"What do you mean they got the rock?" roared Lotor, drawing his sword on the guard who delivered the news to them. "I thought these Merionians were afraid of their own shadows? Who could have done this?"
"The Voltron Force," hissed Haggar, peering into her crystal ball and watching Pidge and Hunk shoot back at the guards who were shooting at the hovercraft. Jael and Airic were at the wheel, and the entire craft was making a break for the cavern. "How were they alerted of our plans?"
"Get back my rock, damn you!" Lotor shouted to the guard, who scampered off.
Haggar suddenly realized that the guards in the snow were firing at the hovercraft filled with Merion fire rocks and turned to Lotor in alarm. "Tell your idiot soldiers to stop firing at the rock," she said frantically. "There’s enough rock in there to destroy this entire planet while we are still on it!"
"What?" Lotor said. He shouted into a loudspeaker.
"Stop firing at the hovercraft. Stop firing! That’s an order!" He grit
his teeth in anger. "All soldiers get into your ships right now. If I can’t
have that rock, no one is. I’m going to blast Merion from the face of the
galaxy."
Outside, the sound of laser fire suddenly gave way to silence as the Doom soldiers slowly put down their weapons. The hovercraft flew into the crevice of the mountain undeterred, carrying its deadly burden with it.
Keith and Allura had thrown on their white cloaks over the Doom uniforms and were making their way towards the crevice when he heard the sound of one last laser being fired breaking the sudden silence, just behind him. Without thinking, he pounced on the princess and pushed her down into the snow, suddenly feeling a burning sensation slice through his shoulder.
Allura gasped at Keith’s weight pressing her down, but she kept still until she felt him push himself up slowly. She looked beside where her head had been and saw some drops of red on the snow, coming from above her. She turned towards him with wide, alarmed eyes, but Keith silenced her with a look. They hastily continued towards the cavern, Keith clutching his bleeding shoulder.
They tumbled into the cavern together, the huge hovercraft barely making it inside the cavern mouth. Pidge and Hunk were waiting for the both of them, alarmed when they saw Keith’s bleeding shoulder.
"I don’t think that Sam will have to lure the Command ships into space anymore," Keith said, hearing the sudden roar of rockets from the direction of the ships. "Airic, as soon as those ships are off the planet surface, move the hovercraft out to the open snow. We’ll blast it with our freeze bombs so that we can drag it with us up into space and get rid of it away from your planet."
Airic nodded.
"Keith, you’re hurt," Allura said, pulling away the bloodstained cloak from his injured shoulder. She tore away a portion of the cloak and bound Keith’s shoulder to stop the bleeding. She met his eyes. "You saved my life – again."
He grinned at her cockily, shrugging with his
uninjured shoulder. "All in a day’s work, Highness," he quipped, suppressing
a wince of pain. "But the fun’s not over yet – let’s get to the Lions.
Jael, can you lead us there?" He suddenly paused, turning to Allura and
biting his lip thoughtfully then grinning. "Princess, how do you feel about
doing some fancy flying in the Black Lion?"
Lance sat in the cockpit of his lion, tapping the console impatiently. "What the hell is taking them so long?" he muttered into the commlink.
Sam looked just as worried as he did as she sat in the Blue Lion’s cockpit. Suddenly, the viewer in both cockpits flickered until it was replaced by Lotor’s menacing face.
"Voltron Force, I know you’re there," he snarled. "You dare to thwart me by taking away my store of Fire Rocks? If I cannot have them, I’m going to make sure no one does – and I’m going to destroy you along with this pitiful planet!"
"Damn," Lance muttered. "Keith, Lotor’s going to blast at the fire rock," he barked into the commlink. "Once he’s out of danger, he’s going to aim his lasers at the fire rock and destroy Merion."
Keith’s voice came over. "Sam, Lance, launch your lions – and engage him. We’ll be on your tail as soon as we can," he ordered. "Keith over and out."
Lance activated his lion and so did Samantha. "Ready?" Lance said into his commlink, noting Sam’s nervous yet determined expression.
"Ready as I’ll ever be," she said, managing a confident smile at him and a jaunty salute.
"Don’t make me worry too much up there, won’t you?" he groaned comically, putting the back of his hand to his forehead. He suddenly paused and looked at her with serious, emotion-filled eyes, feeling that he had to say something more. "I don’t think I can bear losing you again," he said softly.
She gasped at the tenderness she saw in his eyes, then scowled at him to hide the tears forming in her own. "You really have the lousiest timing, Commander Hawke. You always have, and you always will. Lance, why are you giving me all this best friend mush in the beginning of a battle?" she snarled at him into the commlink. She put on her helmet and turned on her engine. "Anyway, let’s get this show in the air."
Lance laughed, a little disappointed that she
hadn’t gotten his meaning, but now was not the time to talk about it. "Aye,
aye, Commander," he quipped instead, as his Lion flew past the mountains
and into space.
"Curse those meddling busybodies," muttered Lotor. He watched as the Blue and the Red Lions approached his command ship. "Looks like we have company." He nodded to his gunnery. "Aim all lasers at the Red Lion. The Princess shall be dragged into one of the ships via tractor beam. Not a hair on her head shall be harmed, is that understood?"
The lasers began firing at Lance as soon as they were in range. He dodged them, firing back and destroying three cannons on Lotor’s main command ship. Sam was also holding her own blasting away five cannons on the storage ship.
"We won’t be able to hold these guys down for long," Lance said worriedly to Sam, dodging yet another fierce volley of laser fire.
"No one’s firing at me," she told him, blasting away another cannon on another ship.
