Chapter Text
Piratology
Part 3 of Of The Pack
Chapter 1: Strange Company
“Will they be all right?” Coran asked Tilla, who grunted unhappily.
The Paladins and Lizenne were all very ill. Only grim determination and habit had allowed the Paladins to pilot their Lions back into their hangars, but they had gotten no further. Coran and the others found them unconscious in their cockpits on arrival. Worse, they had visibly lost weight, their armor suddenly far too loose on their bodies, the bones of their faces visible under graying skin. The two dragons had bullied Modhri, Coran, Zaianne and Kolanth into bringing everyone into the room on the training deck where the mind trip had taken place, and had cast one of their spell-songs over the wounded. Modhri had been hummed over too, although he was the only one who showed any visible improvement. They had just gotten the Paladins out of their armor and into the healing pods for a long session; Soluk sighed and licked Tilla's face comfortingly, then nudged Modhri in the shoulder.
“Yes?” Modhri asked, not looking away from the pod that held his mate.
Soluk rumbled a long string of churrs and crackles.
Modhri nodded. “All right. Will hantic do, or one of the juices?”
Tilla chirped.
“If you say so, but she's going to be a little annoyed about that. Sintras bloom only for a very short time, you know.”
Soluk chuffed and crackled again.
“I bow to your wisdom,” Modhri said, suiting his words to the deed. “Thank you.”
Coran looked back and forth between them quizzically. “Do we get a translation of that?”
Modhri smiled. “When they come out, we are to give them copious amounts of hantic tea, well-laced with sintra nectar. They've been poisoned, among other things. Fortunately, the dragons have taken care of those other things.”
Zaianne gave the dragons a penetrating look. “And those were?”
Modhri shook his head sadly. “I don't know. They were using terms that I don't recognize. They certainly sounded dreadful. Lizenne will be able to tell us more when the healing cycle is finished. What worries me is that it looked like Pidge took the worst of it, and has been lost. I very much doubt that she will find someone able to treat her injuries properly. Do you have any idea of where she might have ended up?”
“None,” Coran admitted, “I was too busy trying to keep the Castle from flying apart.”
Zaianne snorted. “And I was concentrating on keeping the wormhole stable. Her Lion is well out of range of our sensors. All I can hope is that she is able to build another transmitter like the last time this happened. Coran and I might be able to extrapolate where she might have fallen out, but it will take time. It will take even more time before the Paladins are fit to fly again.”
“I am sorry that I have been so useless during this event,” Kolanth apologized. “I can at least start sifting through the newsnets. No matter where you go, a Lion is noteworthy. Perhaps I will be able to find something.”
“I can only hope,” Modhri murmured.
Somewhere, a very long way away, the green Lion popped in out of nowhere and tumbled helplessly down onto an unregarded rogue moonlet. Despite this being a particularly deserted patch of space, its descent did not go unnoticed. Deserted patches of space have their uses, after all, particularly as places to lurk where it's unlikely for a lurker to be found. In this case, the lurker in question was a shipful of pirates whose luck had not been terribly good of late, and anything out of the ordinary attracted their attention. Especially now, since it was late-shift and everybody was asleep except for the three persons on lookout duty.
“Did you see that, Haswick?” asked one of them, a tall orange fellow with enormous ears that an Earthling might find comparable to an African elephant's.
His companion, who was smallish and slimmish and covered in dark-blue bristles, waved three of his eight hands in an affirmative gesture and rumbled in a surprisingly deep voice, “Yeah. Big old cat-robot thing. Looks a bit familiar. Any thoughts, Yantilee?”
Yantilee shifted slightly, tail rasping over the decking as he (or perhaps she at the moment, he hadn't looked recently) craned his long neck around for a better look at the screens. “Lion,” he murmured in an oddly androgynous voice. “Saw it on the newsnets, while we were visiting Port Kelsa. That's one of the things that the Emperor sheds his scales over, he wants it so bad.”
The orange fellow perked up. “Does he? Maybe a bounty on it, then?”
“Yeah,” Yantilee held up a warning hand that was larger than his companion's head, ears included. “Galra bounty, Kezz. The bigger the bounty, the less liable they are to pay out. 'Specially if what brings it in ain't Galra. Double-'specially if what brings it in has a bounty of his own on his head.”
Haswick fluffed up his bristles nervously, revealing the rows of pink biolights beneath. “Could get Ronok to do it. He hasn't a bounty on him.”
“Ronok says he's dead and likes it that way,” Yantilee disagreed. “Galra don't waste good money on the dead, anyway. Might go down there and pick it up. Got enough room in the hold for it.”
There was a soft chorus of sighs and grumbles about that. Their ship was an old Sikkhoran Grand Freighter left over from the last big war they'd fought against the Opuli: huge, roomy, well-armed, and steered like a bathtub on roller skates. The fact that the hold was more often empty than full was a frequent source of discontent among the pirates, most of whom felt that their Captain had his head (not his current head, one of the previous ones) firmly wedged up his primary ventral orifice. Still, he was the only Captain they had, and nobody really felt themselves up to the task of doing his job. A little something, even as something as awkward as a Lion, would be a welcome addition, and it would sweeten the Captain's temper to the point where he wasn't threatening to feed everyone to his pet Gantar all the time.
“Think, maybe, that the pilot's still alive?” Kezz asked.
Yantilee shrugged both sets of shoulders. “Might be, might not. If so, good. It'll give Doc a reason to sober up for once. If not, hey, strip the corpse and feed the Gantar. No sense in wasting anything. I'll take the big freight shuttle. Give me a little help with the hauler-drone, Haswick?”
“Sure thing,” Haswick replied, unlooping his caterpillar-like body from the navigator's seat.
The trip down to the moonlet was uneventful, although the Lion, sprawled awkwardly on its side though it was, was a most impressive sight. “Good thing I took the big shuttle,” Yantilee observed. “Just bring the drone over here, Haswick, and—whoops.”
