"These Galra sure aren't playing around." Hunk watched the masses of Galra battleships and fighter pilots that were surrounding the hub that Lotor had given them the coordinates to. Voltron hung a short ways away from it, cloaked for now so that they could get a grasp on the situation.
"I'm going to say it again. This looks like a trap." Lance's statement was mostly directed at Shiro as he glanced up at the head of Voltron. It was fairly obvious that there were far too many ships here for a normal day at a distant outpost. There were so many that some of them seemed to be taxiing around the hub while they waited for their turn for service. Others just hung around like they were waiting for a command, or waiting for someone. Probably them.
"Not according to the radio chatter." Matt spoke up from the green lion, where he sat behind his sister who was working away on her screens to try to tap into the hub and get some inside visuals. His fingers mimicked hers as they flew across his laptop, deciphering Galra radio frequencies and maintaining their cloaking at the same time. "As far as I can tell, Zarkon is readying for another attack on us and they're just using this as a base while they gather more soldiers. As far as they know, we don't know the location of this base. They don't seem to suspect an attack here."
"How close are they to being ready to launch the attack?" Shiro took in the scene in front of him. It wouldn't be an easy battle, that was for sure. There were a lot of enemies, and more coming each minute. He had fully expected Zarkon to assemble a new army to attempt to regain his stolen property, so if they could take out these cruisers and gain control of the hub, it would put a huge damper on his plans and give them more allies, land and time.
"Not long. Everyone is supposed to be here in the next five minutes." Matt looked a little worried at that. Would they be ready in such a short amount of time? "They'll head towards Naxzela immediately."
"Understood. That would be the best time to hit them and take them all out at once." Shiro opened up communications with the partnering rebels who had joined them for this mission, relaying the plan to everyone. "Once we take them out, we'll take control of the hub and Olia's forces will move in to defend. Olia, do you copy?"
"We copy." Olia's voice rang over the comms in understanding. "We're ready as soon as you give the go ahead."
"All right, I have visuals inside the base." Pidge uploaded a map of the facility and a few camera views to their screens. The place was crawling with Galra, and it almost seemed to be in a frenzy as they worked on prepping so many ships. This hub likely never got so much activity, and wasn't stocked up to properly handle it. Pidge placed a marker on the location of the control room but with so many people and sentries inside, it would be impossible to perform any kind of covert mission to get in and take control. It appeared that, although this base provided for a large vicinity, there were only a handful of planets under it's reign. They were spread far apart, and as Lotor had stated, didn't provide very valuable resources for the Galra. With Naxzela being fairly close, this hub seemed a little neglected on any other day. The only reason is was so popular today was because of their close distance to now rebel ruled Naxzela.
"They certainly don't seem to be prepared enough for it to be a trap." Allura observed as she watched them scramble. "They seem rather overwhelmed."
"Yeah, but if they're short staffed, then there shouldn't be too many people left on board once the ships are all ready to leave." Hunk pointed out.
"Good. That just means that we'll have more of an advantage." Shiro dropped Voltron into a fighting stance, watching as more ships began to converge from the base while others were lining up for the command to go. "Is everyone ready?"
He heard a chorus of agreement over the communicators and watched as all the Galra ships got into a formation pointing to Naxzela. A few were lingering in the hub, probably running late due to low staff, and one more ship warped to the base to join the formation.
"That's the last incoming ship. They'll be launching for Naxzela in thirty ticks." Matt relayed what he was hearing.
"All right. Release the cloak. Everyone, here we go." Everyone readied themselves for the moment when the cloak fell and Voltron would appear literally right in front of hundreds of battleships. It came soon enough and they surged forward before any of the Galra were able respond, blasting through at least a dozen battle cruisers before any shots began to fire. Once they did, however, there was an onslaught of fighter pilots and lasers aimed at them from every direction.
