The next several chapters are going to just be action, action, action. Once the battle is over, we'll slow things down so we can get some character interaction and get inside Shiro's head more. Anyway, without further ado, Let Fall The Rain.
1/30/18: Reworked the beginning of the chapter to get inside Shiro's head after the new ending to the previous one, and some an extra paragraph of exposition in the middle to fill in some book info I left out in the original version of this chapter.
Chapter 28: The Iron Rain:
Pax Hangar Bay
Mars
February 22nd, 741 P.C.E.
As he lay flat on his stomach in the honeycombed network of spitTubes that spread out along the dreadnought's left side, all Shiro could think about what that kiss. Tactus had been more open about what he was thinking since rejoining the group after Europa, but in this case, his actions spoke louder than words ever could. Shiro wasn't sure how he should feel with the realization that Tactus had feelings for him. In retrospect, he shouldn't have been surprised. Other than Darrow, he'd been one of the first to welcome Tactus back into the fold when Darrow gave the man a second chance on Europa. And considering how everyone keeps saying Darrow and I have that same kind of charisma, is it any wonder he started crushing on me too? Shiro wondered as the battle raged around him. Thinking back on it, he could definitely see how Tactus had fallen for him.
His own feelings were more complicated. On the one hand, Tactus' kiss had let a flock of butterflies loose in his stomach. Part of the reason they managed to get along so well despite their contrasting personalities and Tactus' checkered past was because they still had a lot in common. They'd both been broken and shaped by the things that had happened to each other. Shiro by the arena, and Tactus by his family. Mustang and Darrow were always willing to listen when he needed someone to talk to about his experiences, but as leaders of the war effort, they were pulled in fifty different directions at once and never had the time to just sit and talk without any distractions. He hung out with the rest of Darrow's cohort a lot, but the Howlers were still in the dark, and the rest of the inner circle couldn't truly understand the hollowness that came from remembering that time in his life.
But in the last three weeks, Tactus had repeatedly gone out of his way to talk to him. Whenever one of them was feeling weighed down by the weight of their past, the other would drag him down in the officers' lounge when no one was there. They wouldn't turn on the HC or pull up any VR experientials. They'd just sit there until one of them wanted to talk about whatever was bothering them. As he thought about how it felt talking about his homesickness with Tactus, Shiro realized that part of him was starting to fall for the Gold too. They were two broken men who killed time between battles helping each other feel less broken.
Despite his romantic epiphany, there was still the matter of timing. Assuming he didn't die today and cause a temporal paradox, Lorn had assured him that he'd make it back to his own era eventually. Could he really drag Tactus back with him? Would Tactus really be willing to leave his entire world behind to go with him? Darrow was the one who started him down this road long before he met me, Shiro mused as he waited in the darkness. What right do I have to take him away from his friends like that? As he waited in the silence of the spitTube, Darrow, Mustang, and the others bantered as they waited to deploy. He kept his mic muted as he listened to them chatter over the coms. While he still laughed along at their jokes, he needed to be alone with his thoughts right now.
Leaving aside his budding romantic quandary, he was scared. He wasn't afraid of the dark, or claustrophobic, but the confining space of the tube unnerved him just the same. It had only been about six months since he and the other Paladins had made their desperate gamble to finally defeat Zarkon, and already he was entangled in another high-stakes battle with the fate of billions hinging on the outcome. He couldn't feel the shudder of the Pax as it plowed through the battlefield, or see the missiles ranging through space to bring silent death upon their targets. No sound or vibration penetrated the spitTube, save for the beating of his own heart.