The Lion's jaws creaked open, revealing a cockpit with a single, small figure lying limply in the seat. Yantilee, who had seen this sort of thing before at other crash sites, didn't flinch, but ran a pocket scanner over the unconscious pilot. Haswick trundled up for a look. “Meh. Another upright biped.”
“We can't all be twenty-footed,” Yantilee said mildly. “Your lot called dibs on the whole bin when the Creator of All was handing out body parts, so the rest of us have to make do with what was left. Still alive, this one, but not well. Good enough. We ain't had a scut since Cap'n spaced the last one for stealing his squails.”
Yantilee put the scanner away and lifted the pilot out, turning away to lodge the small person in the shuttle for safekeeping. He hadn't gone more than ten yards or so away when he heard a peculiar grating sound, along with a squeal of terror from Haswick. Looking back, he saw the enormous robot heave itself to its feet, its yellow optics focused upon him. Yantilee paused, watching the beast for a long moment, and then continued onward. He had considerable experience with peculiar weapons of war, and he knew a valuable thing: if a semiautonomous war machine wanted you dead, it wouldn't hesitate. He was still alive, therefore it did not want him dead. “Haswick, stop eest ing your ploos and get back aboard. This thing'll follow along.”
“You sure?” Haswick quavered.
Yantilee eyed the Lion appraisingly. “Bonded pilot in distress. If the legends ain't all a pile of plurf poop, these things are a bit like the old Chank-Dhroon Symbiomechs. It'll come. Let's get back to the Osric's Quandary before the Cap'n wakes up.”
The Lion did indeed follow, rising alongside the freight shuttle and keeping pace easily as they headed back to the ship. It followed them readily enough into the docking hangar, but it seemed determined to follow them to the sick bay. “You can't fit through here,” Yantilee told it sternly. “Stay put, Green, we're just taking your pilot in for a checkup.”
The Lion sank down onto its haunches with a mechanical growl and watched them go. “Might be more trouble than it's worth,” Haswick muttered.
“Sign up the pilot, sign up the Lion,” Yantilee said calmly. “Even if they leave, they'll still remember that we helped.”
“Captain's not going to like it.”
“Cap'n can kiss my tail.”
It was a short walk to the sick bay, a large but cluttered room that smelled harshly of the medic's preferred hooch. The medic himself lay sprawled on one of the exam tables, snoring. Yantilee sighed and picked him up by his stained shirt and shook him hard, and was rewarded with a gurgle and a series of indignant squawks. “Wake up, Doc, we've got a new one for you to look over. Into the 'fresher with you.”
Yantilee shoved the protesting medic into the 'fresher tube and set it for full sobriety. Best thing he'd found on that Inaptok cruiser, he reflected. Worked a treat, and didn't take hardly any time at all. After a few minutes, Doc stumbled out of the big upright tube, sparkling-clean, sober, and very annoyed. “I worked hard on that drunk,” he said peevishly, “three quarts of distilled horath, cut with vuslin to stretch. I don't get much vuslin, you know.”
“Mostly 'cause it makes whoever drinks it smell like rotting melons,” Yantilee said unsympathetically. “Now fire up the omniscanner and have a look at this.”
Doc humphed, cleared off a nearby exam table, and pressed a few buttons; the omniscanner whined over on its ceiling tracks and beeped agreeably. “Let's see it, then.”
Yantilee laid the pilot out on the table, and Doc drew the humming machine over. “Huh,” he muttered. “That's not its natural integument. That's armor, and it's blocking the scanner. Shuck it out of that, if you would.”
They managed to get the helmet off without trouble, but the rest of the suit gave them some difficulty before Haswick found the catches. They laid that aside and got their first good look at their newest acquisition.
“It's awfully pink, isn't it?” Haswick observed. “And little.”
“Can't be helped,” Doc murmured absently, staring at the screens. “Hmm. Carbon-based lifeform, and an oxygen burner. Iron-hemoglobin circulatory fluid, calcium-based bones. Omnivorous, to judge by the teeth. Definitely a mammal. See? Endothermic, hairy in spots, mammary glands... ah, and she's a female. Young, too. There's the uterus, and two ovaries.”
“Two ovaries?” Haswick asked.
“Only two ovaries?” Yantilee said.
Doc snorted. “Takes all kinds. Interesting. Not all that different from Galra, actually.”
“Not purple enough,” Haswick observed.
“Got no fur, got no scales, got no fangs or fuzzy tails,” Yantilee said with a smile. “So, what is she?”
“Got me,” Doc said. “She doesn't match up with anything on my files. If the Captain decides to keep her, I'll have to keep an eye on her health.”
“Speaking of which, what's wrong with her?” Haswick asked.
“This and that,” Doc's long fingers traced the image on the screen. “Couple of cracked bones. Concussion. Various strained muscles and tendons. Fungal infection starting up between the toes of the left foot. Undernourished, too. Occupational myopia. Blood full of odd toxins. Some odd activity in the brain. A day or two in the healpod should do it, although the eyes'll need further work. Not sure about the brain, either. Mental injuries are tricky. Might come out a bit weird.”
Yantilee scratched reflectively at his—oops— her tail. “On this ship? Who'll notice?”
Keith came awake with glacial slowness, and he wished that he hadn't. His body felt like the leaded glass flower vase he'd seen once in an antique shop; chipped, fragile, and far heavier than it looked. And full of something unpleasant, he thought, like decomposing ghost peppers. He tried to move, but gave up when the shooting pains in his joints told him that this was a bad idea. It was much like that one time in high school, when one of his classmates had come back from a family trip to Australia and had brought back a strain of 'flu that had completely ignored the standard vaccinations. He felt ice cold and uncomfortably hot at the same time, his skin was as raw and sensitive as his throat, his stomach felt like a forest looked after a really serious fire, and someone was trying to drill holes in his skull with a rusty spork. From the inside. Worse, his perceptions weren't working right. His eyes, when he tried opening them, stung as though his eyeballs had been replaced with hot curried marbles, and his vision was blurry. His hearing was fuzzy and dim, and his usually acute sense of smell wasn't working at all. Worst of all, he could not sense his Lion or his teammates clearly, save that one them—and her Lion—were simply not there. The loss of them was like an open wound, and he sobbed for the pain of it.
