sharp agony of the stitch in her side and desperate terror as they ran for their lives deep underground in this massive Empire stronghold.
Keith took two sharp turns ahead of her and then she suddenly found herself yanked sideways, a hand clapped over her mouth to muffle her shriek of surprise. The only light was the aquamarine glow of their armor's indicator lights, illuminating what appeared to be the inside of a maintenance closet. With the red paladin's hand over her mouth, she froze at the muffled sound of the soldiers running past their hiding place, not daring to move until the sound had faded in the distance.
Only then did she allow herself to relax slightly, chest heaving as she tried to catch her breath. Every breath was sending shocks of pain up her side where the muscles spasmed from the strain, and she could feel sweat plastering her hair to her scalp. Keith was panting as well as he pulled up the map on his wrist computer and ran a finger over the map as he tried to figure out where they'd ended up and what direction they needed to go to get out.
The painful stitch in her side was making it hard to breath and she brought one hand up to massage the cramped muscles. But instead of pressing against the fabric of her undersuit Pidge found herself letting out a sharp high noise of agony as her fingers sank into a hot wetness that should not have been there and sent lightning bolts of pain ricocheting through her body hard enough to drive her to her knees.
Keith was at her side in an instant, expression anxious in the suit lights. "Pidge? Pidge, what's wrong? Talk to me!" She opened her mouth, but the words wouldn't come. All she could do was lift her hand shakily from her side, from the gaping wound that she hadn't even felt through the haze of fear and adrenaline, and let her wide-eyed stare do the talking as she looked down at it. She heard his horrified intake of breath more as background noise to the blood that slicked the torn fabric, the smell of singed flesh, and the cracked pink-stained curve of what she distantly thought must have been one of her ribs exposed where a deep channel of flesh had been ripped away.
"Oh god. Shit." Keith breathed, hands hovering over the injury uncertainly. "Shit, this is bad." She wanted to laugh, there was an understatement if there ever was one, but she couldn't seem to find the breath. That was probably for the best anyway. Laughing would have hurt. When careful hands steadied her Pidge realized she was swaying. Her friend guided her gently until she was laying down on the cold metal floor and pulled off her helmet, her head resting in his lap. "It's gonna be okay, Pidge. Just hang on." He said quietly. The red paladin was casting around him, trying to find something to staunch the blood flow with, but there was nothing.
The green paladin watched upside down as he thumbed desperately at his coms. "Guys, can anyone hear me? Emergency! Dammit!" he hissed. "No signal down here!" His voice was shaking. She tried to remember ever hearing Keith so frightened and came up empty. Angry she could picture easily, happy, frustrated, playful, even anxious. But never afraid. Not like this.
Not that she could blame him. Cornered deep in a subterranean Empire base, with patrols hunting them and no way to call for help. She could feel her heart rate start to pick up and tried to take a deep breath to calm herself, but the stretch of the muscles sent another burning wave of agony radiating from her side and she couldn't suppress a high whine of pain as she screwed her eyes shut, tears springing to the corners.
"Easy! Just take it easy!" She could feel Keith moving above her. Then a firm tug at her already damaged suit, and the sound of material tearing. Opening one eye, she saw him using his Marmora knife to cut away a chunk of her undersuit around her exposed stomach and sides. One last yank freed the patch of material and he quickly bundled it up and pressed it over the wound. "Keep pressure on this." He ordered, firmly repositioning her right arm across her stomach and pressing her hand against the fabric. "We have to slow the blood loss."
The desperate note in his voice gave her pause. When had she been injured? How long had her side been torn open, her blood pouring away under the forceful pounding of her heart as they ran? How much blood could a person lose? She couldn't remember. Matt would know. But Matt wasn't here. He was up on the Castle of Lions, waiting for them all to come back. She suddenly, desperately wished her brother was there to hold her and tell her everything would be okay.
"Keith?" She whispered. Her voice sounded strange to her own ears, young and shaky. "I'm scared."
His hands cupped her cheeks gently, and she pretended not to notice the way they shook and left bloody smears behind. But the touch was comforting nonetheless. If Matt couldn't be here, at least another of her brothers was. "Pidge, it's gonna be okay. I'll keep trying the coms, one of the others will come and help us get past that patrol, and we'll get you up to the Castle and a healing pod. You're gonna be alright."
She managed a small nod at the reassurances and closed her eyes, taking shallow breaths in an attempt to spare her torn muscles. She could hear him calling into the coms, over and over, pleading for one of their teammates to answer and falling silent only briefly as another patrol clattered past outside their hiding spot. But there were too many thick metal walls in the way, and too much rock over head. The only one on the same level of the base as them was Hunk, and he was somewhere at the far end, far outside the limited range of the coms when there was so much shielding around them. The green paladin shifted her hand slightly and could feel the slickness of the fabric, now soaked with her blood and hot and sticky against her cold skin. There was so much. Too much.
