“Skipper, I hate to say this, but the command slave-ship just launched one of Zarkon’s uglies at us.”
Keith bit off a curse as he saw an energy beam shine on the robot, making it grow to thrice its original size. “If we head that beast off as Voltron, the slave-fleet will be free to attack the ground troops,” he told the team, hitting his controls with his clenched fist in frustration. “Father, come in. How soon can you get your soldiers in the protection of the fortress walls?”
“Our forces have breached the north gate and the east wall – the west gate and the main gate are still closed. If we disengage the men in the other sections of the wall and have them move to the open gates, it will take us about a quarter of an hour.”
“Too long, Keith,” Lance said, dodging a blast from one of the slave-ships’ laser cannons. “We can’t hold those ships off and fight the robeast at the same time.”
“We can blast the sections that haven’t been breached,” Hunk offered.
“No, there are people who could get hurt,” Sam said. “Launch proton missiles.” At that two slave-fleet cannons exploded. “I think we should fly as individual ships for as long as we can; two of us can square off with the robeast, while the rest can hold off the slave-ships.”
“It’s the best we can do,” Keith agreed. “Lance, you and I will head off the robeast; Hunk, Sam, and Pidge, you make sure that those slave-ships are too busy to fire on the people fighting below.” He pulled up his own Lion to the level of the robeast coming at the five Lions and came at it full-throttle, launching a proton missile at it. He arched his flight path up, climbing at an almost vertical angle, Lance following behind him to avoid the force of the missile exploding against the monsters’ throat.
“Let’s lead this beastie farther from here,” Lance said, noting in his monitor that the enraged robeast had tailed them, roaring wildly. “Looks like that four-armed ugly needs more than throat surgery we gave him to improve his voice.”
“We’re not here to give him voice lessons, we’re here to keep him busy,” Keith said with a wry laugh as he flew his Lion high above the robeast’s clutching hands, firing his laser at it and dodging its shots. Lance followed suit, flying into the giant warrior’s chest and catching it off balance before arcing up into the sky. “Let’s hope that this buys the Aidelians enough time – we’ll have to form soon to get rid of this monster.”
“Samantha!” Lance gasped as he saw Blue Lion whiz past him, evidently hit by a blast from one of the slave-ships’ cannons. He reduced altitude, intending to dive down after Sam. The action brought his tail into gripping distance by the robeast, and before Lance could put on a burst of speed to dart away, the robeast had dragged his Red Lion towards its and crushed it to its chest with its four arms.
Keith swooped down and with a powerful claw swiped the robeast’s head, but it didn’t loosen its grip on Lance. Sam had righted her Blue Lion and swiped at the robeast’s arms with her razor blade, but was only swatted away like a fly.
“You… have… bad… breath!” Lance shouted, firing a blast of flames into the robeast’s gaping mouth. Its grip loosened slightly, and Lance was able to get away. Keith swooped back down, proton missiles unerringly finding the monster’s head and allowing Lance to make good his escape.
“Sam, get back to those slave-ships – they’re beginning to change targets!” Keith ordered. “We’ll hold this off as long as we can.”
But Keith knew that the promised ‘as long as we can’ was a pitifully
short time if they didn’t have Voltron.
“Which docking bay is that, Rabineth?”
“The seventh south, Ma’am Kat,” the rebel leader replied, moving away to show Katherine and Allura the sleek Doom jet-fighter sitting in the docking bay that their squad had captured. Allura checked the floor plan on the other half of the screen, and located the seventh south docking bay.
“It’s not too far from here,” Allura said thoughtfully. She winced as she saw Keith’s Lion take another missile from the robeast he and Lance were trying to subdue, thinking of his instructions to stick to her instructions and not to take any reckless risks. Was climbing into a cockpit of a ship she had never flown a ‘reckless risk’? She didn’t doubt Keith would think so. But she also didn’t doubt that her team was worth it. She turned her shining eyes to Kat. “We can fly that. It will give our side the extra fire-power we need.”
Kat eyed the ship in the monitor uncertainly. “I don’t know about you, Princess, but I haven’t been behind the controls of a fighter since the crash ten years ago. And somehow I don’t think that flying Drule-designed crafts was part of your training.”
“Sam says that once you get the hang of one ship, the others are just child’s play,” Allura quipped with a confidence she did not fully feel. “Besides, desperate times call for desperate measures.” She pinned Kat’s green eyes with hers. “They need us. Come on, Commander, you know this is their only chance.”
They ran through the corridors, the squads of slaves sent to protect them running at their heels. The two women entered the seventh south docking bay and headed straight for the ship, Kat checking the gauge for fuel and finding it full while Allura examined the controls in the pilot cockpit.
The ship was a beauty.
It was quickly decided that Allura would handle the main controls, while Kat would be co-pilot and in charge of weapons. The two women donned protective uniforms over their scanty costumes and jumped into their respective cockpits. The liberated slaves began to open the docking bays manually as the two pilots put on their helmets and made last minute preparations for launch.
Allura revved up the ship’s powerful engine. The boys would love to fly this thing. It was almost as good as flying one of the Lions.
“Ready, Commander Montgomery? Let’s launch!”
The sleek fighter zoomed out of the open docking bay doors, climbing and heading straight for the robeast at mach 4 speed. Kat was no stranger to high-speed approaches, but she knew a moment of real fear as she saw them closing on the robeast’s wide back. The robeast had the Black Lion in its grip, and Red Lion was trying to shoot into the beast’s eyes to distract it into letting Keith go.