Cool fingers stroked his cheek gently, and he leaned into that caress; something thin slid between his teeth, and a beloved voice murmured, “Drink.”
He complied and sucked on the straw, and was rewarded with a mouthful of liquid, tepid and sweet. Too sweet, really, but it soothed the inflamed tissues of his throat and settled his stomach. To his intense relief, the ache in his head began to ease off as well, leaving a sort of watery lassitude in its wake. Looking up, he saw the slightly blurry form of his mother beside him, her golden eyes worried. He wanted to speak, to reassure her, to thank her for being there, to ask her what had happened, but he couldn't move.
“He's conscious?” A slightly muffled-sounding voice that Keith was able to identify as Kolanth's after a moment's thought asked.
“Enough to understand me, and respond,” Zaianne said, rubbing the velvety back of her hand over Keith's cheek again. “I will allow myself to be encouraged. Are you sure that there is nothing more that we can do than this?”
“'Fraid not,” Coran's unmistakable accent came glumly from somewhere else in the room. “The medical pods in the infirmary simply don't know how to handle hexes like this, and Modhri says that the dragons have already done what they can. They should recover fully, but they won't do so anytime soon. That little bit of a scratch that Shiro took was pretty bad, yeah, but this is something else again.”
“It certainly is.” That was Modhri, and he sounded as though he hadn't been able to sleep for a week. “Frankly, I'm surprised that all of them survived.”
“Not all of them might have,” Kolanth said grimly, “we have no idea of Pidge's status.”
“She's not dead,” Modhri said quietly. “We'd know it. Even if the other Paladins couldn't feel it, the Lions could, and they would react.”
Coran hummed thoughtfully. “You may be right. Those big lads do mourn their Paladins when they fall, especially when the bond's gotten good and strong. My father told me once that the original green Paladin had gotten so close to her Lion that they were nearly one personality in two bodies. Wonderful woman, absolutely fearless and a crack pilot besides, but she lacked caution. When she didn't come back from a reconnaissance mission, the green Lion uttered a shriek that broke every window in the Castle, and the other lions roared right along with it! Deafened everybody in the area. Took over a month to find a replacement that the Lion would accept, too. You look like you need a month's downtime as well, man.”
“Perhaps, but I'm not going to get it,” Modhri said wearily. “Not until Lizenne's out of the pod.”
Zaianne hummed uneasily. “A third cycle?”
“Stopping that hex took everything that she had, and then some. I can't sleep when she's hurt. I have this terrible fear that she'll die unless I watch over her. She's told me that the feeling is mutual. Perhaps a little irrational of me, but...”
“I find it entirely natural,” Zaianne said firmly, “and understand in full. Have you any idea of what they were hit with?”
Keith heard Modhri sit down heavily on something. “A poison of some sort. Beyond that, I can't say. Our histories and legends are full of evil witches who could curse people with malaise like this, but this is the first time that I've ever encountered the real thing. You'd know more than I would, Zaianne.”
“Not really.” Zaianne's warm palm rested on Keith's forehead, and he was deeply comforted by it. “My mother was quite disappointed by my lack of strong talent and didn't bother to have me tutored fully. She had other girls that were more worthy of her time and expense, you see. Even so, none of my sisters or cousins were taught that sort of thing, nor were any of the other girls that I knew. Have the dragons anything to say?”
Modhri snorted. “They say gronk, mostly. They've done all that they can, I think. They're not happy about it either. Have you had any luck finding Pidge?”
“No,” Kolanth said heavily. “The readings from the ship's instruments were too muddled to wring coherence from, and there has been no word of her Lion from any of our sources. All we can do now is wait and watch.”
Wait and watch. Keith let that thought swirl around in the murky pool of his mind. Patience yields focus.
As if in answer, he felt the Lion-bond tremble within him, and a dim flare of gold lit up in his mind. Almost immediately after that, he heard a loud, sour belch and a heartfelt groan from nearby, followed by the regrettably familiar sound of Hunk being sick into a bucket. There was a faint commotion of hurrying feet and a murmur of, “Nice catch, Coran,” followed by more moaning from Hunk.
Coran grunted in distaste. “Not the first time that I've had to do this, although it was usually hangovers that I was dealing with at the time. Alfor did love his numvill, and sometimes overindulged. Come on lad, have a sip of this, it'll settle that down... good fellow. There, that's better, isn't it? We'll have you up and running around the kitchen again in no time at all.”
There was an inarticulate gurgle from Hunk that sounded vaguely insulting.
A few minutes later, Keith felt a surge of blue as Lance regained consciousness, although he was even more foully ill than Hunk was. Allura joined them in a soft bloom of rose a little time after that, although there was nothing soft about her voice when she complained of the pains in her stomach. Still limp and passive, Keith strained his inner senses for any sign that Pidge might be responding as well. It was exhausting, but just before he fell asleep again, he felt the unmistakable spark of green, a very long way away.
She came awake with a gasp and a groan, head splitting and belly on fire. She retched, spitting bile only; there wasn't anything in her stomach and hadn't been for some time. Cold air whooshed over her as something above her swept aside, and she stared in shock and horror at something dreadful that loomed too close. With a scream of pure primate outrage, she lashed out with a fist. The nightmare thing ducked back out of the way, and she fell to the floor in a gasping heap.
“Well, that worked,” a nearby voice remarked conversationally.
She blinked at this, struggling to understand sounds that were both familiar and unfamiliar. Enormous hands—four of them—descended from above and grasped her quite gently, lifting her to her feet. The nightmare thing—a slightly blurry, yellow-green, round-bellied creature with overlong arms and far too many eyes clustered at the end of long stalks, cast the owner of the hands a dirty look. “Yeah, mostly. Fixed up the injuries and leached off the poisons just fine, though that extra cycle's coming out of your pocket, pal, but the eye and cortex problems are still present. Can't be helped. If I had a better healpod, maybe I could do something more, but that's it.”
