(On the Hunt) Chapter 31

Pride: On the Hunt

Chapter 31

Up to Bats

Sven was in the rec room with the stuffed animals from Dradin again. He thoroughly enjoyed the ridiculous ambiance of the place, even if it hadn't been intended… he was deep into his latest book when the ambiance was rudely disrupted. An alarm on his datapad, something being relayed from the navigational console. Frowning, he reached for the datapad and checked the alert, and his blood went icy cold.

"Kufot…!"

Springing off the couch and dragging a multicolored unicorn halfway down the hall with him before shaking it free, he raced to the bridge and threw himself into his seat. "We need to get out of here, now!" His actual console was not sounding an alarm. It was beeping frantically, yes, but that was not an alarm. He'd have to fix that later. No time now.

"What is it?" Lance had barely gotten the question out when a thunderous impact rocked the Bolt, shaking the hull and rippling down his spine. "Fuck!" Yanking the controls back, he tried to evade, though he had no idea what he was evading.

"It's a hypermetric anomaly—" Sven was briefly cut off as he was thrown roughly against his harness. "—tear in hyperspace—we're hitting the outer shockwaves—" Another boom and he fell silent, focusing on the data his monitors were spitting out. It was a mess. Anything and everything surrounding such anomalies tended to be a mess.

Keith skidded onto the bridge just in time to hear the report, and fought down a momentary surge of panic. He knew all too well what a hypermetric anomaly could do. They'd all seen it with the Farantin; he'd seen it long before then, with the Vesuvius, when people had died on his watch. Not again, damn it. "Get us back to real space, now!"

"Working on it!" They couldn't leave hyperspace until the planar scanners finished their check. Even clipping the anomaly wouldn't be as damaging as, say, breaching out into the middle of a star. "Fifteen seconds."

Flynn raced into the engine bay, barely keeping his feet as the ship shuddered again. "Damage report!"

"Nothing yet, sir." Pidge knew the yet had been somewhat unprofessional, but given the situation he also felt it was accurate. "Hyperturbulence impacts only."

"Small favors," the chief muttered, taking the main console. He knew as well as the ninja that yet was the operative word. He had every confidence in their pilot and navigator, but anomalies tended to respond to skilled avoidance measures with unpredictable directional shifts. Because why wouldn't they?

"Got it!" The planar scanners flashed an all clear, and Lance immediately breached them out.

Planar scanners weren't infallible.

They'd been perfectly accurate, really, for what they were meant to detect… there was just that little issue of not being meant to detect small debris. Even large debris, really. Anything without an energy signature was beyond their capabilities, and that included the patch of wreckage the Bolt abruptly emerged into. Maybe someone else's navigator hadn't been quite as quick on the draw. Maybe it was a coincidence. Either way, they were suddenly being pelted with chunks of metal… with little hope of evasion, and the shields still working to redeploy.

"Well shit!" Lance managed to jerk them out of the path of a large radiator fin, but something else rocked the ship as he did so. "This is gonna be bumpy as fuck, strap in!"

"Mother of fuck…" Daniel had barely made it to the bridge after being flung from his bed by the anomaly, and was quickly wishing he'd stayed there. At least the bed was soft.

"Hunk, manual point defense." Flynn didn't expect that to do much, but it might help a little. "Vince, route full auxiliary power to the shields once they come up. Pidge, monitor damage."

There was plenty of damage to be monitored. Lance was doing his damndest to avoid the largest obstacles, but he could only even see so much. In the back of his mind he was aware they were in a star system, with plenty of light glinting off some sheets of metal, but others—boom—were shrouded in shadow. "Fuck…"

The Bolt's shields coming up really didn't help the visibility problem. Blinding blue light arced through the debris field as the shields attacked everything they touched, vaporizing smaller bits, scorching larger ones. He finally had to switch to flying only by the secondary sensors. Vislight was just too damn chaotic.

"Shields are almost entirely ineffective, sir," Pidge relayed as he watched the readouts.

Not surprising. "They'll be more entirely ineffective if they're down, leave them unless the bridge says otherwise."

Lance wasn't about to ask for the shields to go down. At least this way he didn't have to try to dodge dust.

A few more particularly vicious impacts rocked the Bolt, and suddenly they were free—more or less. There was about enough time for a long sigh of relief before the next issue presented itself. "McClain, get us stopped so we can see what we're dealing with."

"Yeah, I'm on it… oh fuck." Only one of the engines obeyed his commands as he attempted to decelerate. Escaping the debris had taken its toll. And as he fought to counteract what little of their speed he could, he felt another force tugging on the ship. Gravity. Goddamn. Yanking the controls he tried to bleed off some momentum, and it worked, but not enough.

Flynn loosened his grip on the bracing bar he'd been clinging to, looking around as the impacts stopped. "Are we clear of the field?"

"Yeah, uh, don't get too comfortable though. See that planet? We're gonna be crashing on it."

"…Cevete."

That about summed it up; as most of the bridge took in the report, Daniel turned to Lance and pointed accusingly. "I'd better not die!"

Snort. "You're not going to die, you think I can't crash land spectacularly fucking well? Just buckle up." He frowned as the gravitational pull increased. "Uh, that goes for everyone."

Most everyone had been buckled in already, but Sven for one tightened his straps and gripped the arms of his seat. This was going to be, well… better than hitting the anomaly would have been, hopefully, but that wasn't saying much.

Vince gulped as he scrambled into his own seat. He wasn't too confident in that at all.

At least they had a full picture of the damage right now. "Lieutenant, engines one and two are fully offline, thrust conversion chambers are damaged. Engine four is producing minimal thrust. Multiple punctures to the starboard wing, control surfaces compromised but leading edge intact."

Lance gritted his teeth. "Yeah, yeah, yeah…" An effective single-engine landing would've been trivial if he could count on an undamaged wing. Coming down with the compromised wing would have been very workable if he'd had full engine power. The combination of the two was going to suck, but… "I've still fucking got this!"

Blinking, Pidge actually took a physical step back from the comms; he hadn't doubted their pilot had it, he'd just thought he might want full information. In another situation he might have protested, but this didn't seem like the time. Instead he secured himself at his console, eyes narrowed as he watched the readings.

Strapping in himself, Flynn considered the report and came to a conclusion. "Vince, surge engine four, see if it clears any of the damage."

"Got it." Having a task, even a small one, gave the engineer a brief respite. There was a sharp roar from the engine as it surged, and its hum picked up a bit.

Nodding, Flynn gritted his teeth and braced. This was still going to be a hell of a mess. "Engine four up to about 50% efficiency. We've got you everything we can, flyboy. Make it happen."

They were almost into the atmosphere, and Lance tuned everything else out as he tried to focus on the landing. Wherever they were coming down had only a few wispy clouds, mercifully. He could see stretches of green—forests? Meadows? From here it was impossible to tell—interspersed with gray sand and dark hills.

What he sure as hell didn't see was anything resembling a flat surface. Fine then. Time to just focus on landing them right side up, that was probably going to take all he had anyway…

On one side of him, Sven was not exactly panicking, but he surely wasn't enjoying the experience. On the other side, Daniel was having a glorious epiphany: if he tried thinking of this as a roller coaster, it wasn't nearly so terrifying! Maybe ignoring the threat of death wasn't just fun when he was the one driving after all.

He laughed, which got him disbelieving looks from both Sven and Cam, but nobody was about to comment just now. Lance was trying to perform a miracle.

Atmosphere greeted them with a horrifying rattle along the hull that didn't seem to want to stop. The functional engines were just barely enough to counter the ship's pressing desire to roll, the damaged wing bleeding speed and control from him with every second that passed. Picking a landing site with any kind of precision was a lost cause, but he was at least able to point then in the direction of what looked more like softly rolling hills than a nearby boulder-strewn forest. It would be enough, it had to be.

With one final shriek from its engines, and a tricky asymmetrical release of the landing gear, the Bolt came down hard atop a hill. The brakes spit sparks as they slid down the slope and halfway up the next, the already damaged wing clipping a jutting rock formation… and they stopped.

It felt like there should have been silence. There was definitely none of that.

"Fucking made it happen!"

"Holy fuckin' fuzzmuffins."

"Salys sa kye…"

"Woooo! That was awesome!"

"…Are we alive?"

