The Purple Paladin

Chapter Eleven : Our Next Mission

Pidge's hands fly over the machine as she scrolls through Sendak's memories and tries to find anything useful. "Somewhere in Sendak's memories, we should be able to find the inside information that gives us the key to take down Zarkon," Allura says watching over Pidge's shoulder.

"I don't think your father would approve of searching through an enemy's memories," says Coran.

"I know," Allura says sadly, "But we have to do anything we can to beat Zarkon."

"Once we learn all his weaknesses, we can drive up to his front door and challenge him to a fight. Winner gets the universe," says Lance confidently.

I roll my eyes, "Lance we aren't strong enough yet. What you've seen is only a taste of what the Galra can do."

Lance glares at me but I ignore him and turn back to the task at hand. "Anything good, Pidge?" Shiro asks.

Pidge looks up, "Due to what happened we were only able to salvage bits and pieces."

"We need something to work with. Right now, we don't even have a decent map of the empire," Keith says, crossing his arms with a sigh.

I place a hand on his shoulder, "Don't worry we'll figure it out."

He gives me a questioning look of doubt but then Lance opens his mouth, "Who needs a map? After 10,000 years of conquering, I could probably fire my bayard at any random point in space and hit a Galra ship."

I glare at him, "It would be a strategic advantage."

Shiro nods, "If we could find troop locations or supply route, small targets we could hit and run. Then we could start to free planets one by one."

"Boring! I want a big kaboom," Lance says.

Now it's Shiro's turn to glare at the blue paladin, "Zarkon's been building his empire for 10,000 years. We're not going to tear it down overnight with seven inexperienced pilots and one support ship that's 10,000 years old. Hitting him where he lives would be a huge mistake."

"Okay, I've cross-referenced Sendak's memories with the info I got from the downed ship on Arus. Most of it was a garbled mess but one thing kept repeating, something called a Universal Station," Pidge interrupts.

"Universal Station? Like the kind of station that controls the entire universe?" Hunk asks, moving in front of Pidge to see the screen himself.

Pidge pushes his head out of her way with an annoyed look, "Well we are translating it from Galra so it could also be Galactic Hub."

"Or Space Base," this makes everyone glare at Lance. "What?" he asks.

"Dude, just keep quiet for now. You're not helping," Alec suggests in a low, highly annoyed voice.

Coran walks over to the holographic map and starts plugging in the coordinates that had accompanied the name on the screen, "I'm pulling up the location of your Universal Hub Station Base on our screens now." I facepalm and shake my head at the fact that had decided to just combine the names we had thought of, including Lance's

An image of what looked like three planets appeared. "Uh... where is it?" I ask.

"I don't know. Our long-range sensors are unable to find anything at these coordinates," Coran replies, double checking the data.

"Maybe he remembered it wrong," Keith suggests.

"Or maybe we just stumbled upon a top-secret base in Sendak's memories," Pidge says, her eyes shining in excitement.

"Only one way to find out. Let's go take a look," Allura says.

We head to the main control room and Allura sets the course. Coran turns to us, "This trip is going to take several hours so I suggest you guys rest up."