“I'm pretty sure you've got an eye lab in here somewhere,” the unseen owner of the huge hands commented mildly. “Try the helmet visor. If she hasn't had her eyes straightened out before now, the lenses will be correctional. It don't do to pilot half-blind.”
“You'll owe me a jug of best horath for this, Yantilee,” the yellow-green thing turned away, disappearing into blurriness.
The girl looked up, seeing something towering above her, sand-colored and spiky with a wide streak of glittering blue down its throat. Something about the colors and the spikes was comforting, and she relaxed a little and turned her attention back to the other creature, who was muttering grumpily as it sifted through other blurs.
“What's your name, girl, if it can be told?” the mild voice from above asked quietly.
The girl opened her mouth to reply, but couldn't. She had no answer to give. “I don't know,” she whispered, and was surprised at the unfamiliar sound of her own voice.
The big creature sighed, and one enormous hand patted her shoulder, which only had room for two of the big fingers. “Remember anything else, then? How about that great green cat that brought you here?”
The girl whimpered; she could remember nothing, nothing at all. “No.”
“Doc, we've got an amnesiac here,” the big one said, sounding a little annoyed, although this didn't seem to impress the other creature much.
“With the damage she took? Be glad that she's not a drooling vegetable. You're right about the lenses, at least. I think I've got some spare blanks and can make a frame that'll fit.” More rustling and the occasional clank came from across the room. “Yeah, these are about the right size. They'll make her look like an Ultavan mystic, but she'll be able to see. Once I get this done, you'll want to run her by Ronok. She needs feeding up, and he needs someone who isn't tired of his cooking yet.”
Whirring noises issued from the blurriness. “Who are you?” the girl asked. “Where am I?”
“I'm Yantilee,” the big one rumbled, letting go of her arms and shaking her hand between a huge thumb and forefinger. “Former mercenary sergeant, though I've held other ranks than that. Several different ones on the same day, once, which convinced me to find other work. That fellow over there goes by 'Doc', which is just as well 'cause nobody can pronounce his proper name. Since you ain't got one right now, we'll call you 'Varda'. It's a decent enough moniker and you can change it later if you feel like it.”
The big one—Yantilee—took a step back and hunkered down, bringing a large, broad head with three big dark-brown eyes close enough to her own to see clearly. “You're currently aboard the not-terribly-good ship Osric's Quandary, which happens to be a pirate craft. We attack other ships and steal their stuff, in case you were wondering, and no, the law-abiding citizens of the universe don't like us much. We picked you and your giant cat robot up off of a rogue moonlet a few days ago. You'll be staying with us for a while, as you've nowhere else to go. Cap'n's a creep and will make you work hard for your bed and board, but stick close to me and you'll do all right. Think you can bear that?”
“I... guess?” The girl—Varda—said, and then blinked as something hooked around behind her ears and dropped down lightly onto the bridge of her nose. She went briefly cross-eyed as the blurriness disappeared, rendering every detail sharp and clear.
“That should do it,” Doc said, “they're even a decent fit. Find her something decent to wear, and then take her to see Ronok.”
“Sure thing, Doc,” Yantilee said, straightening up and taking Varda's hand. “Come on, girl, let's go and get you clad and fed.”
Varda looked down at herself and saw that she was wearing a sort of bodysuit of fine, thin fabric; it might have covered everything but head, hands, and feet, but it left nothing to the imagination. Doc, she noticed, was wearing a stained pale-blue shirt and trousers, and Yantilee... Yantilee took a lot of looking at. The big alien seemed to be made mostly of shoulders. Three sets, strung along a backbone as thick and heavy as an anchor chain, with four massive arms and a pair of legs that missed being a third set of arms only because they had knees instead of elbows. There was a long sinewy tail, a long sinewy neck, both plated with leathery scales, and three rows of modest spikes that ran from crown to tail tip. The line of glittering blue down his throat was actually a ridge of fine, iridescent feathers. As a result of the dorsal spines, the back of his clothing—sort of a vestlike garment and loose shorts with many pockets—were a mesh of steel rings that fit over the spikes. He also wore a wide belt with several pouches and a quartet of holstered objects that might have been weapons.
Yantilee led her into a smaller, very cluttered room and pried open a large crate. “Let's see... upright biped, small, medium-length arms and legs... only two arms. Hmm. Do your people have any modesty taboos, Varda?”
“I don't know,” Varda replied, shifting uneasily. “Not naked?”
Yantilee snorted. “Ain't all that many who do go around sky-clad. Try this shirt. It'll be a bit short in the sleeve and loose, but that's no bad thing.”
It was loose and the sleeves barely reached past her elbows, but it was warm and colored a very pleasing dark green. “It's nice.”
“Good,” Yantilee said, prying the lid off of a different crate. “Trews, now, that's a little trickier. So much happens below the belt that fashion and tailoring drones can barely keep up. Footwear's even worse, 'cause feet are shaped funny the universe over, and everyone's are different. Yeah. Everything in here that's shaped right is too big or too small, which I think may be mandatory for off-the-shelf stuff. One of my semi-uncles used to make his own, since he could never find a pair that fit. Ah. Here's a skirt with a drawstring, which'll have to do until we can get a new tailor-mech. Going to have to go barefoot for the same reason, sorry about that.”
Varda pulled on the skirt and tied the drawstring. “What happened to the one you had?”
There was an amused snort from above. “There are too many folks from too many different races on this ship, and most of them have all the fashion sense of a hermit twisk. It self-terminated out of sheer frustration. Told 'em to take the industrial model or even the theatrical one, but no, the guys would go for the high-end designer-class machine. Those things don't swashbuckle worth a damn. All right, let's go introduce you to the most important man on board.”
