Radio Altea [Sheith fic]
It was brought to my attention that I never published this fic (an AU where Voltron is a space pirate radio station) from the wonderful Across Realities zine!! It feels a bit odd to post this fic to my Ao3 after so long (I feel like I've gotten a bit better at writing since 2019!), but I may find the chutzpah later. For now, here's what appeared in the zine:
--
It was supposed to be an easy mission.
The metal of Keith’s cockpit strains against the vacuum of space. The hydraulics failed half a varga ago. The barometer on the corner of his (cracked) dashboard flashes red for lack of oxygen.
Keith lets his head loll sideways onto his shoulder. He slouches against his pilot’s chair, unable to lift his arms. The agony of his ribs, damaged when his plane collided with another fighter, has dimmed to a low thrum. He feels oddly detached—like his head’s made of cotton.
The rubble of blasted ships floats past outside. Keith peels his eyes from the window and down to the working parts of his dashboard. Not for the first time he curses his plane’s lack of a data chip port; the only way to communicate with the Blades as an undercover agent is via microchip.
He’s going to die out here, and the Red Lion’s location will die with him.
But Keith doesn’t have to die alone. While he can’t contact the Blade, there’s a comms channel anyone within this quadrant can reach from almost any device.
With numb fingers Keith fumbles around on the dashboard. It takes him a while to figure out the controls—the plane is a new model—but eventually he toggles a knob and the radio sputters to life. A few more twists and he’s found the right channel.
“—1151.4, home of Earth’s greatest hits and everyone’s favorite DJ—the legendary king of pop himself, Lance McClain, coming to you live from an undisclosed location somewhere off the coast of your wildest dreams.”
Keith groans as much as his cracked ribs will allow. This feels personal now—like the universe has a vendetta against him for some unknown indiscretion. Five DJs on Radio Altea and Keith gets stuck with his least favorite. He’d almost rather die alone to the tinny silence of his battered fighter plane than pass on to another Allura soliloquy. Lance spends more air time on his crush than the pop ballads he’s supposedly famous for.
“I’ve got a lot of great tunes lined up for you tonight—some real Earth bops—but before we get started, I figure I should give you all the chance to request a song or two. So—you long-time listeners know our number. Give us a call, and who knows! Maybe you’ll get lucky.”
Get lucky. Keith has performed this song and dance over and over across the span of two years and a whole star system, and he’s never once managed to get Radio Altea on the phone. There are always too many callers, always positioned closer to the station’s receiver than the Blades.
Still. Keith never did know when to quit.
Keith keys up Radio Altea’s number on his dash, fingers like lead where he drags them across each dial pad. He takes too long, of course. Over the radio, a starstruck alien delivers his request. As per Radio Altea policy, Keith must wait until this caller’s song wraps to phone the station. He might not have survived the lull—his vision starts to go wonky around the song’s bridge—but more than to Lance’s voice, Keith refuses to die to Britney Spears’ “Toxic.”
At last Britney’s voice fades from the radio. Keith’s hand falls limply across his dashboard’s call button. A screechy dial tone echoes through the cockpit.
Lance’s voice lights up the silence like a firework:
“You’ve reached Radio Altea!”
But the words don’t come from Keith’s speakers.
Keith slumps back against his chair. He’d hoped so dearly that he would be allowed this one small miracle—but the torch has been passed on to someone else. Someone with a better comms connection, no doubt, who hasn’t broken Blade protocol and doomed themselves to an early grave out of sheer, mawkish stupidity.
Keith steels himself for this caller’s request, the soundtrack of his death at the whim of a stranger. But the voice that follows does not belong to a caller:
“Lance! How many times do I have to tell you—the survival of our crew hinges on the regularity and volume at which you play ‘The Sailor’s Hornpipe!’ If you do not play that song back to back before 4:08 solar time today, our chances of being captured by Galra fighters multiplies by one hundred and twenty-five percent!”