Flynn had unfastened his restraints nearly the moment they stopped moving; he was in full crisis mode, his focus narrowed to a knife's edge. His response to Vince's tentative question was perfectly businesslike. "If you have to ask, yes. Status?"

Vince wasn't ready for businesslike quite yet. "We crashed."

Pausing, Flynn remembered exactly where they were and who he was working with; a small grin found its way to his lips. "Right. Thank you." He calmed a little as he started to sort out the alarms he was hearing. Damage was extensive, of course—but no imminent danger of anything more.

Pidge rolled his eyes. "Previous damage report still applies, except engine four is slightly more functional. Armor and structural damage to undercarriage. Telescoping and minor hull breach on gear two. Mechka seems upset."

"We crashed!" Vince repeated indignantly, turning to glance over his own readouts. Nothing looked great.

"No. We performed a hard emergency landing."

"We crashed in one piece," Hunk translated as Vince gave Pidge a look.

Flynn sighed and shook his head. "Okay, wrenchlings? Can you not be the bridge brats, please?"

Vince turned the look on him for a moment. As if. Then, looking down to release his own restraints, he blinked as a realization hit him. "Oh hey… no sparkage?"

That got another smile from the chief engineer. "That seems like progress." Off to the side, Hunk applauded as he clambered from his own seat.

Blushing, Vince tried to sort out what he could learn from that. It seemed like he did okay in the really high octane situations, the ones where he didn't even have time to overthink… though he really felt he didn't need that kind of stress in his life too often.

Exhaling slowly—it might have been the first time he'd breathed since encountering the anomaly—Keith looked around the bridge, and then at the comms. "Alright, let's figure out what we have to work with. I want environmental readings and any planetary data we have available." The presence of prominent plant life meant surely this world had at least been surveyed at some point. "Kleid, once we know about the atmosphere, get your people ready to go out and survey the damage."

"We have a hull breach, if the environment were toxic we'd be hearing about it." Flynn shook his head slightly. "Hunk, you may as well get down to steerage and find the patching foil… I've a feeling some of this is going to be well beyond patching foil, but it's a start."

Sven brought up the navigational charts. He was kicking himself, now that he had the time to do so. If he'd just caught the anomaly earlier, if he'd had his datapad and alarms set better… he would be fixing some deficiencies in his system once they were out of here. For now, the immediate concern had to come first. "This system is called Kel. One planet with known sapient life, a species called the Krryn."

Cam had never heard of the Krryn, and brought his own database up. "Got them… Krryn, Type 3A. Primitive, first contact established. No further contact, no cultural data."

Very primitive, then. The Alliance was not afraid to offer aid to less advanced races—indeed, the idea of well-meaning noninterference flew in the face of its history and its ideals. But they also recognized the risks; they weren't going to benevolently force-march a stone age culture into the space age just because it was there.

"Karen?" Lance repeated. "How Boomer."

"No, Krryn," Sven corrected.

Jace arrived to the bridge to check everyone over, though he suspected if anyone were injured he'd have already heard about it. He'd ridden out the whole mess in the sick bay, which—given that he hadn't felt like strapping himself down in one of the beds—had been a bad idea. "We don't need any more booms right now, caralho."

"No one gets me," Lance muttered grumpily; Daniel looked at him and shrugged.

"It does sound a lot like Karen."

"Don't encourage him," Sven scolded—he'd really been preemptively scolding Jace for whatever he was about to say, but decided it could apply to Daniel just as well. Both of them just gave him a shrug.

Keith rolled his eyes. "Starr, run some sensor sweeps, see if we can pinpoint any nearby settlements. Just in case."

"Yes sir!" Cam was maybe a little too happy to have something to do with himself; the adrenaline from the crash was taking its time leveling off.

Looking around the bridge, Lance stretched his tense muscles and scowled. "So what, no 'thank you, Lance'? I mean, I did just make sure we landed right side up?"

"You're right," Sven agreed; maybe he hadn't caught the anomaly as fast as he should've, but their pilot had successfully salvaged the situation. "I apologize. Thank you, Lance."

"You're very welcome, Sven."

"We fucking crashed," Jace said flatly.

Lance glared. "It could've been fucking worse!"

"Story of our lives."

That was… actually not at all incorrect, though Sven wasn't going to just let it go. "He got us out of there before the anomaly could even clip us. If he hadn't been so fast we'd be dead."

"Well you warned me in time." Lance grinned. "Good thinking with whatever alarm you had set."

"Alarm? My system should've had an actual alarm to warn you! Not just erratic beeping." Though he knew fixing the ship would have priority, he was already planning to borrow Pidge to set up something better the moment he was free.

"Viking, stop acting like you're not a math badass."

A math badass would have avoided this entire situation. Sven knew he might as well let it go—it would be like arguing with a brick wall. Multiple brick walls, if the look Lance was giving him was any indication. So he nodded and settled back at his console, making a few notes of how exactly he wanted things to work for next time. The least he could do was be prepared.

Watching them, Keith shook his head and decided he wasn't touching that. "Alright, people. Good work, McClain. Let's see what we can do from here."

*****

Much as the Bolt had gotten banged up by the landing, it was hardly insurmountable. They'd be here for a day or two, for sure, but it could all be fixed with what they carried with them. Repairs had been underway for several hours before someone had noticed their other problem. Even once the ship was back in working order, without a runway it wasn't going anywhere. And nobody had seen anything that might be serviceable on the way down—though, to be fair, they'd all had other priorities at the time.

So Keith had taken a small group to seek out the Krryn, or at the least, a flat surface they could use without bothering the Krryn. Sven had come along to help find their way around in the wilderness, Cam to facilitate communications, and Jace in case something somewhere went wrong. He'd been ordered to stand back and keep his mouth shut, which was still better than staying in his quarters and not getting hurt.

The Bolt's sensor sweeps had not been terribly useful, but they had picked up some surface water in the forest near where they'd come down. Water seemed like a good bet for where a primitive settlement might spring up. Sven had brought some paper and was making notes—writing things out helped commit it to memory, and besides, it just felt better. Along with the map he was marking trees with his knife as they passed. Getting lost in this place would be, to put it mildly, not great.

Keith and Jace were quiet and serious as they eyed the surroundings. Cam had been trying to do the same, but the surroundings had quickly become much too interesting. Now he was basically just running in circles around them, trying to see everything at once.

"Look at these plants! They're so cool!"

The plants in question were quite something; flowers with translucent petals, casting tiny rainbows around them when the sun hit just right. Though they didn't quite share his enthusiasm, Sven and Keith were amused. Jace wasn't, of course.

"Viking, you know I'd never doubt that you know where we're going, but… you sure you know where we're going?"

Cam looked up from some narrow twisting leaves to give him a reproachful look. "Doc, he's the navigator. Of course he knows where he's going." Then he leaned a little closer to Sven and lowered his voice. "You do, don't you?"

"Of course I don't know where we're going," the navigator answered patiently. "This is an unexplored primitive planet. That means no maps. But I'm marking where we've been so we can get back, and keeping a lookout for trails that might help us."

Jace snorted, then glared at Cam on principle; the comms officer blushed and shot him an innocent smile. "Oooh, look at that blue flower!"

"Yeah, it's really fucking depressed." He hadn't actually looked at the flower. "I can't do anything about that."

"What?" Cam asked blankly, pausing for a moment. Then it sank in. "Oh… doctor joke. Very funny." Sulking, he fell back into line behind Sven, though his eyes were still darting everywhere.

Shooting the medic a mildly disapproving look, Sven marked another tree and shook his head. "Just indulge it. Let him enjoy his first expedition into the wilderness of an unmapped planet."

"I'm just remembering our last expedition into the wilderness of an unmapped planet." Scowl. "That flower is probably monster fur or some shit." He just was not going to forgive and forget Kithran any time soon. Or at all.

Even Keith chuckled slightly. "I think I see a clearing up ahead. Off to the left a bit."

It only took another minute or two to reach what definitely was a clearing. A small stream ran through the gap in the trees. "It's so pretty here," Cam said brightly, forgetting about the earlier discouragement and rushing to the water to look around.

Keith followed at a somewhat more measured pace. It seemed safe enough. "Which way do we try from here?"

"Upstream, if they have any sense," Jace suggested with a shrug.