She didn't realize she was crying until her breath hitched, sending another spear of agony through her body and making her tremble and whimper. Keith was murmuring reassurances but they were muffled in her ears. She didn't want to die.
Pidge didn't realize she'd spoken aloud, but Keith inhaled sharply. "You're not going to die. We're gonna get out of here and it'll be okay. You'll be alright. You just gotta hang on a little longer for me." He sounded as though he were trying to convince himself as much as her, his fingers clenching momentarily where they rested on her head. "Dammit, someone answer me!" He snarled into the coms, a rising note of panic betraying that he knew just as well as she did that they were running out of time. There was no getting out of here without help. Keith wouldn't be able to outrun the soldiers or use his sword while carrying her.
She knew she should just pass him the tablet and tell him to take the data they'd come for and go. The other four members of their team had already died to secure this information. Pidge could see their bodies clearly in her mind's eye, the slumped bodies of the Arusian and the first Ch'mek, the other Ch'mek's defiant snarl as they stood their last stand, the Galra's bristling back as she leapt to clear a path for the two paladins. All sacrificed for their mission, the latter two leaping knowingly and willingly to their deaths with a courage she couldn't seem to find in herself no matter how hard she tried.
"I don't...I'm not brave, Keith. Green paladins are supposed to be brave." The blue lights of their suits were making her head hurt and she closed her eyes in an attempt to lessen the pain. It was cold down here, in the lower levels of the base. She hadn't noticed that before. "But I'm not. I'm scared." She couldn't stand the thought of Keith leaving her alone down here with the darkness and the pain and the reek of her own blood.
It was becoming hard to focus, and she knew that was a bad thing, but she didn't seem to have the strength to care or to stop herself from pouring out the thoughts running through her head. "I d-don't want to die. I want to go back to the Castle, and be with you guys, all of you, and Matt and Allura and Coran. I-I want...I want to go home." The last word came out in barely a whisper, a soft, despairing plaint. It was a desire hidden deep in the back of her heart that she'd never given voice to, no matter how often Lance and Hunk had talked about her families, or how many times she'd caught Shiro alone on the command deck in the middle of the night with the holoprojection of Earth floating overhead.
It wasn't that she'd never wanted to go home as desperately as they did. But she'd never allowed herself to think about it. Never allowed herself to think past the next battle, the next mission, the next opportunity to find her brother and her father.
Never stopped to think about what she would do once she found them, what she would do After the war.
But now she was going to die, millions of lightyears from home, and there would be no After for her, and all she could think of was all the things she'd wanted to do that would never happen now.
"I want to go home." Pidge repeated, her voice cracking as she weakly hugged herself with the arm that wasn't trying to stem the relentless flow of her life's blood out onto the floor. "I wanted see my mom again, and tell her I found Mattie, and introduce her to Green and everyone else. I wanted to call Iverson out on all his bullshit, right to his face, and zap him for hurting us all."
"I wanted...I wanted to see more of the stars, without having to be in a fight every time. There's so many pretty planets and we never get a chance to appreciate them. I wanted to go back to Olkari and learn more about how they use quintessence to shape their machines. I wanted to learn more about Olkari tech, and Galran tech, and Altean, and H'ress and everything else. There's so much I haven't gotten to learn yet, out here."
There was water dripping onto her face. Was Keith crying? Keith never cried. Or did he? He was as good as a brother to her now, but she didn't even know whether he ever cried.
"...I wanted to get to know you better, and Lance, and Hunk, and everyone else. You're my family and I barely know you and that's not right. Family's supposed to know everything about each other. I'm sorry, Keith."
"It's okay, Pidge. It's okay." Her brother's voice was cracking, and sounded muffled in her ears. He reached down and laced his fingers with her small, cold ones. It helped. Her other hand was tingling, an uncomfortable pins-and-needles sensation that made it hard to tell if she was still holding onto the bundle of fabric.
She shivered, fingers tightening around his. "I wanted to see if I ended up taller than Matt when I grew up. I wanted to try alcohol, and go to college, and invent new tech, and see what it felt like to fall in love, like Matt and Shiro and Alejandro and Kurogane and Hunk and Shay and you and Lance. I wanted to know what it felt like to love and be loved like that." The words came out in barely a whisper. It was hard to breathe, and her injured side felt like it was burning under the fabric pressed against it. Keith was saying something but she couldn't make out the words anymore.
The thoughts were falling apart in her head now, hazy and incomplete. The world was reduced to the pain in her side, the tingling in her right hand, and Keith's shaking grip on her left. She wanted to keep living, learning, loving. She didn't want to die. Not now. Not yet.
There was a blinding light on the other side of her closed lids, muffled yelling from Keith, and then the world went black.