It’s Slav, the crew’s technician and resident survivalist. Keith hears Lance wrangle the mic closer to his face as he shouts, “Slav, for the last time: This channel is for callers! If you want to yell about your terrible flute music, you can call me on your comms like a normal person—during a song break!”
“I will not wait for a song break to deliver crucial information on the fate of the known universe—”
But Lance cuts off the line.
“Sorry, listeners.” Lance’s tone brings to mind a fluffed-up house cat. “You know how Slav gets. Lucky for you all, I have our next caller’s signal on hold right... here.” There’s a click. “You’ve reached Radio Altea; what’s your request?”
Silence. Over Keith’s head, the fuel level light blips over and over. Lance clears his throat.
“Hello? Anybody there?”
It takes Keith another long beat to register—but Lance’s voice came from his dashboard. His radio. And oh good god—after two years of trial and error, Keith has Radio Altea on the phone. He sits there about a dobosh from death, mind leagues above his body as his tongue moves without conscious permission:
“Lance?”
“The one and only. What’s your request, stranger?”
What’s his request. Keith has known the answer for years: the song his father used to sing as he fixed them breakfast; the song Keith hums to himself when he’s tired and homesick and no one’s around to hear. He opens his mouth to say “Dolly Parton’s 9 to 5”—
And asks, “Can you put Shiro on?”
Lance snorts.
“Shiro? Why? Am I not good enough for you or something?”
The world performs another ugly lurch. For lack of time and oxygen, Keith cuts to the chase:
“I’m dying.”
A pause. Keith stays very still, slouched over with a too-pale hand cupped over his ribs. Lance calls to someone behind him. There’s the creak of Altea’s swivel chair. Then an all-too familiar voice floats down to Keith from the airwaves:
“Hey. You still with us?”
Shiro. Keith must be already dead, because Shiro is on his comms.
By some miracle Keith manages a noise of assent.
“Good. Just hang on a little while longer, all right? We’re tracing your call.”
Keith snorts. Radio Altea could be thousands of lightyears away. What are the chances they’ll reach him before he runs out of oxygen?
Keith closes his eyes. Shiro’s voice wraps around him like a Mylar blanket: “Are there enemy fighters nearby?”
“No,” Keith croaks. “Rest of the unit... retreated.”
“And how are you hurt?”
“Mmn.” The pain comes and goes like the flickers of an old fire. It almost takes too much strength to swallow, let alone speak. “Ribs. Cracked, maybe. Air supply’s... low.”
“Okay. Just breathe slow and steady. You can sleep if you like; it’ll conserve your remaining oxygen.” A pause. “You’re gonna be all right.”
Keith chuckles. It’s a nice thought. “Just... keep talking?”
And Shiro does. Keith’s not sure what he says, but his tone soothes his ruffled spirit. The last traces of pain wash away on a sunlight tide, and like so many nights before, Keith drifts off to the smooth timbre of Shiro’s voice.
-
“It’s a beautiful night out, listeners. Back on my home planet... you had to train for decades to get access to a view like this. And even then there were only so many rockets to go around, and so many missions. You had to wrestle with a hundred other astronauts to even land a spot as a deckhand.” Shiro snorts. “Guess you could call me lucky, minus the amputation and constant threat of death. I’ve got a couple songs lined up for you all, and then I’ll open—oh!” He swivels his chair to get a look at Keith as he enters the room. “Hey! Keith. Good; my listeners were asking for you earlier.”
“What?” Keith stops a few feet from Shiro’s chair. “Why?”
“Well, I told everyone you were all right, but they seem to want to hear the news from the man himself.”
Shiro tilts the mic towards Keith. The reality hits Keith like a baseball bat to the frontal cortex: they’re on air. He leaps back like a rabbit caught unawares. It takes all his strength to maintain his human form; his fingernails go claw-like around his sleeves.
Shiro has the grace not to laugh.
“Sorry, I should’ve warned you. You don’t have to talk.”