Sven moved up to look for any tracks or other signs of life. There were some tracks, heading both directions, of course… but the sets heading upstream seemed uniformly slightly deeper, as though from gatherers weighted down with their finds. It was a guess, but as good a guess as any. "Yes. That way."

As they moved on, something new was appearing in the wilderness around them. Huge seed pods or leaf clusters were dangling from the trees; curiously, they didn't all seem to be on the same kind of tree. It was an oddity, and no doubt one that would have garnered more attention had something else not come into view.

"Is that a building up ahead, Commander?"

"Looks like it." Moving slowly and cautiously, Keith approached to study the structure. A building for sure, though not a large one, with a much larger balcony space supported by a central core that wasn't much larger than one of the Bolt's staterooms. Half a dozen thick braids of vines were fastened to the balcony's edge, trailing in different directions: some fastening to other structures, some to trees, all with more of the large leaf clusters hanging from them. He focused on the construction, looking closely but not touching. "Looks like… sandstone?"

"Proves there's some sort of civilization here." Sven stepped a little closer to the network of vines, looking at the other buildings. "Hopefully they can help us."

"Yeah, I hope so…"

"Yeah," Jace agreed, "but where are they all?" He took a step back, brushing against a leaf cluster… which abruptly unfurled with a high-pitched shriek. "Porra!"

At the same moment, Cam stepped around a second building and found himself face to face with… a thing. A large, furry, winged thing, about his height, with a catlike face and huge ears. "C… commander…?" The cat-bat seemed to be vocalizing, though no sound was coming out.

Sven sprang back, putting a hand on his knife just in case as several more of what they'd thought were leaf clusters opened up, revealing themselves as more batlike creatures. They ranged from gray to brown to black, though all had wings that were tinged with green; thinking they were leaves had obviously not been unintended by evolution. They approached cautiously, either walking upright or scrabbling on their legs and wing-claws. None seemed remotely hostile, and he lowered his hand from his knife. These could only be the Krryn.

Keith held his hands out, palms up. "We come in peace…" Even before he'd said it he hadn't expected a whole lot, and wasn't terribly surprised when none reacted. "Cam?"

"There weren't any notes about their language, sir." He turned to the Krryn who'd first approached him. "Can you understand me?" He tried the same question in Ak-Kila and even Drakure—the so-called 'big three' diplomatic languages—but none of them got him anywhere.

The group of Krryn parted to allow another to approach. This one had a silver tinge to its fur; an elder? Whatever it was it clearly had authority, as its comrades backed away to give it some space. Approaching Cam, it wiggled one large ear and visibly shrieked something. All that came out was a few high-pitched squeak-chirps.

"They're… fucking cute, what the fuck," Jace murmured as one came up next to him and squirked a little.

Trying the big three languages again got Cam to the same nowhere as last time. "I think they must speak on a different frequency? Something we can't hear… I'm just guessing, I don't know, but it makes the most sense?"

As the elder tried another soundless screech, Sven nodded. The theory seemed apt—those ears would lend themselves to higher frequency usage. "I don't think it's all even in words, those screeches look more like…" This wasn't quite his wheelhouse, but it was close enough. "Sonar?"

"That's as good a guess as I've got, Lieutenant," Cam agreed. "But… what now?" He was good at learning languages, and trained to pick up at least the basics on the fly if need be. But he couldn't very well puzzle out a language he couldn't even perceive. Looking around, he didn't see any immediate evidence of a written language, though they couldn't yet rule it out.

"So the navigator didn't know where we were going, and now the communications officer can't communicate." Jace crossed his arms. "And I'm sure not doing any medic-ing."

"Normal day so far?" Sven suggested, drawing a snort.

"Yeah you're not wrong… Commander, wanna command? Or should we just go four for four here?"

Keith glared. He'd already been trying to figure out what the hell kind of commands to give here… though he knew Jace had really been joking, it still made him want to do something. Stepping forward with his hands still outstretched, he took his own best guess. "Keith." He pointed to himself, then each of the others in turn. "Sven. Cam. Jace. We came from…" He pointed to the sky.

Sven and Cam exchanged winces. Both were pretty certain that wouldn't get them anywhere, though neither could really blame him for wanting to take a shot in the dark.

Some more stuttering squirks heralded the arrival of another Krryn contingent. These were different, all with jet black fur streaked with white, wearing earrings of some silvery gray metal. These too seemed to have authority; the one with the most earrings came up next to the elder and looked at Keith with bright eyes. It pointed to the sky as if to mimic him, then gave a tortured-sounding series of click-squeaks. After a pause, as if waiting for those to sink in, it gurgled out an equally tortured low-pitched sound that if they hadn't known better, they would have said resembled something like no eek. That or it was just getting violently ill. Reflexively, Jace put a hand on his kit, as if he'd have any clue what to do for a sickened cat-bat.

The clicks had gotten it across better, though. "I, um… I think it just said 'we don't speak' in Ak-Kila." Cam winced. "This is going to be more difficult than we thought."

"Great." Keith ran his fingers through his hair, trying to avoid the reflex to start pacing. "Anyone have any ideas?"

Sven had in fact been struck with inspiration. The Alliance had reported first contact with the Krryn, and even one of them being able to tell them anything in Ak-Kila meant they had some concept of aliens. And so, hopefully, some concept of spacecraft. And if verbal communication wasn't getting them anywhere… he took one of the sheets of paper he'd brought along, folded it quickly and precisely, then held up the resulting paper airplane. "Yes."

"This should be interesting," Jace said, raising an eyebrow. Then he startled as the Krryn next to him gave him a tentative poke. "Hey—claws off!"

"Easy, Doc, I think they're just curious." One had approached Cam and was touching his hair; nobody else was getting that treatment, but he could guess why. He was the only blonde in the group, and Krryn fur didn't seem to come in that color either.

Sven waved to get the attention of the Krryn, though he'd had the elder's attention since the moment he'd begun folding the paper. The one with the earrings—the ambassador? He decided to think of it as the ambassador—also turned to look at him with wide eyes and a small squirk. He pointed to himself, the plane, and the sky, then moved the plane a bit to indicate it was flying.

The elder squirked and mimicked his pointing before wiggling an ear. The ambassador responded, seeming to placate whatever had been said. As soon as he had their full attention again, Sven dropped to his knees and crashed the plane into the sand; both visibly startled, though their surprised cries made no sound. The elder rushed forward quickly, giving Sven several pokes, and it didn't take much to grasp that it thought he was injured.

Sven shook his head no, as if they had any way of knowing what that meant, then patted himself to try to indicate he was okay. Though maybe it was just as easy to let them check him over. He took the opportunity to try to think of how to explain what came next. It was going to be tricky…

"I was never too good at charades," Keith said with a half-grin.

Sven eyed him reproachfully; he didn't need distractions from the proverbial peanut gallery right now. "Commander," he said in his most even and polite tone, "with all due respect, shut up." Cam gawked at him.

Keith glared, though instead of responding he hissed at Jace. "You're a horrible influence."

"I'm so fucking proud of him," the medic answered without an ounce of shame.

The Krryn had apparently satisfied themselves that Sven was uninjured, and now the ambassador was attempting to respond. It pointed to the plane and the sky, then laid a claw on the plane, opening it up a bit, pointing between him and the opened plane with what seemed to be a questioning ear-waggle. He wasn't completely sure what that meant… he tried smoothing the plane's nose and wings and setting it down to indicate it, too, was 'uninjured'. Or would be when the engineers were done, anyway.

The elder seemed quite fascinated by that process, then said something to the ambassador. Upon getting a response it focused on Sven again, pointing to him with one hand and the plane with the other. Clasping both hands together, it struck them into the ground. Then the questioning ear-waggle again.

"I think they're getting it?" Keith said quietly. He glanced around at the others. Cam was sitting with a couple of other Krryn, seemingly still trying to get a handle on their language. Jace had acquired what looked like a very young one climbing up his back and peeking over his head at the scene; he clearly didn't dare move.

Sven thought they were getting it too, though he wasn't wholly certain how to confirm it. But the ambassador saved him by repeating its earlier gesture, opening the plane and pointing between them. Suddenly it hit him—they were asking if he'd been inside the ship. Nodding, he repeated the gestures exactly. "Yes."