“The Captain?” Varda asked nervously.
“The cook. Cap'n's come and go, but a good cook is worth fighting to keep.”
Varda was then led down a long, cavernous hall into a dim cave of a room that smelled of things that made Varda's empty belly growl. There were tables scattered around it and several variations on the theme of “chair”, and a big half-circular counter lined haphazardly with stools was shoved up against the back wall. Behind the counter was a tall, spare individual with pupilless yellow eyes and purple fur so pale that it was nearly white. Varda stopped dead, staring at the alien with deep distrust.
“Something wrong?” Yantilee asked.
Varda shuddered. “I don't like him. He's... he's... I don't know! I don't like him.”
Yantilee looked back and forth between them a few times, then put two and two together. “Ah. He's Galra, you mean. You aren't alone, girl. A lot of folks don't like Galra. This one's okay, though. He's officially dead, so he says that he doesn't really count as one. Makes a good sausage, too.”
Varda considered that; helping her decision along was the fact that the word “sausage” sounded really good for some reason. “All right.”
The Galra had been watching them with cynical amusement, and smiled thinly as they approached. He was old, Varda noticed, the lavender streaks in his fur were grayish and his face was deeply lined, his eyes a very pale yellow. “Yantilee,” he said in a dry murmur, his pale eyes gazing appraisingly at Varda. “Haswick said that you'd picked up a new one. A bit odd, eh?”
“We don't do normal around here,” Yantilee replied easily and handed him a data chip. “This is Varda, and here's Doc's list of what she can and can't metabolize. Go easy on her, old man, her memory's been shut down.”
The Galra took the chip and activated it, examined the screen for a long moment, and nodded. “Hmm. Well, for an exotic, she'll be easy enough to feed. Has she had anything recently?”
“Not since before we brought her here, Ronok,” Yantilee replied. “She's spent six days in the healpod. Bad landing on top of being poisoned.”
The cook made a disapproving clicking noise. “We'll start you off simple, then, Miss. Here--” he pulled a tall glass from a chute and filled it with water. “--drink. Back in a moment.”
Varda took a sip, which turned into a gulp. She was suddenly parched, and had emptied the glass by the time that Ronok returned with a small bowl of something mushy and green that smelled like heaven. It tasted like heaven too, and he watched her carefully while she devoured it, then refilled her glass and added a small plate of purple squares. This was followed by five small brown fried cylinders, a bowl of translucent blue ovals, a dish of steamed pink things, and a sweet muffin. Ronok smiled to see her slowing down long enough to enjoy the actual flavors. “Good appetite. That's always encouraging in a poisoning victim. Feel a bit better now, Miss?”
Varda burped. “Yes,” she said, “my headache's gone, but I'm still hungry.”
Ronok nodded. “I've a little ghrembak stew left from yesterday, and some hantic tea. Rare stuff, hantic. Comes from a wild world, and those who go to pick some get chased around by big things with teeth a lot. Stuff refuses to be cultivated anywhere else, too. Give me a minute.”
The bowl and cup set before her both smelled appetizing, and oddly enough, familiar. She'd tasted these things before, and remembered, dimly, that they were good. The stew filled in the corners well, and the tea was refreshing and made her feel relaxed. Ronok was watching her with considerable interest, and that felt familiar as well. “Yantilee said that you were dead. You don't look dead.”
Ronok shot Yantilee a hard look, but when he spoke, his voice was kind. “Yes, I breathe pretty well for a corpse, don't I? I used to work on a battleship, Miss, making sure the proud soldiers of the great Galra Empire stayed fed and healthy. Miserable, thankless job though it was, it was better than staying at home and being bullied by my uncles. They didn't think that cooking was a proper occupation, but it's the only thing that I'm good at. I went into the Commissary Corps to be quit of them. Did okay for a long time, and then the ship got a new Captain. Big name, small talent. We ran afoul of a Gantarash fleet and lost.”
Varda frowned. The word “Gantarash” was familiar as well, and she didn't like the sound of it. “They're bad, right?”
“The worst. They eat whoever they catch. You'll see that for yourself soon enough.” Ronok glared down at the counter. “Not me, though. I was already too old and stringy for their tastes, and they sold me to a Rhandinar slaver for cheap. There are folks out there who like owning Galra, no matter how old and stringy they are. I got rescued only a few weeks later—the slavery ring got busted up by an Imperial task force—but it was already too late for me. My family'd declared me dead and had collected my effects, and on Simadht it's a lot harder to prove that you're alive than otherwise once your kin have turned you off. I found work offworld, and eventually joined up with the merry crew here. I like it well enough; I'm never bored, and no matter how badly I screw up a recipe, somebody's bound to like it. Want another sausage? Those came out properly this morning, at least.”
Varda passed him her fork, and he speared another fried cylinder with it and handed it back. She paused before eating it, and stared at her hand.
“Something wrong, Miss?” Ronok asked.
Varda flexed her fingers. “I had scales, once. And big claws. And someone gave me sausages.”
Yantilee and Ronok looked at her delicate, scaleless and clawless hand.
“Maybe your kind undergo metamorphosis?” Yantilee asked.
Varda groaned. “I don't know!”
“Don't force it,” Ronok said with a sympathetic look. “Lost memories'll stay lost, or they'll dribble back bit by bit, or they'll come back all at once. It needs the right sort of triggers, is all. A sound, a smell, a word, a familiar face. One of my brothers wrecked his landspeeder once, and spent the next three years being unable to remember who he was. Then someone handed him a book he'd liked as a cub, and that unlocked everything. Eat your sausage, Miss, and then you'll need a good sleep. Captain'll want to see you in the morning, and you'll want to be rested for that.”
Yantilee grunted. “Been at you, has he?”
Ronok shrugged. “I'm an easier target than you are, Yantilee. He's seen the Lion already, and asked me some questions about it. Tricky piece of hardware, isn't it? If Varda here is the key to that thing, he is definitely going to want to keep her around.”
