Chapter Text
Approximately a month had passed since Takashi Shirogane disappeared from the cockpit of the Black Lion.
It had been a time of chasing rumors, of looking for shadows and deciphering insinuations. Days went by for the team without a trace to pounce on, the leads on where their friend and leader might have been drying up like a desert creek. Team Voltron lived on tenterhooks, when they should have been celebrating their victory over Zarkon – a victory that may have even ended with the tyrant’s death. Instead, everyone was afraid.
Keith Kogane, Red Paladin of Voltron, was most terrified of all. It fell on his shoulders to lead, and he wondered if he was just leading everyone on a wild goose chase after all, as he leaned against the back of his Lion’s cockpit seat.
“All right, we’re approaching the Suntala exosphere.” His eyes narrowed at the bright orange sphere, its surface dotted with bright blue splotches. “Ship’s probably here somewhere.”
“Are you sure?” A yawn crackled from the comm and into Keith’s ears. “And if you’re not sure, can we just get back to the ship?”
“Not until we’ve completed the sweep of this planet.”
“Geez.” The yawn turned into a grunt of annoyance. “When Shiro told you that you could be leader if he disappeared, did he also shove a stick up your half-Galra butt?”
“We’re not going back,” Keith repeated, slowly and deliberately, biting his tongue at the ‘half-Galra’ comment, “until we’re sure the ship we’re looking for isn’t here.”
There was a silence from the Blue Lion at this.
“…I think I liked you better back at the Garrison.”
“Shut up.” Keith took some breaths to keep himself from shouting at Lance. “Just focus on the objective.”
“After this,” Hunk’s voice popped into the conversation, a quiet worry creeping into his tone. “Whether we find Shiro or not, I vote we go on vacay. Maybe to a beach planet.”
“Oh, seconded, man. Definitely seconded. Especially if we can dunk our Fearless Leader into the water.”
On that note, Keith chose to ignore Lance until he sounded like he had something important to say on what was happening. He knew, he knew he was pushing the others hard, but he had no doubt that if the shoe was on the other foot, Shiro wouldn’t stop tearing through entire star systems until his team was reunited. He tore through Zarkon, after all.
So far as they knew, at least. There had been whispers that Zarkon survived. That he was preparing to exact vengeance. The opposite was also murmured – Zarkon was not only dead, but that save for Haggar, there was a leadership gap so great that no one in the universe could be found to fill the emperor’s shoes. All of the information was uncertain. Much like the tip that maybe Shiro had been on a large ship in this part of space, a ship that was maybe little more than a derelict relic from previous battles, that was allowed to decay in orbit over a planet that may or may not still be an operational mining facility for the Galra Empire. A mining facility that no one really had a clue as to what was being extracted from it.
If there was one thing Keith hated, it was uncertainty. He moved to go full throttle.
“Oh, hey, picking up some readings over here! We can go tanning later.” Pidge’s tone was crisp as she flew alongside Keith’s Red Lion. “There’s the shi—“
It broke on the horizon like a monolith. It was a massive monster of a ship, as large as a ship Zarkon would find fit to fly. It was not, however, a purely Galran-made ship, though Keith could spot Galra-engineered parts poking out here and there. Indeed, as it fully broke into view, the craft showed itself as a chimeric anemone, the likes of which none of them, Keith was certain, had ever seen. It was a strange amalgam of parts and sharpness, built piece by piece from other ships of other worlds, other civilizations, even other metals and colors when light reflected on those surfaces.
There was no trail of gas coming from the beast’s exhaust ports. There were no lights present to signal other ships of its present. The sound coming from the thing’s communications channel – if it even had one – was static.
“…Uh.” Hunk broke the silence. “You guys are seeing what I’m seeing, right?”
“Sure am.” Pidge’s tone was awestruck. “Holy quiznak, it’s a literal junk ship. That…is…amazing.”
“And…” Hunk’s voice continued. “I’m not the only one glad we went before we left the Castle, right?”
“Nope.” Lance’s voice was an octave higher than usual. “So…glad!”
“…Red. Get me down there.” Before anyone else could speak, Keith cut through the chatter. “I’m boarding.”
“Wh—hey!” Keith winced as Pidge shouted. “No way! We haven’t even gotten a bead on what we might be facing! Get back here, you-!”
“Ok, that does it!” Lance’s Lion roared as it tried to follow. “You’re getting sprayed when we get back to the ship. And no milk for a week!”
Keith’s response was to go faster. Anyway, he thought he saw—ah. An exhaust duct of some kind, one big enough to get his Lion through.
