I have no regrets about that cliffhanger by the way. Anyway, so yeah... Bryn's alive in this fic. In all honesty, this wasn't something I had been planning on until I started writing the previous chapter. I came up with the whole "conscript other colors for reproductive purposes" ideas to explain how the 11th fleet would be able to maintain a stable population without have each color's family tree more tangled up than the Targaryens. But it wasn't until I actually started planning what Keith and Shiro would do on the ship that the idea to include "prisoners the Board of Quality Control didn't have the resources to execute because of backlog" in the list of potential ways for the Classis Pultus to maintain its population size. And to be honest, once the idea to have Bryn turn out to be one of those conscripts popped into my head, there was no getting it out. Because of her death in canon, Howlers are forever left to the imagination when it comes to hypothetical interactions between Sevro and his mom is she were still alive. And now that I've gone and written her survival into my AU, well, there's no goryslagging way I'm not going to have a scene where Sevro gets to meet his mom in this fic. I'll elaborate more on what Bryn's been up to for the last twenty years in the next chapter, but you can rest easy knowing that she was able to avoid being forced into being a breeding tool for the Society.
Chapter 25: Advance Guard:
Shirogane Engine Deck
Kuiper Belt
March 24th, 2841
For a moment, Shiro was too stunned to move, unsure he had even heard the name correctly. But the look on Nexiti's face was proof that this wasn't a case of shared names or mishearing. The man had known Fitchner's for years. He would know if this was simply another woman with the same name. Sevro's mother is alive, he thought, the implications staggering as he tried to process the fact. How will he react when he hears? How much does she even know about what's happening in the core?
"You wouldn't happen to know a Gold by the name of Fitchner au Barca would you?" he asked, testing the waters.
"I married him," she answered cautiously. Suddenly, she turned to look at Nexiti and regarded him carefully, evidently recognizing the man but unable to place where she remembered him from.
"Cylax!?" Bryn exclaimed as her eyes widened. "What the bloodyhell are you doing here?"
"Long time no see, Bryn," the Green replied. "We all thought you were dead."
"I figured I'd be executed," she said. "But apparently the eleventh fleet was short on bodies and Prefect Vardan decided that shunting me to the pucker end of the solar system away from my family would be a crueler punishment than execution."
"Listen," Keith interrupted. "I get that it's been a long time since you've seen each other, but we're on a clock here, and we've got a warship to take." Bryn's eyes narrowed in obvious suspicion as she turned to look at the rest of the group and appeared to notice the Gold standing among them for the first time.
"And who are you?" she demanded, focusing on the Gold and the two unknowns.
"Your son sent us," Shiro answered, and that managed to get a reaction out of her. Her eyes widened in surprise.
"Sevro sent you?" Bryn whispered, as if daring to hope for the first time that her family was still alive. "What about Fitchner?"
"I'm so sorry," Shiro replied solemnly. "He was killed a little over a week ago. Sevro took on his mantle as leader of the rebellion."
"You keep talking about a rebellion," Bryn commented. "And I'm not saying I don't believe you don't have the best interests of this ship's crew at heart, but last I heard the only rebellion against Gold failed centuries ago."
"Your husband started this one after we believed you dead," Cylax answered. "Called it The Sons of Ares at first. Sevro's taken up the mantle of Ares now that he's gone. After your husband was killed the rebellion's undercover agent within the ranks of Gold was discovered, and the Sons of Ares were forced into open war. But with the aid of your son and the Reaper, we managed to seize control of Mars itself."
"You freed Mars?" she asked, incredulous. The news that Mars had fallen to a lowColor rebellion had evidently rekindled the long dormant spark of hope she'd kept buried in order to survive out on the edge of the solar system.
"And we're conquering Luna as we speak," Shiro answered. "The rebel leadership killed the Sovereign, and now the entire Society is in disarray." Bryn turned to him, and her eyes narrowed in concentration.