“What?” Varda asked. “I have a Lion? What's a Lion?”
Yantilee gazed thoughtfully into space for a moment. “Finish up there, and I'll show you.”
Varda ate the sausage, thanked Ronok for her breakfast, and followed Yantilee down more huge hallways. When she asked about that, Yantilee explained that the people who had built the ship were not only very large but liked a lot of room to move around in. The docking hold was even larger and had its own selection of shuttles, fighter craft, and pods... and one very large robot cat.
“She's huge!” Varda said breathlessly. “Is she really mine?”
The Lion's optics lit up a bright lambent gold at the sound of her voice, and the great cephalon turned to face her with a deep mechanical rumble. Varda felt no fear; this was a friend, the best friend she could ever have, and she knew that truth right down to her bones. A cool green murmur that sounded like leaves blowing in the wind whispered in her mind, a friendly greeting that she trusted instinctively. It echoed strangely, though, as if it sounded in a place where a great many things had been lost.
Yantilee rested one upper hand on the Lion's paw. “We found you in its cockpit, and it followed right along when we brought you back. Since none of the techs have been able to get it to respond to them, I'd say that it's yours. Grand old thing, isn't it? Paint needs touching up, but it's in first-class shape otherwise. There are supposed to be five of these, and the Emperor wants them. He's particularly intent on getting his hands on the black one, so you don't have to worry too much.”
For some reason, that made Varda very angry, and the leaf-rustle voice snarled right along with her. “He can't have her. She's mine! He can't have any of them!”
Yantilee smiled sadly. “That's the spirit. The Emperor's a bigger pirate than anyone on this ship, anyway. He's spent a lot of time stealing big chunks of the universe, and already has more stuff than anyone could possibly use. Most Galra are greedy bastards, make no mistake, and he's the worst of them.”
Yantilee's words struck a chord somewhere deep inside Varda's mind, and she laid hold of a huge claw possessively. “Mine. Nobody else can have her.”
“I'm sure that it feels the same way about you,” Yantilee said, looking up at the great feline cephalon. “Come on, it's late and we both need sleep. I've fixed you up a nest in my cabin so that the guys won't get silly ideas.”
Varda looked as though she might dispute that, but yawned enormously and sagged against the Lion's paw. Yantilee picked her up as easily as if she'd been a kitten and carried her away.
“Thank you,” Allura said, accepting the cup of steaming tea, although her words were an automatic pleasantry; the entire team was heartily sick of nectar-sweetened hantic. She would drink it, however. The dragons were not in the habit of taking “no” for an answer.
Several days had passed since their disastrous attempt on Shomakti Station, exactly how many, Allura wasn't sure. Every one of those days had been an exercise in utter misery as their bodies cleared themselves of the worst of the poison, and they still hadn't quite finished that process yet. The simple acts of getting up, clean, and dressed had been exhausting for all of them, and Allura was frankly shocked at the aftereffects. All of them looked like poster children for a disaster-relief charity. Keith was gaunt and pale, Lance was downright bony and his skin nearly transparent, shoulders bent under the weight of his misery; he still felt horribly guilty for his inability to rescue Pidge. Even Hunk was sadly reduced and in very poor color—his stomach had been so badly upset over the last few days that there was hardly any of it left. Allura had no doubt that she was equally haggard-looking; indeed, her knuckles and wristbones stood out like an old woman's, and she hadn't had the courage to look in a mirror. All of them had felt too horrible to keep anything down except for the sweetened hantic tea, which their caretakers pressed on them almost constantly. It was working; it might put them all off sweets for good, but it was working. Even so, doing anything other than lying wrapped up warm in bed was a terrible effort.
The only reason why they had all gathered in the Castle's main lounge was because Lizenne had finally recovered enough to speak, although she looked even more dreadful than they did. The effort of stopping Haggar's curse before it could hit the Castle had taken the meat from her bones and nearly the marrow as well. That had been essential, for all that it had nearly killed her—if the wormhole had collapsed, it was possible that none of them would have survived. Modhri sat at her feet as he did whenever he was feeling upset, his head resting against her leg and his golden eyes sad.
“What can you tell us of what happened, Lizenne?” Zaianne asked quietly, making the Paladins look up.
Lizenne sipped at her own tea, wrinkling her nose at the oversweet flavor of sintra nectar. “That miserable, nikvorak-hugging vapbalamuk-tashlop-surla must have been taking Quintessence,” Lizenne said in a thin voice. “I've never had to block a spell that strong, and I wasn't entirely successful. We're probably going to have to replace the Chimera's AI as it is. That curse was designed specifically to affect both Lion and Paladin, and it was aimed directly at Pidge. Haggar meant to destroy her.”
“Her? Why her?” Lance asked, his voice still a little hoarse. “Zarkon's been totally fixated on getting the black Lion all along, so she should've been firing at the Princess.”
“Haggar is not Zarkon, and does not share his obsessions.” Lizenne rubbed at her eyes wearily. “She can't, not with an Empire to run and her Lord to protect. Right now, Pidge is the greatest threat of the lot of us.”
“The military might of the Empire is based largely upon drones and AI's,” Kolanth said, “if the Empire loses those--”
“Then the Empire's grip on its subject peoples is weakened.” Lizenne said softly. “Perhaps enough to be broken. If enough of those subject peoples break free and ally themselves with Voltron, the Empire will be shattered, its might scattered to the winds and its people made vulnerable to the wrath of their erstwhile victims. And all because one little girl has an amazing talent with computers. Given enough time, she would have cracked the new defenses. Fortunately, Haggar miscalculated.”
“How?” Hunk asked. “She couldn't get through to that fort's AI, and that double-whammy we got really did a number on us. I feel like roadkill, and you look like roadkill. Sorry, but it's true.”