“’S fine.” Keith gargles. “Um…”
He steps up to the soundboard like a soldier might approach a landmine. Pidge had “shown him the ropes” his first day on the Castle Ship; if someone put a blaster to his head he could probably loop a soundbite, but the rest of her spiel flew right over his head. Keith was brought up to read star charts, not EQ levels.
“Hey,” Keith says to the mic. “I mean, hello. Uh. Listeners. I’m alive. Obviously, I guess.” He tips the mic back towards Shiro. “Sorry.”
Shiro snorts. “Hey, you did great. You heard the man, listeners. I didn’t lie to you; we got him to a pod, and he’s all healed up. We have some errands to run, and then we’re going to drop him off with his unit.” Shiro’s finger hovers over a blue key on his computer pad. “Now let’s get back to the radio before I find an excuse to go on another tangent.”
He keys up the next song. The chair turns. “Hey, Keith. Thanks for coming up.”
“No problem. Didn’t mean to take so long. I, uh. Got lost again.” It’s true. Keith had always pictured the home of Radio Altea as a rinky-dink trade ship. In reality, the “Castle Ship” is like a labyrinth on rocket boosters.
Shiro rubs a hand across the back of his neck. “Sorry; I would’ve come to you, but I wasn’t sure where you’d be.”
“No problem.”
Shiro lets his hand fall back onto the armrest of his chair. Keith can’t help but follow the line of his metal fingers, bright like liquid silver under the wall lights. He pretends his own fingers don’t twitch at his sides.
God, he’s hopeless.
“I wanted to ask you something,” Shiro says. “But you don’t have to answer me.”
Keith shrugs. “Okay. Sure.”
“Why did you ask for me when you called the station?”
Oof. Keith winces.
“Like I said, you don’t have to answer. It’s fine.”
“No—you can know.” Keith fiddles with the cuff of his sweater. He’d come with one uniform, so the team loaned him some clothes. “I’ve been listening to you guys for a while. And you... your schedule lined up with mine, so when I got done with training you’d be on air. It was...”
Nice. Comforting. A fixed point in a world where his coworkers sometimes came home in pieces. A soft voice he could fall asleep to, when he was bruised and weak and his mother felt like a stranger.
“...Familiar.”
An odd thing to say about the voice he chose to die to, maybe, but not a lie at least. Shiro looks like he wants to push—like he knows that’s not the full answer. But he doesn’t. The two hover on the edge of speech until the last song fades from Radio Altea’s computer. Shiro picks at the scraped edge of his armrest.
“Queue’s about to run out,” he ventures. He gestures to the computer. “You never did pick a song.”
Keith clears his throat.
“Got any Dolly Parton?”
-
Keith doesn’t ask questions—he knows when something’s above his clearance level. But he sees the tracking software; the training exercises; the meetings behind closed doors; the three locked hangars that radiate cosmic energy.
It’s obvious that the radio station is like a side gig to these people.
“It was Lance’s idea.” Hunk crunches on some kind of salad between words. He, Lance, Pidge, and Keith are assembled around the dining room table; Shiro and the two Alteans are away on business. “For stress relief. We found out Zarkon had overrun all the like, fun radio stations with propaganda music—”
“And then Lance wouldn’t shut up about radio pirates for a week.” Pidge flicks a pea at him. Lance glowers. “So Hunk and I worked out a long-distance transmitter.”
“And then Coran found us some kind of Altean coaxial cable. Take the Castle’s bandwidth and multiplex the comms channel, then amplify the signal with the battleship crystal...” Hunk claps his hands together. “Bam! One streamlined quadrant-wide radio broadcast.”
Keith wonders how much of that last part he was supposed to understand. “Sounds... hard.”
Hunk makes a so-so motion with his hand. “Eh, not really. The really tricky part was masking a signal that big. Don’t want the Galra tracking us down, you know?”
