shining like the stars

81

"Hey," Matt said, his back up against the curve of the corridor wall. "Do you remember that time when we went to the beach and Baxter ran away and you thought he went down that old trail that took you down the cliff side to the beach?"

Pidge was connecting a wire from her paladin suit into the glowing purple wall plate that held a distinctly alien hand print. "Yeah," she said. "I think so. Why?" She was a little distracted at the moment, focusing on trying to break in to the ship's computer system.

"I said 'that's a bad idea, what if part of the trail's washed away?' and you said, and I quote, 'don't be a pussy, Matt, let's go.'"

She hesitated in typing and looked up, eyes narrowed behind the blast shield. "I was five, I'm pretty sure I wasn't saying, 'don't be a pussy.' Also, what's your point?"

"You did say that, the babysitter swatted your bottom for it and you cried until I went looking for that dumb dog." Matt leaned to the side, surveying the sweep of the corridor, for the moment they were still undisturbed. "My point is that listening to you gets me in a shitload of trouble, and I don't know why I do it."

"Hey, don't go foisting the blame, this one is all your idea." The wall plate glowed a bright fuchsia for a moment, then the doors slipped open. "Hah." She yanked the wires free and gestured with her head. "I only helped a little."

"Yeah, a little," Matt said. "Not, 'oh hey look at my giant lion you know what this would be good for? Infiltrating a Galra ship all by my lonesome.'"

Pidge shrugged. "Why keep playing tag with prisoner ships when you can get on board one and just steal all its secrets directly from its navigation computer?"

"Okay, but," Matt swept the corridor with his weapon and when they didn't encounter any guards, they both hurried down it. "Consider this: you can only pull navigational routes directly from the navcomputer, which is usually, I don't know, on the bridge."

Pidge snorted. "You can pull navigational routes from any console connected to the ship's main computer. We don't have to storm the bridge."

"Those are gonna be encrypted, genius."

"I've got a key, genius."

Matt caught Pidge by the heavy collar of the paladin armor and yanked her back before she just blindly crossed a hallway juncture. "Are you trying to get caught?" He leaned around the corner slowly, checking for Galra guards and when he saw a pair, he exhaled. Then he put his back flat against the wall and composed himself. "Two of them, but their backs are to us," he said. "We can make it across if we're quiet."

Pidge leaned around the corner as well, bayard in her hand and sparking. "Or we could incapacitate them."

"Yes, because someone stumbling across two clearly unconscious guards won't raise any sort of alarms." Matt moved suddenly, shoving Pidge ahead of him and they dashed across the hallway in tandem. Pidge moved to keep going left down the forked split in the corridor but Matt caught her arm and yanked her right. "This way," he said, and Pidge's head swiveled toward the Galran lettering on a plaque on the wall, then she looked over at Matt, who was staring down the hallway, his grip on her arm as tight as a vise.

"Matt?" Pidge asked, because his right hand, the one holding his plasma gun, was shaking.

"I'm fine," Matt said. He looked over at her and smiled a little, but there was nothing behind the expression and that scared Pidge more than anything. "Let's get this done, okay?"

"Yeah," Pidge said. "Let's."

#

Keith sat cross-legged on the floor, his arms folded and a scowl on his face. Interestingly, he was purple again, ears twitching out of his dark mess of hair, and wearing his paladin armor. Lance stood with his back to the wall, shoulders pressed into it as he watched Keith stare straight ahead and try to hold perfectly still.

He had been human when they first arrived, but a few minutes after doing so Keith sat down suddenly and he started to change. "I don't know where we are," Lance said, "but I don't think you being ... well, you ... is going to help diplomatic relations."

The ear closest to Lance twitched and Keith did not look over at him. "Don't you think I know that?" he hissed. "I don't hold this form naturally, I don't know what it is about the memory core but I can't control it or shift back." He shifted a bit, rocking in place, and made a face.

"Dude, I told you-" Lance started to say, but was silenced by the echo of footsteps in the corridor beyond. They both looked toward the door the small room expectantly, Lance with his bayard in hand, but the footsteps continued without break or pause, fading off. Lance relaxed a little, and leaned back against the wall, exhaling noisily. "Whenever we get back, we're gonna shove this thing out the airlock," he said. "It's causing way more trouble than it's worth."

Keith didn't respond to that, so Lance pushed off the wall anyway, walking to the small window inset in the room. It wasn't a prison cell, but wasn't heavily furnished, with a single bed pushed against the wall and an empty closet. It was remarkably low tech, all things considered; and reminded him vaguely of Earth which left a hard knot of homesickness in his throat that he had a hard time pushing aside.

The buildings were all low, squat things, three stories at best; mostly primitive in construction but with an outer veneer of sophistication, like they were constructed long ago and then just slowly updated over time. There were groups of people in the street, gathered in clusters; some walking with four and six-legged creatures clearly used for manual labor, others riding small hoverbikes. The street was pretty crowded, though in the distance rising above the lower buildings were taller, newer ones — and further off in the distance, barely visible, the jut of a castle-ship.

"So, not to induce panic or anything," Lance said. "But I'm pretty sure we're surrounded by Alteans."

"I never would have guessed," Keith said, tone very dry, as he stared at the closed door.

"We're gonna stick out so much," Lance said. There were a smattering of aliens, almost all bipedal, but they clearly stood out among the pedestrians on the street below.

"I'll take it, it's better than being on a Galra ship." Keith stood up finally, shakily, and Lance eyed him.

"Do we need to stop by a bathroom?" he asked Keith, and was gratified to learn that he could definitely blush in the form, his purple hue getting noticeably deeper on his face as he looked away, ears down.

"I'm fine," Keith said, folding one hand over his stomach. "This is a memory core, anyway, if I focus it away it'll go away." His face twisted a moment as he looked down. "And for the record, you're not allowed to come inside me any more."

"Yeah, that's not what you were saying at all," Lance snorted, and leaned against the window. "Oh Lance," he started in a high falsetto voice, but he stopped and laughed as Keith stormed over to him and shoved his shoulder back against the wall. The armor made a dull sound as he thumped back. "Ooh, testy," Lance said as Keith glared at him from way too close. Lance raised his eyebrows and smirked, and then caught Keith's chin and pecked him on the lips briefly. Keith shoved him back and flailed away and Lance laughed again.

"You're such a pervert," Keith huffed, turning his back to Lance and storming to the door. "You shouldn't do shit like that while we're in here..."

Lance shrugged, then folded his arms, still back against the wall where Keith had left him. "Okay, fine. Ruin a perfectly good excuse to get frisky."

Keith looked back over his shoulder at Lance, ears back. "You shouldn't make fun," he said, golden eyes narrowed to slits. "You're not attracted to me like this, so don't act like you are." He resumed his inspection of the door, which had no knob and no visible wall plate to open it with.

Lance pushed off the wall, putting his hands on his hips. "Excuse me?" he said. "Last I checked you don't get to decide what I'm attracted to." He cocked his head. "Maybe fur and fangs turns me the heck on, you don't know that."

"You'd be the first," Keith muttered. "There's no way to open this door, it must be a holding cell of some kind. Looks like we're stuck in here."

"Well," Lance said, as his bayard shifted into its rifle form. "I guess that depends on your definition of 'stuck.'"