“Prepare to fire two missiles on my mark,” Allura ordered, bearing down on the robeast without reducing her speed. The ship flew like a dream and responded to even the lightest nudge of the controls.
“Princess, we hit in 5 seconds -” Kat warned, noting her instruments and placing her finger on the missile trigger. “4… 3… 2…”
“Now!”
The explosion against the robeast’s back was suddenly behind and below them as Allura applied a burst of speed while pulling up into a vertical climb before righting the ship into a swoop straight at the slave-fleet ships who didn’t know where the new ship came from. They scattered from formation, and the three Lion’s engaging them pounced on the opportunity by making another two explode, leaving five ships to deal with.
“Who did you say taught you how to fly at the Academy?” Kat asked, shooting an admiring glance at the Princess in front of her.
“I didn’t go to the Academy,” Allura admitted sheepishly. “Keith trained me.” She paused before adding, “And he’ll probably kill me for doing this when we land – if I don’t get the two of us killed first.”
“I’m sure he will.” Kat said, biting back a laugh. If she could read
her signals right, this beautiful young princess was driving her son crazy.
She nodded her approval. She liked this girl – instinctively she knew the
Princess was good for her ‘anal’ son, the same way that Zach had been good
for her. And she was an incredible pilot to boot.
“Who the heck was that?” Lance asked with an admiring whistle, following
the sleek ship with his scopes as it prepared to dive to intercept the
beams fired by the slave-ships with its personal arsenal, the same way
the three other Lions were doing. “That last move was a feat of fancy flying.”
A helmet-covered face appeared on the telecomm screens. “Lance, Keith – it’s Allura. Commander Montgomery and I are co-piloting this ship.”
“Princess?” Keith fired another volley of proton missiles on the robeast that he had just escaped, seeing that it was beginning to turn its attention on the walls of the fortress once more. When the robeast turned away, buying Keith some time, he shot a glare at his telecomm. “What the hell are you doing in that ship?”
Allura gave a long-suffering sigh audible even under the helmet. “ You needed us,” she said softly. “Your Mom and I will take care of the remaining slave-ships – you and the others handle the robeast.” Keith groaned as he watched her dive once more, shooting at the bellies of the remaining slave-ships. The three other Lions were busy drawing cannon fire towards them to allow Allura to do damage from below and shield the rebels still outside the fortress.
“Keith, the gates have opened in all sections of the fortress wall – we’re in. I’m going to head for the cannon rooms to assist you after I find your mother in the communication center,” Zachary said, his voice elated.
“You won’t find her there, dad – she’s up here… flying that Doom fighter with Allura,” Keith said through gritted teeth, hating the idea of her flying a ship she had never flown before in a battle situation, yet knowing that she was needed and they had no choice but to accept her help.
“What!”
The robeast didn’t give Keith time to reply to Zachary as it stupidly came after him again in a fit of blind anger. He pulled his Lion away from its range, barking commands to the others as he did so. “Hunk, Pidge, Sam, take out as many ships as you can then disengage. We’re going to show this ugly hunk of junk we mean business.”
Two more ships exploded in the air before the three other Lions flew towards Keith and Lance. All five pulled up into the sequence of forming Voltron. The robeast followed them higher on their vertical climb, surprised when it encountered the gigantic warrior that was more than a match for it.
Voltron drew his Blazing Sword and with a flick of his wrist, sliced off two of the robeast’s arms. Enraged, the robeast threw itself at Voltron, grappling with the mighty warrior and causing his Blazing Sword to disappear.
“Flame him, Hunk, Sam!” Huge blasts of energy from Blue and Yellow Lion threw the robeast off and hurtling through the sky. Before it could recover its balance, Voltron followed it, Blazing Sword once more in hand. With a mighty strike, he sliced the robeast in half, a trail of white-hot energy following the blade’s path. The warrior stepped away, watching as the white-hot light spread through the beast’s body before it exploded in a ball of red fire and smoke, debris from its body floating gently to the ground.
Below them, Kat and Allura were having an interesting time dodging the slave-ships’ cannons as they got hits in. Kat suggested creative attacks to the Princess, who followed them with a flick of her wrist, Kat firing into the slave-ships unerringly. However, only one of the remaining three had fallen, the command ship and another remaining, although the latter only had two functional cannons left.
As Keith and the others descended towards the fray that Allura’s fighter ship and the remaining slave-ships created, Keith saw Allura fly in between the two ships on a vertical climb, and dodging just in time to avoid the shot meant for her fighter. The other slave-ship was hit by the shot instead, but the explosion damaged a portion of Allura’s wing. Before she could right herself and move out of the last slave-ship’s line of fire, Keith saw it align all its cannons towards her – and Voltron was too far as it was to do anything to keep the ship from firing at her.
“Princess!”
In a split second, a flash of light lit the sky where the fighter and the slave-ship were, momentarily blinding the entire team, and waves of heat and energy buffeted them. There was nothing left where the slave-ship and Allura’s fighter had been but clouds of smoke and debris, gently floating down to the ground.
The entire team gaped at the sight before them; the enormity of what had just happened ramming their hearts to their throats and having them fighting tears.
Then they saw it, Allura’s fighter, still listing but flying towards at them, like an old friend. As the smoke from the last destroyed slave ship faded away, they saw remains of smoke arcing from one of the cannons rising from the fortress walls.
Admiral Montgomery and his Resistance movement had come through.
Aidel was free.
Reunion - A Mother and Her Son