“Uh, hey, Lance?” He heard Hunk quietly crackle in his ears. “Maybe cool it on the space cat jokes? He’s clearly getting angrier.”
“Yeah, time and place, idiot,” Followed by Pidge clearly wishing her smack down was more than verbal. “Now Keith is about to smash his face on the side of Star Ship Junk to spite you!”
“I’m fine.” At this point Keith’s temper was reaching its frayed end. “Just keep an eye out for incoming Galra ships. I’ll take the ship interior. Red out.”
“Keith—“
He turned his comms of at that point. He was going in, alone.
Keith. If anything should happen to me…
The Red Paladin quietly disembarked from the mouth of his Lion, eyes furrowed. There was a small maintenance door at the end of the shaft, the security wiring which his Lion had easily disabled with its tail. It made no sound in the vacuum of space, and neither did Keith as he floated to the door, thrusting it open, and positioning himself into the decompression airlock beyond.
The room’s lights beeped once the door closed, before allowing atmosphere to enter the room. The Paladin let his breath out; the air was breathable, but had a sharper taste to it than that on the Castle.
…I want you to lead Voltron.
Of course, Keith promised, back when they had been stranded together without any seeming recourse. If anything happened to Shiro, he would step up and take the other’s place. He still wasn’t entirely sure what Shiro saw in him, but he had vowed to keep his word. He would lead Voltron, now that Shiro was gone.
Lead them to what, Keith could only bitterly ruminate on. Four lions, with no hope of forming Voltron. Constant yelling. Fruitless leads. Day where his team mates chose to avoid the training room, if only to spare themselves their new leader’s anger and pushing. Of course he pushed them. They weren’t doing enough.
He wasn’t doing enough.
Why wasn't he doing enough?
Keith grit his teeth as he pushed the airlock door open, finding himself in an empty corridor. Could anyone blame him, then, for being a little more hair-trigger than normal. That it reminded everyone that one of their own had a little bit of the enemy in him, and was perhaps more liable to snap under the stress. Maybe they were even afraid of him, even though they had claimed to have accepted his heritage, after some time and thought.
He wondered if one day, if things kept on like this, everyone would change their mind right back and leave him alone, as he had been before for so many years.
Not that he cared, of course. Not at that moment. Oh, he should have. Whenever he had cooled off he'd made a vow to apologize or something for his behavior of late. Not yet, though. This was more important. Finding their leader was more important than their personal feelings.
Finding their real leader, because he knew that somewhere, somehow, Shiro had to still be alive.
~Paladin.~
There was no one in the hall. It was quiet. Too quiet.
~PALADIN.~ The growled voice of his Lion echoed louder in his mind. ~COMMUNCATOR. NOW.~
~…Oh.~
He’d almost forgotten he’d turned the comms off. His Lion reminding him meant only one thing: the other Lions had contacted her. Which meant everyone else was probably freaking out about his abrupt cut of communications.
“—WEAR TO GOD!” Keith’s comms nearly looped into feedback as Pidge’s angry voice screeched to life into his eardrums. “KEITH, IF YOU ARE DEAD I WILL KILL YOU!!”
“Keith!?” Hunk’s voice was just as panicked. “Keith, this isn’t funny, please respond!”
“Ugh, he’s fine.” For once Keith was glad Lance was on his side with—wait. “He’s probably just being all edgy and broody and angry, just give him a few more minutes.”
“This can’t wait a few more minutes!” Pidge huffed. “I need to talk to him yesterday!”
“…You can stop shouting.” Keith kept his voice low. “I can hear you.”
Silence.
“Finally!” There was relief tinged with annoyance as Pidge spoke again. “Ok, look, my bio-metric readings on the ship just finished. And, wow, the basic schematics of this ship are nuts, they just cobbled together any ship they could find and somehow managed to make it viable in space! This thing might actually be able to fly out of orbit if we let it!”
“That’s…nice?”
Keith resisted the urge to snap at Pidge to get to the point and stop waxing poetic. He was close, though. Probably closer than he should have been.
“But, uh, yeah.” There must have been something in his voice which had given some indication of his feelings, since Pidge quickly changed track and cleared her throat. “Anyways? There’s something blocking our ability to properly track your BLIP, and now there’re a lot of dots on my screen. Like, thirty-something on your level alone. At least I think it’s your level, unless you jumped fifty feet just now. And, uh, there’s also something else on my energy scans…”
Keith sucked in a breath. He was going to likely run into some trouble, then.
“I’ll find whatever’s jamming your signals.”
“Keith!”
“If this ship is mapped out as crazy as you say it is, then all four of us are going to have to split up to look for Shiro anyways.” A sputter from Pidge was ignored. “Just tell me if you’ve got an approximate location of the source and I’ll find my way there.”
