Cori's eye twitched in annoyance as Lance purposefully jostled the cabin.
“Ugh… Lance, can you keep this thing straight?” Hunk asked, looking queasy.
“Relax, Hunk. I’m just getting a feel for the stick.” Lance said coolly. "I mean- it’s not like I did this.”
The simulator shook again, and Cori looked up to give Lance an indignant glare.
"Or this!" Lance said gleefully, twisting the simulated ship again. Hunk was beginning to look like he was going to puke.
"Stop tilting the bridge, or I’ll tilt you." Cori snapped.
"Okay…" Hunk groaned. "Unless you want to wipe beef stroganoff out of all the nooks and crannies in this thing, you better KNOCK IT OFF, MAN."
"We've Picked up a distress beacon!" Pidge called from his seat. He was the team's communications specialist.
"Alright. Focus, team! Pidge, track those coordinates. Lance, try not to crash this thing for the fiftieth time." Cori instructed.
"Copy" Pidge affirmed.
The simulator started rumbling again with alarms blaring. Cori shot daggers at Lance.
"Knock it off, Lance. Please!" Hunk begged, looking more ill by the second.
"Oh, this one is on you buddy. We have a hydraulic stabilizer out." Lance said, glancing back at Hunk.
Hunk gulped, and Cori turned to him.
"Well, what are you waiting for? Fix it, mechanic." Cori snapped, hurriedly typing things on her holographic monitor, trying to determine a fit flight path for the ship.
"I lost contact. The shaking is interfering with our sensors!" Pidge said, beginning to panic.
Cori groaned in frustration, as the thrown-off sensors were unable to determine a suitable path. She tried to run diagnostics, but that wasn’t working either.
“Good luck flying, Lance. Without the sensors, you're going to need to eyeball a path.”
"Come on, Hunk!" Lance exclaimed.
"It's not responding. Uhg…" Hunk sighed, unbuckling and getting out of his seat to fiddle with the wiring.
“Nevermind, fellas. Preparing for approach on visual.” Lance said as if nothing was wrong.
"I don’t think that’s advisable with our current mechanical, Sensory, and… gastrointestinal issues.” Pidge chimed in.
“Agreed.” Hunk nodded, looking worse for wear.
“Stop worrying. This baby can take it. Cantcha, champ.” Lance said, patting the ship emulator.
As if in response to him, the ship shook fiercely.
“Ah- see? She was- she was nodding,” he said, looking nervous as he scrambled for words. “Pidge, yield to them and let them know their ride is here.”
“No, Lance. Land this thing immediately.” Cori hissed. “We can’t continue the mission like this.”
Lance just ignored her.
Pidge stood up and took the comm off of the wall.
“Attention lunar vesse-wHAA-” Pidge grunted after being flung to the floor.
“Pidge, get back up and buckle in. Hunk?” Cori asked
"I ’m try-ah no-” Hunk’s face went practically green, and Cori had to look away and cover her nose as he puked.
“There goes fixing the shaking… Lance! Try to keep this piece of junk in the air if you're going to be so stubborn.”
“Attention lunar vessel. This is galaxy garrison rescue craft 1victor63tango. Coming in for landing and extraction. Against crew recommendations.” Pidge reported, shooting Lance a glare.
“No time for your mutinous comments now, Pidge. They’re going under, and we’re going in.” Lance insisted, making Cori facepalm.
“Look out for that overhang!” Pidge exclaimed.
“No worries. You know what they called me during my first year of flight school? They called me the-” Lance was cut off as Cori leaped from her seat and seized the ship controls, spinning the ship vertically to avoid the arch, but apparently not fast enough.
All of the crewmates flinched as the ship lost a wing, and Cori held a deadpan expression on her face as the simulation ended.
“Nice work, doofus,” Cori said blandly at Lance, as all four cadets left the simulator.
~~~
Cori stared at the wall as Commander Iverson eyed the quartet of students with judgment in his eyes, and she really fought with herself to stay calm, and not look at Iverson defiantly.