Despite the renewed hope his conversation with Lorn had filled him with, he was still afraid of dying, just like anyone else would be. And on top of the fear, he just felt homesick. He missed Allura, Coran, Kieth, Lance, Hunk, and Pidge. He missed his family back on earth, still ignorant of the fact that he was alive. He wanted to help Darrow topple the hierarchy, and he wanted to figure out the tangled mess of his relationship with Tactus, but right now, he just wanted to go home. Even with all the things he' done as a Voltron Paladin, he'd never pulled a stunt as crazy as this. As he waited in the darkness of the metal cocoon, Shiro's mind raced with all the different things that could go wrong. He trusted Darrow and Mustang's judgement, but he still felt that going straight for Agea, the Martian capital, was extremely risky and would likely result in high casualties. He turns his mic back on as Roque announces that he's engaged the main element of the enemy fleet.
"Hic Sunt Leones," Darrow said to the group over the comm. "Be brave. Be brave, and I'll see you on the other side." The others echoed the sentiment. Not out of loyalty to the ArchGovernor, but because they all wished they were as brave as lions. Shiro grinned as an idea flew into his head.
"Hic Sunt Leones," he echoed, and he could practically hear everyone grinning as he put his own spin on the phrase. "Hic Sunt Voltron."
One by one, everyone said their goodbyes and wished each other luck. As Shiro thought about what was going to happen next, he ultimately realized that he really knew nothing. He'd seen the VR simulations and HC clips of previous Iron Rains, but that wasn't the same thing as actually knowing what it was like. It's like knowing what flying is because you see birds doing it, he thought to himself. But knowing what it is isn't the same thing as understanding what the experience of flying feels like. Before his doubts could chisel away at his resolve any further, the main com channel opened to broadcast to the entire armada. He forced all thoughts of death and time travel and Tactus's kiss from his mind as he braced himself for the launch.
"Deployment coordinates reached"" Roque announced to every Gold in the fleet. "Let fall the Rain." Here we go, the Black Paladin thought to himself. It's showtime. The whining of the tub's magnetic charge filled Shiro's ears. His body slid forward into the chamber as he braced himself for what came next. Despite his fear, he forced himself to look down, so the G forces wouldn't snap his neck. The spitTube fired, and velocity claimed him as bile rose to the back of his throat. Shiro fought to keep himself from screaming as he ripped through the magnetic stream, out of the tube, and into the swarming chaos of battle.
Fire and Lightning ruled the darkness of Mars' orbit. Metallic behemoths spat missiles back and forth, silently pounding each other with all the weapons of war humanity had invented. I know there's not supposed to be any sound in space, Shiro thought to himself amidst the panicking as he hurtled through space. But experiencing the silence personally like this is just eerie. Veils of flak exploded around ships on both sides, cloaking them in fury and looking like raw cotton scattered into the wind. RipWings and Wasps engaged each other in dogfights as they spewed gunfire at each other. The nimble starfighters nipped and sliced at the metal carapaces of the other side's ships as they fought each other in a dense cloud of steel.
Then the fighters began to break off from their chaotic fights in small packs and spiraled silently towards clusters of leechCraft as destroyers and carrier ships launched their troop transports across space in undulating waves. Most space warfare, Shiro had learned from Roque and Victra, was a game of boarding parties. The smallest Man-of-War cost the gross yearly output of twenty cities to make, so it was cheaper in both money and lives to board an enemy warship and claim it for yourself. The leechCraft flew over, under, and through the curtains of flack as they sought out hulls to clamber onto, so they could pump their deadly cargo into the belly of crucial ships. Each one piloted by a Blue raised to do only this one thing. Bellona ships passed those of Augustus as the waves overlapped and broke on one another.
All this happened in total silence as missiles leaped towards leeches, detonating hulls. Since there was no oxygen in space, there were no massive explosions. Only flames where the ships were punctured and began leaking oxygen like harpooned whales leaking blood. Or a wounded opponent in the gladiator arena, Shiro thought to himself as he hurtled through the battle with nothing but the clunky exo-thermal armor to protect him. All around him, Darrow, Mustang, Quinn, Sevro, the Howlers, and the rest of their forces fell in silence. Until they made landfall on the surface, there was nothing he could do but watch the battle unfolding around him. Railgun fire streaked through space, tearing through leeches and fighter craft simultaneously, poking holes in the ranks. Men and women flew out into the vacuum of space as both sides targeted each other's engines.