The ambassador seemed excited by that, turning to the elder and wiggling both ears. Then it pointed to the plane and launched into flight, circling twice before landing and giving a curious ear-twitch.

Was it asking if they could take off? He shook his head no, then decided to take a risk, reaching up and pulling his own ears down. Whether that was a normal component of their language or them trying to find a common ground, he didn't know and if it worked he didn't much care. To follow up he pushed the plane around on the ground a little and shook his head again.

The ambassador seemed to get it, and spoke soundlessly to the elder for a minute. Waggling its ears in understanding, the elder pointed to the plane and took flight itself, circling once, then landed and tugged the plane from Sven's hand to mimic his representation of the crash. It moved as if to take flight again, but stumbled and fell.

Keith really never had been any good at charades. "What do you think they're trying to say?"

"I think he's trying to convey what I said to the others?"

Cam doubted that. It was obvious enough the elder and ambassador were communicating without such charades. "Looks like maybe… the ship used to fly, crashed, and now it can't?"

Aha! "That makes sense." The elder was watching him expectantly, so he reached up and grabbed both ears, wiggling them. Hopefully that really did mean yes.

"They are getting it," Jace whispered as the elder screeched excitedly, then turned to the gathered Krryn and did a whole lot of vocalizing that only sounded like a few sporadic squirks. The little one that had taken a liking to him was now sitting on his shoulder; it was taking everything he had not to reach up and pet the damned thing.

Turning back to Sven, the elder pointed to the plane and the sky, then gestured widely to the gathered Krryn and wiggled its ears emphatically. He was almost certain the question there was how they could help, which… well, this ought to be quite an endeavor.

Another idea struck him, and he pulled out another sheet of paper.

"Maybe try drawing?" Cam suggested, but Sven shook his head.

"I'm going to stick with demonstrating. Not sure how to draw that we need a runway." He made sure he had the attention of the Krryn before using the paper to smooth out some of the sand in front of him. Then he skimmed the plane across the flat sand, lifting it into a takeoff, then pointed repeatedly at the flattened sand. That. That was what they needed.

"Huh." Cam grinned, impressed. "I wouldn't have thought of doing it that way."

If it just impressed the Krryn as much, Sven would be happy… and the ambassador seemed to get it. It gave a chirp-squirk and grabbed the paper and plane from him, crumpling the second sheet and running the plane along it, giving an eerie low-pitched whine and lowering its ears before crashing the plane into the sand. Then it flattened the second piece out, running the plane along it and lifting it up with a flutter.

Sven couldn't help feeling a bit of excitement. It was working. He reached up and wiggled his ears yes.

Seemingly just as excited, the ambassador indicated the sand and flattened a bit more of it out, then drew a circle around the flattened part and spread its wings. It wiggled an ear and gave a questioning squirk. That part he couldn't fully discern, so he tried tugging one ear himself, which seemed to work; it smoothed out the lines it had drawn, then seemed to come up with a better idea. Taking the flattened paper, it set it in the middle of the sand, then tugged on it in different directions and questioned with its ears again.

Oh! "I think they're asking how big it needs to be. Flynn said about two miles, correct?"

"Yeah, around that."

"Think that was the minimum. Giant donut dude said 'go big to go home'."

Fair enough, then. Sven stood and brought his hands together, then spread them apart as widely as he could and made a little outward-flinging motion. It needed to be huge.

Understanding that as well, the ambassador turned and conversed with the elder for a minute. It was a bit surreal watching them 'talk', given how little they could actually hear of it, but the elder seemed to be understanding whatever the ambassador was telling it. In fact…

Turning back to Sven, the elder crouched on its haunches and touched the sand, making several indentations. Then it tapped the sandstone of a nearby building, lowering an ear in question.

Now that was something… though the Alliance did regularly stress to its crews that primitive and unintelligent were not at all synonymous, he was nonetheless impressed by how they seemed to have grasped the concept. Flattened sand would certainly not stay flat once the Bolt got onto it. He tapped the building and wiggled his ears.

After a little more conversation with the elder, the ambassador looked back at Sven. Mimicking his 'huge' gesture, it pointed to the sand and then the northwest.

It didn't take being good at charades to understand what was going on now. Keith smiled. "Good job, Sven."

"Thank you, Commander."

"You're looking a lot like your mom now, Viking."

The thought that his mother would be proud had already occurred to Sven; he scowled at Jace anyway, dropping back into his most polite and even tone. "Jace, with absolutely no respect, shut up."

"…So fucking proud of you." He shut up.

The Krryn weren't quite finished, though. Pointing northwest again, the ambassador clawed at the sand, making indentations again. Clearly it was indicating the sand wasn't hard… which wouldn't work. Shaking his head and pulling down on both his ears, Sven pointed to the sandstone wall again, knocking lightly on it to stress the point before knocking on the sand.

His contradiction didn't seem to bother the ambassador; it wiggled its ears in understanding. Then it flattened out a stretch of the sand and rested its clawed hands just above it, leaning forward with its earrings jingling. A few of the other Krryn approached, standing behind it and touching their claws together, as if waiting to assist somehow. Some sort of ritual? The team watched, confused.

There was a sudden, sharp crack. A shockwave like a small airburst from the ambassador's claws. And then it reached down to tap the flattened sand, now solid.

Four human jaws dropped at once.

"What was that?"

"What. The. Fuck."

"Whoa… bats with magic?"

"Fuck that!" Jace looked at Cam and shook his head almost frantically. "Magic lion robots is bad enough! There is a fucking scientific explanation for this and one of those assholes back at the Bolt will be able to give it to us. Right?"

"I… I just watched that and I don't believe it, you think any of the others will know how they did it?"

"Starr, with complete disrespect, shut the fuck up."

"Bite me, Doc. With equal disrespect."

Before Keith could formally shut them up, the Krryn ambassador performed the ritual again. It almost seemed to think they hadn't grasped it the first time… which to be fair, maybe they hadn't. Staring at the sandstone, Sven forced himself to push it aside. He could not worry about magic-not-magic now. He would definitely mull over magic-not-magic later. "I think they're offering to do that for us. Harden the sand so we can take off."

Keith frowned. It had solidified such a small area… "Can they do that on that big a scale?"

"They know we need a large area." He looked around at the Krryn with the earrings, and was suddenly reconsidering nicknaming their leader the ambassador. Perhaps what they'd been talking to was the leader of their mages. Which was… crazy. "I don't think they would offer if they couldn't."

"Right." Keith was having trouble believing it too, but it felt like they couldn't really afford to doubt. And it wouldn't even be the least believable thing they'd seen on this mission… well, maybe.

The elder approached and picked up a piece of the newly-formed sandstone, holding it out as if to mimic giving it to them. Then it made Sven's huge-area gesture. And finally, as they stared at it, it pointed to the paper.

If Sven was understanding it correctly, this had already become even more absurd than the sandstone magic itself. He couldn't possibly be understanding correctly. Taking the rock, he handed the paper over, then tugged his ear in a question.

Accepting the paper, the Krryn elder made an expansive gesture. Not as large as they'd been using for the runway, but enough to get the point across. Yes. Yes, he had been understanding correctly.

"They will do it, but they want… paper. They want a large amount of paper in exchange."

"…Paper?" Keith blinked, then shrugged. He was pretty sure that was workable. "How much do they want and how much do we have?"

"They just signaled that they want a large amount." What was a large amount of paper, really? "I have a couple of good sized boxes that I use for writing out navigational calculations. Daniel has some as well, but I don't know how much."

It seemed like a very fair price, to put it mildly. "If that's what it takes, then that's what we'll do. Tell them they have a deal."

Sven reached up and wiggled his ears, and he might as well have told the elder they'd won the lottery. The paper lottery, maybe? With an excited series of squirks it wiggled its ears in return, then pointed at the plane, pointed northwest, and mimicked walking.

Nodding and wiggling his ears one more time, Sven turned to the others. "They'll lead us and our ship to the area."

"Viking…" Jace looked at the little Krryn on his shoulder, then at the navigator.

"Yes, Doc?"

"You're fucking magical." Smirk. "And it's adorable when you wiggle your ears like that." Cam giggled.

Sven knew precisely how to handle that, and just smiled. "That's very kind of you, Jace."