"I've seen your face somewhere before," she commented, putting a hand on her chin as she appeared to contemplate the thought. After her supposed death, her family's photo album would have been destroyed or confiscated when the Board of Quality Control had raided her and Ficthner's home all those years ago. Finally, Bryn's eyes widened in recognition and she frantically started moving out back towards the main corridor. "Follow me," she said. "I need to show you the Archive Room."
The Archive Room turned out to be a large space in the exact center of the ship. One side of the room was dedicated to the history of the warship itself. Important dates were engraved into the walls, while in front of the text sat low pedestals containing salvaged artifacts taken from alien ships as battle trophies. Approaching each item brought up a holographic screen describing where and when each scrap had been collected, and by who. A few Shiro even recognized by color as coming from Galra starfighters and battle cruisers. Others, he was chilled to realize, resembled engine components from the exteriors of Altean pods. But when he turned around to examine the other half of the room, he could only stare in stunned silence at what he saw.
It had felt weird enough seeing his face on screen when Mustang showed him the official announcement of the Kerberos mission's disappearance on Luna so many months ago. It was another thing entirely seeing the same Garrison portrait hanging floor-to-ceiling on the wall of a Society warship. Two blocks of text flanked his image on either side. The left was his official bio that had been on the Garrison website before he had first left for Kerberos. As their poster boy, he was one of the few Garrison employees to have information about them posted online. Directly beneath the bio were his flight simulation scores, all the records he'd broken, and various other statistics about his career as a pilot.
In retrospect, he should have expected something like this when Keith told him that the flagship of the Classis Plutus had been named after him. But seeing it in person was another thing entirely. And that was nothing compared to the text engraved along the wall to the right of his portrait. That was entirely new to him, and it made his blood boil.
"In 2036, Captain Shirogane was selected to pilot the Galaxy Garrison's mission to Kerberos, the farthest manned space flight in the history of space exploration. The mission arrived on Kerberos five months after their departure from Earth, but less than twenty-four hours after they had landed and set up base camp, they vanished without a trace. While the public story was that the ship had crashed due to pilot error and all crewmembers had been killed, Garrison probes on the edge of the system detected an unidentified object of massive size entering the solar system shortly before Mission Control lost contact with the crew and leaving shortly afterwards.
With the knowledge that the crew of the Kerberos mission had been abducted by a potentially hostile extraterrestrial force, Galaxy Garrison began covertly preparing to defend earth against a potential alien invasion. A year later, an alien spacecraft crashed landed on Earth, just outside the Garrison's main campus in Arizona, in what would eventually become the American Empire. Captain Shirogane was found alive inside the extraterrestrial ship, his hair in the process of turning white, with a long horizontal scar across his face, and his right arm replaced with a cyborg prosthetic.
Though Shirogane was taken from quarantine by former Garrison cadet Keith Kogane, and was subsequently never seen again, his return to Earth was the first step along the path that eventually lead to the Conquering of Earth, and the colonization of the solar system. This ship, named in honor of the captain himself, developed using technology from the same ship he brought back to Earth, stands ready to guard Captain Shirogane's legacy from all outside threats, to ensure that his abduction on Kerberos will not happen to anyone else.
In that moment, Takashi Shirogane saw red. He was barely aware of himself as he pulled out his razor and began carving into the walls where the final paragraph had been engraved. The marble walls of the archive were like butter against the hot surface of his razor in blade form. I'm done, he thought to himself grimly. I'm done pretending to be someone else. I'm done hiding who I really am for the sake of survival anymore. If people don't want to believe I time traveled from eight centuries in the past, then I don't quiznaking care. When he had first heard that the 11th Fleet flagship had been named after him, he'd kept his helmet up. The Classis Plutus was so isolated from the rest of the solar system that even if the ship's highColor officers didn't recognize him as a leader of the Rising, his face would probably be recognizable as that of the warship's namesake.
But no more. He'd been fine with the anonymity when he believed that he and the rest of his team had made no impact on the history of Earth beyond the children they had had – or would have, from his perspective. But knowing now that this was his legacy, that the technology used to make it possible for the Sovereign to enforce this fascist color pyramid across the entire solar system had been developed in his name? Shiro had never been one to be concerned over one's legacy. He always felt it best to let his actions and accomplishments speak for themselves. But it sickened him to think that this was how future generations of humanity remembered him.
