Chapter Six
Lance
never thought he would be back underground, so deep underground that the air
was stale and it was almost wintry cold.
He folded his arms across his chest and leaned against the wall, his brown
eyes darting around as he tracked the soldiers who were stacking sandbags
against the walls and bringing in supplies.
Gwen directed them effortlessly, her strong voice bouncing off the metal
walls that protected them, and Archent was further
down the corridor, making sure that they had all the supplies they needed.
This
was not where Lance wanted to be, safe as it was. He wanted to be in the air or at least with a
gun in his hand, not down here, waiting.
But that was what Keith wanted and he did say he was the Royal
Stooge. His job went from being military
cleanup crew leader to just plain military leader. He hated leading and being responsible for
more than ten people, but that did not mean he was bad at it. All he had to do was remember why he was
doing it, and he forgot about complaining.
Somewhere,
in similar rooms a mile down, Link was doing her own leading. Communication was out of the question, but
Lance wanted to make sure she was alright.
Evacuating Voltronia was no small task and Link
had gone over the procedures more than a hundred times in her long tenure as
mayor, but if there was one thing they both knew, it was that nothing ever went
as expected. He only hoped that she
hadn’t shot anybody on their side yet.
He
straightened when a young private dropped a box of square-shaped grenades at
his feet. Lance winced though he knew
that the grenades were fairly safe and he helped the boy, who looked to be
about Jason’s age. He found a small
relief in the fact that his youngest son was far from this. That was one less person he had to worry
about.
“Why
do we still need these, sir?” the private asked. “Our blasters use batteries, not these
anymore.”
“As
far as I’m concerned, anything that can cause a lot of damage is a good thing,
obsolete or not.”
The
answer seemed to satisfy the private and he moved on. Gwen went to his side, her datapad clenched in both hands.
“Give
me the numbers,” he said.
“Keith
may have let his military falter, but the bases are solid,” Gwen told him, holding
out her datapad.
“We have a decent amount of weaponry.”
Lance
skimmed the figure. “Decent, but not
enough to mount an offensive…at least one that won’t end with us being
flattened within ten minutes.”
“Those
robots are worth at least two of us,” she said.
“Did you see them?”
Lance’s
eyes narrowed at the memory. “Yeah, I
did. That just means we’re gonna have to
get creative in order to get rid of them.
Did anyone manage to bring one down here?”
“I
think so. Archent
would know.”
“Finish
up here,” Lance said. “I’ll talk to
him.”
He
found Archent crouching by boxes marked MRE. The Major looked up at Lance.
“We
have enough here to last us three months,” he said.
“Good
and bad news,” Lance said. “Did you get
a Lotorian robot down here?”
“Yes. It’s in the med bay with Commodore
Nicholas. We didn’t know where else to
put it. We’ve also got some debris from
a Lotorian fighter.”
“Perfect.”
Archent fell into step beside him and they made their
way down the packed corridors to Pidge. They found him hovering over the exam bed,
his sleeves rolled up.
“What
do you have, Pidge?” Lance asked.
Pidge looked over his shoulder at Lance, his
glasses sliding down his nose.
“I
can’t even begin to tell you,” he said.
Lance
moved to his side and arched an eyebrow at the gutted robot lying on the
bed. It was a round, squat thing, but
had three rotating gun turrets that sat on top and sturdy looking legs on the
bottom. He peered down at it, trying to
make sense of the mess of wires that Pidge seemed to
understand. There was nothing about the
robot that was familiar to Lance and that made him nervous. New technology in the hands of their enemy
was the worst possible scenario.
Advanced was one thing, but completely new was another.
“What
the hell is this thing?” Lance muttered.
“I’ve
never seen a design like this before,” Pidge
said. “It’s genius really, but it’s not
a puzzle.”
“Good
thing because I think we’re in enough of a hole as it is. So you can make sense of it?”
Pidge blinked owlishly at him. “Oh yeah.
You look surprised.”
“It
looks…different. I’m no mechanical
genius but one look at this thing tells me it didn’t come off any Alliance
assembly line.”
“You’re
right there. In fact, it has parts that aren’t
from the Alliance at all. If I didn’t
know better, I would say it was Drule technology.”
“How
is that a surprise?” Archent spoke up.
Lance
circled the robot, his eyes steady on it.
“We absorbed Drule technology into our own
when Doom was defeated, but this…this isn’t like any Drule
tech I’ve ever seen.”
“I
think maybe if we had allowed Drule technology to go
forward without our influence, this is what it might have turned out to be,” Pidge said as his fingers nimbly followed a thick cable to
its root in the center of the robot.
“And I’ve got the power source.”
“I
don’t suppose it has any obvious weaknesses we can exploit.”
“From
what I can see, its energy source has shielding that would make Castle
Control…” Pidge broke off, faltering.
Lance
put a hand on his shoulder. Pidge gave him a grateful smile and pushed his glasses back
up his nose.
“Yet,
as strong as the shielding is, we can target the energy source easily because
of its output. It’s just a matter of
patiently breaking the shields down.”
“What
about the hull? They didn’t go down
easy,” Archent said.
“Same
stuff that’s covering the fighter,” Pidge said. “Laserfire just
slides off the surface with little damage.”
“But
there is damage. We just have to find
the right kind of laser that’ll destroy instead of damage,” Lance said. “Am I right?”
“Kinda, but I noticed that this kind of material probably
doesn’t stand up too well to old-fashioned explosives.”
Lance
frowned, not understanding. “How is that
possible if its laser repellent?”
Pidge held up a piece of the fighter hull for Lance
to see. It was thin, silver, and didn’t
look like much to Lance but he’d seen laserfire skim
its shiny surface.
“See,
it’s lightweight, makes for good aerodynamics, but it doesn’t have the
structural strength to stand up to extreme force,” Pidge
explained. “I should have realized that
when Jack flew the Black into that carrier.
It was too easy for completely destroy it. If it had been an IAF or an Arusian carrier, it would not have exploded as quickly as
the Lotorian carrier did.”
“That
seems too easy,” Archent said guardedly.
“Sure,
if you don’t consider the fact that they blink in and out of our sensor screens
and pack three times as more power than we do into each laser they fire.”
“I
see your point.”
“We
need one of their engines,” Lance said, rubbing his chin. “We need to find out how they can do that blinky crap.”
“Easier
said than done,” Archent said.
“Doesn’t
mean we can’t do it. Let me know when it
quiets down up there. I want scouts out
to get Pidge that engine. Is that all you’ve got, Pidge?”
“For
now. But I do need another pair of hands
and brain here, Lance,” Pidge said. “I can’t do this one on my own.”
“Too
bad Hunk is out of range. I’ll see what
I can do. Great job, Commodore.”
“Thanks…you
too, Colonel.” Pidge
grinned suddenly. “Hey, I outrank you.”
“Don’t
let that get to your head. I’m still
taller.”
Lance
started to leave, but Pidge put a hand on his arm.
“Have
you heard…?”
Lance’s
face tightened. “No, nothing yet. I’ll let you know as soon as I do.”
Pidge nodded, brown eyes angry. “If anything happens to Keith and Allura…”
“You’ll
have to get in line behind me for a go at them and I can promise you that there
won’t be much left when I’m done.”
Seeing
the dangerous glint in Lance’s eye, Pidge and Archent didn’t doubt that.
