AN: Readers may notice intercutting scenes between Jazia and Keith, it was intentional since their actions happen simultaneously in different locations. Here's the story.
Chapter Nine
By the time Jazia's consciousness decided it was time to wake up, the sky was full of stars. She began to wonder how she could modify the Haggarium substance as an effective persuasive tool for interrogation as she willed her numbed extremities to move.
For now, as she painfully lowered to her haunches, taking out a specimen bottle from her satchel, she has decided to study this specimen. She cut a good size chunk of the Haggarium substance and plopped the specimen inside the bottle. She was half-expecting it to react or glow but nothing happened.
Straightening up again, she double-checked the Haggarium sample wasn't eating through Quarite glass just to make a second bout for her which would overwhelm her mind again. Her thoughts momentarily drifted back to Kala's memories and searched for the face she vowed to take revenge.
Maahox.
"The little toad is still alive," her throat choked as anger rose from her chest. She raised her eyes imploring the dark skies. "Mother, I know I'm breaking another promise, but Maahox, he must pay for taking me away from you." The skies, as always, were silent to her, and she mused if the burden of cold ache that she had long been carrying would ever be lifted. There were so many things cropping up in her agenda this time; she found it strange, as if some cosmic hand was guiding her toward things in Arus she needed to find out and do other than fulfilling Kala's request.
She activated the hover bike and read the direction on the monitor. It was her next location to investigate for the night. She radioed back to the constabulary, asking if Marsh had reported back in. Her hunch proved correct when the reply came with a notice the ex-deputy failed to comply with their calls; accordingly, they had conducted a sweep of his residence. It turned out he hadn't been in the address for months now.
"So he has a secondary address," Jazia realized as the communications officer on the other end affirmed her suspicion. "There is something for me to check first before I head back to the constabulary. It's just only a hunch," a pause as she listened to the instructions given to her. "It has something to do with Zanir Gor's case, that's all." With that, she ended the call and left the canyons to head back to the residential area.
Keith slowed his vehicle to park behind a tree away from the main road. According to the overlay map on his monitor, the road terminated to a building built near a bluff, and from whatever public records the Oliyar provincial computer was letting him see, there was a defunct military defense underground facility too, but details to it were restricted to Marsh Nevs's authorization. He took one last look of the castle's schematics; it was a larger installation than the Castle of Lions. After leaving word to Lance of his location, he sprinted toward an unused path parallel the main road, which later split leading alongside one of the side entrances of the property. Keith pushed on.
An hour later, Jazia parked the hover bike a corner away from the hacker's house. This part of the residential area hadn't suffered too much destruction, unlike the commercial and industry centers in the town. A constabulary car went past her position before veering off to the second corner and disappearing. She moved swiftly in the darkness. The shadows welcomed her again. Soon, her silhouette detached from the wall as she watched the apartment from the across the street. There were no lights seen from the windows of the hacker's house. She set her jaw straight. She could feel a trap.
Keith trudged up a very steep and rocky incline nearing the side entrance. He fought against the strong buffeting winds seemed intent in plucking him off of the ground. He reached the top and saw the dark outline of a huge structure two hundred yards from him. Under his night vision scan, most of the castle was standing on its skeleton while half of it, a couple of rooms offered adequate protection.
What was left of the towering perimeter walls had been reduced to its base foundation, framing the property line. The numerous broken stone slabs littering the ground had been overgrown with moss, becoming part of the landscape. Years had transformed them into tall mounds enough to hide a five-member security force. However, according to his scans, there were no forces around. Yet, he could feel a trap.
Jazia listened to her surroundings, waiting for the access card to work its magic and grant her access inside the hacker's home. The button on the card plate flashed blue, and the door slid to the left. She cautiously stepped inside the threshold, and her visor automatically switched to night vision. The little hairs at the back of her neck stood up, and she involuntarily went into a loose fighting stance and went through the other rooms in coordinated movements. She finally came to the converted garage just as the laughing skull flashed on the screen with the 5-second countdown reaching zero. Thoughts were obliterated as the orange flare bloomed out of the building.
Keith reached out with his mind and gently nudged the Princess to wakefulness. He was grateful she was unharmed and in no immediate danger. They traded a few more mental images of the room where Allura was being kept, and he ended their mental conversations by showing her how to shield her mind the same way he had done years ago. Keith immediately felt Allura's questions burning at the heels of his order but he was grateful she didn't press him with peripheral matters. He knew they will have a very long talk after this.
