Chapter Text
“SCREEEEECH!”
Adora jolted awake. She clutched the threads of the raggedy blanket in between her trembling fingers as she waited for her consciousness to chase away the remnants of her nightmare.
She had been back in the Crystal Castle, suffocating in a glittering sea of purple and blue platinum. Light Hope’s cold, metallic voice had echoed through the training room as Adora picked up her sword.
“You must let go, Adora. Let go of your fear and embrace your destiny.”
Even though it had been years since she had set foot in the Castle, or even thought about her supposed ‘destiny,’ Adora wanted to curl in on herself and scream until Light Hope’s voice was drowned out by her raw and bleeding cries.
The floor of the ship jolted underneath her, bringing her back to reality. From somewhere in the distance, Adora heard the piercing siren that indicated the hatch on the docking bay was opening.
“Bow?” She cried out, scrambling out of her cot. In the dim light of the ship’s small sleeping quarters she could make out the neon yellow numbers of the clocks that sat atop every doorway, vigilant guardians of their tight schedule:
23:45
Adora reached under her pillow and grabbed her sword, sliding it into the leather scabbard she kept strapped to her back at all times. They weren’t due on Krytis for another seven and a half hours and their route had them traveling directly through the Yawning Gap, aptly named for its ability to lull flyers into a near comatose state of boredom from its lack of planets, meteors, or even a waste dumping ground.
(She also heard there had once been stars along the journey to Krytis, but she had been born long after they all disappeared.)
She wrenched open the door and blinked rapidly as the harsh fluorescent lights accosted her eyes. She grabbed her wide-brimmed hat from its hook next to the door and slid it onto her head, but still had to blink away tears from the sudden change in lighting. She doubted Bow had unintentionally opened up the hatch to the docking bay, which meant they were in for some trouble.
Adora grinned. She was overdue for a spot of trouble, and taking out whatever idiots were trying to board their ship in the middle of the Yawning Gap might just satisfy that itch.
“Adora, hold on!” Bow’s voice called from the cockpit. The ship lurched to the side again, causing their cleaning droid, MDA3, to let out a series of concerned beeps and boops.
“Hang in there, buddy,” Adora called over her shoulder as she made her way to the cockpit. She didn’t realize MDA3 was behind her until a jolt of the ship had her careening backwards right onto their aluminum-reinforced head.
“BEEEEP!”
“Sorry, MD,” she patted their side reassuringly even as they rolled indignantly away from her and towards the cockpit. She followed, keeping one hand on the ventilation shafts rimming the narrow passageway so she wouldn’t lose her balance again.
When she arrived she found Bow frantically pressing the glowing red comms button with one hand, the other stuck in a white-knuckled grip on the steering controls.
“This is oh-two-oh-one-dash-Darla requesting information as to who is trying to board us, over.” Bow waited for a moment before sighing and slumping back in his seat, allowing his hands to fall from the dash. Adora whipped her head up to see that their ship had been ground to a complete halt with nothing but an onyx expanse to greet them.
“You wanna tell me what’s going on?”
Bow scratched at the back of his neck nervously, banging his elbow on the routing controls behind him. At a meager one yard wide and two yards deep, the cockpit barely fit one human, let alone two humans and a rotund cleaning droid with over sixty-three detachable appendages.
“I think we’re being boarded by the Horde.”
“Krayt, Bow- the Horde?”
“Now hold on- don’t be having your kittens by the litter,” Bow intoned and Adora crossed her arms. Even after three years of friendship, she still didn’t understand some of the phrases the Chari-borne and raised pilot said.
“We don’t know that they know we have illegal fuel onboard. It could just be a routine inspection,” he offered.
Adora frowned deeply. “In the middle of the Yawning Gap?”
“What better place to get to know some friendly space travelers!”
“From Bright Moon, Bow,” she reminded him. “The documents that Glimmer forged for us before we left say that we’re from Bright Moon.”
“Well, there are dozens of bright moons,” he said lamely.
Adora fought the urge to roll her eyes. “We need this shipment-“
She was interrupted by a loud clank, followed by complete silence.
