Chapter Five
Romelle paced the
length of her office, her hands clasped behind her back. She’d received the reports about the various
pods now spread out all across Alliance space and a knot had formed in her gut,
tightening by the second. The attack on
the transports had only been an introduction and she knew, just like they all
did, that they were about to face some serious trouble. The fact that these pods could be delivered
without any indication of how and who was enough cause for alarm. Though they were all being watched by a
number of fighter squadrons from both the home planets and IAF, Romelle had a
feeling that they would not make much of a dent in whatever would emerge from
those pods.
Her communicator
had been beeping relentlessly for the past hour and she had turned it off for a
few minutes peace. Her electronic
mailbox was full of messages from concerned Arusians wondering what the Senate
was doing about this impending danger.
The telescreen was tuned to ANN but it was on mute. Romelle did not want to have to hear more
reports about what could possibly be in the pods—or the inevitable questions
about whether or not the Voltron Force was going to come together again to save
the universe. She knew that the Lions
were inactive for reasons that only they were aware of and she had to stop
herself several times from calling Allura and asking her what was to be
done. She was sure her cousin had enough
on her mind as it was.
Her door chimed and
she thought for a moment about not answering it.
“Come in,” she
sighed, going to sit behind her desk.
But she stopped
when she saw who was visiting. Instead,
she went to her two visitors, enveloping them in tight hugs.
“Take it easy,
Mom,” Jordan Van Voorst gasped as her mother tried to squeeze the life out of
her. “We just wanted to see if you were
holding up okay.”
“I am,” Romelle
answered. “What are you two doing
here? Shouldn’t you be in class?”
Jordan’s twin
Christian, or more familiarly Ian, grinned.
“It’s 19h00. Classes are long
over.”
“Have you eaten?”
Jordan asked, worriedly. “You look too
thin these days.”
Romelle smiled at
her, running a hand down the smooth dark blonde hair exactly like her own. “Shouldn’t I be the one mothering you?”
“Ian always makes
sure I have plenty to eat,” Jordan said easily.
“Let’s go home. I’m sure Dad’s
kept dinner warm for you.”
“I doubt it. He’s a little busy these days.”
“I suppose his
advice is needed, retired or not,” Ian said.
“He wasn’t wrong when he said the IAF would never stop hounding him even
though he was no longer the big guy on top.
Anyway, you need to get out of this cell before your hair starts falling
out. Believe me, the problem will still
be here tomorrow.”
Romelle gave her
son a wry look. Leave it to the son of
the admiral who led the IAF active forces for nearly ten years to reduce it to
‘the big guy on top’. The description
would amuse Sven to no end.
Letting the twins
usher her out the door and into a waiting groundcar, Romelle suddenly realized
how tired she was. She fell asleep as
soon as she sat down and Jordan shook her gently when they reached the official
residence of the Senator from Arus.
Groggily, she allowed them to lead her into the house and settled her
into a seat at the kitchen table. Ian
managed to put together a meal with what was left in the refrigerator and
Jordan took a seat next to her, all the better to interrogate her about the
attack and the pods.
“I talked to Alana
yesterday but she wasn’t able to tell me too much about what they’re doing over
there,” Jordan said. “What has Aunt
Allura said to you?”
Unlike her cousin,
Romelle kept her children out of the loop and disliked discussing official
business with them. They were always
curious but she was afraid one of what her political enemies would do to them
if they knew she shared her thoughts with them.
She heard learned the hard way to keep her cards close to her chest,
even if it involved keeping some things from the people she loved most in the
universe. Sven was her one confidant and
even then, there were some issues she abstained from speaking to him
about.
“They’ve got
fighters by the pod and they’re just going through level three security
measures to make sure Arus is well protected from whatever comes out of that
thing.”
“I heard that on
ANN this morning,” Ian pointed out.
“Tell us something we don’t know, Mom.”
“Uncle Lance and
Jack are…”
“Playing spy for
Uncle Keith,” Jordan said. “Alana told
me that one.”
“Was the connection
secure?”
“Isn’t it
always? She’s a princess.”
“They’ve got the
pod count up to thirty since six o’clock tonight,” Romelle sighed, rubbing her
eyes. “I think maybe ANN knows even more
than I do.”
“What are you
thinking?” Jordan asked quietly. “If Ian
and I are sent out there in a couple months after graduation, we should know
these things beforehand.”
Fear was like a
vise around Romelle’s heart. Jordan was
right. She and her brother were in their
last year at the Academy and graduation was only three months away. Romelle did not have enough strings to pull
to get them out of being deployed and even if she did, they would never let her
do it. Sven could be called back and she
had as much control over him as she did over the twins.
