Lance Alone

Part 16 (Lance)

Lance, Annie, and Dale slinked through the desert night, under a half moon. They stuck to buildings so they would blend in, but their orange uniforms would have been better if they just laid in the sand. Lance still knew the place like the back of his hand, but they had more security than he remembered. Maybe that was because of him. Still, it was nothing worse than avoiding sentries on a Galra ship. When they finally came in sight of the warehouse, no fewer than ten armed guards stood around the various entrances. Even as hungry for a fight as Dale was, there was no way they were going to be able to take them out with just the three of them. They tucked behind a dumpster to scout out the situation.

"Neither of you would happen to have a bunch of remotely controlled explosives we could lay in the desert, would you?" Lance asked. Dale and Annie both shook their heads. Dang it. Keith really was one of a kind. "I guess we'll have to improvise, then."

They watched a little bit longer, as two of the guards started to dig through a backpack. Lance couldn't hear what they were saying, but one of them reached into it and pulled something out--his bayard. 

"Hey!" Lance realized, "That's my stuff!" Without a plan, he started sprinting towards the door to the warehouse. The guards were so surprised, he already was pulling the backpack out of their hands by the time they could pull back. 

"Give it back to me!" he yelled, "that's not yours!" 

"This belongs to the Garrison now," the guard ordered. Annie and Dale just managed to catch up to help, but the other guards turned on them. Lance wrenched the bayard out of the guard's hand and it transformed into his rifle. The guards jumped back from the younger cadets in surprise. Lance aimed his gun at them, walking backwards into the door for the warehouse. The pod was waiting for him. 

He ducked into the pod and started it up, pulling it into a hover off the ground. "Hey, everyone! Hop in!" 

Annie and Dale scrabbled up over the side of the pod to fit in, and the top sealed. Lance flew the pod through the open doors of the warehouse, leaving the guards aghast at the sight of the alien ship flying so quickly overhead. Lance pulled the pod higher and higher into the sky, leaving the Garrison behind like a speck in the desert. Annie leaned her face against the window as everything shrunk below her, a wide smile on her face. 

"Haha! We showed them!" she cheered, "Take that, Garrison goons! No one beats Lance McClain!" 

Dale looked more concerned than happy. "Where are you going to go?" 

"I can't go back to the Garrison. They won't let me share the truth with the rest of the world. No one wants to hear it," he admitted, "I never should have come back." 

"Well, what's the one thing you missed the most while you were gone?" Annie pulled her face away from the window. That was one question he had an answer to.