Bow’s eyes widened and his cheeks paled. “The docking bay,” he whispered, but Adora was already creeping out of the cockpit and down towards the cargo hold. She drew out her sword and held it in front of her, keeping a cautious eye on the divet in the wall where the docking bay lay hidden in shadow. When she heard two loud clicks behind her, she knew Bow had drawn his compound bow constructed of Bantha bone dyed a deep navy with golden stripes along its S-shaped curve. Although the apparatus was traditional, Bow had retrofitted each arrow in his quiver to perform a unique task, such as sticking to a wall like a star barnacle to the underbelly of their ship or shattering into several tiny arrows that whistled through the air as they struck true.
Adora ran her thumb along the biometric scanner at the base of her sword, causing the laser to illuminate the dim space with a piercing blue radiance. She felt the other changes- the armor growing to encircle her forehead and the stretch in her calves- as she grew to a height taller than even Light Hope herself, but barely paid them any attention as she took a defensive stance facing the docking bay hatch.
After all, transforming into She-Ra was a necessity more than a spectacle, a wholly ordinary task rather than a glorious flaunt of the transcendent power she possessed.
If Light Hope could see her now she’d probably faint, but Adora had more pressing concerns than the reminder of everything she had been promised... and then gave up.
A hiss rattled through the cargo hold as steam began to pour forth from the cracks in between the hatch and the walls. As the hatch slowly opened, a voice called out, “Please desist, we come in peace.”
Adora glanced over at Bow and saw her skepticism reflected on his face.
Through the hatch stepped a young woman in the red and white armor of the Horde, her short brown dreadlocks tied back into a low ponytail. Her hazel eyes fixed on Adora, then Bow, then MDA3, who rolled behind Adora’s leg.
“Is this all of your crew?” she said, disbelieving. Behind her, a tall lizard-man appeared, pointing a surprisingly large gun at Adora.
“Why are we being boarded? The Horde has no jurisdiction here,” she protested.
The woman’s eyes lingered on Adora’s sword, no doubt entranced by the glimmering blue laser that had replaced a traditional blade.
“The Horde will soon have jurisdiction over this entire fucking galaxy, and the one next door,” she bragged.
“What Adora meant to say is that we already requested clearance through the Gap from the Fantuthians,” Bow offered. “So we’re confused as to why you stopped us along our pre-authorized flight path.”
The lizard-man’s eyes flicked behind Adora before he grunted something unintelligible at the woman. Adora didn’t need to look over her shoulder to realize that he had seen the stack of fuel containers secured to the ground by a bunch of loose wires Adora commandeered from a polite (but chatty) old woman on Fantuth.
“Is that Horde-sanctioned Thulite?” She inquired.
“Would you believe us if we said yes?” Adora tried.
The woman flicked her hand and the lizard-man began shooting at them. Adora deflected the blows with her sword as MDA3 let out a screeching “BEEEP!” Bow loosed an arrow from his quiver that fell at the woman’s feet and quickly wrapped around her ankles, binding them together. Adora charged forward, careful not to bang her head against the top of the hatch, and swung at the woman. More swiftly than she had anticipated, the Horde soldier jabbed a taser into her side, causing Adora’s teeth to rattle as her muscles clamped up in an unsteady orchestra of electric pulses.
Despite the sensation that her bones had suddenly turned into string cheese and the growing taste of metal in her mouth, Adora managed to clip the woman in the shoulder, causing her to cry out as her armor singed from the heat of Adora’s laser blade.
“You filthy, thieving scum! It’s high time you learned a little respect for the Horde.”
From behind the lizard-man, Adora watched as half a dozen soldiers clambered down a makeshift ladder to form ranks, guns trained on her and Bow. “You’re outnumbered, princess,” the woman taunted, leveling her taser at Adora’s face.
Adora heard the clamber of Bow’s weapon dropping to the ground and turned to see her companion already raising his hands in defeat.
“Sorry, Adora.”
Even MDA3 let out a regretful “boop.”
Adora sighed and let her sword fall out of her grasp.
“Good girl.” A smug smile grew on the soldier’s face, similar to a maggot stretching to reach a spare piece of waste. “Foul smugglers like you need to learn to show some manners when-“
Her monologue was interrupted by the ship lurching forward. The woman tripped over the wires around her ankles and fell into the lizard-man’s arms.
“Who’s piloting your ship? You said this was all of you!” She picked herself out of her companion’s arms with forceful anger.
“This is all of us, I swear,” Adora replied.
“I thought you locked us in with your ship?” Bow questioned.
The woman’s hazel eyes widened as the ship lurched again. Suddenly, the makeshift ladder began swaying in a phantom breeze and the loud hum of an engine roared to life. Adora realized what was happening a second before the soldiers did.