Keith does know. A good Blade weaves through space with all the presence of a desert breeze. Masked signal or no, the very suggestion of a quadrant-wide radio broadcast located at the heart of their operation would give Kolivan a hernia. “You’ve really never been caught?”
“Nah. We got close once when we went to get the Gree—”
But Pidge cuts him off with an elbow to the stomach. Hunk wheezes as she says, “You know, Keith, we have that weekly Monsters and Mana broadcast coming up. You should play a side character or something!”
Keith goes bright red. Lance scoffs at her. “What, we’re letting the emo hitchhiker tag along on our fictional adventures now too?”
Pidge rolls her eyes. “Don’t mind him, Keith. He’s just jealous because you didn’t want to die listening to his voice.”
Lance throws up his hands. “Okay, so maybe I’m a bit hurt! Sue me. What makes me so much worse than Shiro, huh? Am I not calming enough?”
He’s risen from his chair. Hunk plonks him back down with a heavy hand on his shoulder. “Sorry, bud. You’re kind of more of the—pep talk type?”
“Yeah.” Pidge nods sagely. “Great for motivation. Not so much for dying.”
Lance still looks miffed, so Keith says, “It’s more that I don’t know you as well.”
That earns him an eyebrow-quirk.
“Right. Because you know Shiro?”
A pause. Keith’s fingers curl a little tighter around his fork.
“No,” he acquiesces. He turns back to his lunch. “No, I guess I don’t.”
-
“You said I was familiar...?”
Keith has become enough of a regular visitor for Shiro to rig up a second chair around the soundboard. The two sit together as the song roster ticks down, down, down. They’ll have to pick new music soon.
Keith can feel Shiro’s eyes on him; his own are locked on the floor. He works his tongue over the backs of his teeth. Twice he parts his lips, on the verge of an answer, only to clamp them closed.
At last Shiro puts him out of his misery: “I’m sorry. I know you don’t want to talk ab—”
“I kind of made you my friend,” Keith tells him, mostly because he can’t stand the disappointed lilt to Shiro’s tone. “It was stupid, but I—you know. The missions were rough sometimes, and I didn’t really have anyone to talk to.” His face feels like a furnace. He pulls the last part out like a splinter: “It was... nice. To turn on the radio and pretend you were... talking to me, I guess.”
Keith grimaces. He still hasn’t looked up from the floor.
The chair creaks as Shiro leans forward. Out of the corner of his eye Keith sees him rest his elbows on his knees. He doesn’t make to speak; Keith can’t decide whether the fact should calm or concern him.
The last song of the queue pops up; something upbeat and old—older than Taylor Swift, even. The room changes somehow. The atmosphere becomes warmer—lighter on Keith’s shoulders. There’s another creak from the chair. Shiro’s boots enter Keith’s line of vision.
Keith looks up. Shiro smiles, and his eyes reflect the glow of the wall lights. He holds out his hand; there’s a playful edge to his voice as he asks, “Dance?”
Keith baulks. His heart tumbles down a flight of stairs and lands somewhere at the soles of his shoes. “I, uh,” he says, at a loss. “I don’t know how.”
Shiro raises an eyebrow. “You can fight, can’t you? Hand to hand.”
“Well, yeah.”
“Then you can dance. Come on, I’ll lead.”
Keith stays paralyzed for another long moment. Then his motor functions sprout to life, and he reaches out to grasp Shiro’s hand. It’s the flesh one.
Shiro hefts Keith up out of his chair. “I’m gonna put my hand on your waist,” he warns. It’s voiced like a question, and Keith bobs his head once. Then there’s a weight on Keith’s side, smooth and cold—the polar opposite of Shiro’s left hand. The song reaches the first chorus line, and they’re off.
At first, Keith steps like he’s afraid to activate a tripwire. But Shiro doesn’t let Keith tread on his feet, and soon he gains confidence. The footwork comes to him like muscle memory; he’s dueled with enough aliens to know how to anticipate Shiro’s movements. Together the two weave a path across the room.
