Catch the Stars ||Keith Kogane||

08

Hours is what it felt like, minutes is what it was.

Trip is not used to being on the sidelines of any mission. It was unnerving but also relaxing. The whole thing wasn't depending on her for a change. She stood against the closed metal doors at the back of the room, her shoulders relaxed but her foot bouncing on the toes.

In the front of the room were the other paladins. Pidge and Hunk, who Trip had deemed the brains of the group, were still messing around with the dead centry. Hunk had been told to stop messing with it, so now he was just tapping together two sensors and making its hands move. It had been entertaining at first, something to keep minds busy, but now it was old and something to keep just him busy.

"It's been a while." Says Lance, "you think they're all okay?"

There was no immediate answer. Trip was getting antsy because there was a chance that they weren't all okay. If the paladins of Voltron died, then there was no hope of ending this war for another 10,000 years.

"I think we would've gotten some kind of signal if they were in trouble," Pidge says, "or there would be more alarms going off if they were caught."

She wasn't wrong. Red lights, alarms, the whole thing. The Galra were very big on being obvious when something threatened their rule. They did not like being challenged, especially on their own turf. So they would make a big deal about taking down the threat.

More minutes passed and Trip grew more anxious as they did. Not only would Harron have her head if she let the paladins die, but Hayley would probably go into stress-induced labor. Finally, she had enough of waiting around on one of the expeditions to report back.

She stands up and turns to the door, hitting the button on the side of that triggered it to open.

"Don't wait up," she says simply before disappearing beyond anyone's view. As she hid behind corners and slinked past guards, she decided that helping Allura and Shiro would be much more difficult and dangerous. And while she wasn't opposed to difficult and dangerous, she felt as if they were the ones who were safe and on track.

It's the red paladin, who had proved to be hot-headed and impulsive, that she figured would need help. If she were to make herself useful in the ways she can, her best bet is making sure he hadn't ruined anything or gotten himself killed.

To find out where he went, all she had to do was follow the trail of dead centries. She stayed out of sight, something she felt he hadn't bothered to do, but she was beginning to think that this 'stealth' mission wasn't going to end very stealthily.

Trip found herself walking down a long hallway, a golden glow coming from the end room. She knew that whatever it was, there was a lot of it.

Suddenly, a loud crash came from in the room as she approached the archway inside. Crunching of glass and metal creaking was deafeningly loud.

Trip ran, reaching for her sword. She held it up, ready to fight whoever was waiting for her on the other side.

"Pidge, I need an extraction now!" Keith's voice was heard as soon as she broke into the room. He was obviously in the same vicinity as her but she couldn't see him. She followed the sound of his voice.

The room was full of shelves and shelves of the golden stuff. They had an abundance of it, so it had to be important. When she scanned the walls covered in it, she saw Keith up high on one of them. He had been thrown into a container, busting it open and now hurt. And looming over him was a cloaked figure, a mask covering their face.

She knew them on sight; one of Haggar's henchmen. Whether or not they were beings with their own mind, Trip didn't know or even care to find out. They had been a thorn in the rebellion's side everytime they were unfortunate enough to run into each other. Having one of their robes on her throne seemed like the perfect thing to take away from this mission.