A third of the way from the IGF Atlas, Alex woke up from a nap. He looked out the window and saw something that looked very out of place on an asteroid. "Hey, is that Alterran tech?" Alex asked, referring to the hybrid tech that humans based on Altean magic. "The place looks completely abandoned, should we scan it for life? We could rescue some people." He suggested.
Hunk peered through the cockpit window, and told the lion to scan the lonesome asteroid for signs of life. One weak red heat signature was visible in the supposed command centre of the outpost, occasionally blacking out completely, but always appearing again after a tick or so.
"Should we check it out?" Acxa asked.
Hunk thought for a moment, before he slowly guided the lion towards an open hangar near the command centre.
Shay got out first because she could survive in a vacuum, and felt like she was split in two. One half of her felt warm and at home with the familiar Alterran surroundings, but the other half felt sad at their clear decay. She waved to Alex, Acxa and Hunk that it was safe to get out, and they followed her into a flight of stairs with their helmets on to breathe right. Joanna and Keith stayed behind to guard the lion.
"Why are we taking the stairs instead of an elevator?" Alex asked.
"The elevator's probably just as broken as the rest of the system in this place." Acxa said, climbing the stairs slightly faster than Alex. "The stairs won't drop on us here, it's cemented into the building."
Hunk was the last up the stairs, walking slower than usual. Shay looked back and asked, "Are you okay?" As he seemed to have a sorrowful look on his face.
"Just wondering what might have happened here. How there's only one person alive on the ship." He said, still keeping eyes on the railing that his hand was gliding on.
Once the trio had made it to the top of the staircase and through a short corridor, they found the control centre, or what used to be one.
The panels around the walls had been ripped bare off the plaster, leaving life support systems that would usually be in the walls sprawled across the floor in an array of tanks, pipes and wires. One was lying in a recovery position on the floor next to a fire escape. A gaping wound gushed deep red blood from their hip, so it was clearly a fresh one. Part of their hair was singed off at the ends. Acxa ran over to the dying person, pushed hair out of the way and gasped.
Veronica Kogane, her wife and only lover, presumed dead, was lying there, barely alive, with nobody to help her.
She looked desperately at Hunk, who nodded and ran alongside Alex to get a medical kit. Shay crouched over to where Acxa was, and kneeled down. "It's gonna be okay." She said. "Veronica's a strong person. She'll get through it." She rubbed her shoulder, which she found annoying, but she knew she was only doing it to reassure herself.
After Hunk and Alex had returned with First aid, they took over with getting Veronica off the bloodstained floor and into the yellow lion to safety.
Acxa followed behind, comforted by Shay's words, but still worried for Veronica. She was only human, and they were very weak when it came to attacked bases.
Once they were in the lion, Acxa helped Keith and Joanna put Veronica inside a healing pod to recover. She say there for the rest of the journey, scared to the bones that Veronica wouldn't survive the trip. The hip injury led her to losing way too much blood than was good for her. Not that losing any would have been good, anyway.
Hunk landed the lion on the Atlas carefully, as to not shake the healing pod, but Acxa was still on her toes. A couple of Garrison medics came into the lion to aid Veronica, and Acxa followed them. Hunk sat on a bench next to Keith and tried to start a conversation. "You okay?"
Keith sighed. "Do you want the short version or the long version?" He leaned back on the bench out of tiredness.
Hunk's mouth twitched. "I think both of us would feel better if you told me the long version." He said.
And so Keith began. He and Acxa had been captured by sentries commanded by General Karr when Mira was barely ten, and were tortured for for information until Karr came to the conclusion that they were solid lockers. Mira has rescued them along with Jo, but they had never been able to talk to each other properly. He missed her so much, and he finally had her back, but she ignored him.
Hunk sighed, then said, "Try talking to her and catch up on things. Make some time for conversation. Don't just wait for her to realise that you're suddenly back in her life again." He then got up and went back to the yellow lion to work on getting the mud off the Lion's claws.
"So, we've just stolen a crystal from probably the Galra's most protected Balmera mine to power a ship that barely anyone knew was rebuilt." Lance said to himself, not quite believing that they had succeeded in such a reckless and dangerous mission. He looked at Pidge, who's eyes were looking straight ahead, blinking rarely. She was strange when she was concentrating. "Pidge?"
"Oh, yeah. About that, we're coming up on the Gobi System." Her knuckles were white after gripping the joysticks for so long.
Suddenly, a every sound stopped. Before they knew it, the two paladins were hit by a ship twice the size of an average Galra cruiser, it's colossal hull ramming into the side of the pod with the force of a Concorde.
He blacked out.