shining like the stars

90

Three large, spectacular explosions detonated one after the other along the aft of the Galran frigate. The cloud of ejected vapor burned brightly, until it consumed all the vented atmosphere from the ship and extinguished. Shiro blew out a breath as he spun the Black Lion away from the much bigger ship, avoiding large bursts of lined turbolaser fire. Black had outrun an entire wing of the Galra drone starfighters that were just now beginning to catch up, but there did seem to be less of them now. Marginally so. His HUD was still lit up like it was Christmas. "Yellow, report," he said, without taking his eyes off the forward viewscreen.

"I don't know how much longer I can keep doing this," Hunk's voice was exhausted. Shiro let his gaze flicker to the linked cockpit cameras, and he could see that Hunk was slumped slightly forward, both hands on the flight controls of the Yellow Lion. He looked as worn down as Shiro himself felt, but there was no time for commiseration. Instead of responding to Hunk, Shiro tapped a command on the console and brought Green's cockpit camera online.

"Pidge," Shiro said. "You clear of the prisoner ship yet?"

"Well," Pidge's voice came through before the camera connected. "About that...."

#

"There is absolutely no way that this is going to work," Allura said, one hand on the back of the pilot's chair. Pidge ignored her, sitting as far forward in the seat as she could and typing out commands one-handed on the floating, holographic command console.

"I can't rewrite the lion's OS to accommodate only using one flight stick," Pidge said.

"Did you even try?" Matt asked, leaned over her side and staring at the scroll that was the liner code for the flight system. Pidge ignored that, swiping the console clean and restoring it to systems ready.

"Of course I did, and while it may be theoretically possible, it's not something I'm going to be able to code on the fly. Unless you think you can-?" she turned and gave her older brother a look.

"Nuh-uh," Matt said, and held up his hands. "I still can't tell the squiggles from the scraggles in Altean, don't try to pin this on me."

"Scraggles go left to right, rising," Allura said. "If you can't pilot the lion, Pidge, I'll do it."

Pidge stood. "Please, Princess," she said, and indicated the seat with her good arm. "Be my guest."

Matt opened his mouth and closed it, watching Pidge move slightly out of the way so that Allura could seat herself in the pilot's chair. "I thought-" Matt started to say, then closed his mouth and studied his sister thoughtfully. Allura cracked her neck, stretched both of her arms out with her fingers interlinked, and then settled her hands on the flight controls for the Green Lion.

Abruptly, all the view screens in the cockpit went dim.

"Well, that can't be a good sign," Matt said, as the engines began powering down.

Allura scowled and squeezed the flight controls. "I am Princess Allura, and you will listen to me," she said, her voice ringing with authority. The Lion rumbled a little around them, like it was about to come back online, and then let out a noise that was reminiscent of a raspberry and went completely offline. Pidge began to snicker, then coughed to cover it up.

"Mystical bond that can never be forced, right, Princess?" Pidge said, and didn't bother to cover up her snicker this time.

Allura's face was stormy, her back held rigid – then she sighed and slumped back, releasing the flight controls. "You've made your point," she said, and immediately all the view screens pulled up as active, including the portrait window for the other four lions. Only Yellow and Black's were currently active, but there was an exclamation point over Red. Blue was still offline.