They carry on at a casual pace for a while. Then the song picks up. The grin widens on Shiro’s face. He moves to grasp both Keith’s hands, and Keith’s world blurs as they enter a kind of pretzel twirl. Shiro laughs; Keith’s heart soars. They lose track of each other’s hands between spins. The two fumble around for each other. Skin brushes skin, and then they slot back together like magnets. Shiro’s hands—both flesh and metal—are solid and sure around Keith’s.
“See?” Shiro says. “Easy.”
Keith can’t remember the last time he felt this free. “Where did you learn how to do this?”
“Gym. We had a unit, and then I liked it enough to follow up on it with some studio classes.” Keith’s not sure what most of that means, but when Shiro treats him to another spin, he forgets to care. “Moved on to other things after a while—not a lot of room to practice swing dancing when you’re studying for your FAA test, you know...”
“Looks like you retained a move or two.”
As though to prove the point, Shiro pushes Keith forward, turns him around, then yanks him back towards his chest. The two resume their original position, flesh hands clasped together with Shiro’s metal palm on Keith’s hip. The music goes faster and faster. Keith and Shiro orbit around each other, two suns crackling with joy, scorching circles into the air with the clap of their feet.
Then the song starts to ebb. The tempo winds down. The static charge leaves the air. Like an unplugged record, Keith and Shiro turn once, twice, then ease to a stop.
Both their chests heave. Keith swipes the bangs out of his eyes. It’s a small thing, but he can see the light leave Shiro’s eyes, bit by bit. The smile on his face takes on a strained edge.
Back at the soundboard, silence permeates the airwaves.
Keith can count on one hand the times he’s gotten dead air on Radio Altea. It’s common not to hear from the hosts for days at a time—but they always have a backup queue at the ready. Always.
Now there’s nothing. Just radio silence as Shiro stares at Keith, and Keith stares at Shiro. Keith’s heart runs laps around his ribcage.
Shiro’s flesh fingers twitch between Keith’s. It’s like an electric shock. Keith starts. He steps back, and their fingers disentangle.
Shiro’s tense smile has become something small and sad.
“Keith,” he says—so softly, as though not to startle him. “I don’t know what you think you heard. What you think you know. But the person you’ve been listening to on the radio... that’s not me.”
Keith doesn’t move. Doesn’t speak. A muscle in Shiro’s neck moves, like he has to force the words out of his throat:
“I know a lot of people turn to this station for hope, so I do my best to honor that expectation. To stay composed. Keep the tone light.” His right hand quivers, and he bunches up his metal fingers. “But honestly? I barely sleep at night. I get nightmares. Flashbacks. That’s why I take the night shift. I’m... scared and I’m so tired and I’m...” He drags his flesh hand over his face. The shadows under his eyes seem darker than before. “I’m not okay, Keith. That person you became friends with—I can’t be that for you. He’s not real.”
Keith’s throat clicks. Heat builds behind his eyes—because for all the hours he’s lain awake and listened to Shiro’s voice, he’s never heard him sound so lost.
It’s enough to steel his resolve. He gathers up his courage, balls up his fists, and takes a step towards Shiro.
He holds out his hand.
Shiro blinks. He stares at Keith’s hand, eyes wide as a baby owl’s.
Before he can ask, Keith says, “You’re right. This whole time... I never knew the real you. But I want to. So I’m gonna wipe the slate clean and start over, with no preconceptions.” He raises his hand higher for emphasis. “My name’s Keith. I’m a fighter pilot. I like dogs and hippos and I was born in Arizona. And I can’t tell you much more than that for confidentiality reasons.”
There’s a long pause. Overhead, a fan turns on. Then the confused slant to Shiro’s mouth starts to perk up at the corners. He reaches over, almost shyly. For what could be called the first real time that night, Shiro wraps his hand around Keith’s.
The two shake hands.
