Two more chapters in Part I. This'll be the one that gives you an idea of what direction I'll be going with for Part II.
Chapter 19: Death of a Gold:
Invictus Officers' Suites
Martian Orbit
March 16th, 2841
"How are you still standing?" Mustang asked incredulously as she put a hand on Darrpw's stomach where Aja had stabbed him.
"Because we're not yet done," he replied. Battered and bloody, the two lovers searched through the suite for medical supplies while Cassius and Sevro locked her brother in a storage closet to keep him from interfering when he regained consciousness. She and Darrow were quiet as they moved from room to room, the magnitude of what they'd accomplished weighing on them.
They'd done it. Against all odds, their plan had worked. They hadn't been sure Cassius' escape would be believable enough to fool the Sovereign. But it was. And now, Octavia au Lune was dead in the next room. But the fight wasn't over. They were still trapped in the heart of enemy territory, wounded, unarmored, and with no supplies. Fortunately, they still held the element of surprise on their side. Cassius had activated a jamField right before Adrius pulled the trigger of Sevro's gun. Nobody outside of this room knew what had happened. Even without the jamField, the suite itself was soundproofed. None of the guards outside would have heard what was going on. The four needed to move quickly if they were going to take the ship.
Finally, Cassius and Sevro called out that they'd found med kits in one of the closets they'd shoved Mustang's brother into. She and Darrow walked back to meet their friends in the main room to get cleaned up. They took advantage of the silence to patch up their wounds and strip the armor off the corpses of Octavia's guards.
"We need to get off this ship," Darrow announced as they cleaned the enemy blood off the armor. Cracked and pierced though the armor was, it was better protection than what they were already wearing. "As long as everything went according to plan, Shiro will have already started putting together a rescue mission. As long as we can rendezvous with the boarding parties we'll have an escort back to our own fleet."
"Cassius," Mustang began, turning to face her ex. "Is the information you gave us about the Sovereign's private stealth shuttle accurate?"
"I rode in a similar model to reach Ganymede," the Morning Knight answered. Mustang nodded. After their talk in the medBay aboard the Deja Thoris, Cassius had shared more Olympic secrets than just Octavia's secret nuclear weapons stockpile in the belt. One of those secrets was the Classis Plutus, the eleventh fleet of Pluto.
Common knowledge held that the Society military garrison was divided into nine fleet. The Scepter Armada was comprised of the first and second fleets, responsible for the defense of Earth and Luna. The third fleet was headquartered on Mercury. The Classis Venteum, the fourth fleet, served as the Venusian navy. The fifth and sixth fleets made up the armada of Mars. The seventh fleet patrolled Jupiter. The eighth fleet, while based on Jupiter's moon Callisto, was responsible for the protection of Saturn. The ninth fleet belonged to Uranus, and the tenth fleet protected Neptune. Colonization of Pluto had begun relatively recently, so the planet was too small to have an officially fleet garrisoned on the dwarf planet, instead relying on contracted Peerless lancers for protection from Outriders and other criminals.
But apparently that wasn't strictly true. According to Cassius, the eleventh fleet, though shrouded in myth like the Ascomani, was very real. A top-secret fleet created to patrol the farthest edges of the solar system and protect it against hostile extrasolar civilizations. She would have thought the idea preposterous had she not already heard of the Galra Empire's atrocities herself from Shiro. And as it happened, the time traveler had more of an impact on the current time than he thought. Though the Galaxy Garrison had publicly done little to prepare themselves for a Galra invasion, they had quietly reverse engineered the Galra technology of the escape pod Shiro had crashed in when Ulaz had sent him back to Earth.
The project had been shelved when the Iron Golds conquered Earth. But as the colonization of the solar system began to spread beyond the inner asteroid belt, the ruling Sovereign of the time saw the value in having a specialized defense fleet capable of protecting human civilization from outside threats. Over the last few two and a half centuries, the work continued. With the resources of an entire solar system at their disposal, the nascent shipyards of Ganymede constructed a secret fleet of warships combining the elegant aesthetics of the Society with the advanced technology of the Galra Empire.
The existence of the eleventh fleet presented a tantalizing opportunity for the newborn rebellion. The Rising's biggest obstacles were distance and time. Even at full burn, it would take their fastest ships three weeks to reach Earth and Luna from Mars. Another month to go the other direction towards Jupiter. Still another month if they hoped to spread the rebellion out to Neptune. And then another three months to get from Neptune to Pluto. But the Galra starfighter that Keith had apparently been flying when he'd been dragged to this era could cross the distance in a fraction of the time. Shiro never knew the exact speed of one of those small craft, but if Darrow were to guess based on Shiro's estimates of the lions' top speeds, then a single Galra fighter could reach the edge of the solar system in a matter of hours.
The Classis Plutus flew in a consistent, non-stop loop along the edge of the Kuiper Belt, not stopping for anything. Cloaked, unmarked shuttles docked on Kerberos to load up on fuel and provisions to take back to the fleet. If Shiro and Keith could lead a strike team out to the rim and smuggle themselves aboard one of those supply ships, they could make their way back to the fleet and take control. It was a risky gamble, especially since they had no idea whether they'd have the same conversion rate on the lowColors that they did on the Pax. But if the two Paladins of Voltron could steal even a quarter of the Eleventh Fleet for the Rising, it would dramatically accelerate her and Darrow's plans for the rebellion.