"Shiro," Keith's voice finally snapped through the haze of anger that had clouded his thoughts. The Red Paladin's voice had sounded desperate, strained. Shiro turned to find a dozen Gray marines standing in the open doors leading into the ship's mess hall. Low-ranked workers of a variety of Colors – Blue, Orange, Green, Violet, Pink, and Red – crowded behind the legionnaires to get good look at the intruders. His own troops had their weapons drawn and their fingers on triggers. But the Grays weren't attacking. Instead, they looked stunned, eyes darting back and forth between the portrait on the wall and the rebel leader standing before then. Despite his anger, whoever had carved those words into the walls of the ship had just given the rebellion the match that would light the powder keg across the fleet.
"C… Ca… Captain Shirogane?" the lead marine spluttered in shock, taking in the sight of Shiro's multicolor pulseArmor and the rebel insignias painted across it. "How are you…?"
"It's a long story," the Black Palaidn interrupted. "As you can guess by my being here, time travel is involved. I don't know how or why I ended up eight hundred years from my own era, but what I've seen of this color hierarchy disgusts me. So, I've come on behalf of the Rising to take this fleet for the Reaper of Mars. I'd prefer to do this without hurting anyone, but if my comrades and I have to fight to take control of this ship, then we will." He noticed movement in his peripheral vision and turned around in time to see half a dozen Golden knights charging into the room with their razors firm.
Shiro was about to let his own extend back into a blade again when six gunshots went off in rapid succession. Red dots and spatters of blood blossomed in the foreheads of the Golds, dropping them all like flies in an instant. He turned back to find the Gray marines blowing smoke away from the barrels of their weapons before holstering them again.
"We're with you, sir," the Gray in charge of the unit said firmly. "Name's Tsuyoshi Seidou. Captain in the Fourteenth Legion. Just tell us what you need us to do." Shiro smiled, feeling proud that he had been able to lay the groundwork he needed to take the ship without bloodshed. They still had a long fight ahead of them just to take this ship, let alone the fleet, and he had no doubt that many of the highColors would fight to their last breaths, but this way the loss of life could be kept to a minimum. Back in his own time, he hadn't really enjoyed the fame that came from being the Garrison's top pilot, but if it mean saving lives, then there was no way he wasn't going to take advantage of it in this moment.
The first thing he did was have the captain contact the security forces on other ships in the fleet, to spread the news that Takashi Shirogane was aboard the ship named in his honor and determine how many of them would be willing to fight for him. Meanwhile, Shiro himself contacted the rebel squads on other ships and directed them to link up with the sympathetic marine captains on their own vessels. Once that was done, he asked Captain Seidou for internal schematics of the Shirogane and mapped out a plan of attack for what needed to be done to secure the ship. While they moved into the mess hall to plan their attack on the bridge, one of the Greens in the cafetiera gave Cylax access codes to the ship's computer terminals so that the veteran Son of Ares could upload the footage they'd brought with them – Darrow's speech in Agea, footage of the Second Battle of Mars, and Mustang taking the throne on Luna – for everyone on the ship to access. Thanks to sympathetic midColor conscripts on the other four relay ships, the other squads' tech specialists would be doing the same. Once they took the bridge of the Shirogane, the Blues would spread the footage to every other ship in the fleet.
An hour later, everything was ready. Word had spread quickly throughout the ship, just as Shiro had wanted it to. Locked doors opened for them in seconds instead of the minutes it would have taken to melt through with a laser drill. As they moved, Cylax monitored the ship's internal communications. The warship's officers were scrambling to keep a lid on the identities of the intruders, doing everything they could to maintain the loyalty of their crew. One of the Blues on the bridge had apparently sabotaged the security feeds so that the Golds couldn't see where in the ship the rebels were. Good, Shiro thought to himself. That'll give us the element of surprise once we reach the bridge. Along the way, they were joined by other crew members of all Colors. Gray, Orange, Obsidian, Red, Pink – they all armed themselves and joined the rising tide that swept through the ship.