Amidst the blue and silver mass of the Bellona fleet, the massive family flagship WarChild shattered Augustus ships left and right like a giant strolling through a field of sheep, swing its club like a pendulum. Victra's destroyer, shielded by two other ships, sprinted towards the WarChild. Railguns and missile fire strafed her ship's hull. Eventually, she got too close for the Bellona to try to capture, and they opened another salvo into the ship's weakened underbelly. But amid the fire, the corvette spewed out a desperate burst of forty leechCraft. But instead of attacking the blue and silver eagle of House Bellona, Victra plunged through the enemy formation towards her mother's flotilla, bearing the bleeding sun of House Julii. And that's when Victra sprang her second trap.
In an instant, Victra's mother switched sides, betraying the Bellona as her daughter had convinced her to. The Julii ships unloaded over two hundred leechCraft right in the heart of the Bellona fleet, throwing the enemy formation into chaos. Immediately, Bellona-friendly leeches began to redirect back to the WarChild to provide support in the battle that would clutter the family's flagship with smoke and blood. As Shiro witnessed ripWings trying to shoot leechCraft off the WarChild before they could unload their boarding parties, he couldn't help but be awed by the beauty of it all. The elegant dance of action and reaction and reaction and reaction. Shiro could do nothing to alter his trajectory as he carried on through space. On either side, thousands of Golds and Obsidians streaked through space, all armored in clunky thermal suits while the Grays rode down in hive-pods of twelve marines each.
This was what Golds meant when they spoke in hushed tones of an Iron Rain. An intense onslaught of men and metal as soldiers fell towards their target all the way from orbit. Amid the current of raining warriors, Storks followed behind, packed with more Obsidians and Grays. Once they made landfall and secured the beachheads, the legions that had come from far and wide for this battle would pour out behind them on landing craft to take the surface. Contrary to what their enemies thought, the planet's orbit was too large for the Bellona to stop them from landing soldiers. That, Darrow and Mustang had explained to Shiro, was why holding the cities of Mars was so important. Each city was like an island. The only practical way of seizing them was to make landfall and slip under the two-hundred-meter gap between their shields and the ground. And that required millions of men on the surface in a coordinated assault.
In the chaos of the battle, missiles streaked for the landing party's suits. Augustus-aligned capital ships deployed flak screens behind them, while starfighters protected their flanks. But enemy fighters managed to swoop in from the sides and strafe them. Shiro was already sweating nervously, but now he was on the edge of a full-blown panic attack as dozens of soldiers died around him, their armor folding back like burnt paper. Finally, the Black Paladin gave up and screamed at the top of his lungs in unrestrained terror. His comm went silent as the others cut off his connection so they could concentrate. But there was nothing he could do except pray. Pray that he didn't die. Pray that his friends didn't die.
Shiro's heart pounded in his chest as he began to hyperventilate. He wanted to be home. He was supposed to be back aboard the Castle of Lions, saving the day as a Paladin of Voltron. Or back on Earth in his own time, in the comfort of home with his family. He wanted to forget about the pain. But he wasn't home. He was falling towards the Martian atmosphere, where killers cared for nothing more than filling his body with hot metal before moving on to kill his friends. Tears stung his face as his mind finally wore itself out and his body went into autopilot, acting completely on instinct and training. Mars grows above him until it swelled to consume his entire field of vision. His display on his helmet was too busy for him to track what was happening. He wouldn't know until he landed who was dead and who was still alive.
