As Cold as Fire [VOLTRON Keith X OC]

Collection and Extraction

Pidge's computer began beeping rapidly just as Keith and I entered the room. The others were huddled around her, intently watching.

Allura noticed us, "Where were you two?"

I shrugged, "Training."

Allura squinted. I knew she could tell I wasn't handling Alfor's 'death' very well, everyone could, but I hoped she wouldn't call me out. "Again?" she pressed.

"Yes, why do you care?" I asked, annoyed, and desperately trying to change the subject.

She crossed her arms, "You've been training a lot lately. You're not even a paladin."

I grit my teeth, "That doesn't mean-"

"We were just training," Keith cut in, "princess." Allura eyed him warily, visibly confused by the spite in his voice.

Shiro cleared his throat. "Anything good yet, Pidge?" he asked, thankfully turning everyone's attention back to Pidge.

"We were only able to salvage bits and pieces."

"We need something to work with," Keith stepped forward, "Right now, we don't even have a decent map of the empire."

Shiro continued, "If we could just find troop locations or supply routes, small targets we could hit-and-run, then we could start to free planets one by one."

"Okay, I've cross-referenced Sendak's memories with the info I got from the downed ship back on Arus," announced Pidge, "Most of it was a garbled mess, but one thing kept repeating, something called a "Universal Station.""

"Universal Station? Like, the kind of station that controls the entire universe?" Hunk cocked his head.

Pidge explained, "Well, we are translating it from Galra, so it could also be "Galactic Hub.""

"Well something like that has to be important right?" I said. Pidge nodded.

Coran added coordinates into the screen. "I'm pulling up the location of your Universal Hub Station Base on our screens now." We looked on expectantly.

"So... where is it?"

"I don't know. Our long-range sensors are unable to find anything at those coordinates."

Keith offered, "Maybe he remembered it wrong."

"Or maybe," Pidge flashed a grin, "we just stumbled across a top-secret base in Sendak's memories."

Allura's face was fixed in determination. "Only one way to find out. Let's go take a look."

When we got there, the scene was surreal. Two large planets, one sky blues and greens, the other a stark contrast of oranges and reds, seemed to almost be orbiting around each other. And in between, was a rocky mess of a planet, much smaller, with a ginormous galran ship embedded in the surface.

"It appears the gravitation between the two planets warps the electron emission spectrum enough to keep the planet off the deep space scanners," Coran explained in awe.

I crossed my arms, "It's so huge, it probably handles shipment and cargo from the entire empire."

"We'd better go down to take a look," Allura said, pointing to a section of the map. "We'll need to enter here: the central control building."

Keith gave her a sideways glance. "I'm sorry, Princess, did you say "we"?"

"I'm going with you. I've travelled through the Galra transportation hubs many times with my father before the war began. I know more about them than any of you."