shining like the stars

13

Lance was having a very nice dream about cheeseburgers. Well, to be entirely accurate it was about the little no-name burger shack by the beach that made the hands-down best bacon and avocado burger he had ever had, mouth-wateringly good and he missed them so much, when his dream was very rudely interrupted by a finger poking his cheek.

He batted at the finger and tried in vain to hold on to his dream, but it was already fragmented and gone. Lance let out a loud aggrieved sigh and opened his eyes, only to find that Coran was way entirely too close in his personal space, face barely a hand's span away from Lance's own and finger out prepared to poke him again. Lance blinked once, slowly -- and then screamed.

Coran wheeled back in surprise, and Lance threw both of his hands out to shove the Altean away -- and that action caused him to flail back at the same time and crack his head into the support column he had been sleeping against. Lance leaned forward, both hands folded over his head and nursing his poor, aching cranium. "Why would you do that?" he moaned.

"The bridge is not the proper place for a sleepover!" Coran announced as he straightened, hands on his hips.

"I'm not having a sleepover," Lance yelled as he lifted his head, only to realize that Coran was not the only person on the bridge. In fact, it seemed like everyone was present -- Pidge in her favorite claimed spot, the navigator's chair; Hunk and Keith standing behind her and Shiro standing beside Allura with his arms folded. "Ugh," Lance said and rubbed his hands over his face. "What time is it?"

"You missed breakfast," Hunk called cheerfully, and Lance groaned. Then, abruptly, he remembered and flailed himself into an upright position, almost smacking the still-lingering Coran in the face with his hands.

"Has anyone else seen it?" Lance said to no one in particular, staring at the viewscreen.

"Uh," Pidge said, after a moment. "Seen ... what, Lance?"

"The light in the Galra ship!" Lance jabbed his finger at the forward viewscreen, and the dark mass of the wreck in the lower corner, a fixed distance away. "There was some glowing yellow light in there last night!"

With his back to everyone, Lance couldn't see the particular glances being exchanged, but the even longer moment of silence made him turn around, one arm still pointing at the wreck. "No one else saw it?"

"We've scanned the wreck half a dozen times by now," Allura said firmly. "There are no operational systems, and definitely no lifeforms. You must have simply dreamt it."

"I didn't dream it!" Lance said. He marched over to the viewscreen and jammed his finger in the approximate location of the light, to the best of his memory. "It was right here, it was yellow and it blinked a few times and went out!"

"Kind of like your brain," Keith muttered loud enough for Lance to hear.

Allura and Shiro exchanged looks, and Pidge leaned forward. "While there probably isn't anything operational," Pidge said, "I did want to check out the wreck before we left."

"Wait," Hunk said. "You're saying you want to visit a burned-out space-tomb?"

Pidge looked back at Hunk, as Lance and Keith said, at the same time, "Space-tomb?"

"Well, yeah," Hunk said, his eyes wide. "It's a burned-out wreck, right? It didn't get that way without a battle, and yeah the Galra have all those drones and robots but there would have been people on that ship too, so..." he covered the lower portion of his face with both hands, eyes still very wide. "Space tomb," he said in a high voice.