Hours later the fight was over, and Keith was finally given the time to think about what Red had shown him. As the rest of the paladins made their way to the common room, he pulled Allura aside.
"Keith!? What happened?" Allura asked him.
"I...uh...I think Red was trying to tell me where Lance is." He kept his voice low, so that only Allura could hear. Talking about it was dangerous though. If Keith was right that Lance hadn't run away but had walked into a trap instead, that meant that knowing where Lance was could prove dangerous for himself too.
If Lotor and Shiro were in on it, they would know exactly where Lance was already.
"What?!" Allura blurted out.
"Shhh…" Keith said, "I'm not sure if that's what Red was trying to tell me, and I can't really give any other details right now, okay? Something's wrong about it all, and I don't want the others to know."
Keith already worried that he'd told Allura too much. She looked at him with concern.
"I understand not wanting to tell the others because it might upset them." She glanced over his shoulder at Hunk. "But don't you think it would be a good idea to let Shiro know? This information might prove useful in some way."
"No!" He said it too fast for it not to sound suspicious to Allura. He wracked his brain for an excuse. "No, it's just that...Shiro already feels like Lance leaving was his fault. I'm not sure he could make any rational decisions about it right now."
"So, what? Are you going to track Lance down by yourself? I'm not sure that's a good idea Keith. He left. He didn't sound like he wanted to be found. It might make the entire situation that much worse." Allura was trying to be a good sport, and with the lack of information she had she was being rational.
"Look, I know this sounds like a bad idea, or at least not like the best idea. But I don't think Red would give me this information unless she wanted me to act on it."
Allura frowned, not saying anything for a moment. "Okay, I suppose I understand that. But what are you going to do Keith?"
"I'm going to go find Lance, and you're going to help me."
The plan was set. Allura would set up a wormhole jump to the star system Red had shown Keith. Keith would have 15 doboshes to be on the other side of the system to find Lance and wormhole back, or she would tell the others and send backup.
If anyone asked, Allura would say it was some sort of training exercise she and Keith had come up together.
Keith had needed to work with Allura for the wormhole jump, but she was a frustrating partner in crime. Originally she had only wanted to give him 5 doboshes on the other side of the wormhole, but he'd managed to negotiate her up from there.
They set everything up. Keith would take Red. Since Red was the only one that seemed to know information about Lance's whereabouts, she could prove useful. He worried about not taking a more stealthy craft. In the end, though, he knew taking Red was the best option. He could use the backup.
Keith got set up with his paladin armor, about to head up to the cockpit. Allura stopped him.
"15 doboshes. I won't give you a tick of more time. You will get back here, do you understand?" She said it sternly.
He nodded in agreement.
She paused for a second, considering, before squeezing him tightly in a hug. "Keith, I know how important Lance is to you. If anyone can bring him back I know it's you. But don't let your emotions get out of control either. Keep a clear head."
She said it like there was subtext that only Keith was supposed to understand.
He nodded again. "See you soon Allura."
Looking back at his lion, he steeled himself for the journey and for what he might find. He would return Lance to the castle, no matter what shape he was in.
The wormhole opened and Keith took off into it. He set a timer on his suit to alert him when 15 doboshes was almost up. I can do this.
Flying through a wormhole was not unlike being squeezed out of a tube of toothpaste. He shuddered at the odd feeling.
The other side was darker. Different constellations lit up around him, and there was no nearby star to bring much light to the area. It only took him a moment of looking around before he spotted the charred base Red had shown him earlier.
He flew carefully. Red was a much bigger ship than one that would normally dock at the base, so it was difficult to maneuver her in such a way that she could land on the hull without jostling it too much.
Keith wanted it to be as soft of a landing as possible, just in case Lance was inside, injured, but alive. He wouldn't want to make any injuries worse by careless piloting. He set her down gently. Red's claws took hold of the metal under her paws until she was secure. She was too big to properly dock, so he would have to spacewalk into the base.
Keith studied the outside of the base, looking for an opening. Considering the amount of charring on the outside, there were likely any number of breaches Keith could sneak into. He'd just have to find the closest one that he could fit through.
There.
Keith made sure his spacesuit was secure before daring to make a jump out to the cold dark abyss of space. He tensed into a ball on the side of Red's hull before pressing himself off hard towards the direction of the hole.
