Kat was smiling as she put her fan down and approached the Princess, walking down the steps with the grace of a tiger. “You are one of ours – I knew it from the moment I saw your eyes… and then there is your coloring. That was well done,” she praised shaking Allura’s outstretched hand. “However, you didn’t even think about the two guards, did you? In other circumstances, that would have cost you your life.”
“No,” Allura admitted ruefully, “I wasn’t thinking of them at all. But I trusted you wouldn’t have ordered me to knock that man down if you didn’t have anything prepared.” She peered into her top with a grin at the audacity of her gesture, to the small watched sewn onto the fabric. “The assault begins in fifteen minutes according to my clock.” She looked at the two other women holding rifles behind the two terrified guards then at the sleeping form of the king. “How did –“
“I disarmed the two guards standing sentry outside this throne room, while Gahanna drugged the King’s wine,” Kat explained matter-of-factly. “You will find the two guards tied up and unconscious behind the throne with Gahanna. She too is one of ours. We knew the next shipment would be taken here first. Fifteen minutes, you say? That’s enough time… ” She frowned, noting once more Allura’s coloring. “You are not from Aidel – your coloring is the same as mine and I know all the women I’ve trained. I am Kat, the Lyon’s wife. What are you called?”
Looking at Kat’s proud bearing and forthright expression, Allura decided that she liked Keith’s mother – and wanted to be the woman she was someday. Courage and strength was etched all over the older woman’s face and body, yet the capacity for love and gentleness was there, too. Allura smiled inwardly to herself. With parents like these, it was no wonder that Keith was the man he was today. He had exceptional genes.
“I am the Princess Allura from Planet Arus,” she introduced herself, standing tall and meeting Kat’s searching green eyes. “I was one of those sent by the Galaxy Alliance to aid you.”
Kat’s eyes lit up in startled pleasure. “A princess? I didn’t know they let royalty fly. I was from the Galaxy Alliance, too, long ago,” she admitted. “I didn’t think they would respond to our call now, not when they didn’t respond to us ten years ago. What is your team and who is your commander?”
“I am a member of the Voltron Force, and my commander is Captain Keith Zachary Montgomery.”
Kat’s eyes suddenly filled with tears at hearing Keith’s name and she looked at Allura with stunned disbelief written on her ashen face. “You jest.”
“It’s true,” Allura said gently, filled with delight at being able to bring her the good news. This was the reason why she had wanted so much to be the one sent in. “Your eldest son is here. He fights outside beside his father.”
“Keith. He’s really here?” Incredulity and hope both rang in Katherine’s voice as she said Keith’s name.
Allura smiled reassuringly at her. “Yes, he is. He is to lead one of the squads assaulting the front walls of the base – or to defend airspace if he is so needed.”
Allura’s reference to the impending battle shook Kat out of her bemusement, but her face remained wreathed in a joy-filled smile. Then her face was once more all-business as she regarded the Princess. “Once the assault begins, most of the guards at the slave pits will be deployed to defend the walls, leaving only a skeletal force guarding the slaves,” she explained to Allura.
Kat nodded her head towards the two women guarding Erinol’s soldiers, and they brought the butts of their rifles on the men’s heads, knocking them unconscious. After giving Gahanna an approving nod, she motioned for Allura to follow her.
“Already we have spies in most of the slave pits that have instructed their comrades to overpower the remaining guards,” Kat continued to explain as she made her way across the throne room, Allura at her heels. “These groups will be led to different sections of the fortress to secure all docking bays and to lock the remaining off-duty soldiers within their quarters. This throne room is already ours by virtue of Gahanna and these two others.”
Allura was impressed. “If everything has been so precisely planned, knowing that the attack would happen today, why did you need someone from the outside to breach security and tell you about it?” she asked curiously, following the older woman through the corridors. “An alarm would signal the beginning of the attack, and you would be able to set your plans in motion with or without me. Where are we going?”
