Stardust (A Voltron Fanfic)

I Hate Surprises

Word Count: 3,057

Yikes, I'm sorry guys, this one's a bit...... long.

...

My fists tightened over Red's controls as I narrowly almost collided with another random space rock.

Why were there even rocks in space?!

"Take it easy, Acira." Shiro's voice came over the comm.

I ground my teeth together. "Easy for you to say," I snapped, "you're the only educated pilot here."

"Hey, I'm here too ya know." Lance's voice whined in my ear.

"Yeah right," I said, thinking back to what Pidge had said Lance was before Keith had been booted out of the Garrisons, "cargo pilot."

Lance didn't say anything, just a small huff coming from his end of the line.

After Allura had cooled down from the recent turn of events, we were regathered together on the bridge, being told to investigate Faltris, it was, of course, still the main priority. Allura's reasoning for letting us fly the rest of our way to the planet was that the red paladin "needed practice". Of course, I did, I had never even sat down in a pilot's chair until then, I didn't know anything about flying.

Using that simple fact as Allura's main point, we were now blasting through space toward the big, green planet that was quickly growing in sight as we approached.

Of course, choosing me and even replacing Keith in the first place might've not been the best idea.

I couldn't help but hold back a scream of frustration as I collided with Hunk, again. "Hunk, I'm so sorry."

"It's fine," Hunk's voice came from the earpiece, but it sounded like the poor guy was about to lose his lunch from being jostled around so much in the past five minutes alone.

Seriously, couldn't this thing just go in a straight line?

My gloves tightened even tighter over the controls.

When we were told to suit up, I could tell that Allura had wanted me to get into the red paladin's armor, there were suits designed for both men and women but I felt uncomfortable taking over Keith's spot so suddenly, so I stuck with the silver suit that I had been given earlier.

If he wasn't dead, then he wasn't replaced. Me being the red paladin wasn't permanent. It was all temporary.

"Alright, team, take it steady," Shiro said, we were getting close enough now to see the trees and land closer in detail, and there wasn't really any clear place to land.

"Don't these people have, like, fields or something? Courtyards? Anything?" Lance asked.

"Well, since they're avians, they don't really need the ground, they could live up in mountains or something," I said thoughtfully.

There was some more silence, most likely everyone was raking their eyes over the landscape, full of mountains and lush valleys, a temple top would pop out of the underbrush of trees occasionally, their roofs caved in, and ivy snaking up from the floor but other than that it was a deathly silent.

"Where're all the people?" Shiro said, his voice quiet.

"Shiro. I- I was doing some research on Faltris before we got here and, I think the species has been extinct for some time." Pidge said quietly but it was still audible to the rest of the team.

Silence rang out from Shiro's end of the comm.

"Let's find somewhere to land and take a look around."