Lizenne smiled. “Don't I just? Trust me, I feel no better than you do. Nevertheless, Haggar did not cast that spell quite right. If she had, Pidge would now be a mindless pile of living meat awaiting transformation into a Druid or a Robeast, her Lion would be in the possession of the Empire, and we would be dead. The Lions are mighty protectors, and you all have been busily strengthening your bonds with them and each other of late. That was what saved you. Had those bonds been any weaker, you would have perished.”
“So, we sort of... shared the load?” Keith asked.
Lizenne nodded, and winced. She still had a slight but persistent headache. “Yes. The spell that hit Pidge was intended to disrupt the bonds between herself, those of her team, and disable the Lion into the bargain. It was also meant to weaken her body, destroy all conscious thought, wipe her memory, and set powerful controls in her that would have turned her into Haggar's puppet. She would have looked like Pidge and sounded like Pidge, but she would have been dead in truth... and yet still have been able to manipulate machines. Possibly even the Lions. What a wonderful tool she would have made.”
Allura made an inarticulate sound of pure revulsion. “Don't even suggest that!”
“Nonetheless, it is true. You may congratulate yourselves in that you forced the spell along a different path, however. When the spell hit her Lion, it arced over and hit Lance--”
Lance raised a hand. “It didn't. I panicked when I felt it hit her, and I sort of... I tried to pull it off of her. I don't think that I did it right.”
Everyone stared at him in amazement, and Lizenne gave him a long, considering look. “Is that so? Interesting. Nonetheless, it had some portion of the desired effect. As horrible as the effects might feel, Lance, it was probably the only thing that you could have done. All of you absorbed enough of that spell to mitigate the effects somewhat, and weakened it enough so that I could block it from hitting the Castle without actually exploding. Lance, take heart; you have saved Pidge's life after all by deflecting the killing strike. You certainly saved me, your teammates, Modhri, and everybody aboard the Castle. Well done.”
Lance perked up a little, but sagged again. “She's still lost out there, though. She'll be sick, maybe hurt, and all alone. Maybe she's been taken prisoner, or put in a zoo, or... or frozen in carbonite or something!”
“Calm down,” Modhri murmured, reaching over and patting his knee. “Her Lion will look after her. They have grown close, as have all of you with yours, and it will not give her up easily. It is a most intelligent beast. You may also check on her through your own bond, I expect.”
“I've tried,” Keith said grimly. “I can't get anything, except another headache. Can you scry for her, Lizenne?”
Lizenne snorted. “No. Soluk has decreed that I must not even think about magic at all for the next three months at least. I do not argue with the dragons. If she is to be found, then you must do it. All together, sharing your strength and the strength of the Lions. I cannot help you this time.”
“I will lend you strength, if I can,” Kolanth said, “I refuse to be useless in this. Can the Princess draw power from me?”
Allura's head snapped up in surprise, and she stared at him in mild horror. Lizenne merely frowned. “In theory, I believe that a Perfect Mirror may draw strength from whomever might offer it. It is not wise, however, and might easily lay you low for weeks, or even kill you. Coran would run that same risk. Zaianne, who has some small magical talent, would be a safer source. Or, if she were to ask them very nicely, the dragons. I am sorry, Kolanth, but I'd swat you across the nose if I had the strength. You've only barely recovered from bringing us the key. You must not strain that part of yourself.”
The Blade bared his teeth in frustration. “I feel responsible for her loss, too.”
Lizenne smiled. “Keep sifting through the newsnets. It seems trivial, but it's not. One thing that I have noticed about these young heroes is that they tend to do things noisily. If Pidge is able, then she will make herself known. Hah. One way or another.”
Varda fidgeted nervously. Yantilee had seen to it that she was clean and had gotten a good breakfast before taking her to meet the master of the ship. Yantilee had also warned her to be on her best behavior; it seemed that Captain Plosser had a filthy temper and a filthier sense of humor. He had no sympathy at all for castaways, no mercy for the wounded, and no pity for the small and weak, the dragonish crewman had told her, as well as the nastiest pet in the cosmos, and she was not to give him any excuse to unleash it upon her.
First, however, they had to find the man. The Captain wasn't on the bridge, nor was he in his quarters, nor in any of the other official spots. Yantilee eventually tracked him down by asking one of the bridge crew, a long bristly blue person with glowing pink spots, to hunt him up on the Quandary's security cams. As it turned out, the Captain was down in a storeroom just off of the docking bay, apparently hassling one of the Quartermaster's assistants, and Yantilee had sighed and led Varda back down to the lower decks. It was a long walk, even with the lifts, and Varda wondered just how large the Sikkhorans actually were. That moment of curiosity vanished when they entered the storeroom, for there was something there that monopolized her attention.
The first thing she noticed was the smell. Two smells, actually; the more noticeable was the stink of something like fermenting garbage, a hot, mephitic reek that made Varda struggle to hold onto her breakfast. The second, less intense but sharper, was the thick, somewhat fungal odor of moldy cheese. Both stinks were forgotten when she laid eyes on the scene in front of her; there was a spreading pool of yellow liquid on the floor, and crouching above it was a thing out of nightmares. It was huge, easily twice her height and six times her mass, covered in dark red bristles, and had seven protruding, glossy-black insect eyes that stared with soulless intensity right at her. The eighth eye had been lost to an attack sometime in the past, the empty socket bisected by a long, pale scar that slashed down half the length of its head. It also had a set of insect mandibulae lined with enormous fangs, which were currently working on what was left of someone's arm. It slurped that down with a horrible crunching noise and heaved itself to its feet with a curious gurgle, but it made no move to come closer. Varda stared up at the burly maneater in unabashed horror and loathing. Surely, this thing couldn't be the Captain?
“Maozuh's not going to be happy about that,” Yantilee observed in a calm, level voice that made Varda stare at him in shock. “She says she's shorthanded already, and training men up fresh is a pain.”
“Tostoln was no loss,” a harsh, gravelly voice said with satisfaction. “Sloppy, slow, and inefficient, he was, and skimmed off the best of the stock half the time. My pet was getting hungry, anyway.”
