Hey guys, I'm back. Holy Quiznak was Season 6 amazing or what? I finally got the snippets of Shiro and Keith's backstories I've been waiting for, so I'll be incorporating references to those flashbacks in future chapters. And while I was one of many who predicted Clone!Shiro, even I didn't see the way that played out coming. It's safe to say that my Red Rising/Voltron fics have officially crossed over into full AU territory now, so from this point, so there will be quite a few differences in canon once Shiro and Keith get back to the past. For the rest of the summer, I'm going to try to keep a consistent writing schedule and update every Monday and Saturday. Enjoy, and I'll have the next chapter posted on Saturday.
Part II: Rage:
"Shit escalates"
–Sevro au Barca
Chapter 22: Outbound Flight:
Galra Fighter
En route to the Kuiper Belt
March 24th, 2841
It was crowded in the cockpit of the Galra fighter as they broke through the Martian atmosphere out into the dark void of space. Shiro was grateful everyone was wearing gravBoots to keep them anchored to the floor while Keith reoriented the ship away from the sun and took them towards the Rim. After a week of preparations and planning, they were finally on their way to the 11th Fleet. ArchGoverness Norvo and Lorn au Arco's daughters-in-law had taken their ships the day after the battle and sailed out towards the Rim in pursuit of the Jackal's Boneriders. Once the bastards had been caught, the two families would continue towards Jupiter, where the remnants of House Arcos would retake Lorn's stronghold on Europa to give the rebellion a foothold among the Galilean Moons.
Tridenti au Norvo and her forces would remain in Jupiter's orbit until Shiro's team sent word that they'd successfully taken the Classis Plutus, then they would use the modified fleet to expedite the ArchGoverness's return to Triton. Meanwhile, the rest of the rebel forces who hadn't gone with Darrow and Mustang to Luna remained behind on Mars. Orion and the Telemanuses stood sentinel over the fourth planet to protect it from Gold reprisals, while Ragnar began the long, difficult process of liberating his people from the ice wastes of Mars' South Pole. That left Keith and Shiro to lead the rebel strike team to the Kuiper Belt to hijack the 11th fleet. However, there was one pit stop they needed to make on the way there.
Cassius had told Mustang about Octavia's deep space asteroid warehouse on S-1988, a minor main belter in the Karin Cluster. It was a silicate-based junk asteroid with no mining potential, but it was what was inside the warehouse that mattered. Five hundred nuclear warheads, each with a yield of thirty megatons. The depot sat between the Core and the Rim, the Sovereign's trump card if the Ash Lord ever had to repeat the atrocities that earned the man his moniker. The idea of weapons of such devastating destructive power in the hands of a man like ArchImperator Grimmus was horrifying enough on its own. But according to Quicksilver, The Jackal had heard whispers of the depot's existence.
It wasn't a stretch from there to assume that he'd shared that intel with his most trusted conspirators for after the intended slaughter at Darrow's Triumph. While the Norvo and Arcos fleets would hunt the Boneriders, Shiro and Keith planned to stop at the depot on the way there and destroy it before the Jackal's Boneriders could get to it. Shiro had seen footage of Adrius' lieutenants during the Second Battle of Mars, and at The Institute. They could not be allowed to acquire those nukes under any circumstances. The only reason they hadn't left earlier was because it had taken a week for the Rising's scientists to analyze Keith's Galra fighter and figure out how to free up extra space for more troops without sacrificing critical systems.
Tactus put a hand on Shiro's shoulder as the ship sped through the darkness of space in the direction of Pluto's orbit. The fighter wasn't fast enough to get them there in minutes like when he and the other Paladins had first fled Earth in the Blue Lion, but it would still take less than a day. By Shiro's estimates, it would take about an hour for them to reach the asteroid belt. Depending on how long they spent at the warehouse neutralizing the warheads, it would only be a few hours from there to Kerberos. If all went well, they'd reach their destination by the end of the day. Despite the anticipation of the mission, Shiro found himself filled with a quiet sense of dread at the thought of returning to the moon where all the insanity of his life began.
It had been a relief to hear from Keith that Pidge had finally found her brother, although the Black Paladin couldn't help but worry since there was still no lead on what had befallen Commander Holt. Intellectually, Shiro knew there was nothing he could have done to keep himself and the Holts from getting captured. The Galra Empire would have taken them no matter what. And even if they hadn't been captured, the empire would have eventually invaded Earth in search of the Blue Lion. But there was always that small part of him that clung to the idea that if he had done something differently, it wouldn't have happened. It was a futile exercise, something he did when he thought about his situation to give himself some measure of control. It helped keep him him grounded during travel time and his thoughts drifted back to the past.
The next thing he knew, his ears popped, and Tactus was gently shaking him on the shoulder.
"Sorry," he apologized sheepishly. "Just got lost in my own thoughts." Both Keith and Tactus looked at him like they could see through the excuse at what had really happened. Neither of them said anything, though, and for that, Shiro was grateful. Tactus deactivated the jamField and told the other rebel soldiers crammed into the back of the starfighter to ready themselves for an EVA.
"We've reached Asteroid S-1998," Keith announced as the ship began to slow. Shiro moved closer to Keith's seat to look out the window. From the outside, the depot looked like any other asteroid in the inner belt. If he hadn't known what he was looking for, Shiro wouldn't have paid any special attention to it. But he knew this was no ordinary asteroid. As Keith piloted the Galran craft around the asteroid, Shiro opened the coms and transmitted the Olympic clearance codes Cassius had supplied them with before he had left for Luna with Darrow and Mustang. A chime marked that the codes had been accepted, and a large rectangular section of the asteroid's stone surface sunk inward and slid away to reveal a small hangar bay for ships to dock for loading.