“The communications room – it’s the nerve center of this fortress,” Kat replied, pausing as the first sirens pealed loudly through the castle. She pulled Allura into a shadowed corner just in time; in the next few moments, several soldiers came tearing down the corridors where they had been. Both women stayed still, quiet until they had gone. When the corridor was once more silent of the soldiers’ pounding boots on the metal floor, Kat moved out of the shadows, and Allura followed.
“You were asking why I needed someone to come in when everything has been very well thought out. It’s because I need someone I trust guarding my flanks while I go about my business commanding the rebel forces within the fortress, not just one of the slaves but someone we had trained, someone who wouldn’t cave,” Kat explained as they approached the corridor leading to the communications room. “Everyone who has been here since we put this plan in motion has been assigned to lead a group of slaves with particular missions. Therefore, there is no one else but you.”
Three guards were standing sentry outside the communications room. The two women approached them, lasers pressed into the folds of their pants behind them. The guards were too busy looking their fill at the two stunning beauties heading towards them to notice their unusual posture.
The guards didn’t know what hit them.
Allura had set her rifle to stun and stunned two of the men even before she was at their arms’ reach. Kat was more direct, thrusting the butt of her rifle into the remaining one’s stomach before following it up with a strike on the back of the head as he doubled over in pain. All three were unconscious in less than a minute.
The two women dragged the three into a storage room off the side of the communications center – a storage room that conveniently had automatic doors that could only be opened from the outside. Afterwards, Kat and Allura each took a console in the communications room, Kat at the internal monitoring system, and Allura on external transmissions and monitoring activities outside the base.
“We’ll be safe in here – two squads of slaves have been assigned to move into position on either end of the corridor leading to this room. Besides, that the soldiers will be too busy defending the walls and fending off attack from within for them to bother with this area of the castle,” Kat said, punching in commands and calling up an image of the fortress floor plan onto her screen. “It just goes to show how Erinol has let security slide here. Our silent presence lulled him into thinking that this planet would be under his thumb forever.”
Several of the strategic areas had already been breached by the slaves, including some of the docking bays and one of the cannons, and the off-duty soldiers’ quarters had also been blocked off. However, some docking bays were still being contested and in so were two more of the cannons; the security control room, where the fortress gates’ central control was located was also not yet under rebel control. Nonetheless, it appeared that the rebel forces had most areas under control within the castle.
Half of the huge screen in front of the Princess showed points corresponding to areas along the base perimeter. Several lights were blipping on screen, indicating areas where the fighting was going on. Although she was eager to see how Keith and the others were doing, Allura had to study the panel in front of her before beginning to work the controls; it was an older system than what she was used to.
“The rebel forces have already begun attacking in earnest. Some areas on the west wall have already been breached,” Allura reported to Katherine when she finally figured the panel out. “I’ll run a radar check to see if there are any enemy ships in the immediate airspace, and I’ll try to set up a communications link with one of the Lions.” She began to run the radar security system to check if there were any ships in the immediate airspace, turning to the second half of her huge monitor.
After spending several minutes gathering information from the Resistance leaders around the castle and issuing instructions to them, especially to the leader whose team had captured one of the cannons, Kat turned to Allura and asked for another update.
Allura pointed to the five blips on her screen flying patrol back and forth over the fortress. “These are our ships – our Lions,” Allura explained with a frown. “It appears that they are anticipating attack from above; I know we all decided that only two of the Lions would be deployed otherwise, and Keith and Lance would be leading squads of their own against the castle walls.”
Kat frowned as well, the frown melting into an expression of self-reproach as she remembered. “I forgot about the slave-fleet coming in early,” she groaned. As she spoke the words, twelve new blips came into view on Allura’s monitor. “And there they are.”
The Princess smiled confidently. “A slave-ship fleet? Keith and the others can handle that,” she said, fiddling with the controls and radioing Pidge. “Pidge, are you there? You have a fleet of Doom slave ships coming in at you at mach 2. Can you see them on your monitors?”
