Chapter 15:
Doing Homework
It's near midmorning, shipboard-time.
Keith lounges at the back of the Archives, awkwardly stuffed on a seat at one of the only functioning smaller side terminals. Pidge is sitting next to him, very reluctantly letting him borrow her laptop so he can actually read the stuff he's trying to find on this blockade Coran mentioned. But it's slow going and it's very hard to stay focused, especially since Allura had extended an open invitation to their passengers to explore the Archives.
"The history of our people is yours. It is your birthright," she had told the survivors earlier that morning, solemnly. "It has been stolen from you and now it is yours, to do with as you see fit."
It looks like a handful have decided to take her up on that offer - seven in all, among them a few whom Keith has been introduced to.
It's very strange, he thinks, to watch them explore the Archives, because it's both a happy thing and totally heartbreaking, especially when it's clear that some of them are barely older than Pidge and this is the first time they've ever truly been free to do as they wish. There is such awe and reverence on their faces as they move through the room. And yet, it's obvious that in spite of every overture that's been made to make them welcome in the Castle, they're still super wary of the pilots, even afraid. The slightest twitch from him or Pidge has their immediate attention as they brace to flee imagined violence to come.
Keith looks back at the laptop and one of the survivors nearly leaps. The movement is so sudden that it startles Keith, too, and he nearly tumbles out of the chair in surprise.
Pidge's fingers catch his shirt and she gives him a tug, allowing him to right himself. Then, she shoots him a look, raising her eyebrows, and he winces out an unspoken oops.
She pushes her glasses up on her nose with one finger and sighs, leaning with both elbows on the terminal's surface.
Keith grimaces a little in uncertainty and scrolls down a little further on the laptop. Behind it, the terminal screen lags a little, causing the laptop screen to suddenly jump.
Pidge frowns and reaches over, slapping the side of the screen with the palm of her hand. One of the survivors skitters away from them, but the screen stabilizes and doesn't jump again.
Keith looks at her.
Pidge shrugs.
Keith sighs and then, suddenly, pauses. He looks back at her with wide eyes and points at the screen, mouthing this is what I was talking about!
Pidge leans over, adjusts her glasses, and mouths the words that caught his attention: Princess Romelle, Final Address, Blockade of Pollux, Location: Pollux. When she turns back, she's got a look on her face that screams what are you waiting for, you doofus!
Keith attempts to toggle the controls for playback to the terminal as Pidge had shown him, but it relies purely on command line codes – something he's never quite managed to wrap his head around – and all of a sudden the central terminal springs to life.
"Oh no, no, no, no," he murmurs, unable to find the stop button.
"Keith," Pidge says. Then, more insistently: "Keith, look."
"How do I shut it off?" he hisses, hitting all the usual buttons – escape, ctrl+q, end.
She makes a frustrated noise, pushing off on the balls of her feet to stand, grabs his head and forcibly turns it in the direction of the central terminal.
He freezes.
In one instant, it seems that he and Pidge suddenly have gained the full and undivided attention of the present survivors.
Or, rather, the recording has.
It plays through once.
No one moves. No one makes a sound. No one dares.
The file closes.
"Please, play it again," one of them calls out; she is Uhwaz, the one with pink slashing marks running from her temples to her chin, like a Druid. She and the others gather around the central terminal, and stare up at the display as if transfixed.
"Please, Kete," Uhwaz repeats. Her long, tufted ears twitch, one of them swiveling slightly in their direction.
Keith rolls his eyes at the unintentional butchering of his name – she's trying, after all, but the 'th' sound isn't something that comes naturally to them and the translator won't actually translate their names like it translates everything else. It seems weird, but, honestly, it explains loads about the weird looks he's gotten from them, including Fala back on the station.
("Names shift meanings over time," Coran had explained, at one point. "Sometimes, you end up with names that are derivative forms of words that no longer exist in actual usage. Absent of that cultural context, they're impossible to translate. Better just to leave it be. Besides, it gets really confusing when you have societies where lineage is expressed in the name, like the Harbarl. Absolute nightmare! My tongue was tied for ten cycles.")
Keith flashes them a quick thumbs up and accesses the file again.
The image of a dark-skinned Altean woman reappears and Keith finds himself drawing a sharp breath at how much she resembles Allura in appearance. Her white hair is coming loose from the severe style she wears it in and in her eyes is a burning, familiar defiance. She is dressed in armor and bears a sword, similar to the one generated by his bayard, in one hand. Flanking her are two beings: a Galran in white robes with the pink slashes of a Druid across their face and a young Altean, wearing the same simple diadem on his head that both she and Allura wear. Behind them and displayed prominently on their clothes, there is a seal with Altean and what looks like Galran symbols.