Shaking his head and looking at the Krryn, Keith found himself wondering yet again how he'd gotten himself into this to begin with. But… at least it was certainly always interesting. "Well then… let's head back."

*****

Repairs had been going remarkably well, all things considered. The engines were back up and running, and the compromised landing gear had been restored to working order; a couple dozen layers of patching foil were still bonding in place to seal the breach, but it would be fine before they had to take off. All that was left was the damaged wing.

Of course, the wing was a disaster. It had been cored through in at least a dozen places, some quite large. The outboard flap was hanging half off its hinges, probably only one impact away from being left behind in space. The leading edge was largely intact, but the slats couldn't deploy. One aileron had a hole through it, and several spoilers were, well, spoiled. They had their work cut out for them.

Flynn was sitting on a large rock not far from the leading edge, watching the others work. He ached everywhere—more from tension than exertion, per se. The engine damage had been no damned joke. This part he would mostly just oversee, with any luck.

They'd drafted the remaining bridge crew into helping, which… well, the wisdom of that was yet to be determined.

"Pidge, Vince, how's the wiring?" The smaller wrenchlings were scurrying around on the wing, dealing with the major punctures while Hunk worked on the control surfaces from the ground. There were hydraulic lines and electrical wires to be patched up, and a simple framework mesh had to be put in place for the patching foil to stick.

"I have seen worse." That was the most optimistic Vince was willing to be about the matter. "Fixable, shouldn't take long to finish, but we'll really need to restock on spare wires."

"Yes. Resource intensive, but nothing we can't handle." Pidge had been focused on the hydraulics and framework while their electrical engineer did the electricity. "The forward breaches are ready to be sealed."

"Sounds good…" Flynn turned to the people he'd been meaning to put in charge of that and frowned slightly. "Daniel, the patching foil is not a toy." 'Patching foil' was in fact shorthand for a hyperengineered laminate of graphene, aluminum and titanium alloys, and cerasilicate coating, structured to bond with itself or harden into a proper hull shell with exposure to relatively simple treatments. Whichever Glis scientists had devised the stuff millennia ago had not done so just to have an unappreciative cadet turn bits of it into origami.

"Yeah, kid." Lance had been toying with a wrench while his sidekick turned a square of foil into a rabbit. Flynn scowled half-heartedly and pitched a screwdriver at him.

"The wrench is not a toy either, flyboy."

Dodging it with a laugh, Lance mock pouted right back. "What is with you throwing pointy objects at me, grease monkey?"

"You deserve it!"

"I probably do." He winked and went to retrieve the screwdriver as Daniel pointedly finished up his rabbit and glared.

"Are you actually going to do anything, or just sit there?"

Flynn eyed him calmly. "I just spent twelve hours straight repairing the thrust conversion chambers. Which, since you probably didn't take that class and certainly wouldn't have paid attention to it, are very large and delicate chambers filled with toxic heavy metals and gamma radiation where one wrong move will kill you and everyone who attempts to save you." His tone remained conversational. "Would you prefer to have done that so I could help with the wing?"

"At least I wouldn't be listening to a lecture."

Lance looked between them with a slight frown. "Not sure I want either of you hulking out."

"Pit boss is bad enough when he's angry," Hunk agreed from where he was fixing the slats.

Rolling his eyes, Flynn slouched back on the rock and abandoned that topic. "Okay look—flyboys—can you just take some of that foil and patch the holes when Vince and Pidge tell you they're ready? It's not difficult. It smooths itself out and everything. If you can just handle that part we'll be ready to get out of here that much faster, assuming Kogane and company can find us a runway."

Nodding, Lance grabbed some more foil and tossed it to Daniel, who caught it and snorted. "Ah ah, I'm not an actual flyboy. I don't have the training."

Lance groaned. "Would you stop whining about that?"

"When I'm fully trained."

"Aren't you a gunner?" Pidge asked absently, welding the framing mesh into place over one of the larger holes.

"That's what I was assigned here as. I'm actually a fighter pilot, but there are only so many available pilot positions on an Explorer Team. Especially if someone hogs all the helm time."

"Hogs all the—?! And here I thought you were willing to learn to be more badass."

"Oh." The ninja nodded, ignoring Lance, and finished up with the welding. "Okay, this breach is ready."

Vince nodded to their reluctant gunner and indicated the hole. "Have at it, Daniel."

"You got it, Vince." He shot Lance a dirty look as he clambered up onto the wing. "More badass? With you as a teacher? Ha!" Not that he thought Lance wasn't totally badass, but he couldn't very well admit that. He was going to fight off his inevitable fanboy-ness as long as he possibly could.

"I am wounded!" Lance did not sound particularly wounded. He sounded like he was trying his hardest not to laugh as he looked away and started patching a hole.

Hunk had gotten the slats partially straightened out and was moving along the front of the wing. "Explorer Teams are basically Badass 101, little dude! Actually maybe more like Badass 501? We're totally the advanced course."

Badass 404, Vince thought, badassery not found. He kept it to himself.

"And I got drafted straight here!" Daniel smirked. "Guess that means I'm fully trained in badassery."

"Advanced course, definitely. And you can always use more advanced training."

"You don't want to learn from Lance, you could learn from Kogane like Starr is…"

Daniel gave Flynn a horrified look. "I'd rather have another Kolaliri roommate."

"How 'bout a Terinian roommate?" Hunk suggested innocently. Lance snickered and gave a low whistle of approval; he hadn't quite been willing to shoot down the kid's delusions of grandeur himself, but if Hunk wanted to do it he'd happily piggyback.

Daniel blushed bright red. "That's low, big guy. Very low."

"Naaah, they can fly!"

He shuddered. "Don't remind me."

"Wait, now it's flying things you don't like?" Flynn was grinning too. "That seems off-brand."

"It's not the flying! It's the birds being birds, okay? The beaks and the pecking and the flesh ripping talons! Flying is just how they catch you."

"You make them sound very admirable," Pidge commented from the hydraulic line he was patching; Vince looked up at him with great concern.

"What?"

He didn't get an answer, and decided to just make a mental note of it. He did that a lot.

Daniel looked up from the foil he was laying and made a face. "You wouldn't feel that way if you were attacked by one." Then again, given it was Pidge, maybe he would. "They're evil."

Things settled down for a bit after that; they were getting a good rhythm going. The wing did have a lot of holes in it, but it was all pretty much the same task. Internals, patching foil, treat, repeat. But routine could be dangerous, too. You could only stay laser-focused on every move for so long. And when you were operating on a fairly slick cerasilicate spacecraft wing, well…

Lance was working on a gash near the fuselage when the combination of the wing's own angle and the slope of their landing zone betrayed him. "Fffuuuuck!" Losing traction completely, he tried to grab for something to steady himself, but there was really nothing to grab—they'd already fixed all the holes between him and the edge. Naturally. Grimacing, he braced himself for the impact. The wing wasn't that high off the ground, but it was still high enough to suck.

None of the kids were really in position to intervene. Hunk even less, as he'd made his way to the wingtip to see what he could do with the punctured outboard aileron. But Flynn was close enough to jump up and half-catch him, breaking the worst of his fall; they both hit the ground, rolling a few feet down the slope in a tangle of limbs and curses before managing to come to a stop.

"Really, Lance…" Flynn dragged himself up and grimaced. There would be bruises. "Are you alright?"

Breathless from the fall—yes, definitely only from the fall—Lance blinked at the engineer for a few moments before letting him help him up. "Uh… yeah, I'm good. Thanks."

Helping him back over to the rock he'd been sitting on, Flynn stopped holding him just a tiny bit too quickly and met his eyes just a tiny bit too long. "You're sure?"

"…Totally. Fucking awesome, right?"

"YOU GUYS OKAY?" Daniel bellowing from the far end of the wing broke into the conversation, and both startled a little. Lance shot him a thumbs-up with a slightly shaky hand.

"They're alright," Pidge said without looking up from the breach he was working on, "they'd be complaining if they weren't."

"Probably true," Vince agreed.

Almost certainly true, Daniel admitted to himself, but he wasn't going to acknowledge it out loud. "That was totally not badass. Don't go scaring people like that!" He turned back to Vince and the hole they'd been fixing, shaking his head and grumbling a few Korean curses under his breath.