"Hunk, form shoulder cannon! Let's take out as many of these guys as we can, and quickly!" Shiro yanked at his controls to spin and swerve around laser beams. Hunk slammed his bayard into the slot, and his cannon formed in a manipulation of light on Voltron's shoulder. It shot out a swarm of lasers that cut through the Galra ships with ease, making its way completely across the front of the formation, leaving nothing but a trail of explosions.
The rebel ships flew in and focused on the smaller fighter ships so that Voltron could divert full attention on the battle cruisers. It took all of that attention to avoid the multiple blasts from ion cannons and lasers all aimed at one target. Voltron plowed through ship after ship, but it seemed that with every ship they took down a new one would immediately replace it.
After suffering a few hits from the lasers, Shiro gritted his teeth. "We need to form sword!"
His command was followed with silence and none of the paladins took any action. In the pause he had to jerk Voltron to the left to avoid an ion beam. "I said we need the sword!"
"We can't form it." Lance's words came solemn through the communications. "We don't have Keith."
This was the first time since Keith's leaving that they had needed to form the sword. The realization that they were unable to form Voltron's strongest weapon now was a daunting one. Shiro could feel the weight of that realization. He clenched his jaw and again, pulled Voltron out of the line of fire. "We'll have to rely on Hunk's shoulder cannon then, and take the rest out with our lasers."
"The laser cannon can only handle so many shots." Hunk pointed out the obvious limitations to such a heavy duty weapon.
"Then we'll have to make them good ones." Shiro yanked back on his controls and pulled Voltron a good distance back to aim the cannon again, focusing on the largest swarm of battle cruisers he could before laying out a stream of projectiles.
Across the galaxy, at the second location, Keith peeked cautiously around the corner at the entrance of the information outpost. He and Kolivan had discreetly docked their ship out of sight of any cameras or bots, and now they just had to make sure their path inside was clear. Not surprisingly, the control hub they needed to reach was at the very center of the outpost, and heavily guarded by sentries. Aside from sentries, however, there were only three enemy life forms here that they could pick up. That could be a good or bad thing. It wasn't unusual for Galra to set traps filled with nonliving guards, but the fact that there were three living beings here would hopefully mean this wasn't a trap.
He waited for a sentry to clear the hallway ahead before he and Kolivan proceeded forward with weapons at the ready. The place wasn't especially huge, since it was only used to hold information for this distant territory, and it was difficult to believe that it houses much information of value. But Lotor seemed to believe that it was something they "sought after" and so Kolivan had believed it worth checking out.
"Turn right here." Kolivan directed as Keith glanced down another hall. Two sentries were guarding the hall, and didn't seem to be on a path to exit it. On the other end of the hall there was a camera, so running in wouldn't be smart. He paused a moment to think until Kolivan tapped his shoulder and pointed upwards. Above them was a grate into the ventilation system, which would likely lead them right to the control center. Keith gave Kolivan a knowing nod. In return, Kolivan cupped his hands together to hoist Keith up, and with a few yanks, he had the grate off. He pulled himself up and held out a hand for Kolivan. Once they were both inside, Keith carefully replaced the grate, making their presence completely concealed.
In the vents, they had to move slowly in order not to make too much noise, but moving slowly was better than being reckless and getting caught. Kolivan helped quietly direct them towards the command center, and within ten minutes, they were looking straight down on the control panel.
Two Galra sat at the panel. A tall, bulky Galra sat flicking through information that littered the screens, rubbing his chin as he scanned over Galra text. The other was more slender than the first, with a beard that he absentmindedly pulled at as he read a book. It took a few seconds before Keith found the third, in the far corner of the room. It was a slender, female Galra who had glasses and dozens of papers spread out before her. She seemed more than enthralled in her work, as she mumbled a few inaudible words here and there and scribbled notes down on the papers as needed.