Someone’s hijacking their ship.
The woman began shouting orders to the soldiers who, all at once, attempted to grab onto the ladder as it bobbed up and down. The lizard-man rushed forward and bent down on one knee so the woman could climb atop his shoulders and then up the ladder, scrambling past the other soldiers with an almost inhuman speed.
Bow took advantage of the confusion to reach over and press the button that would re-seal the hatch. Adora quickly grabbed her sword as the steam began to fill the air again. She swiped her thumb across the base and felt herself shrink back down to her usual size and posture.
She heard the soldiers yelling at the woman that the fuel smugglers were getting away, but Adora ignored their cries and followed Bow down the hallway back to the cockpit.
“Can you believe our luck?” He said excitedly, flipping the manual steering switch and grabbing the reins.
“Don’t jinx it- let’s go.”
“On it.”
In a matter of seconds their ship was steadily gliding through the dark maw of the Gap, no docking bay alarms accosting their ears or Horde soldiers in sight. Adora didn’t breathe until they got up to a solid sixty-five kilometers an hour and Bow shot her a wild grin. She couldn’t help but return it.
“That was wild,” he remarked.
She let out a breathy laugh. “Yeah, it was.”
They fell into a comfortable silence for a few minutes as Bow prepared the ship for high-speed travel. “Never thought I’d see them again.”
Adora reclined in her seat, placing one leg up and leaning her elbow against it. “You know that girl and the lizard guy?”
“No, not them specifically. The Horde.”
Adora hummed in response. “You’re probably going to run into them a lot more now. After... y’know.”
Bow’s grasp tightened on the controls. They hadn’t spoken much about the death of his fiancé’s mother, Queen Angella of Bright Moon, the entire journey. On one hand, Adora didn’t know how to approach the subject with him, as she had spent most of the past couple months consoling Glimmer instead. On the other hand, she had a feeling that he’d needed to get away on this trip as much as she had. She wasn’t going to bring up one of the reasons why it hurt so much for him to be home right now.
“Unfortunately I think you’re right,” he conceded. “Okay, are you ready to jump to lightspeed?”
Adora nodded. “Yep, let’s go.”
She braced herself for the onslaught of turbulence but when it didn’t come, she looked over at Bow, confused.
He pointed at her seatbelt.
“Krayt, you’re such a dad,” she teased as she buckled herself in.
“There’s nothing wrong with taking precautions,” he responded firmly. “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.”
Adora shoved his shoulder fondly.
“You too, MD,” Bow added. The droid chirped as they fastened themself into the panelling near the entrance to the cockpit.
“To Krytis,” Adora instructed.
“To Krytis,” Bow repeated, flipping the switch to start Darla’s acceleration. Instead of hearing the loud groan the ship normally let out whenever they pushed her into lightspeed, Adora’s ears were met with the familiar hum of the cruising engines.
Bow flipped the switch again. Nothing.
Her companion groaned and slammed his forehead down into the controls. Adora chuckled but leaned forward to help pick him back up. “She probably just needs to be restarted,” she suggested.
While Bow concerned himself with the controls, Adora unbuckled and leaned over to check the meters that displayed Darla’s vitals. Her eyes flitted over all the gauges until one caught her eye- the red hand on the fuel gauge was all the way on EMPTY.
Adora cursed. “They siphoned our fuel.”
“Huh?”
“Those Horde bastards, they siphoned our fuel. They’re probably on our tail right now,” she stated.
“Damn,” Bow remarked, leaning back in his seat. “Maybe we can put out a distress signal and hope that someone finds us before the Horde soldiers do?”
“It’s worth a shot,” she responded, tight-lipped. If they got caught here, so close to earning enough money for the Rebellion’s upcoming offensive attack against the Horde, Adora wouldn’t know what to do with herself anymore. She had already failed at becoming the hero Light Hope wanted her to be, then failed at making a name for herself as a mercenary. She was only here - trapped aboard a run-down ship smuggling illicit goods halfway around the galaxy - because she had no other options.
She and Bow spent the remainder of the hour wiring up a distress signal on a channel that they knew the Horde wouldn’t use. Their scanners showed no signs of the Horde ship that had tried to board them, but Adora wasn’t so sure they’d completely disappeared.
