shining like the stars

54

Nothing about this made any sense.

Lance crouched behind a speeder in the repair bay of the Garrison. There had been no alarms tripped by the strange man in black, or the two guards that Lance had barreled through. He'd clobbered one with a chair and took the other's gun and yet no alarms were going off, there didn't seem to be any uptick in patrols, in fact he would be hard-pressed to tell that this day was any different than any other Tuesday on the base.

Except it was different. He wasn't supposed to be here. Neither was Hunk. By Tuesday they were all aboard the Castle of Lions on Arus, not still here on Earth. Lance put his hand flat on the speeder and tried to put his thoughts in order, so much of it was muddy swirls that he couldn't pull the entire picture together. All he knew for certain is that he wasn't supposed to be here any more; and that he had an ache in the back of his throat, the knowledge that he could ditch all of this, grab the unattended speeder, and head for the coast and his family.

But, Pidge was in trouble.

And if they hadn't been there for the stolen Galra ship's crash, to see Shiro being brought in by Garrison officials, then he was in trouble too. Lance touched the back of his neck again and swallowed. And Keith...? He would have been captured as well, unable to hold Shiro on his custom speeder and pilot it well enough to get away.

He didn't even know where to start.

You could always start in the brig.

Yeah, that made sense. Except it didn't, because he'd just made his way out of the labyrinthine corridors of the base; and while there was still no hint of an alarm, turning around and storming into the prison area was a guaranteed way to light the base up like Christmas. Besides, they wouldn't have stashed Shiro in the brig; too many people would see him. They would want to keep his arrival on the down low, like in the tent in the valley by the wreckage of the ship.

Lance smacked his hand against the speeder and stood up, setting his gun on the seat and unzipping the uniform jacket as he did so. He discarded the coat and got on the speeder, before staring down at its controls. The last time he had ridden one of these Hunk was clinging to him and yell-crying something about them possibly getting expelled, he didn't entirely remember the conversation, but felt that black ball in the pit of his stomach that Hunk had stayed. That was a betrayal he hadn't expected.

The man in black's scarred face and gold eyes popped into his head again, and Lance shuddered, before kick-starting the speeder and shooting out of the mechanical bay.

There were no mechanics to stop him.

#

The sun was high in the sky, intense and bright. Lance had stopped the speeder on a cliff opposite the Garrison, overlooking the emergency tents that had been constructed. There were several transports parked all around, and guards here. He stood up in the saddle of the speeder and shaded his eyes. The goggles protected some from the glare, but not enough — he wasn't as stupid as Keith, he wasn't going to go charging in to a fully-staffed base; even with some kind of distraction there were just too many people down there for him to be effective at anything; and that was with the assumption Shiro was still down there.

Lance kicked the speeder back to life, and peeled out. If he had to do this solo, it was either go big, or go home.

#

He wasn't entirely sure that he knew where he was going; it had been dark and between being shot at and yelled at and the entire world coming down around his ears he had been just a tiny bit distracted. He ate through at least half the speeder's fuel reserves before he hit the plains, and not long after that he found the small, piece of shit shack that Keith had apparently been calling home.