“Hello, Keith.” Shiro’s eyes twinkle. “My name’s Takashi, but my friends call me Shiro. I love to fly. I was born in Japan, but my family moved to the States when I was eight. I really miss Kraft mac and cheese. And I can’t tell you much more than that for confidentiality reasons.” He looks down to where his prosthetic hand meets Keith’s. “Also, I was held captive by the Galra Empire for nine months. It’s... a lot, sometimes.”
Keith offers Shiro his own small smile. They still haven’t let go of each other’s hands. “Nice to meet you, Shiro.”
Shiro beams. He looks at Keith—really looks at him—and Keith’s heart melts.
They stand like that for a second or a day, hands clasped as though to seal a pact. Shiro opens his mouth—
—And the Castle alarm goes off.
-
By the time Keith was rescued by Radio Altea, he’d been undercover for the Blades for five phoebs. He’d taken up residence amongst a crew of hybrid loyalists and, as per Kolivan’s pleas, done his damnedest to keep his head down. Keith’s directive was simple: follow his Galra unit. Keep his eyes and ears open for the location of the Green, Blue, Red and Black Lions. Report back with any leads.
And of course, as always—put the mission first.
Keith had failed to follow that rule then, and as a Galra commander brings a laser blade up to Pidge’s windpipe, he fails to do so now. There’s a great clatter as he and the rest of Radio Altea drop their weapons.
It was useless anyway. The Castle had been stormed from all sides; their particle barrier could only hold out for so long against a whole fleet, and once the Galra had boarded the Castle—well. Advanced weaponry or not, the eight of them hadn’t stood a chance.
“I warned you this would happen,” Slav bemoans.
The team pays him no mind. They put up their hands. The Galra commander loosens his grip around the knife at Pidge’s throat, but doesn’t make to step away.
“Radio Altea,” he greets. Blood flows freely from a cut on his arm, courtesy of Shiro’s prosthetic. “You put up quite a fight for a team of amateurs.”
The hosts don’t dare retaliate. The commander bobs his head, and several officers peel from his ranks. Claws wrench Keith’s arms behind his back. Allura all but snarls as she’s restrained. Shiro flashes her a panicked look—like he knows better than to struggle—and Keith’s heart cracks right down the middle.
The commander wisely keeps his blade over Pidge’s carotid until the eight of them have been neutralized. Mission accomplished, he pushes Pidge away from his knife. Keith catches her pained glance as she’s wrangled by another soldier; he hears the apology as though she’s spoken aloud.
“Now then,” the commander drawls. “What to do with you all. I know Zarkon will want you alive, but I’m sure we can have some fun before we get back to base...” He scans their lineup. Keith feels like a dish at a buffet table. “Hmm. How about—”
“Yorak?”
The world falls out from under Keith’s feet.
Horket.
A figure shoulders their way through the crowd, and Keith spasms under his captor’s hands: “By Harkarah! It’s you! You’re alive!”
The commander’s brow furrows. He gestures to Keith with his knife. “You know this human?”
“Oh, he’s not human!” Horket claps his giant hand on Keith’s shoulder, and Keith wishes the floor would swallow him up. “Go on, Yorak; show him!”
Keith doesn’t have much of a choice. He lets his fingernails grow out. His eyesight sharpens as his sclera yellow and his pupils thin. His skin darkens to a cool purple.
Keith can feel his friends’ eyes on him as the dust settles. He refuses to turn to them. He knows what he’ll see on their faces.
Horket makes a gesture like a magician before a completed trick. “See? He’s from our unit. Lost track of him during a dogfight about... what, a phoeb ago now?” The soldiers have stepped away from Keith’s sides, and Horket grasps him by both shoulders. “What happened to you, Yorak? What’re you doing here?”
“What does it look like I’m doing?” Keith snarls, because he could really use some suggestions.
Horket frowns. “Well, looks to me like you’ve been getting all buddy-buddy with some of this quadrant’s toughest criminals...”