After a half hour, their communications channel pinged. They both rushed to press the button to hear the incoming request.
“Hello, this is the S.S. Black Garnet. We got your distress signal, oh-two-oh-one-dash-Darla. Do you still require assistance, over.”
Bow held the button down and spoke clearly as he said, “Hello, S.S. Black Garnet. We seem to have run out of fuel- specifically Phoedor. Do you have any you can spare? Over.”
The channel crackled for a moment before the response came back. “Of course. Permission to dock and board? Over.”
Adora sighed in relief.
“Permission granted. Thank you. Over and out,” Bow finished and let out a whoop of joy.
“How lucky are we?”
“Let’s just hope they’re not like the last guys,” she cautioned. MDA3 let out a low beep as if in agreement.
Catra flipped through the comms channels aimlessly, bored out of her mind from her fifteenth day in a row spent camped out in the space junk near Fantuth. She couldn’t return empty-handed or Shadow Weaver would have her head.
Perhaps literally.
She sighed and readjusted her head in the crook of her elbow as she lay sprawled out in the cockpit of her tiny reconnaissance ship. She had outfitted it to look like a piece of space junk itself - covered in an ugly brown paint that was beginning to peel from the nightly storms that ravaged the upper atmosphere of the ice planet.
In all honesty, she didn’t know what exactly Shadow Weaver expected from her on this mission. Part of her wondered if her superior officer had just sent her out here to rot, alone in the graveyard of broken vessels and refuse from the industrialized civilization below.
As she flipped through the channels, she felt a sense of sonder overcome her: all of the voices she heard belonged to people - whether they be human or some intelligent inhuman creature - who had lives of their own, families that relied on them and whom they relied upon in turn. Hearing the overlapping languages and tongues made Catra nostalgic for the years that she held out hope that her parents would find her, that they would return and apologize for abandoning her on the doorstep of the most ruthless witch in the galaxy one rainy, winter night.
Because if they returned, Catra would finally be a part of a family again; she would love and be loved in return. Not the cruel, conditional attachment Shadow Weaver tried to pass off as affection, but real love.
If her parents returned, that meant that Catra was worth something.
Catra shook her head. It was worthless to entertain such thoughts. She had given up on ever being a part of a family or being loved a long time ago, around the time that Shadow Weaver had thrust her into space on her first mission with no money and no ship. To her officer’s chagrin, she had returned two weeks later - albeit malnourished and unbathed - with the head of the politician she’d been sent to assassinate.
After that, the missions became dirtier, more despicable. If Catra ever had a soul, she lost it the moment she slit that politician’s throat.
A sudden beeping noise roused her from her half-awake state. She recognized it as the emergency comms channel that she kept open for one person and one person only.
“Catra!” Scorpia’s voice filled the tiny cockpit. “I need your help. Over.”
Catra sighed. She raised her finger to press the button and respond, but couldn’t gather the energy to go through with the motion.
“Please, Catra. I need you to bring me some extra Phoedor. Over.”
Catra’s finger slid against the button. “You literally just left Fantuth. How could you already be out of fuel?” She almost removed her finger before remembering proper protocol. “Over,” she added.
There was a pause and then Scorpia’s voice resounded through the system, somewhat garbled and staticky. “It’s not for me, it’s for some people we ran into. They really need our help. Over.”
Catra debated the merits of leaving her post just to run a simple errand. If Shadow Weaver found out, Catra could lose her position in the witch’s army. But, if she was going to run into something out here among the space debris, she already would have run into it. A little trip wouldn’t cost her her livelihood and would allow her to finally stretch her legs, so-to-say, for the first time in over two weeks.
“Ugh, sure,” she responded. “But you owe me big time. And these people better be rich. Over.”
Scorpia’s relieved voice came through the comms, “Oh, thank you so much, Catra! I don’t know if these two have any money but I’ll pay you back somehow. Sending you the coordinates now. Over.”
Catra’s navigation system beeped and she flicked a nail against the screen to display Scorpia’s location. She was only about an hour’s ride away and Catra had fuel for days stored in her cabin.
“Received. I’ll be there in a bit. Over and out.”
She hoisted herself up into a sitting position and let out a large yawn. She’d just take this little excursion then return to her post, Shadow Weaver none the wiser. After all, what was the worst thing that could happen while she was gone?
Catra flicked the switch to fire up the engines and strapped herself in. She wasn’t going to stick around to find out.