In even better news, the Sovereign apparently kept a similarly modified stealth shuttle for her own personal use. It was how she would have escaped from Mars had the Jackal not allied himself with her. Darrow forced thoughts of fleet movements and the Jackal out of his mind and focused himself back on the task at hand. They couldn't take the eleventh fleet if he and the others didn't get off the ship first. After arming themselves once more, the four turned walked over toward the doors leading out into the corridor. Cassius went to type in the Olympic code to open the doors, then paused to sniff the air.
"What's that smell?" he wondered suspiciously.
"Smells like a sewer," Darrow commented. Sevro stared intensely at the razors he'd taken from Aja, including the one that used to belong to Lorn.
"I think it smells like victory," he remarked.
"Did you shit your pants?" Cassius asked in surprise, squinting his eyes at him. "You did."
"Sevro…" Mustang began.
"It's an involuntary muscle reaction when you're fake executed and swallow massive amounts of haemanthus oil," Sevro snapped. "You think I would do that on purpose?" Cassius and Darrow paused to look at each other, chuckling internally as they recalled the last time Sevro had asked a similar question back at the Institute.
"Well, maybe," Darrow replied with a shrug.
"Yeah, actually," Cassius answered. Sevro flipped the two of them the crux and made a face, twisting his lips till it looked like he was going to explode.
"What's happening?" Darrow asked. "Are you… still…"
"No!" Sevro retorted as he threw a water bottle. "You stuck a needle full of adrenaline into my chest, asshole. I'm having a heart attack." He swatted their hands away as they tried to help him. "I'm good he said," wheezing for a moment before he straightened up with a grimace. "I'm good."
"Are you sure you're prime?" Mustang asked.
"Left arm's numb," Sevro answered. "Probably need a Yellow." The quartet snorted with laughter as they took in the sight of their own appearances. After the battle with Aja, they looked like walking corpses. The only thing keeping them all awake and standing was the stim packs they'd looted from the dead Praetorians. Darrow wanted nothing more than to lie down with Mustang and go to sleep for a week. But they still had work to do. If everything had gone according to plan, then Shiro would already be planning a rescue mission to storm the ship and free them. They needed to be ready to meet the boarding parties and make a break for the Sovereign's shuttle.
Cassius finished entering the code, and the doors slid open with a soft hiss. The Praetorian guards stationed outside whirled around. Darrow and Cassius killed them before any of them had the time to raise their own weapons. Mustang strode past before the last body hit the floor, not even stopping as she made her way through the ship. Behind the group, Cassius re-entered the code to seal the doors before turning around to follow the others. Sevro and Darrow flanked Mustang like an honor guard as they made their way through the corridors. Alarms wailed in their ears as a voice over the intercom declared that the ship had been boarded by enemy troops.
The corridors were a maze, but the four of them had each been on the ship long enough at various points to have its internal layout memorized. They rounded a corner to find a glowing circle melting through the wall as a leechcraft drilled itself into the warship's hull. The bulkhead gave way and a squad of rebel soldiers swarmed into the hallway, their combat gear painted red with the spiked helmet of Ares. A Green raised his weapon as the four moved away from the alcove they'd sheltered from the smoke in, only to drop his weapon and salute when he realized who he'd aimed his weapon at.
"Glad to see you're still alive, sir!" the tech specialist greeted as Darrow stepped out into the corridor. Gasps of shock and cheers of surprise echoed through the hallway as the rest of the boarding party caught sight of the Reaper. The cheers and whispers died instantly when Mustang stepped out, holding the two symbols of power needed for the next phase of the plan. The soldier who'd first spotted them let out a long, surprised whistle.
"Looks like you didn't need our help after all," the man commented cheekily.
"We still do, we just didn't need it to the first part of the plan," Darrow replied with a smirk. The Green chuckled.
"Terranova figured you and Ares knew what you were doing," he answered. "Captain Eckert at your service. What do you need us to do?" Darrow grinned, glad to put the next phase of the plan into motion.
"First, we need an escort to the rear hangar," the Reaper began. "There should be a modified stealth shuttle parked there fast enough to reach Luna in less than a day." Excited whispering broke out as the squad overheard and realized what Darrow was planning next. "Summon as many boarding parties as you can to rendezvous with us there," the young warlord added. "And make sure we have a Yellow with us. Virginia, Bellona, Ares, and I patched ourselves up in the stateroom, but we'll need more thorough medical attention before we reach our destination."
"Register," Eckert answered, grinning savagely as he realized what the Reaper's plan was. "Anything else?" the man asked as he reached up to activate his commlink.
"One last thing," Darrow nodded. "We stuffed the Jackal in a supply closet in the Captain's Suite. Could you send someone to pick him up on their way to the hangar. We're bringing him with us."
The Classis Plutus is entirely my own invention. The only known designations for Society Fleets from the books are the Classis Venetum (4th Fleet of Venus), Classis Libertas (5th Fleet of the Inner Belt), and Classis Saturnis (8th Fleet (presumably) of Saturn). The 6th fleet is mentioned as being under the command of House Bellona and their allies, but the name is not known. All the other fleet names are my own conjecture based on fleet information from the books. The Scepter Armada being comprised of the 1st Fleet of Luna and 2nd Fleet of Earth is guesswork on my part, based on information in the books. Darrow mentions in Red Rising that the 5th and 6th fleet together make up the Armada of Mars. Going by that, it makes sense to guess that an armada in Society terms is made up of two or more fleet garrisons.