Gently, Keith brought the ship in and landed it delicately on the metal floor of the hangar. Shiro didn't know whether it was Druid magic or the Galran equivalent of a GravThruster that kept the starfighter precariously balanced on its narrow base, but he wasn't going to look a gift horse in the mouth. Evey stayed behind with a third of their strike team to guard the ship while Shiro and Tactus lead everyone else into the decontamination chamber. Once the chamber had completed its cycle, the team stepped into the dark hallways of the warehouse.
The instant the hatch leading into the corridor unsealed, the Geiger meter synced to Shiro's helmet crackled at the radiation in the air. If they hadn't had to wear their helmets due to lack of oxygen in the facility, they'd have been immediately fried. The amount of radiation was staggeringly greater than that present in the legal five megaton warheads used in space combat. Looks like Cassius' intel checked out, he thought to himself as he leads the way to the control room. Not that he had doubted the Morning Knight's sincerity in defecting to their side, but he had entertained the possibility that Cassius had been given false information to divert attention away from booby traps or other security measures the Sovereign's weapons depot might have.
In any case, they were here now, and thus far the floor plans the Bellona had provided them with appeared to be accurate. They moved quickly, radiation-proof clothing worn on top of pulseArmor crinkled noisily as they crept towards the control room. The jets on their suits were silent in the vacuum as they moved forward, gravBoots anchoring them to the deck. Helmet cams transmitting everything they saw across the solar system. Darrow had figured that learning the Sovereign had kept enough nukes to repeat Rhea if the Rim ever rebelled again would be a useful incentive for the undecided Moon Lords to throw their lot in with the Rising. As they rounded a corner and found a window overlooking the warehouse's contents, Shiro could only hope that the Reaper was right.
The Black Paladin paled as he took in the sight of so many nukes. He glanced up at the Geiger meter on his helmet display, seeing how much radiation was in the air. Unbidden, his mind flashed back to childhood memories. Of his grandfather telling him about the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. About the Fukushima disaster. He remembered the horror in his grandfather's voice when he spoke of both, and it was the closest frame of reference he had to even come close to describing the terror he felt as he truly processed what people mean when they spoke in hushed tones of the Burning of Rhea.
Shiro turned as he felt a hand on his shoulder to find Tactus standing beside him, his face equally as horrified. Keith stood still on Shiro's other side, trying to process the rows upon rows of nuclear warheads spread out before them, stretching across the metal cavern of the warehouse until they looked as if they'd go on forever. Shaking his head, he turned back to face their troops, wrenching his eyes away from the sight.
"Alright," he said, his voice hoarse as he struggled to maintain his composure. "According to our intel, there's a self-destruct switch in the control room. We know the Boneriders haven't found this place yet because the nukes are still here. But we need to be careful. We don't know if there are any loyalist forces stationed on nearby asteroids dispatched to defend the warehouse. So, we proceed with caution. Stay in formation and keep your eyes open. Let's move." Everyone snapped to attention and formed up in a column. Shiro took the lead, and with Keith and Tactus behind him, he led the way down the hallway toward where Cassius' map said the warehouse's control center would be.
It was almost too easy. It took fifteen minutes for them to reach the control center from the hangar. The warehouse still had power, so they disabled all communications and set the base to self-destruct in twenty minutes. That could give them enough time to get back to the ship and get clear before the asteroid blew up. Halfway through the countdown, and two thirds of the way back to the ship, Murphy's Law reared its ugly head.
"Sir," Evey's voice jumped out at him over the coms. "We've got incoming."
"Friend or foe?" he asked.
"Foe," she answered. "Three dreadnaughts. Bonerider insignias." Shiro grit his teeth.
"How long till they get here?" he demanded.
"Dreadnaughts are holding fifteen minutes out from the asteroid, but they're sending shuttles to steal the warheads. ETA ten minutes." Shiro checked the countdown timer on his HUD. The shuttles would reach the warehouse right as the clock hit zero. He turned to Keith, his eyes asking the silent question of whether his fellow Paladin could pilot their ship away from the ship fast enough to get out of range of the dreadnaughts' long-range guns. Keith nodded, and Shiro grinned as he told Evey to get everyone on board.
They moved quicker after that, gravBoots calibrated for them to skip through the hallway like when they pursued Tactus through the halls of Lorn's castle on Europa. Tactus leaped along beside him now, moving like Aja had come back from the dead to chase him. It took three minutes to reach the hangar. Shiro glanced nervously at the ticking countdown on his wrist once they were safely inside the ship. It had taken them two minutes to get everyone crammed on board. They had five minutes before the asteroid exploded, and the Bonerider shuttles were halfway to the base and closing fast.
He held his breath as Keith guided their ship out of the hangar into open space. He held the edge of the pilot's chair in a death grip as they dodged missiles and railgun fire from the dreadnaughts and sped through the asteroid belt, weaving among large objects to avoid being targeted while getting as far away from the asteroid as they could. Once they reached the outer edge of the belt, Keith did a U-turn and parked the ship to give everyone a front row seat for the impending fireworks.
Shiro began to count out loud as the timer finally ticked down its last few seconds and tinted his visor as the view outside lit up with a blinding white explosion of energy as the explosive force of five hundred warheads ripped through the asteroid belt. When the explosion faded, everyone in the ship gaped in awe at the sight. Between the self-destruct mechanism and the nukes themselves, the explosion had incinerated every asteroid around it on both sides of the belt, carving a tunnel through the belt that let them see all the way through to the other side.