Lance wasn't sure quite why he'd been so startled to hear Daniel yell. Like he'd outright forgotten there were other people around, or something. "I'm fucking awesome, kid, don't sweat it."

"So fucking awesome you just fell off a spaceship!" Flynn snorted. "Even Vince has only done that when the hangar literally got hit by lightning."

"That's because I'm meant to fly them!" Running around on the outside of the wing was no place for a pilot to be.

"Which is why we're fixing it, so you can fly it again, because that," he pointed to the mangled wing, "has already proved slightly beyond even your formidable capabilities. Know what, you sit down. I'll show you how it's done."

Hunk had come running, and was now close enough to object. "Pit boss, you just spent twelve hours fixin' the engines… and fell down a hill? Sit back down yourself, we've got this."

Blinking, Flynn supposed he couldn't actually argue that point, and sat on the rock next to Lance. It was a good-sized rock. "Fair enough. You still stay put, flyboy "

"I'm down for observing." He shrugged. "Even though I'm fine."

Flynn wasn't the only one doubting Lance's reassurances. "Don't sweat it," Daniel mimicked as he pulled off the next bit of patching foil, "like he didn't just fall off a spaceship and down a hill… sorry, Vince, did you say something?"

Vince had tried to say a few things while Daniel was grumbling, actually. None had gotten very far. "We're set on this hole." He smiled sympathetically. "And he's fine, Flynn wouldn't be scolding him like that otherwise." He'd seen that sort of behavior out of the moms pretty regularly.

Blushing again, Daniel shot him a sheepish glare. "I know he's fine! I'm just saying… I don't know what I'm saying."

"You're saying you'd prefer he not risk injury in your presence," Pidge offered helpfully. He still hadn't looked up from his work.

"…Thank you, Pidge." Their gunner did not sound particularly filled with genuine gratitude, and took a deep breath. "Anyone who mentions anything about this conversation to anyone, ever, will be treated like roommates number two, four, and five."

That sounded sufficiently ominous for Vince to edge back slightly. "Mention what?"

"Exactly."

"I dunno what conversation you're talkin' about," Hunk said with a grin, "but I definitely wanna hear about roommates two, four, and five." That got him a distressed look from Vince, who wanted to hear no such thing, and a wicked smirk from Daniel.

"You really do. Those were some of my best work… well, I mean, not two, but I was still learning the ropes on how to effectively get rid of a roommate at that point."

Pidge wanted to ask about the missing roommate number three, but noted Vince's expression and decided it wasn't a good time for it. Hunk had caught their electrical engineer's expression as well, and chuckled. "How 'bout we finish patchin' this thing up for now, and once we're back in the air we can have roommate storytime? I'll make snacks." He shot Vince a wink. "Even for people who don't wanna hear the stories."

That got him a grateful laugh.

It didn't take too long to get back into the rhythm, though with a bit more caution involved, and they were making good time on the repairs. Even with two of the bridge crew doing the patching. Well, one of the bridge crew—Lance was still sitting to the side with Flynn, the engineer leaning over and explaining all the intricacies of the wing's internal structure, as the pilot listened with rapt attention that may or may not have been related to his actual interest in the wing.

Welding some framework into a particularly small and tricky hole, Pidge was facing the direction the others had left in. He was the first to see the movement on the horizon. "…Um. Sir? The Commander and the others are coming back." He stood and squinted into the distance, trying to figure out what precisely he was looking at. "They aren't alone."

"You don't have to sound so ominous," Daniel complained; Vince gave him a weak smile.

"That's just his tone."

"Oh."

"You get used to it."

"Sort of," Hunk added.

"If you say so."

Was that ominous? Pidge looked at the others in confusion and decided not to worry about it. If humans considered factual statements to be ominous, well… that actually rang fairly true.

Standing and moving up under the wing, Flynn and Lance exchanged looks of bemusement. "Well… at least they don't have feathers?"

"They seem to have ears."

"That they do…"

Above them on the wing, Pidge and Vince were standing and looking equally confused. Finally the ninja laughed softly. "Never boring, kir sa tye?"

He wasn't wrong; Vince sighed. It was just that he'd said it like it was a good thing.

"I miss boring."

*****

Driving the Bolt through several valleys and rocky passes had been tricky, but doable. The average spaceplane was designed to traverse all kinds of terrain, for situations exactly like this… just not necessarily to take off from it. The Krryn had led them to a huge, reasonably level desert far to the north, where the Vagrant could roll around to its heart's content.

They'd done a mock takeoff roll, to mark off precisely the distance they needed, and then it had been time for the hard part.

Pun definitely intended.

Dozens of Krryn workers had accompanied them to the desert, and had been helping to smooth the sand with great enthusiasm. It was understandable, really. The arrival of aliens needing their help must be an unimaginable novelty. It was hard not to imagine that many of them might have come along just to see the ship… and they all seemed quite sufficiently impressed.

Flynn finished helping a few of the cat-bats fill in a particularly stubborn hole, then walked over to stand by Sven and look over the sand. They'd been at it for a couple of hours, and the runway was shaping up pretty nicely, considering the utterly ridiculous premise.

"So… run this by me again. We help flatten out a couple miles of desert, they'll magically turn it into rock, and we'll give them a box of paper?"

"Yes." Sven shrugged. "They seemed impressed by paper airplanes."

"They should!" Hunk joined them, grinning. "Paper airplanes are awesome!"

The others were approaching as well, with varying degrees of skepticism. Lance had been keeping perhaps the sharpest eye on the preparations. What they'd marked in the sand was long enough, and the worker Krryn were diligent, it was just… well… the entire damn concept. "We sure this will work?"

"If the Krryn can do what they say they can, we'll be able to use it."

That hadn't been exactly what he was asking, but Sven got to the real question. "Fairly certain." He could still see the mage's demonstration in the back of his mind. "It was something."

"So they'll really bippity boppity boo this into working?" The pilot looked at the runway and shrugged. "I do kind of want to see that."

"We're gonna have to rename the ship Jupiter's Pumpkin," Hunk joked, drawing a slight glare from Flynn.

"No."

"Cinderella's Bolt? That's how she lost her shoe, right?"

Daniel popped into the conversation then. "Does that mean we're Cinderella?"

"Why?" Lance smirked. "Do you want a prom dress?"

"I would totally rock a prom dress."

"I'll keep that in mind."

Hunk grinned as Lance brushed that off; he knew people. The same people who could once have gotten him fuzzy pink spacecraft carpeting, in fact—one of his brothers did side work for a textile warehouse. "Little gunner dude, we can totally make that happen."

Eyeing him and grinning right back, Daniel took it in stride. "Alright, but nothing orange. I don't look good in orange."

The big engineer's grin broadened. "You learn that in prison?"

"Never been to prison. Been told I'll end up there, though." He sounded a bit too proud of that prediction; Sven sighed, and Vince arrived just in time to hear and shake his head.

Lance snorted, opting not to even address that. He'd be keeping the kid out of prison if he had anything to say about it… you only went to prison if you got caught. "Nobody looks good in orange, anyway."

"Bro…"

Blinking, he looked back at Hunk, who was suddenly pouting. Probably had to do with the brown and orange tech coveralls he was wearing. "…Okay, you can pull it off," he acknowledged after looking him up and down. "It just takes a pretty damn high cuteness factor."

"I'm totally the cute one, bro."

That assessment was almost immediately countered by the arrival of the Krryn elder, fluttering and making little squirking sounds as it tugged Sven's arm. The cat-bats were the unquestioned masters of cute around here. It pointed back to where about half a dozen other Krryn were flying up the runway, seemingly checking for any last uneven bits, landing and wiggling their ears in what was presumably an all clear.

Lance watched, grinning as he noticed Vince seeming transfixed by the ear wiggling. He couldn't really blame the kid; they were adorable. "It showtime?"

"I believe so." Sven went over to where he'd placed the larger of his boxes of paper, intending to offer it to the Krryn before they got started. The same alien who'd so quickly picked up that they needed a solid runway clearly didn't grasp that the box was full of paper, though. Instead it tugged the battered paper airplane from his pocket. "Oh, this is their… elder, we think? Seems to be one of their leaders, anyway. Along with the one with all the earrings…" As if hearing itself referenced, the ambassador-mage approached as well. It had been one of those flying up the runway, and now wiggled its ears again as it joined them.

