There, nestled against my pulse

Chapter 11

"The minute everything is resolved," Pidge says, "I am redesigning these shuttles for better maneuverability."

"Not if I beat you to it," Hunk grunts. "It shouldn't be this hard to navigate through these asteroids, what the hell."

Pidge snaps her fingers. "Navigation! I'll recode that, then. I can't believe the system is so spotty. It couldn't even identify that stupid rock that messed up our starboard engine."

"I assure you, this shuttle is the height of Altean technology," Coran informs them over comms.

"Yeah. Ten thousand years ago, maybe," Shiro scoffs. He pilots the shuttle past another cluster of asteroids. "I never thought I'd say this, but advanced alien tech is such a letdown."

"I miss the time when you were all starstruck in the face of our superior systems," Coran grumbles.

"Remind me again why we didn't take our lions," Hunk says. "Because we should've taken our lions; now those beauties are advanced. I still don't understand how Alfor could make five of those, all with different customizations and somehow make them sentient, but fail so completely with simple shuttles."

"Hey, that's my dead father you're talking about," Allura says, voice going static-y as the shuttle pulls hard to port. She sighs, exasperated. "But he was known to be rather scatterbrained at times. I do wish he had thought over the designs more thoroughly. I dislike sitting here uselessly while Keith and Lance are battling a robeast on their own."

"We're almost there, Princess," says Shiro, low, as the shuttle squeezes past two gigantic asteroids, hull skimming against the rock. "And the moment we dock, you'll open a wormhole and we'll fly down there and rip that robeast into pieces."

"Wow. If that wasn't such a big mood, I'd totally be terrified of you," Pidge says. "Any updates on the situation, Princess?"

"Only some general observations Ryner's made through her feeds," Allura replies. "This shapeshifting business is worrying. She reported that the robeast switches back to the Olkari child form every time Keith or Lance go in for a killing blow, disrupting their focus. And the scale-like armor of the beast renders most of their attacks ineffective."

Shiro frowns. "How much damage has Lance and Keith taken?"

"They've been thrown around some—Keith's using his left arm less and less; his rash might be acting up—but they have managed to avoid any life-threatening injuries so far. The beast's main weapons are its claws; it seems well-versed in hand-to-hand combat. And although it has the armor, it strives to dodge, as if the beast is used to a more vulnerable form." Allura pauses. "Yet more proof that the beast's...composition most likely involved a member of an intelligent species."

That blackens everyone's mood further. It's one thing to join two alien animals to form a weird lizard robeast, but experimentation and modification on people is another matter.

Shiro grinds his teeth, Galra hand flexing on the controls.

"Is it just me or is the robeast going easy on them?" Hunk asks. "Not that I don't appreciate that our friends are still alive, but shouldn't these things be super destructive? Ryner said it hasn't done much but set off a smoke bomb and bust through some walls."

"You think its gearing up for something big?" Pidge swivels in her seat to share a look with him. "Ryner mentioned that thing in its chest. You don't think—?"

Hunk's mouth goes thin. "Why bother going out of your way to create a mess, when something else will do it better, bigger, and deadlier than you?"

A chilling silence falls over them.