Satisfied with her mental barriers, Keith turned his attention on the ground and switched to scan for incendiary materials. He knew places like these have alarm systems tied next to bombs, and he wasn't interested in making his arrival known just yet. He made his way carefully since the ground was littered with bomb shells crisscrossing the area. Keith wondered what made Marsh employ these devices and placed them in haphazard if obvious locations. It seemed to run against Marsh's former GA training. He was halfway through the property when he momentarily stopped. His own instincts screamed a warning. Keith managed to string a few thoughts but all of it was obliterated from the bright flare.
Upstairs, Allura bit her lip at the sound of more bombs blowing in unison. The rumble snaked up to the room she was in as the last of the explosions subsided. She reigned in her panic and diverted her attention to the feeble light from a corner. There was a mild numbness in her arms and legs from being bound for the duration of the travel, and according to Keith, they were in Oliyar province, in a bombed out castle. She pondered on the mental picture of the area sent by Keith and racked her mind for an answer. She knew a castle this size was prominent in her planet's history, but whose was it? She tucked her thoughts in the meantime and decided to reconnoiter the area.
She was grateful the bonds had been removed and Marsh had appropriated a bed for her beside a wall. Great ornate pillars stood at the middle of the room, bracing the beams crisscrossing overhead. The vaulted roof took her breath away despite half of the roof looked like it had been eaten by giant alien termites, affording very limited protection from the howling winds funneling into the room. She could still feel the cold needles of the wind through her thermal-controlled uniform.
Allura surmised they were along the coastlines of the province to have these steady strong breezes, but she needed to get out and find any sort of landmarks to tell her if she was right. A sound of rope snapping under a strain of a body trying to find freedom echoed in the half-battered room. A brief search under the bed revealed no weapon to use and while she could take the bed apart, it would be too noisy if Marsh was in the shadows observing her.
She hid her annoyance and promised herself to have Pidge include biometric locks in all their Voltcomms, since every bad guy seemed very keen in removing them.
Finding no metal pipe or bar she could wield as a temporary weapon, she slowly headed toward the field lamp. When she reached it, she held the lamp high and saw old paintings on the wall. The faces were burned or had been eaten away by the weather elements, but she could see they were from a royal family. She swiveled to the middle of the room. She knew eyes were observing her.
She followed the sound of the snapping ropes. There were three men now, she noted with mild interest. They were bound at the wrists, gagged and very much awake as they swung for freedom. Perspiration shone on their faces from their pointless efforts.
"Identify yourselves," she stated authoritatively when she removed their gags.
"Havran Ayel," said the medium built man sandwiched between two stocky and swarthy-looking men.
Allura's steely emerald gaze pierced the other two men, commanding an answer from them.
"Geldril Ifin."
"Fellin Brax."
"Were you behind the Drule attacks in town too?" The princess asked.
"We know nothing about it," Geldrin declared as he struggled with his bonds.
"Liars!" An older yet authoritative male voice boomed from behind the princess.
"Deputy?" She called out and her voice echoed before it was drowned under the howling wind.
Allura had wondered why Marsh freed her; or was there something else he wanted her to see? "Why have you brought me here?"
No answer, so she studied the prisoners' faces as closely as possible. They didn't exactly express fear in their eyes, but more like a realization of something they've known along. "Who is he to you?" Allura's no-nonsense tone took a stab at Geldrin, who she could tell was the leader of this tied-up outfit.
"We call him the Cleaner."
"They're the spies, princess." Marsh apparently appeared behind her like smoke.
The princess watched the ex-deputy step further out of the shadows to stand at arm's length from her.
"Are you going to turn these prisoners over to the authorities?" She waited for Marsh's answer while she examined the room and came to a wall where a royal crest brightly shone under the lamp's light. From all she saw, this crest was the only one cleaned from all the years' worth of dirt and grime. Someone has been taking care of this particular part of the room.
"I was going to but I've changed my mind," he replied, waiting for the princes to make the connection.
It wasn't the reassuring thought the princes was hoping for from Marsh, and she wondered if the toll of not securing his wife's remains was the final nail that drove him to take matters in his own hands. "I don't see how they can be connected to Naria's passing, Marsh."
"I've come to accept my painful reality, unfortunately; a part of me that has been trained to defend the helpless will not be quelled anymore from behind the desk. Tell me princess, does this place remind you of something now?" He pointed at the wall.
Unbidden by an old memory, she pressed at the two swirling symbols simultaneously at the corner then the third swirling symbol situated at the bottom middle. Soon, the symbols repositioned automatically at the center to form a large relief of an eye emblem.
"Arus Eyes," Allura muttered under her breath as recollection came to her. She remembered it now. The three sets of swirling lines symbolized the three northern sisters. The three tips touching at the center interlocking at a smaller circle set at the middle of the wall signified the town under their protection, but it had been sacked by marauding space pirates. Few had survived the rampage, and among the casualties were the three brothers the sisters had cared for very deeply.
