shining like the stars

99

"So," Hunk said, his face coming up on the screen to Lance's left. "Who wants to say it? I don't want to be the one who says it, I always say it and then you all make fun of me."

"Hunk," Shiro said firmly through the comm. Lance smirked a little, because it was the slightly-exasperated tone of voice that he knew all too well and for once it wasn't directed at him. "No one needs to say anything."

"Really? Because I'm really feeling it."

"Hunk, buddy," Lance said. "It's fine. Things are cool." He leaned forward in his chair, hands resting on the controls of the Blue Lion, and things felt ... normal. So normal ... well, as normal as things could be when you were flying a giant, frighteningly sentient ancient alien weapon through relatively uncharted waters in the hopes of luring out the Galra cruiser that had jumped into system six hours ago and had yet to engage. It was refreshing to be back in action, just him and Blue - okay, and everyone else, too.

"Still no transmissions from the cruiser?" Shiro asked, and Allura's voice came through the comm.

"Nothing. They're sitting just beyond the planetisimal cloud." Allura sounded just barely worried. They had lain in wait for two days, not moving from the system of their initial wormhole jump based on Shiro's gut feeling that they were being followed. It did seem strange that the Galra hadn't pursued them immediately, but they had wormholed out of the system, and apparently caused a great deal of damage to the cruisers, and the frigate's core engine block. "I can barely get a reading on the ship at all."

"And this isn't worrying anyone else?" Hunk said. "Because I've got a bad feeling, man..."

Pidge, Lance and Matt managed to make a chorus of groans that liberally drowned out the rest of whatever Hunk was saying. "Don't say that," Matt's voice was slightly broken up, coming from the Castleship, while Pidge said at the same time; "Hunk, if you fucking jinxed us..."

Shiro let the banter go on for a few moments longer, clearly working something out or just speaking on a private comm channel to Keith, who had been uncharacteristically silent. Not that he dug into Hunk as much as Lance and Pidge did, but he usually offered some input, even if it was just a grunt of disgust. Lance flipped over his system to Blue's private comm channel and drew up alongside the Red Lion, who he was flying in loose formation with anyway. "You okay, bud? You're awfully quiet."

"Yeah, I'm good," Keith said. His reply was curt and to the point, which wasn't entirely out of line for him when they were flying into a potential threat. After a moment though, there was a sigh through the open line and Keith's voice sounded more open. "Thanks for checking on me, Lance."

"No problemo, my man," Lance flipped back to the main comm line in time to hear Shiro say, with intense exasperation, "Matt."

"What?" Matt sounded like he was playing intentionally innocent.

Dammit, sounded like he missed something potentially hilarious. Lance made a mental note to ask Matt later what he had said, as Coran spoke up. "It appears that the Galra cruiser has warped out of system."

There was a brief moment of stunned, surprised silence, and then Hunk said with total and legitimate enthusiasm, "yay!"

"Okay..." Keith said. "That's really weird. Why would they hang out at the edge of the system, not engage, and then bolt?"

"They probably got a read on their sensors for all five Lions," Pidge said. "Maybe they left some snooping satellites or something, we should totally make a pass through the planetisimals just to be on the safe side." Pidge sounded far too enthused about flying through what amounted to a larger, slower asteroid field so she definitely had some form of ulterior motive. Lance wasn't going to lose sleep over what that could be, though, because there was honestly no telling.