“You sure about that, man?” Hunk’s voice came through after a moment. “You don’t know what you’re dealing with in there. None of us do. I vote we get back to the Castle and do a scan there.”
“Not sure if that’s the best idea now.”
“Lance?”
“I mean, Fearless Leader’s already on board.” Keith rolled his eyes at the epitaph as Lance continued. “And it doesn’t look like he was spotted yet, right? The only way we know anyone might be on there is that our signals are jammed. And if there is anyone else on board, these guys might not even know we’re here. Or, they know we’re here, are trying to pretend they’re not here, and they otherwise don’t know Keith’s there.”
“What’re you saying, Blue?”
“I’m saying, Pidge, if we leave now, and Shiro…” Lance trailed off. “We had a lead to this place, right? The most solid one we've had. Our searches haven’t all panned out, but we promised we’d find out what happened to him, no matter where that took us. Maybe this is the ship he’s on, and if we retreat, and these guys leave…”
There was silence, at this.
“So we just…leave him there?”
“We give Keith the time to see what he can do about our signals. Then, we try boarding too. If he can’t we get out.”
“That’s a thought.” Hey, Lance had his moments, Keith had no problem admitting that, even at that point. “So, Hunk?"
"...All right." He wasn't fully on board, judging by his tone. "But be careful, ok?"
"Pidge?”
“…If this is right…” Pidge paused. “The source of the signal jamming is…where the cargo bay of Super Junk Ship might be.”
“Ok. So bottom levels. Give me twenty minutes. Red ou-”
“Wait!”
“What?”
“I need to tell you something else! Guh!”
No. Keith did his best to not explode at Pidge, yet again. They were trying to help.
“What is it?”
“There’s…some really weird energy readings there. I don’t know if its related to the signal jamming, but the readings I can get are really…” He could hear Pidge struggle to try and describe what she was seeing. “Look, just be watch your back, ok? I haven’t seen anything like this before.”
“Yeah, no worries.” Keith nodded. “I will.”
“You better,” Lance quipped. “Or else Pidge really will kill you!”
That actually got a small smile out of him, even if no one else was there to see it.
“Fine. Red out.”
Whoever was on the ship – if anyone was on the ship – wasn’t taking any chances.
Keith hadn’t encountered, much less seen, anyone. No hint of life, despite the obvious atmosphere pumping through the ship. Lights were dimmed to the absolute minimum needed for the sake of sight; every door that could be opened revealed empty rooms, some seemingly not habituated for days. Elevators were disabled. Temperatures were cold and ice was starting to form in a few corners. The ship had gone as dark as it could without outright killing whoever was on it.
Lance seemed to have the right idea, then. No one had come out to challenge Keith. Indeed, no one had come out at all.
Which allowed the echoes of voices down one particular hallway to startle Keith enough to jump backwards.
“…rgo…” Keith quickly found his composure again and ducked behind a door panel, as a reedy voice whispered through the wall. “…no way they could know we’re here. They shouldn’t even be aware of our existence!”
“Things change, Jabon. Especially nowadays.“
Keith’s blood chilled at the guttural growl that responded. He knew exactly what that meant. One of them was a Galra.
This ship belonged to the Galra.
Of course it did.
“Surely,” the reedy voice speaks again, nervously as they start to pass Keith’s hiding place. “Once they realize that what they’re looking for is gone, that, ah, no one worth finding’s here, they’ll leave us be. No reason to stay, yes?”
“It wouldn’t be a problem,” The growl deepened. “If this ship weren’t full of stupid skeefs. Where’s the one who made the deal?”
“On ice, sir. You may…ah, do what you will with him.”
“And the snitch?”
“Jetted, as per your directive.”
“Good.” Keith could see the flash of yellow, and the massive physique which accompanied it, as it began to disappear. “Once the coast is clear, we will…he main fl…”
And then they were gone. Keith let out the breath he didn’t know he was holding, and bolted in the opposite direction.
Cargo bay. There it was, with five minutes to spare.
Meanwhile, it didn’t feel like he’d been on board for only fifteen minutes. Not with all the sweat suddenly forming at his brow.
Keith stared at it, before quietly making his way down the stairs. Here. Here was where the jamming source was. All he had to do was sever the jamming, let his team mates on board, grab Shiro and then haul out. If Shiro was on board.
He’d passed several prisoner cells, the walls still coated with blood. There were no bodies to be found, alive or otherwise.