“Now let’s see if we can’t use this complete failure as a lesson for the rest of you students. Can anyone point out the mistakes these four so-called ‘cadets’ made in the simulator?” Commander Iverson said stiffly, standing with his hands behind his back.
“The engineer puked in the main gear box.” a boy in the back said.
"Yes." Commander Iverson agreed. "As everyone knows, vomit is not an approved lubricant for engine systems,” he said sharply, making Cori wince on Hunk’s behalf. “What else?"
"The comms spec removed his safety harness." a girl added.
"The pilot crashed." said a girl in the back as well.
“The operations manager seized ship controls instead of running diagnostics on failing systems.” A boy by the name of Griffin scorned.
"Correct! And worst of all, the whole job, they're arguing with each other! heck, if you're going to be this bad individually, you may as well be able to work as a team!" Commander Iverson chastised.
"The galaxy garrison exists to turn young cadets like you, into the next generation of elite astro explorers. but these kinds of mistakes are exactly what cost the lives of the men on the Kerberos mission!"
"That's not true, sir." Pidge immediately interjected, which was.. odd. Why had he interjected?
"What did you say?!" Commander Iverson demanded.
"Sorry, sir. I-I think he may have hit his head when he fell out of his chair, but point taken." Lance said, quickly covering Pidge's mouth.
"I hope I don't need to remind you that the only reason you're here is because one of the best pilots in your class had a discipline issue, and flunked out. don't follow in his footsteps." Commander Iverson said intimidatingly, towering over Lance.
wow, harsh... but deserved.
Iverson leaned over to Cori, and she quickly saluted.
“Very good job trying to follow protocol, Mrs. Hikaru.”
"Next!" The commander called at the group after Lance's team, and three of the four teammates just looked down at their feet in shame as they walked back to their spots for the rest of the groups to finish.
Cori folded her arms and watched the monitor as the four cadets inside the simulator worked in tandem.
She jolted as somebody elbowed her in the ribs, and she glanced over to see Veronica, one of her old teammates and Lance’s older sister.
“Good job trying to keep the squareship in the air. Really makes me wonder again why you decided to become an operations manager, Cori. you were the best third-year pilot.”
Cori wrinkled her nose. Well... there was a reason she downplayed her piloting abilities, and decided to become just a humble operations manager. But nobody needed to know that.
~~~
Cori was just finishing up complaining about Lance’s incompetence to Veronica when she was cut off by Commander Iverson calling lights out in five minutes. She grumbled under her breath and was about to go into her dorm and put back on her noise-muffling headphones when she heard Lance and Hunk muttering around the bend, just as the hallway lights cut out.
Why are they walking around here? Probably up to something...they don’t like us being outdoors at night here.
Cori walked around the corner and slammed one hand on the wall, giving Lance and Hunk a deadpan stare to stop them in their tracks. She was not in the mood for this.
"What are you doing out here at this hour? Going to the food courts again?" she said boldly. "You know, commander Iverson is going to have a fit if he sees you two out and about."
Lance looked like he nearly jumped out of his own skin in fright, and Cori just looked on, board.
"I could ask you the same question. besides... we're just going to get Pidge and go out, hit the town... wanna come?" Lance said, waggling his eyebrows. Cori just gave him a deadpan stare, then sighed deeply.
"Fine. you'll get in less trouble if you have a third year with you."
Hunk and Lance hid inside of a couple of garbage cans, while Cori hid behind hers.
Just as she settled down against the wall, an officer walked past, muttering into a walkie-talkie that the hallway was all clear.
She got up from behind the garbage can when the coast was clear, and Lance all but jumped out of his while Hunk struggled and almost fell over.
"Ya good, Hunk?" She whispered. Couldn’t have anyone getting caught if he was injured...
"I 'm fine." He nodded, climbing the rest of the way out of the trashcan.
Cori was just about to walk around the bend when she was suddenly yanked back by Lance, and she flinched when her hair parted enough momentarily to have a clear view of her ears.
She quickly combed her hair back over her ears with her fingers, glaring at Lance. However, he hadn’t seen them, he was glancing down the hallway. She would have totally put her headphones back on, but they were sneaking around, and she needed to hear as well as possible.