Sound roared back into his ears as the rain of soldiers hit the atmosphere. The Black Paladin's trembling body was enveloped in a halo of color as the friction heated the exterior layer of his armored exoskeleton. On either side of him, the falling warriors looked like lightning bugs seen through the filter of an LSD trip in the glow of the sun. Moments later, a pop-up on his display notified Shiro that he'd cleared the atmosphere. With a verbal command, his suit jettisoned its friction armor and his pace accelerated. As soon as the group made it clear of the atmosphere, anti-aircraft gunfire screamed up at them from the surface, carving holes in the falling swarm. But like a beehive that had been hit with a stick, the invasion force activated their gravBoots and broke off into a thousand different squadrons, each following its own coordinates.
Bellona ripWings had followed them into the atmosphere, but they weren't as maneuverable as they were in space, and the Augustan forces now had the upper hand. Shiro slashed at a passing ripWing with his mechanical arm as he followed Mustang towards the designated drop point. They were the first to land as they slammed down onto the slopes of a snow-covered mountain near the landing zone. Clouds of vapor rose around them as their red-hot suits melted holes in the white, powdery terrain. The rest of their force, a mix of Golds, Greys, and Obsidians numbering roughly four hundred, roared down around them as they finally found safe harbor on the ground. As he stood up from the crouch he'd landed in, Shiro felt his stomach churn. And before he could get any on himself, he pulled open his helmet and vomited into the snow.
"There goes my breakfast," he quipped with a groan as he tried to lighten the mood. He hadn't been the only one to hurl after the intense adrenalin rush of the Rain. All his education with Mustang on Luna and training with Darrow and Roque hadn't prepared him for this. Mustang put a reassuring hand on his shoulder as she helped him up. He nodded in thanks as he wiped the vomit from his mouth. At Mustang's command, the armored column stripped off their clunky exo-thermal suits, revealing the more agile starShells beneath. Right now, Shiro wanted nothing more than for it all to be over. But he knew that it wasn't going to be that easy. What I wouldn't give to have the Black Lion with me, the Black Paladin thought to himself sadly as Mustang ordered everyone to don their helmets.
Four hundred troops stood ready as Mustang answered a call from Darrow over the com. As they waited, Shiro took stock of their surroundings. They had landed on Mars' day-side. The sky looked like a meteor shower as the next wave of starShells pierced the atmosphere, leaving trails of smoke across a sky now scarred by fire. Hundreds of ground cannons still shot at the swarm that spread across the horizon, but the gunfire thinned as the artillery was targeted from space or eliminated by ground squads like theirs. Shiro and Mustang's force had landed two hundred fifty kilometers from the designated drop zone. The Reaper's squad was fifty kilometers farther from where they needed to be than they were. Mustang signed off on the call with Darrow and gave the order to move out.
Moving at a brisk pace, the armored force made their way towards the rendezvous point a few peaks over, using gravBoots to quicken their pace. They arrived on the mountain shortly after Darrow did, scattering snow as they slammed into the ground. Shiro waited patiently and caught his breath as Mustang and Darrow attempted to contact Roque in orbit. Jam fields and the gathering thunderstorm were disrupting the signal, so Darrow sent Ragnar, Tactus, Proctor Jupiter (one of many former Institute instructors who came to join the Augustus armies), and a hundred Obsidian warriors to secure the valley north of the mountain range as a landing field for their Gray legions before the Reaper ripped up through the thunderclouds with his bodyguards until he could get high enough to hail the fleet. Shiro knew some of what Darrow was planning, but even he was still shocked when the young warlord landed back on the ground and reported that the Sovereign herself was trapped behind the shields of Agea.
Things are starting to heat up, ladies and gentlemen. The combat is only going to get more intense from here. Unlike the shifting point of view in the chapters covering the gala, the battle provides a perfect way for me to keep things centered on Shiro's perspective while still capturing the epic-ness of the battle. Most of the action described was just Darrow expositing what he could see as he fell towards the surface of Mars, so it provided a convenient way to describe what Shiro sees happening around him. There will only be one or two chapters left in Part 3, then Part 4 will cover the remainder of the battle and the aftermath up to the end of the book.