"Lotor thinks you’re the Princess," he said, counterattacking another of the ships and blasting away two more cannons, but the shots kept on coming. He dodged, then spied a wide beam of light aimed towards Sam’s Blue Lion. "Get out of the way!"
"What in the world -- ?" Samantha exclaimed, then cried out in pain as the intense energy of the tractor beam slashed through her cockpit. "Lance, what’s happening – I can’t control the Lion! I’m being dragged away!"
"It’s a tractor beam, Sam – don’t strain your engines, I’ll find a way to get you out of there," he told her, blasting at yet another cannon and dodging more laser beams. He couldn’t find which ship the tractor was coming from – there was no time – and Sam was slowly being pulled away from him.
"Damn you, Lotor, you can’t have her!" Lance screamed into the commlink. But even before he could find the source of the beam, Red Lion sustained a direct hit from two cannons. Lance felt his Lion spin out of control, and struggled to right himself, seeing that he was in the sights of another of Lotor’s cannons. Suddenly, there was a flash of light behind him and the cannons exploded in a cloud of fire and smoke.
"Hey, Lance, save some for us, why don’t you?" Pidge said, grinning into his commlink. Hunk, in the meantime, had blasted away the nose of the command ship from where the tractor pulling Samantha was coming from, freeing her. Once free, Blue Lion zoomed towards one of the command ships, guns blazing and shooting away at more cannons.
"She’s lethal, isn’t she?" Hunk said, whistling at Samantha’s flying admiringly.
"That she is," Lance said, breathing a sigh of relief. "Sam, are you okay?"
"The question is – are you okay," she replied, winking. "What are you doing wheezing like an old man, Hawke? It doesn’t say much about your stamina!"
"Hey, is there any left for us?" a familiar, musical voice said over the commlink. Lance adjusted his view to see Black Lion flying towards them, dragging a huge chunk of ice on a chain behind it. He saw that it was the hovercraft they had seen earlier that morning carrying the fire rock.
"Princess? Does Keith know you’re fiddling around with his Lion again?" Lance said, startled to see Allura’s face appear on his viewer instead of Keith’s.
"He’s in here, and he’s not complaining – yet," Allura sang out with a wink. "We’re about to pay Lotor a visit, want to help us drag along his welcome present?"
"Keith got his shoulder busted," Pidge explained wryly to the shocked Lance.
"Sure thing, Princess," Hunk said, latching a
chain on to the block of ice himself. Samantha, Pidge, and Lance followed
suit, and all five Lions flew full speed towards Lotor’s command ship.
"What are they doing, Haggar?" Lotor asked in alarm as he saw the five lions flying straight at him. "And what is that they’re dragging behind them?"
"Sire, hold fire and speed out of here, now!" Haggar said, recognizing the hovercraft encased in ice. "That chunk of ice contains all the fire rock we were able to chip off from the rock face of Merion – there’s enough there to blow us into the next galaxy!"
Lotor turned to the helmsman in panic. He took the helmsman by the collar and shook him. "You heard what she said, you fool," he shouted. "Get us out of here!"
"But, sire, the mach engines have been damaged – we’re going as fast as we can," the helmsman answered, his feet dangling off the floor and him sweating profusely.
Lotor dropped him. "We better find another way
out of here. Next time, Voltron Force – next time..." At that both he and
Haggar went running out of the bridge into the chamber with the escape
pods.
Allura had, on Keith’s instructions, ordered the entire team to stop and allow Lotor’s ship to fly further away from the Planet Merion into open space. Then, seeing that he was far enough, all five lions whipped the hovercraft towards the ships and released it, flying back at top speed away from the impending blast.
The hovercraft hit Lotor’s ship just as the five lions were entering Merion’s atmosphere, and the force of the blast threw all five lions into the snow. Luckily, they had entered the planet in a clear area, away from the Belt of Fire.
All the pilots crawled out of their lions with self-satisfied smiles.
"Looks like Lotor’s learned his lesson the hard way again," Pidge said breezily, blowing at his fingertips. "Piece of cake."
Keith shook his head and looked towards the still-orange sky, clutching his injured shoulder. "Lotor wasn’t expecting us to be here," he said softly. "We just got lucky. But I don’t think he’ll ever come back to Merion again after today."
Lance ran straight for Blue Lion as soon as he got out of the cockpit of his Red Lion. "Samantha, you dope, you better be okay," he muttered, making a beeline for the cockpit door and rapping on the metal with his bare fingers. "Evans, if you don’t come out of there right now –"
The door suddenly opened, and she pulled herself out of the cockpit with a grin on her face. "That was fun!" she said gleefully, jumping nimbly to the ground beside Lance. "I swear, Hawke, you haven’t changed at all – you’re still all mouth and no head," she said, clucking her tongue at him. He surprised her by reaching out and embracing her close to him.
"You must mean no heart, Evans," he said gruffly. "Didn’t I warn you not to scare me up there?" Samantha stared up at him, silver-gray eyes wide with unspoken questions and not just a little bit of alarm. Seeing the look in her eyes, he brought up a hand to gently but firmly hold her chin in place. "And you’re not going to turn away from me this time." With that, he slowly tipped his head towards her and gently brushed her lips with his.
When he let her go and moved away, Sam stared at him in mute shock, her fingers touching her lips. "You – you…" she began, stepping back from him, eyes wide with shock. "What… what kind of game do you think you’re playing, Hawke?" With that, she turned and ran back into the Lion cockpit, launching the Lion and flying back towards the caverns, leaving Lance staring after her in stunned bemusement.
A Second Chance -- Confessions