She inched back over to the bend, and followed his gaze to see Pidge leaving his room with a backpack that looked packed to the brim.
"Where is he going?" Lance asked suspiciously.
"Is it any of our business?" Cori shot back.
"Well, Commander Iverson wants us to 'bond as a team.' So yes, it is my business. C'mon." Lance said, sneaking along the hallway.
Cori grumbled under her breath, but she and Hunk followed Lance to the roof, where they found Pidge sitting down in front of a PC, chilling, with headphones.
Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.
Lance stalked along the garrison's roof, eventually stopping next to Pidge, and lifting one of his headphones.
"Come up here to rock out?" Lance asked, in Pidge's ear, making the boy bolt back in fright.
"Argh- oh. Lance, Hunk. no, um... just looking at the stars." Pidge said, giving Cori a suspiciously nervous smile.
"It's beautiful at night," Cori said with a nod. Agreeing with his reasoning.
"I guess," Pidge said, glancing back at his PC, and not at the stars, which destroyed his entire argument. He was probably lying then.
Cori quirked an eyebrow.
"looking at the stars... with all this tech?" she asked curiously, making Pidge start to fidget.
"She has a point. This doesn't look like garrison tech either." Lance commented
"I built it." Pidge declared, sticking his chin out a little with pride. Cori was greatly impressed.
"you built all this?" Hunk asked, sounding amazed as he tried to poke it.
Pidge immediately smacked Hunk's hand away without missing a beat, nodding."With this thing, I can scan all the way to the edge of the solar system."
"That right? All the way to Kerberos?" Lance prodded, and Pidge looked away with a resigned look.
"You go ballistic every time the instructors bring it up. What's your deal?" Lance asked, Pidge simply shrugged, still not meeting anyones eyes.
"Second warning, Hunk." Pidge snapped, as Hunk tried to touch the antenna.
"Look, Pidge. if we're going to bond as a team-"
"Lance, leave him alone.” Cori muttered.
Pidge hesitated and then gave in.
"The world as you know it is… about to change. The Kerberos mission wasn't lost because of some malfunction or crew mistake.-" Pidge cut off as he saw Hunk reaching over to poke his PC again.
"stop touching my equipment!" Pidge finally yelled —really Cori wouldn’t have blamed him if he’d done so earlier)— and Hunk dejectedly stopped.
"...so I've been scanning the system..." Pidge trailed off, clearly hesitating. "And picking up alien radio chatter." He finished.
Cori narrowed her eyes slightly, and she felt her ears twitch at the word, hidden under her brown hair, which was fading to blonde.
"Whoa-what? aliens?!" Hunk asked nervously.
"OK, so you're insane. Got it." Lance concluded.
Cori said nothing.
"I'm serious! They keep repeating one word: "Voltron". And tonight, it's going crazier than I have ever heard it."
Voltron? As in-
"How crazy?" Lance asked, still looking like he needed convincing.
Cori opened her mouth to say something, but an alarm suddenly started blaring out of nowhere.
Commander Iverson's voice started speaking over the speaker.
"Attention, students. This is not a drill. We are on lockdown! Security situation Zulu Niner. Repeat: All students are to remain in barracks until further notice."
Cori flinched as a roaring sound started coming from the… atmosphere? She turned around quickly to see a fiery object appearing in the sky.
She slid her headphones on to muffle the deafening noise, because it was quickly becoming too much to bear.
Hunk looked up at her sudden movements and his eyes found the object easily.
"Is that a meteor?! ... A very, very big... meteor?" Hunk asked, starting to panic.
Pidge grabbed a pair of binoculars from the ground and held them up to the sky where everyone was looking now.
"It's a ship!" He said, sounding more appalled than afraid.
Cori snatched the binoculars from Pidge's hands and narrowed her eyes at the oncoming UFO.
"Is that...a Galra escape pod?" She muttered, under her breath. “Why would it be here though?” No one really heard her, too focused on the oncoming spacecraft.
Lance, in turn, snatched the binoculars out of HER hands.