The sisters' disheartening grief turned into one sweeping vengeful attack on the marauders. Legend wrote of a fierce war taking place in the stars. The sisters unleashed a weapon they had promised their parents would never be used since it needed neural links to the sisters to power the machines. Arus Eyes were three war satellites commissioned to protect the planet from hostile homeworlds.
"The sisters exacted their revenge, but they were never the same after the experience," Allura muttered, recalling an old history lesson.
"Oliyar lost their queens, and the royal line was dissolved." Marsh took up the narration.
"Soon the throne went to lesser title holders and then the responsibilities fell on Naria Trellith's family," Marsh said. "They kept to the ways of the lost royal family but when the Zarkonian wars blasted us to the Stone Age, her family became the last of the line."
He then regarded Allura with deep animosity. "I don't think it was advisable to destroy all three satellites by the Knights of Arus or to have the blueprints erased, princess. We could have turned the tide of the wars back then!" Marsh's eyes flashed as his anger boiled back to the surface.
Allura took a step back further. She sensed his deeper anger but the old tales from history weren't the source of it.
"My Naria would be alive and this!" He waved at the destroyed building, "this would be our home!"
"Marsh, what happened to the three sisters was centuries ago, and the subsequent circumstances can't be the fault of the Knights of Arus." She stepped back when Marsh approached her. She watched his face contort under his withering anger while his rage dripped along at his every step.
"The Knights of Arus answer to your family, do they not, princess?" He bellowed now, unable to retain the calm anymore. "Your predecessors gave that order!"
Allura stood her ground firmly. She matched the deputy's wrathful glower to her emerald glare. "That was centuries ago, Marsh. The machines' integration with the sisters' minds left a destructive effect on them," she stated the truth calmly.
"The science was very new and as a result, they turned those satellites against Arus! History recorded it or have you selectively forgotten that part for your convenience?"
With a flick of his wrist, a small spinning blade launched out, to cut the rope before returning to its owner. Marsh deftly caught the blade and hid it back under his sleeve, snapping the little device in its casing. He approached the spies and grabbed one by the collar, his fist cocked in the air, ready to land a punch.
"Taking the law into your own hands then is your answer?" Allura fired back.
"This is not the first time I've done it, princess."
"It won't bring her back, Marsh," Allura said quietly.
"No, it won't." Marsh considered her words. "It has been rightly said that bitterness is like a poison that you prepare for someone else and then drink it yourself."
He dropped the man and for a moment; Marsh seemed disoriented. He managed to snap out from his lapse and quickly noted the persistent beep from his side pocket. He took out the device and executed two commands. First, the room was illuminated to let the princess view the faded glory of the faded royal line on painted wall murals and to have his unwanted guest join them.
Lance at the Castle of Lions, leveled the conference room with his own brand of death glare, which successfully quelled the cadets' near-mutinous mutterings. According to them, they were getting separated from the main action again. The friendly, laid-back instructor façade that he let the cadets see on him melted away to a sterner carbon copy of Keith, if that was even possible. Pidge and Hunk shared glances. They have quite forgotten this side of Lance with all the years they've worked together.
Larmina glanced furtively to her left. She may challenge her aunt once in a while on certain occasions but never in an emergency like this. If only she could throttle Daniel through her mind and just cool his heels for a moment. Vince gave his best friend a warning tug on the sleeve to stand down, but for the life of him, his friend still dared to match wits with the red lion pilot.
Vince finally let a breath of relief as Daniel took his seat. The standoff lasted one more second as Daniel huffed more on himself and listened as Lance delegated the cadets and assignments to the remaining senior member.
Hunk and Daniel would continue with the recovery efforts in town; Lance and Larmina would head to the constabulary to coordinate efforts with Chief Andros and his officers, while Pidge and Vince remained at the castle to provide support if Keith needed it. With the plans ironed out, the Voltron Force left the conference room and went to their respective assignments.
The sudden glare of the light made Allura and the three captives blink, and they all wondered what else was in store for them. The princess and the spies regarded their host who had already shrugged of his jacket uniform, revealing a plain white shirt and a pendant which was startling familiar to Allura. She had seen it somewhere before-at the constabulary.
"But through the bitterness, there is always hope." She gazed at Marsh's pendant. It was the same, only his was probably a masculine version of the one she saw back the constabulary.
"You said Naria's family was the last; perhaps a relative of hers survived all those years." Yes, there is always hope. She clung to it hoping that Marsh will see it too.
"What are you talking about?" His anger rolled back in as he circled her. "Naria was an only child. I was young and idealistic. I wanted to serve Arus. It took me away from her and in the end; all it gave me was a broken heart. This!" He pulled out his pendant, "was the only remembrance I have of her!"
Allura glanced at the pendant again. "I've seen its twin."