Keith’s mind flashes to the station’s latest on-air contest, where callers were invited to guess how many “space marshmallows” Lance could fit in his mouth at once.
Toughest criminals for sure.
“It’s not like that.”
“Then what is it like?” There’s an edge of suspicion to Horket’s tone now.
Keith decides to take a risk. He throws up his hands. “Fine! I’m undercover, you moron! Or at least I was until you yelled out my name and made me change like that!”
“Underc—why?”
Keith is laying railroad tracks down about a foot in front of a speeding locomotive: “You said it yourself! These guys are this quadrant’s toughest criminals. They’ve been broadcasting rebel propaganda for a year now, with quadrant-wide reception.” He fixes Horket with his best Galra glower. “They should be like a light show on our radar, but we still couldn’t catch them until now. Can you imagine what the empire could do with their masking technology? I was gathering intel.”
Shocked silence follows Keith’s outburst. The Galra soldiers don’t seem to know what to make of his story. There’s a tiny, broken noise from the radio crew, weak enough that Keith knows he wouldn’t have been able to hear it outside his Galra form.
Shiro. Keith wrestles down the urge to cry.
Horket purses his lips. “I mean. You could’ve just interrogated them. Would’ve been a lot faster.”
“Sure, because I could take on seven fighters by myself.” Keith crosses his arms. “Look, they picked me up after the dogfight. I was wounded. I was making the best out of a bad situation.”
The commander narrows his eyes. “And did you learn anything useful?”
“Oh, sure.”
“Like how they mask their signal.”
Hell no. “Absolutely.”
The commander gives what Zarkon might call a smile. “Well, then.” He points his squadron back to the Castle entryway, where they’ve strung a bridge from one ship to the other. “Everyone back to their posts. Escort our guests to the hold; feel free to rough them up a little on the way.” He turns to Keith. There are protests and dragged boots as the radio crew are bundled towards the door. “Half-breed. Yorak, was it? Why don’t you show me to your... mm.” He snaps his fingers as he searches for the right word. “Recording booth, I suppose?”
Keith has to pry apart his gritted teeth. He turns on his heel, away from Shiro and his friends. “Sure. This way.”
Footsteps sound against the marble floor. The commander calls back to the crowd of soldiers: “Sloak, Kaut, come with us. Let’s find out how these rebels operate, shall we?”
-
Keith is covered in blood, and only some of it is his own. The metal bridge creaks under his boots as he crosses between the Castle and the main Galra warship.
A soldier passes Keith on his way to the lower levels. He’s dead before he hits the ground.
Keith has undergone enough stealth missions on Galra ships to recognize the layout of your average battle cruiser. His avoidance of high-traffic areas makes the trip longer than he’d prefer, but he’d rather get to the hold slowly than not at all.
At last Keith enters a long, dark hallway. Two cyber-soldiers guard a metal door; they raise their weapons as Keith approaches, but he’s too angry to entertain any further delays. Within seconds the guards are diced husks on the floor. Unhindered now, Keith claps his hand onto the lock pad outside the cell door.
The door slides open, and a slice of light sweeps across the cell. The radio hosts (along with their resident mechanic) are gathered at the very back of the hold. Several scramble to their feet. Lance raises his hand to shield his eyes from the hallway light.
“You need to run,” Keith announces without preamble. He moves to step out of the doorway. “We haven’t got a lot of—”
Shiro sounds dazed: “Keith?”
“You mean Yorak,” Lance seethes. “You know, I thought your plane looked like a Galra cruiser, and nobody took me seriously—” He stops as he registers Keith’s appearance. “Is that blood?”
“I killed the commander,” Keith says. The words are punctuated by an ominous pitter-patter as blood beads off his shirt. “And the two officers. Once we got to the control room. Then I sent out a distress call over the radio, on loop. We need to get out of here before anyone comes to help—”
“And we should believe you because?”