It was quick, and easy to grab ahold of the base's torn exterior. In less than a tick Keith had pulled himself inside.
The base was as quiet as the rest of space. Pieces of metal floated past his field of vision, bumping into his suit and into the walls. Screws and washers that had come loose from the blasts did the same. He brushed them out of his face, looking around carefully.
Occasionally bigger pieces of metal floated by. So much of the ship was mangled and charred, Keith feared what state he'd find Lance in. The reality of the damage was so much worse than he had recalled in Red's visions.
Keith searched from room to room, always careful to watch the time. Finally he saw it.
Floating in the room, in the midst of the wreckage, casually bumping against the walls, was a red bayard. Keith's heart skipped a beat as he flew through the air towards it.
Success! He smiled, excited for a moment, before his heart sunk again. Where was its paladin?
Keith grabbed the bayard out of the air, testing it in his palms. It was definitely his bayard, the one he had given to Lance when they switched lions. He formed it into the sword and slashed through the air through a pipe that was floating near him. It was just as strong and sharp as it always had been.
The excitement of having the bayard back wasn't worth the anxiety it left coursing through him.
As though the bayard could read his thoughts it transformed into the large bubbly gun that it had last been in Lance's hands. Keith snorted, couldn't believe that a bayard could make a joke. He raised it as though to shoot it, but nothing about it felt right in his hands. It was too big and bulky, and he wasn't used to shooting guns anyway.
Something about it sent a shiver down Keith's spine though. Keith sighed. He missed the bayard's former paladin. He took a second to curl himself around the weapon, wishing that he was curling around someone else instead. His eyes brimmed with tears.
He fought them back. I am NOT going to get emotional. He had promised Allura as much, and he still had a mission to complete. He dropped the gun to his side, transforming it back into a bayard, and attached it to his hip.
Keith would have expected Lance to be near his bayard. Or at least, his body to be nearby.
He didn't see anyone though, or any clues as to where someone could have gone. It was time to figure out what happened.
The burn marks on the wall were all the same direction. They came from what had probably been a computer at one point.
If the blast had come from that direction, then Lance would have been thrown down the hall. Keith rushed to follow the charred marks.
Why would a computer self destruct strong enough to destroy an entire base?
Keith had suspected a trap, but seeing the evidence was an entirely different experience. He followed the marks all the way to a docking port. The gate was open to the darkness of space.
His hand grazed over the control panel for the door. Charred marks covered the surface, but they were different from the ones that covered the rest of the station. These ones came from a smaller blast, with a more focused point of origin. It looked like a blaster mark.
Keith glanced to the bayard by his hip. If Lance had been running away from the blasts, he might have shot the panel to force the door to open. Of course only Lance would do something so reckless and stupid. What if the blast had forced the door shut instead? Lance would have been completely trapped.
There wasn't a ship docked to the other side of the port. Keith wondered if there had been at one point. He peeked his head through, careful to maintain a grip on the base's wall. Keith wasn't sure what he was looking for, but he immediately saw how mangled the docking mechanism looked. It didn't look like a blast had caused it damage, but like a spaceship had been trying to fly away without properly unlocking itself from the mechanism.
Keith prayed that had been Lance's escape route. He couldn't find anything else to suggest Lance was anywhere aboard.
Keith's heart sunk further, realizing with each passing dobosh that he wasn't going to find Lance, and wasn't sure where to start looking for him. But an escape meant Lance was probably alive.
Keith had only one other thing to do, figure out why Lance was at that base to begin with. He went the opposite direction, away from the open port, following the burn marks the other way. It took him to what looked like the command center.
Inside was a large cracked glass wall and a completely blasted apart computer in the middle. According to Keith's suit he only had another 5 doboshes to inspect, he would have to make it quick.
He pulled the panel underneath the blast open. It was surprisingly easy to pull off, having been damaged. There were a load of wires underneath. Keith couldn't make sense of any of them, he wasn't an engineer like Hunk. Inspecting further he could see there was definitely something off about where the explosion had started. A bomb had certainly been added to the space, probably setting off a chain reaction.
But what was Lance looking for? There had to be something here that he thought was important. There had to be information somewhere.
If Lance had been standing at a computer when the blast went off, he was probably trying to find some piece of information that had been hidden inside it. Keith didn't see any sort of drive plugged into the computer that Lance would have hooked up.