"Holy crow! I can't believe what I'm seeing! That's not one of ours!" His exclamation was too close to Cori's ear.
"No. It's one of theirs." Pidge breathed, a concerning amount of amazement leaking from his voice.
"So wait. There really are aliens out there?!" Hunk squeaked out.
"What do you think?" Cori snapped, frowning as the ship crashed in the distance. Several of the garrison's land rovers drove out to investigate.
"We've gotta see that ship!" Pidge was far too excited for his own good.
Cori shrugged and folded her arms, following as Lance and Pidge made their way from the roof.
Except, she noticed Hunk wasn't moving.
"C'mon, Hunk! It'll be fun!" She called back at him.
He reluctantly got up and went after the others, muttering something about team-building exercises.
A little while later, the team sat on a cliff overlooking the crash site. Cori held the binoculars, spying on a dome the garrison had set up over the area.
"They must be packing up the UFO to be taken back to base," She observed.
Lance grabbed the binoculars from her hands again, looking through them and watching the dome. "The whole place is crawling with guards!" Lance complained. "We'll never get past them to get a look!"
"Aw, man. Yeah, we—yeah I guess there's nothing to do but head back to the barracks, right?" Hunk tried to get up and leave, but Cori grabbed the collar of his shirt, not looking up from Pidge's PC, or saying anything.
"Wait. They set up a camera in there and I grabbed its feed. Look!" Pidge called, and all four pairs of eyes focused on the screen.
The feed showed a man strapped to the table, dressed in a tattered plumb colored shirt, along with a worn jumpsuit. he... didn't LOOK alien. In fact, he looked pretty human. Although appearances can be deceiving, she knew that firsthand.
“Hey! What are you doing?” the man grunted, glaring at the med techs surrounding him.
“Calm down, Shiro. We just need to keep you quarantined until we run some tests on you.” One of the doctors calmly explained while Shiro struggled in the straps.
“You have to listen to me! They destroy worlds! Aliens are coming!” he insisted.
“Hey…” Cori whispered. "Isn't that... Takashi Shirogane? The pilot of the Kerberos mission?”
"Shiro? That guy's my hero!" Lance exclaimed, FAR too loudly.
"Guess he's not dead in space after all," Hunk said, surprised.
"But Where's the rest of the crew?" Pidge said, sounding slightly distraught.
"Do you know how long you've been gone?" One of the med-techs asked over the camera feed, drawing back Cori's attention.
"I don't know. Months? Years? Look, there's no time. Aliens are coming here for a weapon. They're probably on their way. They'll destroy us! We have to find Voltron!" Shiro begged.
"Voltron." Cori muttered. "This is getting freaky..."
"Sir, take a look at this. It appears his arm has been replaced with a cyborg prosthetic." A technician said to the Medtech who seemed to be in charge.
"Put him under until we know what that thing can do." the Medtech commanded.
"Don't, don't be me under! No! No, there's no time! Let me go!" Shiro struggled against his bounds.
“They didn’t ask about the rest of the crew,” Pidge whispered, so quietly that Cori had a hard time hearing it with her headphones on.
“The guy’s a legend and they aren’t even going to listen to him?” Lance asked, seeming a bit outraged.
“Sometimes people have a hard time accepting the truth, even if it’s right in front of them, spitting in their face. And sometimes, they just don’t accept the truth no matter what.” Cori muttered.
Pidge hesitated, before obtaining a new look of determination. “We have to get him out of there.”
“Uh- I hate to be the voice of reason here, always- but weren’t we watching on TV because there was no way to get past the guards?” Hunk nervously interjected.
The others just stared at him.
“All in favor of breaking in and saving Shiro, raise your hand,” Cori said, raising her own.
Lance and Pidge rose theirs as well.
“Alright, what’s the plan?” she asked
“Could we tunnel in?” Lance suggested.
“Maybe we could get some hazmat suits and sneak in like med techs,” Pidge said, nodding.
“Or, we dress up like cooks, head back to the dorms, sneak into the commissary, little late-night snack,” Hunk said, smiling.
“...no. What we need is a distraction,” Cori said thoughtfully.