"I have so many questions we aren't going to have answered," Flynn murmured.

Lance nodded. "Many, many questions."

"They're so cute!" Hunk whispered, and Vince nodded his emphatic agreement. That ear wiggling really was something. Even Daniel couldn't really disagree. So much better than birds.

Though he could guess at what they were trying to tell him, Sven really had no idea how to respond to any of that in a way that would be useful. Instead he opted to just hand the mage a sheet of paper. It might get across that they were ready to carry out the trade.

Squirking cheerfully, the mage turned and screeched at its companions. The other Krryn with earrings—were they all mages? So many questions—started to gather around the Bolt, while their leader crouched forward and unfurled its wings in what was actually a pretty decent imitation of the ship's appearance. Then it pointed to the paper, pointed to the other mages, and mimicked something hanging from the paper's edge with a hopeful little chirp.

Everyone stared at Sven, who grimaced slightly. The pressure seemed a little higher when the entire team was giving him that look. "I think…" His mind racing, he remembered when they'd first come across the Krryn, and his eyes widened slightly. "I think they want to hang from the ship's belly?"

"That's a good idea." Even though the whole team had gathered by now, Pidge speaking from whatever shadow he'd been standing in caused a couple of them to jump.

"Conservation of energy," Jace agreed, shrugging. "So they can focus on magical fucking sandstone transformation. Makes sense, to the extent any of this makes sense."

Sven ignored that commentary, though he agreed with it, and looked at Flynn. "Do I tell them okay?"

"I don't see why not." The chief looked back at the ship, then at the Krryn. "The undercarriage has carrier bars, they're rated for several tons. I don't think we have multiple tons of bats here…"

"Someone'd hafta drive them then, yeah?" Hunk looked at Lance. A few others also looked at Lance.

Lance was having none of it. "Yeah, but I've gotta make sure this runway actually goes flat enough." Anyone could have done that, for sure, but this was his ship and he was going to oversee the process, damn it. And besides… "And, well, it's bat magic."

"You don't need to say more than the last bit, man," Jace snorted. "We get it."

"Fucking good point."

Most of those who'd been staring at Lance now turned their gaze to Keith, who sighed. "I know, I know… the burdens of command." He'd wanted to see this too, but at least he'd seen the demonstrations back at the settlement. Besides, he had no doubt whatsoever someone would get this all on video. "I'll drive."

As Keith headed for the boarding ramp, Sven turned to the mage and reached up to wiggle his ears. Which was the first time he'd needed to do that around the whole team, and had the wholly predictable result of getting him laughed at. Quite a lot. He glared at Jace anyway; this wasn't exactly new to him. "Do you really have to laugh at me doing that? Still?"

"Fuck yes!"

Sigh. He hadn't really expected anything else.

Literally the only person who hadn't laughed was Pidge, who was staring transfixed at the Krryn mages as they arranged themselves. The leader had followed Keith, and the others scurried behind, spacing out with remarkable precision across the Bolt's forward carrier bars. Usually those structures were meant to tow supplies on the ground in a pinch. Now they were playing host to what had to be dozens of the batlike creatures, hooking on with their feet and furling their wings to hang beneath the ship's structure.

"This was not within the Vagrant's original design profile," Flynn murmured.

That was for sure. It was nothing short of remarkable… and perhaps a little ridiculous, but by now everyone was too intrigued to worry about that. Lance pulled his datapad out to start recording; nobody was going to believe this without proof.

As the mages finished getting set up, the workers were lining up along the side of the soon-to-be runway. The elder screeched down the line, soundless to the gathered humans and even the Baltan, but apparently enough for Krryn ears to hear down the whole two-mile stretch. The workers stretched their wings out, touching claws, just as the few had done back in the settlement. Obviously it was part of the ritual.

Even more obvious when the elder scurried over and grabbed Sven's arm, then Jace's next to him, and touched their hands together.

"…Really?"

"When in Rome!" Lance said immediately, stepping up to the runway's edge and grabbing Flynn's hand. The engineer startled a little and touched hands with Pidge on his other side; why not?

"Just do what they say." Sven joined hands with Daniel, too, eyeing the gunner's hand with his own moment of doubt. Mother always did say being a diplomat forces a person to do things they don't really want to do. "They're making us a runway for a box of paper."

That was a hard point to argue; Jace shrugged and touched hands with Hunk on his other side. Vince took Hunk's other hand with a nod. "It's polite."

Watching them sharply until they'd all arrayed themselves properly, the elder trotted down the line and squirked its approval before returning to Sven. It pointed to the Bolt, then gestured up the runway.

The moment of truth. "They want us to start driving." Flynn let go of Pidge's hand long enough to relay that—the elder squirked at him with concern until he was back in position—and slowly, the ship came to life, engines whining a bit from the strain of being held near minimum power. Just as slowly, it started to roll, keeping a pace that would give the Krryn plenty of time to do… whatever it was, precisely, that they needed to do.

Several sharp high-pitched cracks and low rumbles began to emanate from the sand almost immediately, and not for the first time today, a lot of human jaws dropped.

"Um…"

"Dude."

"That's supposed to happen, right?"

Sven shrugged in response to Daniel's question. "I have no idea." There had been that little bit of a shock wave from the demonstration, but how it was supposed to translate to a larger scale was anyone's guess.

"That's reassuring."

Glancing over at the elder, which had taken a spot at the end of the line beside Cam, Lance noted a distinct lack of any distress. If something were going wrong, surely the cat-bat would tell them about it somehow. "Kid, just watch the show." As he said it, he watched the sand in front of the Bolt rippling. The huge tires were not making the slightest indentation, because by the time they reached the ground, it was solid.

"Wow."

"How the fuck…?"

Vince looked over at Flynn. "There's… a reasonable explanation for this, right?" He had sort of gotten used to his sparks being unexplained, even if he didn't care much for it. Unexplained rock formation was at least a step too far.

The chief looked from him to the runway. "Magic is just science we don't yet understand…"

That sounded more or less like a no. Next to him, Pidge snorted; he wasn't at all impressed by the non-answer, but was far too interested in what the Krryn were doing to take issue with it.

Jace, though, was not so easily dissuaded. "They haven't even discovered paper!" He looked slightly pained.

Flynn eyed him; having grown up thinking fusion plants were literally divine miracles, Clarke's third law was about the closest he got to an article of faith anymore. Explaining that to the medic was definitely not worth it. He tried something else. "Doctor, did you know that nuclear fission reactors can occur in nature?"

"…No, and I'll concede the point if you promise not to fucking explain it."

Smirk. "Deal."

The Bolt had made it about halfway down the runway by now, and the Krryn elder was suddenly a little distressed. It broke free of the line and ran in front of them, fluttering, gradually slowing to a walk with an urgent series of squirks.

"It wants us to slow down," Sven translated, as the elder repeated the process. "Possibly. That or it wants us to dance." That hadn't been in the ritual before, though.

"I can dance!" Hunk volunteered brightly; Jace glowered at him.

"Not holding my hand, you can't."

The big man pouted a little, muttering under his breath. "We can dance if we wanna, we can leave your friends behind, cuz your friends aren't bats and if they aren't bats then they're no friends of mine…" That earned him a light kick in the shins, and he laughed.

"Do they need a break?" Flynn asked, concerned, as the Bolt slowed to a crawl. "I don't think we're really on a deadline here…"

"I'm not sure. I think they'd tell us if they did."

Probably, but then, who knew? Krryn honor code could prevent that sort of thing. If the Krryn had an honor code. Or something similar. Pidge tore his gaze away from the proceedings just long enough to look up at Sven and frown slightly. "Can't you ask them?"

The navigator exhaled. "Maybe." Are you guys good? suddenly seemed like a remarkably advanced concept when it came to expressing it through charades. Still, he drew the elder's attention, pointing to the Bolt and mimicking mages hanging from the wings. Then he reached up, wiggled his ears, and tugged down on one, hoping it would get across. It may or may not have, but the elder wiggled its ears excitedly and spread its wings. "I think they're okay." At the least they weren't not-okay.