Once they reached the lift, they rode up to the ship's top level where the command deck was located. The doors opened to reveal a squad of armed marines. Shiro stood at the front of the group, his fury evident on his face as he marched out of the elevator. He didn't expect the same instant conversion he got with Captain Seidou's unit, but it was still satisfying when one of the Grays turned and fired on his squad mates, even as Shiro mourned the ones he cut down with his razor. The few that Shiro and the new defectors hadn't killed were taken down by Tactus or the Sons of Ares. The young Legionnaire, Hiroshi, quickly joined the swelling ranks of those marching towards the bridge alongside the moonBreaker's namesake, and Shiro turned to face the door.
Hiroshi slid his digital key into the bulkhead's locking mechanism, and the doors slid open with the wheeze of hydraulics in the walls. The rebels surged onto the bridge, anticipating an ambush. Instead, they found Golds and Obsidian caught unprepared. To the left, near the bridge's armory, a tactical squad of Obsidian and Grays secure heavy weapons and listen intently to their Gold commanders as they prepare to defend their bridge against the unknown intruders. It took three seconds for the Gold infantry commander to see them. As much as Shiro had come to enjoy the Howlers' flare for the dramatic, predators killed best in silence. So, he pointed to the left and the Obsidian who had joined their group along the way surge toward the soldiers listening to the Gold.
Two Obsidian and three Gray infantrymen drop their assault cannons and raise their hands in surrender. The Gold shouts for his soldiers to turn, but the rebel Obsidian are on them before they can lift their weapons. Only two guns went off by the time the Gold's body slides off the end of an IonBlade. Grays fire at them from the other side of the control pit, but Seidou and his marines pick them off. Shiro marches forward towards the bridge's central command and the Golds in charge. A loyal Obsidian charged the rebels with a forcePike, only to be quickly felled by Tactus' razor. Four others link together and begin keening one of their culture's war chants. Tactus killed them as well with quick blasts of his pulseFist. Shiro raced forward to join his boyfriend as they engaged the last two Golds on the bridge, who quickly fell to their razors.
It was over in less than five minutes. The bridge was theirs now. But the battle was far from finished. Tactus and the ship's comBlues cycled through live internal feeds of Oranges and Blues ransacking the armories. Some Grays helped. Other stood by, unsure of their duty even as other shot at the tide of their fellow shipmates. But bullet could never hold back this tide. The lowColors took weapons and ran sloppily through the halls, swelling their ranks. Orange hangar workers, Red maintenance workers, and Gray security forces lead the tide. A Gray captain directed a score of men and women into the stateroom of one of the Gold officers and peacefully subdue him.
They had done it. In less than two hours, they had seized control of the flagship of the 11th Fleet of Pluto. Now, it was time for him to make his presence known to the rest of the fleet. With a nod to the ship's comBlue, he opened a com channel that would broadcast his words to every ship in the Classis Plutus. He turned to look at Keith and Tactus, who stood at the edge of the Blues' command pit and nodded their encouragement. Shiro took a deep breath and opened his mouth to speak.
"This is Takashi Shirogane of the Galaxy Garrison."
So yeah, now Shiro's done with the fake names and fake backstory. When I decided to name the flagship of my OC fleet after him, I thought it would be interesting if anyone on the ship actually had photos from that time and recognized him as the missing Garrison pilot rather than as a rebel leader who'd masqueraded as a Gold. And thus, the idea of Shiro leveraging his notoriety among the fleet to his advantage. In other words, when he confronts the moon lords, he'll be introducing himself as Takashi Shirogane, rather than his alias of Shiro au Terranova.
Virtual brownie points if you spot the GoLion references with the two named Grays in this chapter. (Hint: the names for the characters in the original anime who would become Pidge and Hunk in the 80s Voltron cartoon)