As if on queue, Explosions suddenly erupted around the dome.
"Is that the aliens? Are- is that the aliens? Are they here? They got here so quick!” Hunk panicked.
“No. Those explosions were a distraction.” Cori muttered. Down below, she could see a figure with black hair and a red jacket, heading toward the dome-like building.
She needed to go now.
She instinctively felt in her pocket for her blaster, skidding down the slope of the hill the others were perched on. She had no idea why, but she needed to go.
Hunk yelped at her sudden departure, and soon he, Pidge, and Lance were on her heels, sprinting towards the building.
She twisted and dodged the guards with the grace of a well-trained fighter, and almost easily slipped inside the building.
Shiro lay on the table unconscious, but otherwise he seemed unharmed.
All the Medtechs and doctors were suddenly on the offensive, as the black-haired boy from before whom she now recognized as Keith Kogane, the best pilot in Lance’s class, burst into the room as well with a blade in one hand.
Working together on instinct, they both dispatched the enemies easily.
Keith sprinted to the side of the table to see who it was, and seemed fairly shocked, making quick work of the binds strapping Shiro to the table.
Cori and Keith draped Shiro’s arms over their shoulders and started helping him out.
“So who are you?” Keith questioned.
"I’m Cori Hikari. I’m a year above you. Keith Kogane, right?” She asked.
Keith seemed surprised for a minute before he grinned.
“Cori Hikari? As in, the best Pilot in her year, before she quit and became an operations manager last year?”
Cori wrinkled her nose. “Well, yeah.”
Their humble conversation was interrupted when Lance bolted up to Cori, taking Shiro's arm from her, even though she was clearly not struggling at all, and they were almost to the entrance by now.
"Who is this?" Keith asked Cori, and she immediately snorted.
"You don't recognize Lance? really? You were in the same class, and I was put on his team because you decided it was a good idea to wash out."
"Oh- were you an engineer?" Keith asked Lance.
"No, I'm a pilot! we were like rivals, you know? Lance and Keith, neck and neck." Lance boasted.
"Wait. I remember you." Keith said thoughtfully. "You're a cargo pilot."
“Well, not anymore. I'm fighter class now, thanks to you washing out." Lance said competitively. Keith was about to retort when Cori snapped her fingers in front of both their faces.
"Girls, girls. You're both pretty. Now shut up." She snapped. "Besides, I could leave you both in the dust when it comes to piloting, but competing isn't the objective right now. We need to get Shiro out of here before the garrison guys they sent to check on the bombed areas come back."
The team of three escorting Shiro simply exited the building when Hunk was suddenly yelling about the guys coming back, no doubt going to strike down their enemies.
"We gotta go!" Hunk called to the others, running off towards the vehicle Keith had come in on. Everybody piled on, and Cori helped load Shiro onto it.
"Is this thing going to fit all of us?" Pidge asked doubtfully.
"No!" Keith responded, but started it up anyway.
They started —with some difficulty— speeding away from the dome structure, although it was fairly clear that the land rovers were gaining on them.
"Can't this thing go any faster?" Lance complained. Cori elbowed him in the ribs.
"We could toss off some non-essential weight," Keith responded, eyes focused on the ground ahead.
Cori rolled her eyes at the joke while Lance looked around for something to throw off. "Okay, so that was an insult. I get it."
"Big man. lean left." Keith commanded Hunk.
Hunk obediently leaned left as instructed, and the hovercraft immediately dodged out of the way of two rovers, who crashed into each other. Cori and Pidge had to work together to keep Shiro's unconscious body from falling off.
"Big man. Lean right!" Keith called. Hunk leaned again, and the hovercraft twisted off the edge of a ravine, landing on the other side as the rovers tried to follow.
"Guys?" Hunk suddenly spoke up. "Is that a cliff up ahead?"
"Oh- no. NONONO," said Lance.
"Yep," smirked Keith.
"LESGOOOOO!" Cori screamed as Keith sent the hoverbike right over the edge of the cliff, forcing the vehicles above to stop. The wind rushed past Cori's face, and she grinned as the ground came rushing at them.