As though fate was guiding his eyes, Keith noticed something small glinting near one of the pipes. He pushed off the ground just hard enough to be able to control his speed. He reached out his hand and grabbed at the piece of metal. He opened his palm to look at it.
It was a partially burnt thumbdrive. The plastic part was melted into the metal, if Keith hadn't been looking for a drive he would have missed it completely. There probably wasn't any data on the drive anymore, but then again, Keith had seen Pidge do some pretty incredible things with limited technology, so he took it anyway.
He inspected the site for last few minutes trying to find anything else, but with no luck.
Finally he headed back to his lion. Outside the base he touched his hand to her nose and choked out "Please just tell me that Lance is alive."
She didn't respond. He hoped that just meant that she was unsure, and not the other possibility.
He climbed back aboard and set up a return wormhole. Keith hadn't gained much information from the trip, but he inventoried what he now knew.
Lance had disappeared because he was caught in a trap.
Lance was probably alive.
Something on that thumbdrive was important.
Allura was waiting for him expectantly when he got back.
"I thought you weren't going to make it in time!" She hugged him again. "Where's Lance?"
Keith grimaced at the question. "I don't know."
Lance was floating in the most relaxing pool ever. His head was spinning a bit, a dull ache at the base of his neck also concerned him. Lance wondered if he'd had too much to drink. He couldn't remember.
His ears started picking up a dull beeping sound. Is that my alarm? Lance shook his head. That wouldn't make sense, I'm in a pool, not in my bed.
He opened his eyes, expecting to see the clear blue sky of his childhood, but it was dark, painted, metal that greeted him instead.
A million thoughts started racing through his head in a panic. Maybe I'm in a hospital. Maybe I just woke up out of the Matrix. Maybe I've been abducted by aliens…
Suddenly the past several months all came flooding back. Hunk and Pidge at the Garrison. Rescuing Shiro with Keith. Piloting space lions. Allura and Coran and the castle. The Galra Empire. Lotor.
"Shit." His head hurt. He must have gotten knocked unconscious by the blast. He was alive though, that meant he'd managed to hyperjump. He'd gotten away.
The lack of gravity was a problem though. Lance tried to swing his arms to propel himself through the air. He needed to get to the controls in order to see what was causing the beeping. A little history lesson: beeping noises while in space are never a good thing. He just hoped the beeping didn't mean he was about to run out of oxygen.
Contorting his body and kicking through the air he finally managed to turn himself around. Hunk was right. This isn't fun. And is so much more difficult than swimming.
His boot finally made contact with the ceiling and he kicked backward hard. He flew through the air toward the controls, almost missing them. His hand just managed to grab at one of the levers on the dashboard.
"Alright!" For a moment Lance turned around expecting to high five someone. Then he remembered that he was alone. In space.
Focussing back on his task he pressed some buttons and the computer lit up. "Computer, run diagnostics."
A machine voice spoke back to him. "Running diagnostics...There are 113 problems found with this vessel, would you like them listed alphabetically, by category, or by importance?"
"Uuugh...by importance please." Lance hardly wanted to admit it to himself but this was not good, not good at all.
The computer listed off issues, most of them were cosmetic or small problems, Lance could deal with those easily. The bigger problems were the communication systems, the gravity, and the lack of altean magic. There wasn't enough to make a jump back to the castle, and without a functioning comm system no way to call for help either.
"Alright Lancey-Lance, what's the plan?" Somehow talking out loud made things easier. "I've gotta find the real Shiro, and either get back to or warn the castle about Lotor somehow." He paused, this was not going to be easy, "That means I've got to fix the ship. I really hope there's an inhabited planet nearby and I really really hope it's not Galra."
Lance pulled up the navigation systems on the computer. "Computer, please find the closest inhabited planet for me."
After a few seconds a diagram of the planet lit up the computer screen. Lance's eyes widened while the computer whirred on.
"The closest inhabited planet is Earth."
A/N: I said I would get this one out early today and I did it! Happy reading! :)
On another note, this next chapter is a bit of a beast. I'm not sure I'll be able to update it on Saturday, and if I don't you'll have to wait until Monday at least, since I was going to take Sunday off for my health.
Suprise Me: No worries, I'm a student, so it's only distracting me from my studies. ;)