The cargo doors slid open as Keith descended the last of the stairs, and a powerful, unexpected blast of heat hit his face. The cargo bay was giant, silent, and in the center was a large, black container. It looked like a holding area of some kind. Perhaps, even, for prisoners.
The heat was emanating from it, he realized, as more sweat began to form as he continued forward, closer to the container. Soon enough, he was mere feet away, and he leaned against another, smaller container a few feet away.
“Guys.” Finally, Keith turned on his comm and spoke in a whisper, looking to his left. “I’m here. I think I found--”
Three large robotic Gladiators and a large, two-headed alien were staring at him when he turned to his right.
“…Be right back.”
“Keith--!?”
His bayard was out and swinging before the first Gladiator could react. Its head rolled on the ground as the other two robots lunged forward. The two-headed creature let out a shout and ran off as Keith began to parry the blasts from their laser.
A Galra leader, Galra robots…in Keith’s mind, there was no doubt. This was a Galra operation of some kind. Not a very well-guarded one, considering the level of the robots. They were barely dodging him, whereas he was easily outclassing them.
“Come on,” He teased the last remaining robot, after eviscerating his second opponent. “Is this seriously the best you can do without Zarkon around!?”
The robot charged, and Keith’s bayard went right through it. It heaved and sparked before falling to him, lifeless. After dislodging his bayard, Keith went back into a stance, looking for the two-headed alien.
No sign of him. He was likely already gone, warning anyone he could fine.
I better hurry.
“Keith!” His comm came back to life again. This time, however, it wasn’t any of his team mates speaking, and there was an unusual amount of static. “This is Allura. What are you doing!?”
“Hey.” Without any remaining, obvious resistance, Keith began to walk towards the container. “I take it the others didn’t tell you what’s going on?”
“They did,” He could still hear the miffed tone that responded, static or no. “What were you fighting, just now? Do you need back up?”
“No. I got them all.” Looking, looking, ah. Ah. A shiny button to push. “We might have a fight on our hands when they come aboard, though, if everyone’s up to it. One of them ran off.”
“…Keith.”
“They’ve powered down almost every non-essential system in here.” A hiss came from the inside of the container, and the hatch on the side began to open, as Keith pushed the button. “The team can be on board before…any...”
He trailed off, his eyes widening as another, more powerful blast of heat hit him.
“Keith?” The worry in Allura’s voice increased, as did the static, “Keith, what’s happening?”
The Red Paladin could feel his skin crawl beneath his suit as he beheld what was within the container. He’d know the canisters in front of him from anywhere; he’d tried taking one from the Druids. But what was inside was nothing like the quintessence that had healed his skin. It was hot, it was bright.
It was a bright, navy blue.
“Allura…” Keith couldn’t help but stammer as he walked into the container, sweat was already starting to drip off the edge his chin. “Guys? Team…its quintessence.”
“What!?” Pidge’s voice managed to break through. “These guys have quintessence cargo!?”
“Awesome!” Lance’s ‘woo hoo’ followed it. “Let’s loot it! We could use it for our Lions!”
“No, guys, this…” Keith swallowed hard as he picked up a container. It was hot, almost burning, even with his glove on. “Something’s not right, this quintessence iaaAAAH!”
He yelped as, he spotted the laser blast in the corner of his eye from the robot he had decapitated first. After shooting, it gave one final shutter before sputtering and falling to the floor. Keith, for his part, managed to dodge a hit that otherwise would have hit him in the chest.
It shot right through the container in his hands instead, blue liquid running down to his feet. Keith didn’t even have time to toss the container from him before it shattered.
Exploded, throwing blue liquid all over Keith and the surrounding containers.
“Haa--!”
The effect was almost instant, as the strange quintessence proceeded to burn right through the pieces of Keith’s armor that it touched, sinking onto his skin with a hiss. It burned. It hurt.
“GAH-!!”
“KEITH!” The static became a great whine as his teammates began to shout. “KEITH!!”
“Nuh…!” Keith shut his eyes as he felt his helmet start to crack from the liquid’s presence. “Everyone, th-this…!”
“BLIP is unresponsive!” Allura’s tone became panicked. “Keith, are you all right!?”
I’m fine.
It’s what he constantly said to everyone. His rebuffing of concern had increased significantly since Shiro’s disappearance. Everyone knew he was lying. Keith wasn’t stupid. It was all he could do to keep focused on what needed to be done. That’s what a leader did. Leaders could handle whatever happened, and could recover from their moments of weakness.
But now? Right now, as he felt the overall heat in the container increasing, even as his own skin burned like fire?
He was so not fine.
“…No…” His voice shook as he shut his eyes, his breathing fast and shallow. “NO!!”