Keith glanced at Kolivan and gave another nod. With that, Kolivan took out a small device from the pouch on his hip. He pressed down on the solitary red button on it, and off in the distance they could hear the small explosion from the bomb they had set out as they arrived here. The bomb rattled the place and immediately alarms began to blast down the halls and on the screens. The three Galra leaped from their seats with their weapons readied as the stocky Galra pulled up cameras. He focused on the smoke where the bomb had gone off on the opposite end of the facility. "Xena, Nocxus, go check it out. Find anyone who might be trying to infiltrate."
The girl Galra gave a slightly feeble nod and the slender one ran to the door at the command, racing to bombs location with her close at his heels. The big one stayed behind and stayed close to the control panel. He stood still, listening for any sounds that may be out of the ordinary. If anyone decided to break into his information outpost, they would be sorry.
His eyes shot upward as he heard the scrapping of metal, but was met with a metal grate to the face. Keith landed in front of him and swung his blade at the Galra's chest, but he quickly shook off the pain from the grate and caught Keith's blade with the barrel of his gun. Keith jumped back at that to avoid a shot from the weapon and he dodged a second shot as the Galra lurched towards him. As he did, Kolivan jumped from the vents, landing right on his shoulders and pushing him to the ground with a jolt. Keith grabbed his gun as soon as he hit the ground and wrenched it from his hands as Kolivan took his blade and slammed the hilt down on the back of his neck. Kolivan had no gentleness to his attacks and the Galra was out cold instantly.
Keith gathered the gun and aimed for the door as Kolivan approached the control panel. He had very little trouble accessing the database and he inserted a chip into the computer to download the information. He flicked through screens at almost lightning speeds until he found where all of the information was stored and started the download to the chip.
Keith stayed focused on the door, but he ventured to the corner of the room where the female Galra had been and picked up one of the papers. He couldn't read any of the Galra writing on it, and he imagined that even if he did read Galra we still wouldn't be able to read the chicken scratch handwriting. Among the writing, however, were a series of drawings. They looked like branches, or roots of some sort leading up to some scribbled drawing of a humanoid looking figure, but he couldn't tell what it was supposed to be. Maybe it was just a bored girl's odd doodles.
"Keith." Kolivan grabbed his attention and he joined him at the control panel. On the screen Kolivan had pulled up a map with a number of planets highlighted in a pulsing yellow color. Between them all was a pulsing yellow stream that connected them all together. Keith stared at it for a moment before realizing what he was looking at. "It's the quintessence supply line."
Kolivan nodded. "This is the entire map of the supply line we've been investigating. The portion that we've discovered is only a small part of an extensive supply line. These planets that are being pointed out may be bases of operation, and could hold massive supplies of the quintessence. There could be more information in these files, but the best source of information is going to be acquired by seeing for ourselves."
"And now we have a map of exactly where to go." Keith heard the beep as the chip finished downloading. He took it out and put it inside an inner pocket in his hip pouch for safe keeping. They had been following these streams of quintessence for months, and thanks to Lotor, they now had a map straight to the main sources of it. What other information they had gathered on this device was extremely valuable. If they could figure out what the Galra were planning with this quintessence from this information…well maybe Lotor's intel wasn't bad to have.
Behind them, they heard the door to the control room slide open, causing them both to spin on their heels. In the doorway was the female Galra, and she looked just as surprised to see them there as they did to see her. How could she have gotten back here so quickly? She had her hands squeezed shut and Keith immediately fired at her, hitting her in the shoulder. She whimpered at the blast, but didn't go down, and instead clutched harder at the thing in her hands. Kolivan squinted and saw the shine of a red button and his eyes widened. Keith readied another shot.
"V-Vrepit sa." The female Galra squeezed her eyes shut as she pressed down on the button, setting off the outposts defenses. Kolivan grabbed Keith and yanked him to him, wrapping his arms tight around him and almost crushing Keith to his chest as the control panel behind them exploded. It caused a chain reaction of explosions all throughout the outpost, completely blowing the entire place into pieces.