“It’ll be alright,
Mom,” Jordan added, holding her mother’s hand as she saw how pale Romelle
got. “I didn’t mean to frighten you.”
“I know, but you’re
right. As cadets, you should be informed
about what is happening out there,” Romelle said. “It doesn’t look good for the IAF and various
planetary forces that these unknowns were able to deposit these pods without
their knowledge. It tells us that they
have advanced stealth capabilities that we cannot track and that is more
dangerous than the firepower they showed us they had when they attacked those
transports.”
“Are you sure the same
group is doing this?” Ian questioned.
“It’s possible that there are two.”
“Possible but I
don’t think so. The transports was like
an introduction to a larger danger.
They’re showing us what they can do, instilling fear in the citizens of
the Alliance planets so that when the time comes for them to show their faces,
they’ll have one half the battle just because there will be leaders who will
cower to them.”
Ian brought the
food and they ate in tense silence.
“Is Aunt Allura
going to bring Voltron out?” Ian finally asked.
“I don’t know,”
Romelle said honestly.
The front door
opened then and Sven walked in, looking as tired as Romelle felt. He smiled when he saw the twins home and
immediately took a seat next to his son.
He was as handsome as ever, if not more, with the gray at his temples
and lines that only added gravitas to his chiseled features. He and Romelle made an attractive couple when
they were photographed in the society pages and when the twins were included,
they made an attractive family. That, of
course, lead to endless teasing from their extended family and friends, and
Romelle missed them now as they were faced with a new danger.
“This is a nice
surprise,” he said, patting Ian’s shoulder.
“What are you two doing home?”
“We thought you two
could use the company,” Jordan said.
“No, really,” Sven
said with a laugh.
Jordan and Ian
looked at each other and Romelle realized that they did have something up their
sleeve.
“I want to go to
Arus,” Jordan said.
“Why?” Sven asked.
“If Aunt Allura and
Uncle Keith decide to roll out the Lions, I want to pilot one of them,” she
said. “Ian and I decided I should be the
one to go since I don’t get sick when I’m in a cockpit.”
“What about the
Academy?” Romelle inquired, but she had a feeling that Jordan had all the bases
covered.
“I talked to the
Dean and he said that I could have graduated a semester early because of all
the credits I have. I can leave whenever
I want basically.”
Romelle wanted to reach
out and hold on to her daughter, knowing that this decision was going to be the
start of something that she thought had ended long ago. She was a realist above all else and she knew
that Voltron would be needed, and soon.
She looked at Jordan, at the earnest navy blue eyes, and wished she had
not raised such an honorable young woman.
“I’ll speak to your
Aunt,” Romelle said, reaching out and taking Sven’s hand. “Let’s see what she has to say before you
pack your bags.”
Jack did not know
how he managed to get one foot in front of the other long enough to propel his
exhausted body into bed. He had gotten a
little over three hours sleep the night before and he had been up since six
earlier in the day. He and his father
had visited two bases since Metark and the older man did not seem to be feeling
the same affects as his son. Lance was
as alert as the first day they had set off on this job when the base commander
took them around the much larger and more advanced Oceanus Base on the shores
of the Great Ocean.
“This one wasn’t
too hard,” Lance said, strolling into Jack’s room and ignoring the fact that
the Lieutenant was half asleep.
“No, not at all,”
Jack muttered, burying his face in his pillow.
“Dad, if you don’t mind…”
“I just thought you
would want to hear this message I just got from Keith. They’re going to be test flying Voltron
tonight.”
Jack’s eyes flew
open and he shot up. “What?”
Lance sat on the
edge of the bed, resting his chin in a cupped hand. “The situation has gotten increasingly
critical with the appearance of these pods.
The one by Arus is too close for comfort and they’ve decided to see if
the Lions are up for it.”
Jack’s forehead
crinkled “What do you mean up for it?”
“Let’s just say, we
never really flew the Lions. They flew
us.”
Jack had no idea
what that meant. “Are we going back
then?”
“No, they want us
to finish up so we’ve got another two weeks before we get back to the castle,
but if they need us, they’ll call.”
“Don’t they need
you to fly the Red?”
Lance glanced at
him. “If they do, they’ll call.”
He got up and went
back to his room. Jack laid back down
but his exhaustion was nothing but a memory.
All he could think was that Bethie was finally going to get her wish to see
the robot Lions fly and he was sure she was doing her best to get a key for
herself. One of the main reasons she
wanted to learn how to fly in the first place was to fly the Black Lion, and he
wished that he could be there now see her reaction when she was finally in the
hot seat.