From the speakers, Romelle's voice fills the room and, for a moment, Keith forgets that she is long dead, and had, in fact, probably died long before Blue ever came to Earth. Her anger, her horror and her outrage seep into every word, untainted by the passage of thousands of years.
I speak to you now, on the eve of this, our darkest hour, not as your sovereign, but as a free citizen of Pollux and the universe. Never before have we faced such certain and absolute danger. Above us, the Oathbreaker's fleet stands poised to fire. They believe us to be trapped below their solar shield, mere animals ripe for the slaughter. They believe that we shall simply lie down and accept this fate. We rest on the edge of oblivion and we - we shall not be silent, we shall not lie down. We are the proud people of Pollux and we shall never lie still and silent when confronted with evil. In their arrogance, the Oathbreaker and his fleet have forgotten who and what we are, we, the indomitable people of Pollux! They forget their ships were built with our hands!
"She's beautiful," a bat-eared male says. He's called Kawe.
My people, brothers and sisters, proud patriots of Pollux, I now call on you. I call on you to rise up as never before, in the name of your children and your ancestors. Rise up! Rise up!
"She's just as I imagined," sighs another, with the purple skin of a Galran and the facial marks of an Altean; their name is Moyvda, or Mo as they prefer.
Pollux calls you, my people! Pollux calls you to embrace this last sacred duty! Go now, to the docks and the yards we have built our honor on, and serve us this last time, in this, our bleakest hour.
Pidge fidgets uncomfortably, drumming her fingers on the table. Then, abruptly, she whispers, "I'm sorry, Keith. You were right."
Keith blinks, looking at her.
"We're in way over our heads," she admits, quietly. "I didn't think. Biggest Trekkie on the ship, always joking about Darmok, and I… forgot. I forgot."
"It's okay," Keith whispers back. "You had some good points. And, besides, you're only human, Pidge."
Pidge slumps her shoulders, making a miserable noise that is somewhere between groan and whine. "Yeah, but I should have known better. I'm smarter than this."
Keith sighs and mentally asks himself what Shiro would do.
"Don't beat yourself up over it," he decides on, finally. "We were never trained for any of… this."
He gestures helplessly, sweeping his arm in a wide arc from the laptop to the central terminal. Really, in terms of piloting and engineering and all that, they were golden, but as far as fighting in a war in space in giant mystical robots and dealing with clearly traumatized alien survivors of said war? Yeah, that wasn't something the Garrison classes covered.
Small wonder everyone's been freaking out lately.
"Besides," he adds, "It isn't me you should really be apologizing to."
Pidge chews on her bottom lip pensively, looking down at the table. Her glasses glint, catching the light. "I know," she says softly. "I forgot. God, I'm stupid."
Keith gives her a questioning look and she shakes her head, waving it off.
"You're not stupid," he tells her, after a moment.
"Yeah, I am," Pidge admits, crossing her arms and leaning back into her chair. She looks up, sighing heavily as she puts a foot up on the edge of the table and rocks herself back and forth. "We were crew, you know?"
That's right, Keith recalls: Pidge, Lance and Hunk had all mentioned being on the same crew assignment, back at the beginning. And, in the Garrison, your crew was everything. You didn't have the luxury of secrets or personal space or even mental space sometimes. Your crew became your life. They had to be, because they were who you'd be counting on to keep you alive. There was always a lot of shuffling going on, trying to find people that meshed right and, as he could personally attest, it didn't always work out too good for everyone. Even before, Keith had held the record for shortest crew assignments two years running (nearly got himself booted for it, too, but they overlooked it – no one, not even Shiro, had his kind of scores in the pilot seat).
Then, of course, Kerberos happened and, well, that was the end of that.
…At least, until Blue happened, that is.
"So, you can't say I'm not stupid," Pidge continues, "Not when I should have known."
"You hacked an alien robot drone, Pidge," Keith points out, "Twice. And you created software that translates Altean and Galran to English from scratch."
Well, that was stretching it a bit, really, because Coran had definitely helped with the translation software and the program abuses the hell out of the Castle's data to even function, but it's the spirit of the matter that's important, really, at least as far as Keith is concerned. Well, that's what Shiro is always saying anyway.
He really wishes he didn't suck so much at this crap.
Pidge is quiet a moment, but she stops rocking back and forth. Then, she pipes up, softly: "I miss Rover."
"Yeah, me too," Keith says quietly – success, he thinks to himself.
On the display, Princess Romelle draws back, her eyes rimmed with tears.
I will see you all again at the base of Thiamue. May the Great Mother of Lions guide your course.