Keith gestures to his bloody torso. “Why else would I be here? How would any of this benefit me?”
Allura’s glare cuts across the cell. “Why would you help us when you work for the Galra?”
“I don’t,” Keith pleads. “Or, I’m not from the Empire. I work with a rebel organization called the Blade of Marmora. I was undercover with the Galra—”
Hunk cuts him off: “Of course you were.”
“Dammit, I’m serious! I was looking for the Red Lion, and then we got drawn into a battle with a rebel group—and I couldn’t bring myself to fire on them, so I got shot down. That’s why you found me in a Galra ship. That’s why that soldier recognized me.” His voice cracks as he finishes: “I am not from the Empire.”
For what feels like an eternity Keith’s friends stay huddled at the back of the cell. Keith waits at the entryway, fingers wrenched around the doorframe for dear life.
Then an explosion rocks the ship.
Alarms blare. A terrible, guttural sound erupts up from the bowels of the battleship—the scream of punctured metal. The floor bucks with the force of a second blast, and Keith loses his balance. He topples sideways—
Only to be caught by Shiro’s arms.
“Everyone, let’s move!” Shiro snaps. Keith has less than a second to recover from the shock of his touch: Allura gives her consent from the back of the cell, and then Shiro’s weight disappears from Keith’s side. As one, the group piles out of the cell. At Keith’s direction they turn towards the far end of the corridor—but as they run, a herd of guards barrel around the corner.
Keith shoves his way to the front of the assembly.
“There’s an airlock back there,” he shouts over the alarm. He points to a spot along the far wall. “Your suits have boosters, right? I’ll hold them off while you run.”
The team looks torn. Shiro raises his prosthetic, and the hand glows to life like a star. “Go on,” he says. “We’ll be right behind you.”
“You’d better be,” Allura warns. She turns on her heel and ushers the rest of the crew down the hall. Keith doesn’t have time to question Shiro’s decision to stay behind. The guards are on top of them like the crest of a wave.
If you can fight, you can dance. Turns out the maxim goes both ways.
There are seven guards; two patrols. It should be a hard fight. But Keith and Shiro are an army unto themselves. They kick and twirl and slash, a wall of hellfire where they push the soldiers back, back, backwards down the hall. It feels routine, almost. Like they were built for this.
Familiar, Keith had said. He ducks to let Shiro swipe over his head. Shiro swivels to give Keith access to a Galra at his back. It’s all so right that even as Keith fights for his life, he feels at peace.
In what seems like no time at all they’ve cut down the last of their assailants.
In the aftershocks of another laser blast, Keith whirls on Shiro.
“I’m so sorry,” he pants. “Shiro—I swear. I didn’t mean any of that back there. It wasn’t real. I’m not—I’m not Yorak. I’m—”
“I know.” Shiro shouldn’t be able to look so soft and sweet with robot-guts spattered across his cheek. “You’re Keith. I know. I believe you.”
“Okay,” Keith says, and he must sound as anguished as he feels, because Shiro reaches out and laces their fingers together. He squeezes and asks over the alarms,
“Did you ever find the Red Lion?”
Keith struggles to make sense of the non sequitur. “Uh. Yes. Actually.”
Shiro laughs. They’re on a Galra cruiser, about to be blown to smithereens by their allies, and Shiro laughs. “This is just too perfect,” he rasps.
“What do you mean?”
“We know where the Green Lion is, and we have Blue, Yellow and Black already.” Shiro looks like a kid on a carnival ride. “The Red Lion was the last one we had to find!”
Keith’s mind flashes back to the secret hangars full of strange energy. He registers the words as though they come from someone else’s mouth: “Oh my god. You’re...”
Shiro beams at him. “Welcome to Team Voltron.”
-
Somewhere in the depths of space, a radio station sputters back to life. “The Sailor’s Hornpipe” plays back to back—solemnly, like a belated apology.
Then Radio Altea announces their newest radio host.