“Dude, Keith!!” Lance’s voice managed to cut through. “Stay calm, we’re c—m-ng f—“
His helmet emitted a loud crack, and the visor covering Keith’ s face fell out of its nook and crashed to the floor. That was followed by more glass cracking, and Keith whipped his head around in time to see several dozen of the containers closest to him start to shake. All of them had cracks melted into them, courtesy of the quintessence that had exploded from his hands.
Just like that, then, all of them shattered, bathing Keith in blue with such force that it ejected him out of the container entirely. His screams were replaced by gargling as the liquid went right down his throat, in his eyes and up his nose, setting his insides on fire.
No. No. No. NO...
It was all he could think of, before he found himself on the ground in a puddle of blue, the two-headed creature suddenly hovering over him with a large rail gun. His entire body was screaming, and his armor was cracking all over him.
He was in no condition to fight back.
“…Oh no.” Instead of ending him (which, at this very moment, Keith would have shamefully preferred), his opponent simply shrieked threw the gun aside, and ran. “Oh no, oh no, its leaking!!”
He slammed his hand onto a white button near the cargo bay entrance doors, before fleeing to a cluster of escape pods, several yards from Keith’s position.
“EMERGENCY SCAN COMPLETE. RED ALERT.” A pleasant-sounding female voice – Altean, somehow from the inflections - accompanied the sudden flashing red lights and blinking emergency strobes. “RED ALERT. CONTAINMENT BREECH INDICATED. RADIOACTIVITY LEVELS RISING. ONE-DAKİKA SELF-DESTRUCT ACTIVATED. PLEASE HEAD TO ESCAPE PODS IN AN ORDERLY FASHION.”
Quiznak.
Keith’s breathing turned into panicked hyperventilating as he lay in the blue goo, otherwise unmoving. Too much pain. Hard to focus.
This was his fault.
~Paladin.~
This—
~PALADIN!~ Red’s roar echoed through his mind. ~I must get you now! The ship will be destroyed!~
—his fault.
~…Red.~ He slowly turned to his right. ~…Escape.~
~Not without you!~
Focus, Keith. Focus. You are a leader now.
He grit his teeth and rolled over. His armor – what was left of it – creaked unstably.
~Escape…pod.~ One, two, three. Up. No. One, two, three, four, fi—up. ~I got this. Come get me…my pod. You or the others. You can come get me.~
~You are hurt.~ A stinging sensation zipped from the back of his head to the back of his eye as he struggled towards the cluster of escape pods. ~You will need medicine when you are back with the others.~
~I know.~ He tried to smile, as he finally staggered into a pod. ~Catch you on the flip side.~
“RED ALERT. TWENTY-İKİNCİ WARNING.”
Keith shakily pressed a button, then slammed his fist into it to seal him in. As he did, his gooped up hands pressed against several inner wires, causing them to hiss and spark.
If I don’t get electrocuted—Another sharp pain skittered across his eyes, and his eyesight became dimmed. Come on, come on…!
Finally, breathing fluid started to fill the tank.
COME ON!
“TEN-İKİNCİ WARNING.”
The fluid was taking far too long. It was only up to his hips and going too slow. He wasn’t going to make it.
“GRRRAH!!”
Finally, he just ripped the sparking wires out and prayed that did something.
The fluid rushed up to his chest, and he let out a gasp at how cold it was as it seeped into the broken bits of his armor.
“FIVE, FOUR…”
Up to his neck.
“THREE…”
The escape pod was full of liquid, and Keith began to float inside of it.
“TWO…”
He heard a beep, and the next thing he knew the pod – and he inside of it, were being sucked away from the ship.
“ONE…”
The ship’s destruction wasn’t immediately apparent. It wasn’t like in any films, where when you hit a spaceship, it exploded into a great fireball. That was a lie. Space had no oxygen to sustain fire without any kind of magic. Nor was there really any explosion. There was no sound in space.
In the case of the amalgamated ship, nothing seemed to happen for the first few seconds. All the other Paladins would have seen, no doubt, were dozens of escape pods flying out from who knew where on the ship. Then, Red Lion flying around the ship, letting out her roars.
What they would have felt was the shockwave. It came quick and fast, and tossed the Lions – and those with Paladins within them – far and fast from the ship. This seemed to be a part of the design of the ship’s self-destruct, Pidge would later note, as it also tossed every escape pod right out into the void of space or onto the planet below.
There were 183 escape pods that Allura could track back on the Castle of Lions, shooting away from the scene at the speed of sound.
And when the Red Lion could finally be persuaded to come back to the Red Tower, Keith wasn’t inside.