“Yes, Princess – I saw them coming when I set up the interplanetary communications wall cutting Aidel off from external transmissions,” Pidge said, his small face appearing in an inset at the bottom of her screen. “Did you have trouble tapping into our frequency?” He whistled at the sight of her. “Nanny would throw a fit if she saw you in the outfit. Has Keith seen you in that? He’d lock you up for sure.”
“Yes, as a matter of fact, he has.” Allura cleared her throat self-consciously as she felt Katherine’s eyes regarding her speculatively. Just then, Pidge’s face was replaced with Keith’s on the bottom of her screen. “Captain Keith.”
“Are you all right in there?” he asked, his brow creased with a worry that eased as he saw her unmarked face on his monitor.
“Obviously,” Allura replied, rolling her eyes at him but tempering her sarcasm with a smile. “Don’t worry, Captain Mother Hen, Nanny will leave you in one piece when we get back home. Now get your mind back on your fight – you engage that fleet just about…”
Keith’s image wavered, but not before Allura saw him sharply turn his controls to the right to avoid a laser blast.
“…Now,” Allura finished with a wry grin. She turned to Kat and saw that the older woman’s face was once more swathed in an almost-trance like expression, her eyes fixed on the inset where Keith’s face had appeared.
Kat turned emotion-filled emerald eyes to Allura’s sympathetic ones. “He’s handsome,” Kat marveled with a small smile. “He looks just like Zach.”
Allura nodded her agreement, her expression gentling. “But he has your smile,” she added, earning for herself a brighter smile from his mother.
“I always thought so,” Kat said, her eyes beginning to twinkle. She turned back to her monitor, nodding approvingly as she saw the two other cannons come into rebel control. None of the slaves had any actual experience handling the cannons, but at least the forces outside attempting to breach the walls did not have them to worry about. If worse came to worst, there were some rebel leaders who had been lectured the theory of working cannons like the ones in the fortress. She turned back to Allura who was watching the air-battle with a measure of wistfulness. Kat smiled to herself, understanding the Princess’ longing for flight. She hadn’t been behind the controls of any aircraft since the crash.
“What is he like?”
“Exasperating,” Allura confessed, turning to Kat with a laugh, her face softening unconsciously. “Controlled, cautious… Lance calls him anal, although I don’t know what that means – but I guess you do, because you’re laughing.”
“Yes, Princess, I know what ‘anal’ means,” Kat said with an answering chuckle of her own. “Zach has used the description on me more than once, when he refers to the many shoulds and should-nots that he says rule my life.”
“Oh, Keith has a lot of those,” Allura agreed, her eyes suddenly reflecting sadness and longing as she fingered her rose pendant absently. “He’s also one of the kindest, most selfless, most courageous people I have ever known. He would give his life for what he’s fighting for, and my people almost worship him – as they do the rest of the Force.” She raised her eyes to Kat’s. “He gives us hope.”
“He’s grown up to be a remarkable man, even… even without much help from us.” Kat smiled proudly, not bothering to hide the moisture gathering in her eyes. “I only wish…”
On impulse, Allura reached out and covered the older woman’s hand with hers. “He understands – and you’ve helped him to become who he is today more than you know,” Allura assured her. Kat smiled back gratefully, but a new blipping on the screen cut off any reply she might have made to the Princess however.
Allura swiveled her chair to fully face her monitor, frowning as she noticed a new blip on the screen different from the blips made by the fleet. Punching some buttons, she zeroed in on the blip, and the sight made her gasp.
“It’s one of Zarkon’s robeasts,” Kat said, eyeing the four-armed monster on the screen with mounting alarm. “Can the Lions handle that monster?”
Allura closed her eyes, shaking her head. “If that were the only thing they were fighting, yes. But with the slave-fleet also attacking them and their having to cover the ground forces – “
Kat watched the robeast fly towards the five lions squaring off with the twelve slave-ships. “We have to do something.”
Allura nodded, her eyes reflecting her fear. Yes, they had to do something,
but what could they do?