shining like the stars

91

Shiro's head bumped gently against the ceiling of the cockpit. He squinted into the darkness, disoriented; his only light was the dim teal glow emanating from his Paladin armor. Shiro touched a hand to his helmet, feeling that it now completely ensconced his head. The automatic life support system of the suit had taken over, despite Shiro's sudden blackout. He exhaled, and then put his hands flat against the ceiling and pushed off, floating back down toward his seat.

It was absolutely silent inside the cockpit without the rumble of the engines or even the barely-perceptible electronic noise of the Lion's computers processing. He could hear his own breath in his ears, his heartbeat in his chest. What had happened?

A blue beam of light blinding him, Black thrashing around him in pain, so much pain – Shiro winced against the memory as he settled himself down in the pilot's seat. With the Black Lion completely offline the magnetic restraints were no longer active, just like the artificial gravity, the internal compensator, the life support system, the communications array....

Fortunately, the Paladin armor had its own internal communications system. The suit's connection with its Lion bolstered its broadcast range, so with Black being offline it was a crapshoot if anyone would be able to hear him but it was worth a shot. Shiro flipped over to it anyway, tuning the system to the frequency most often used by the Castle of Lions and the other Paladins. "Coran?" Shiro said. "Anyone? Do you copy?"

"Shiro!" It was Allura's voice that greeted him, the others must be nearby. A flood of relief washed over him, he probably wasn't captured. "Are you all right?"

"Black's completely offline." He touched one hand to the flight control stick and didn't get any response. "I can't seem to raise her, how do I manually reboot?"

"You were hit by an ion blast, that usually fries the central processing crystal," Matt's voice this time, somewhat strained. Shiro put both his hands on the flight controls and frowned, because even when the Lion was off and resting in her bay there was still something there. "I have no idea what the computer systems are like on these things, they almost seem alive."

"That's because they are alive," Pidge said. "Matt, bring Green closer, I'll jump over and help Shiro reboot Black, I've done it before. Keith needs backup, you can't hang around here."

"What?" Matt was incredulous. "Absolutely not, you're hurt! You're not leaving me alone in this thing, Katie."

Shiro closed his eyes, halfway tuning out the argument that sprang up between the siblings. Black was quiet, still as death ... but it wasn't like she was sleeping. There was still something there , something on the barest edges of his perception. It was like catching a flicker of a shadow out of the corner of his eyes; he couldn't focus directly on it or else he'd lose it.

"We're sending Pidge over, Shiro," Allura's voice this time, it brought him out of the trance-like state he had drifted into. Pidge must have won the argument.

Not that it mattered. "Negative," Shiro said, his eyes still closed. "Black's completely down, I can't manually open the jaw to let Pidge in. You'll have to talk me through rebooting her over the comm." There it was again. Shiro winced a little and tried to follow the spark but lost its thread again. Suddenly the entire craft shuddered as Shiro felt the Black Lion take a direct hit.

Without the magnetically locked restraints active, the impact shot Shiro out of his seat. He was awake this time though, and managed to brace himself, half-turning so that the impact led with his shoulder against the wall and not his head. "What was that?" he yelled.

"Company," Matt said, his voice a little scrambled, the Green Lion must be moving out of range. "Sorry, Shiro, hang tight-"

The rest of what he said was lost in a scramble of static and Shiro muttered something into the open comm channel that he usually wouldn't say in front of cadets. He looked at the small display over his arm and saw that he hadn't lost the comm channel at all; bright red letters overlaid the information. "Jammed," Shiro said out loud, as if anyone was listening now. "Hunk took out those dishes on the frigate first to avoid that happening, why would it kick in now? "