Varda turned and stared at the second person in the room. As large as the bristly red one was, this one wasn't much smaller, and he was just as unpleasant to look at. He was an upright biped and remarkably broad, with a protruding potbelly and a heavily-muscled torso that the loose red shirt and dark trousers he wore didn't bother to conceal. His arms and legs were equally powerful, and when he turned to face them in his armored boots, Varda felt the floorplates tremble underfoot. Despite his obvious strength, his hide was loose and hung in waxy folds, and was a faded blue where it wasn't streaked with orange stripes and old scars. His hands were seven-fingered, coated with small plates of bone, and looked rock-hard. He had one red eye in a similarly bone-plated head that resembled that of an enraged camel; the other eye had been lost and the socket crushed by some dreadful blow. Completing the image of a first-class dubious character was a crest of greasy quills that ran down the back of his long neck to just below his shoulderblades and a wide belt with two well-worn blasters in equally well-worn holsters, and a swagger stick clutched loosely in one hand. The one red eye glowed like an ember as it focused on varda, and the bone-plated face twisted in contempt. “What is that wretched little thing, Yantilee?”
Varda felt a flush of hot anger, and a surge of hatred for this individual. He fed crewmembers to a monster whenever he liked and he called her wretched?
Yantilee pushed her into full view with one broad hand. “What she is, even Doc doesn't know. Who she is, even she doesn't know—bad landing wiped her memory, Cap'n. What we do know is that she was piloting the Lion when it showed up. May be of some use.”
Captain Plosser sneered, showing long brown teeth in a hideous grimace of contempt. “Stole it, then, or took it on a joyride with no idea of how to fly the thing. The girl's not big enough to be piloting a war machine.”
Yantilee shrugged. “Took the armor off of her myself, Cap'n. Had injuries and had been poisoned, probably from a fight with the Galra. You know there's a bounty on those cats.”
Plosser barked a harsh laugh. “Yes, and one that's useless to us, since any Galra authority'll take me along with the cat if I go to collect! You'll not be rid of me so easily, Elikonian. Taah. We'll auction the thing off at Muntri's Haven, and someone else can can get chased about by the Imperials for a change. The girl--”
“You can't sell her, she's mine!”
“Eh?” Plosser said, turning his attention back to Varda.
Varda glared defiantly right back, meeting his eye without flinching. “She's mine. You can't sell her. I won't let you!”
Plosser rumbled ominously and lunged, seizing her by the front of her shirt and pulling her up to eye level. She gagged at the overwhelming stink of moldy cheese that wafted off of his hide, but bared her own teeth in defiance. “Yours, girl?” Plosser said, very quietly, “Oh, no. Those that are found and picked up in passing are salvage, and the rightful property of whoever did the picking. As the Captain of this ship, all salvage belongs to me! I can do as I please with that Lion, whether it's to sell it off the block or plant herbs in it, and none may say me nay! Girl, you say that Lion is yours. Will you fly it my service?”
“No!” Varda snapped, “Not for you, you creep! Not ever!”
Plosser's red eye glared dangerously into hers. “You get above yourself, girl. I am Captain, and my word is law on this ship. If you will not serve, then you will not stay.”
Varda kicked at him as hard as she could, one foot even managing to strike a glancing blow on his chest. It hardly rumpled his vest, but he took it poorly nonetheless.
“Girl, you do not strike the Captain. I might have sold you as an exotic pet in the markets on Queshag, or perhaps to a vollock ranch on Tathri. Now, I'd say that you'd do better as the Gantar's dessert, for the beast is always hungry.”
The bristly red creature globbered eagerly, strange fluids dribbling from its yellow-stained mouthparts; it had been licking the unfortunate crewman's blood off of the floor. It reached for her with three-clawed hands. Varda squealed in fear and disgust, and was answered by a shattering bellow of robotic wrath. There was a tremendous impact on a nearby wall, and crates on the shelving wobbled and fell as the heavy bulkhead was punctured and peeled back by four huge metal claws. The Gantar howled in terror and scuttled away, and Plosser dropped Varda and shielded his eyes from the blaze of yellow light that issued from the very large optic that was peering through the hole.
“Bonded pilot, Cap'n,” Yantilee said calmly, “like the Chank-Dhroons. I'm sure I told you that earlier. There's no separating them. It's either keep them both or sell them both, and yon cat won't permit the pilot to come to harm.”
“Then keep them I will!” Plosser snarled angrily, glaring up at the yellow optic. “Even the Symbiomechs fell to the Galra in the end, and I'll not be outdone by those vermin, nor will I be defied on my own ship by an oversized wind-up toy! Keep the girl, you say? Well then.”
Varda had landed badly and wasn't able to dodge when the Captain grabbed for her again, and she felt something hard and heavy being locked around her throat.
“Then keep her we will,” Plosser continued. “She'll serve as ship's scut and work for her keep. As for that thing, it'll stay lashed down in the bay. I'll not have it wandering around loose. Get you gone, Yantilee, and take that filthy little creature with you.”
“Yes, Cap'n,” Yantilee said, picking Varda up off of the floor and backing away, keeping an eye on the Gantar as he did so. “I'll just take her back to the kitchen, right?”
Plosser ignored him, and was already snarling commands into a belt-comm. Yantilee humphed quietly and left the room, setting Varda back on her feet once the doors had hissed shut behind them. “Come on, girl, you get to live today, and that's as much as you can hope for right now.”
Varda yanked at the collar around her neck and looked up imploringly at her huge friend. “What's he going to do with my Lion?”
Yantilee glanced to one side at a crowd of burly crewmen who were rushing in through the bay doors a little way down the hall. “You heard him. The Lion's too great a treasure and too fine a weapon to lose, and you're the key to both. He'll keep it tied down until he's satisfied that you'll do as you're told, or until it finds another pilot.”
“She won't,” Varda said flatly, and heard the green voice in her mind concur.
Yantilee sighed. “Then it's best that we all lie low for a time. Come on, let's go and see if Ronok has anything that needs doing.”