It took a few more minutes for the last mile to be finished. But finished it was. As the Bolt returned along the now-solid sandstone, several of the worker Krryn sprang into action to assist the mages—as best Sven could tell, they were too exhausted to even unhook their feet from the supports without help. But they seemed excited, soundlessly chirping and chittering as the alien visitors inspected their handiwork.

"Whoa."

"Ceve."

"De chyle…"

"This is fucking usable," Lance murmured, stunned, as he stepped onto the sandstone and looked it over. It was smooth and flat all the way to the distant horizon; Alliance paving trucks couldn't have done it better.

As the workers peeled their mage comrades from the carrier bar, Jace had reflexively moved up with his medical kit. The issue with that presented itself very quickly. "Uh, Viking? How you suppose I ask if they need medical attention?"

"I've got no idea." Sven was busy staring in awe at the runway, anyway. "This is amazing."

Lance grinned. "Try an interpretive dance."

Glare. "Try fucking yourself."

"Sounds boring."

"With you? Probably."

"Dudes!" Hunk gave them both a disapproving look. "We just watched a magical runway get built by dunuh nunuh nunuh nunuh BATMAGE, and you're just gonna have this talk again? Priorities, bros!"

"…Good point, big guy."

"It's valid." Heading over to the exhausted Krryn, Jace opted to try his own hand at charades. Or his arm, more accurately; pulling free of one sleeve of his field jacket, he indicated the mostly-healed cut left from the fight with the Drules, mimed bandaging it, and pointed to the cat-bats with a shrug.

The elder approached Sven, carrying the paper airplane it had commandeered earlier. Pointing to the runway, it smoothed the paper, then mimicked accepting it. The navigator smiled. They'd more than fulfilled their end of the bargain… he went back to the box and put it down in front of the elder, opening it to show off its contents.

With a screech and several ecstatic squirks, the elder actually launched into flight, fluttering a couple of circles around Sven while its ears fluttered like crazy. Landing and grabbing the box, it rushed over to the others, leaving the team staring in disbelieving amusement.

"That is just fucking cute."

"That was fun." As they watched, the elder distributed several sheets of paper to each of the mages and workers. Then another Krryn, with rings on its wingtips rather than its ears, accepted the rest of the box with what could only be described as reverence. A priest? Sven wondered what exactly they might have just done, but really, watching how happy they were he had no regrets. "They really like their paper."

Pidge tilted his head. Several of the mages seemed to have gained a second wind and were experimenting with their sheets. "It's as fascinating to them as their sandstone transmutation was to us."

That insight rang true, and Flynn smiled. "Seems like it may be a fair trade, then."

"I've always liked pens and paper as gifts," Vince commented. Did he like it as much as the Krryn? Probably not. But, if it were up to him, he supposed he might be willing to spark for some really nice paper.

Really, really nice paper.

After a little bit more watching the Krryn and looking over the runway, Flynn turned back to Sven. "You'll be able to explain to them to get a safe distance away, before we take off?" Smirk. "Once Jace is done using up all his bandages?"

Jace, whose attempt at charades had resulted in him bandaging a lot of completely uninjured but very appreciative cat-bats, glared over his shoulder. "Fuck you! They like them!"

Grinning, Sven nodded in response to Flynn's question. "Yes, I should." His focus was more on the medic, though. Never before in the history of the 686 had Jace done anything, let alone used up his precious medical supplies, with the started justification of making someone happy.

It wasn't lost on Lance either. "Admit it, Doc, you think they're adorable." He earned a glare for that, and no such admission… though he also didn't say no.

"Doc likes big bats and he cannot lie," Hunk whispered, snickering.

With a snort, Lance stepped out onto the sandstone and stared down the runway again. He could still hardly believe what they'd just seen, even walking on the surface.

Magic…?

The memory of warmth tingled in his fingertips, and maybe it all sounded a little less crazy. But only a little.

*****

The small group from the castle shelter had just returned from burying the King in a makeshift tomb. It was small, hidden away from the tunnel passageways and easy to overlook. Allura was tired from the trip. While she was content that they had been able to recover and protect her father's body, the near-secret burial was nowhere near what she wanted. Brushing her hair from her face, she reminded herself that what she wanted and what was possible in their current situation were two wholly different universes.

Of course in truth, what she most wanted wouldn't be possible in the best of circumstances. She didn't possess that form of magic that could raise a body from the grave. What ran in the royal blood of Arus was minor magic, granting minor skills… empathy, visions, the tenuous ability to speak to the dead. But no more than speak. It made her wonder if her family had ever possessed the level of powers spoken of in myth.

As she entered the shelter proper, raising her eyes up, she noted there were somehow more soldiers inside. It took a moment for her to recognize them as part of the royal guard, and then her eyes widened; they were the guards that had traveled with her brother and Nanny. Approaching the group, they snapped to attention, Captain Sherion stepping forward to greet her. "My Princess, we are so glad to have found you…"

The words carried something that struck Allura, the joyful thought of seeing her brother turned to nervous fear. Something in his tone… she couldn't hide the small shake within herself as the Captain led her to where her brother was.

In the small room, a small bed, laid a small form covered in blankets and heating pads. Nanny was sitting nearby, asking how the prince was feeling and fussing to get some food ready. Coran was also there, giving Allura a concerned look as she entered. Kneeling down the bed, Allura peeked under the blanket. A pair of soft green eyes perked up from underneath.

"Sis!" Tanner squeaked lightly.

"How's my lil' lion?"

Tanner coughed. "Tired… but I'm happy to see you."

Allura brushed a strand of hair from his face as she moved some of the blanket to see him better. It was as her hand cupped his cheek that she could sense it, shivering. The sickness that was in him. She had seen it in others within the cave shelters… a fungal-like virus that wove itself throughout the body, taking silent hold before a massive growth that overtook the host body in a short span of time. Biting her lip, she dreaded having to tell the others what she sensed, but this was not a matter she could lie about.

"Well, it looks like Nanny has a little bit of lunch ready for you now. How about you work on that and I'll be back to tell you all that I've been up to after that, okay?"

Tanner nodded, eyes bright, as Allura helped to prop him up so he could eat. Watching him for a moment longer, she closed her eyes and sighed. No, she couldn't put it off, either.

She moved to the doorway with Coran and one of the doctors that had been treating him since he arrived. The doctor immediately started to give a report. "Your Majesty, I'm suspecting something to do with his lungs. Perhaps even the cave-mold illness, but I'm—"

"—It is," Allura interrupted. "It is the cave-mold."

The group fell silent for a moment; it was broken by Coran asking in a low voice, "How far along, do you think?"

"The growth has begun. Days… maybe a week at most, but I don't think so. He's…" Allura trailed off, tears beginning as her voice started to break.

Coran placed an arm around her, looking at the doctor, who nodded gravely. "I'll make sure he is comfortable as preparations are made for him… and I will take it upon myself to inform the council," he added softly, earning a grateful nod from the princess.

"Nanny will not take the news well." Coran sighed. "Perhaps we can take solace in the fact that his time is not coming through violence, at least."

Allura thought about that as she leaned into the old advisor's shoulder. "Maybe there is something we can do for him yet…" Coran looked at her, curious, and she shook her head slightly at the unspoken question. "Nothing that could save him, but there is something he would dearly love… something that would mean everything to him," she murmured.

"Oh? What would that be?"

"It's where I recovered my father. There is something that he loves… more than anything in all of Arus. If you were to help me in getting him there, he would be so happy." Her eyes lifted, pleading for his help. "He would be at peace just to see it one last time."

It was hardly something Coran could refuse, though he tried to convince himself. But looking into the room where the young prince was settling down after his meal, then back to the pleading eyes of the princess, he sighed. It would be tricky, but not impossible. They'd managed once. "Alright, my princess. But after this… you must stop placing yourself in such dangerous positions that could risk everything. Do I have your word?"

Allura nodded silently. She understood. After this… her safety would become even more paramount.

"Then I'll get things started. As soon as we have things prepared, we'll head off."

Giving him a quick peck on the cheek, Allura headed into the room to be with her brother. Coran sighed as he looked after her. He really could no longer shake the feeling that his princess was going to be a bit harder to deal with than her father.

*****

*Sorry about last week! Just working out a few glitches in the new schedule. (...Not that anyone was planning for the three-day power outage one of us got, but, you know, no plan survives contact with the 686. Even from a meta perspective.)