Chill (Klance Warmth series Book 2 of +4)

6: Frost on the Wing

"It's a good thing Pidge left the hangar door open," Coran said, closing the pod roof and prepping the vehicle for launch. "Although I do wonder what Pidge was planning to do with all this supplies."

"Yeah," Hunk muttered, eyeing the bag of snacks and thermoses of water. "I wonder."

"That's not important right now," the Altean said, taking control of the pod. "We need to start scanning for a Balmera."

"I thought the scanners on the pods weren't as powerful as the Castle's," Hunk said.

"They aren't," Coran said, starting the engine and taking off. "That's why we need to get out of the planet's atmosphere to start scanning. Our range is limited but hopefully, we can get a clear enough image of the nearby space to figure out where to start looking."

"Right."

Hunk buckled his seat belt and gripped the sides of his chair in preparation for a rough ride. He was surprised when the pod rose from the Castle's hangar floor and flew smoothly through the door. They only experienced turbulence when they started ascending through the planet's atmosphere. It was rough, but nowhere near as bad as flying with Pidge.

Hunk hardly felt sick at all. Okay, so he felt a little nauseous during the ascent through the atmosphere, but he was fine afterwards. Whatever the aliens used for their artificial gravity also helped ease the G-forces that would normally be pulling and pushing at his body. The forces were still there, but they were nowhere near as powerful.

In fact, now that he thought about it, he could move in the Yellow Lion's cockpit easier than he could in the Castle or on Earth. Actually, he could move in the pod easily too. He felt... lighter. Was it possible that the gravity the Alteans were used to wasn't as strong as Earth's?

Oh great. Now he wanted a scale to weigh himself. He knew he was on the heavy side, but maybe he was lighter now. That would be an interesting experience; not necessarily a bad one either. Maybe he could do a few experiments to see exactly how much more powerful the Earth's gravity was to what the Alteans were used to.

Who knows. Maybe he could even figure out if the atmosphere was thinner or thicker than Earth's. Although, if the Altean's gravity was weaker, it would be a safe bet to assume their atmosphere was thinner as well.

"Found one!" Coran crowed.

"Woah," Hunk gasped. "Already?"

Coran excitedly entered the coordinates for the Balmera into the pod's computer. "It's a fair distance, but nothing this pod can't handle," Coran said. "Hopefully, we can get there, get a crystal, and get back to Arus within a quintant."

"Um, is that realistic or optimistic?" Hunk asked hesitantly.

"Ridiculously optimistic," Coran said plainly.

"Oh." Hunk's hopes sank.

"But we have to be optimistic right now," the adviser said firmly, gripping the controls and pushing them forward. "We need to get back in time to help Lance."

Well, yeah, there was that.

"Luckily," Coran continued, pressing several buttons on the pod's dashboard, "Altean pods can use a slipstream."

"You mean like what the Galra use?" Hunk asked. "The warp drive or hyperdrive thing?"

"I'm not sure what those are," Coran said, looking at Hunk with a completely clueless expression. He flipped a switch and gripped the control yoke just as the pod's slipstream activated. "A slipstream essentially uses quintessence to create a fold in the fabric of space-time. This causes the point of origin and the destination to become closer than they actually are in normal space-time. That fold is what we call the 'slipstream.'"