The display flickers and fades, to cries of dismay and sadness.
Kawe, wiping the tears from his eyes, turns towards them and asks, "Is there more?"
"Um," Keith hesitates, glancing at the screen.
"There!" Pidge says, pointing at a line of text. How she reads that fast, he'll never know. "Ugh, Keith, shove over, you're taking too long!"
"It's not my fault I can't read this Matrix crap!" Keith exclaims, gesturing at the laptop screen with both hands.
Pidge stares at him. Slowly, she smiles, as if she's the cat that just caught the fattest mouse in the barn.
"I meant Unix," Keith tells her, but he knows it is already far, far too late.
"Kete, what is the Matrix?" Uhwaz asks, bewildered.
Pidge freezes for a moment, her smile going even wider, and then bursts out laughing, nearly rolling out of her chair.
"I am so sorry," Keith tells the survivors. "She's an actual child, god bless her."
If anything, it just makes the lot of them even more confused.
"Kete?" Uhwaz presses.
"Knock, knock, Neo," Pidge chortles.
"Right," Keith drawls, deliberately ignoring her. He scans the laptop screen, hovering a finger over the keyboard. "The file… the file which I am playing now… the file."
"The other lever, Kronk," Pidge manages, still giggling, and reaches across to make a few keystrokes.
The central terminal lights up and Princess Romelle appears once more, this time with an infinitely more severe look. She is even wearing a spacesuit, though one significantly more austere than Allura's own, and it looks like she is in a cockpit.
"What did you press?" Keith asks, looking down at the keys in confusion.
Before Pidge can answer, Romelle's voice again issues through the room, sharp and containing none of the impassioned appeal from the previous file. This time, a military commander speaks to them.
This is the Princess Romelle to all forward fighter groups. These are my final orders as your princess. Your primary objective is the shield generators on the Galran Tekkat. Take them out, at all cost. We need that path clear if the transports are to advance. When you have completed your primary objective, regroup at gebre one and take defensive positions for mass portal jump, location scramble high. The path must remain clear!
On the audio, there is a strange breathy hitch, as if someone has just inhaled sharply. It does not match the footage attached – it sounds closer, like audio from a helmet feed.
The safety of our greatest treasure now rests in our skilled hands. Now, fly! For Pollux!
Someone, a ghost from this one memory of Pollux, lets out a loud and clear whooping cry, one that is rapidly joined by others, rippling through the speakers. In the background, it dissolves rapidly into military radio chatter as squads sound off.
Then, it abruptly goes quiet as the screen shuts off.
Pidge has her hand on the keyboard. She looks up at Keith. "They don't need to see the rest."
"It's not our call," he tells her, and glances at the survivors.
Mo has a hand pressed over their mouth. Kawe is silently crying, his face in his hands, and he is not alone.
Uhwaz alone meets Keith's gaze. She suddenly bows, placing her right hand over her left breast, and when she raises her head, she is giving him a grateful smile, one that shows no teeth. Just as suddenly, the other survivors present do the same.
"Vre sa-a, Kete," she says. "You do us a great honor."
Keith gives her an odd look. "Is this a Paladin thing?"
Uhwaz glances at the others, who seem bewildered and at a loss for words.
"It is close enough, Kete," Kline's voice calls. He stands in the doorway, leaning against the doorframe with his arms crossed over his chest. "Someone who respects the right of choosing would be such."
Keith narrows his eyes, bewildered, and shoots a look at Pidge, who merely shrugs and pushes her glasses back up on her nose.
Kline chuckles. "It is better in the original Galran."
"You should hear Shakespeare in the original Klingon," Pidge tells him.
Keith groans, rolling his eyes, and Kline laughs.
Notes:
After meeting the Harbarl, Coran's tongue was literally tied for ten cycles. He had kinks in it for weeks.
Princess Romelle is a Hardcore Lady and there's a reason she's venerated as a practical divinity. Also, heeeeeey Prince Bandor!
Keith uses they/their/them for Mo because he has no idea what pronouns Mo prefers - in actuality, Mo's preferred pronouns aren't properly translatable to human equivalents, but xe/xir is pretty close, from an authorial standpoint. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Keith's been through so many different crews, Iverson was on Mace Windu levels of done with his Skywalker grade Extra.
Keith continues to fail his perception check. AND THEN THERE'S PIDGE. PIDGE PLEASE.
Kline was gonna have another line in this chapter, but it was too Extra.
Also: I haven't watched the new season yet. I am waiting until I finish this fic. I don't get to watch the new season til I finish this. I guess I gotta finish this. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Please note that this fic updates in chapter batches of between 2 to 3 chapters when I update it.