Against
All Odds
By Cheezey
It was near
In addition to that, his own failures to Voltron were beginning to wear heavily on him. During his many years of service in Zarkon’s royal fleet, Yurak had successfully led the conquest of countless planets and had earned commendation after commendation for his accomplishments. Prior to Voltron’s reemergence on Arus, his battle record had been flawless and the envy and aspiration of many an officer. It frustrated him beyond measure to have that now tarnished by some magic robot protecting a primitive planet that Doom’s forces had taken years ago and that Haggar had supposedly gotten rid of. Zarkon’s increasing impatience with the matter and subsequent displeasure with him only added to the frustration. Yurak respected King Zarkon highly and had no desire to fall out of his favor, but it seemed that was exactly what was happening despite his best efforts—and Commander Yurak was not accustomed to having his best efforts fail. Failure was not an option he gave himself. He had higher personal standards than that.
Such were the thoughts weighing on his mind when he closed the door behind him, and he was so caught up in them that his usually sharp attention only picked up as an afterthought that the lights in his quarters were already on when he entered. Before he had time to question why that was, he heard a voice call out, “Welcome back.”
His blue ears twitched in the direction of the greeting and he looked over, mildly startled, but he relaxed when he recognized the familiar blue face. His visitor, a younger man of noble Doomite background like himself, was another loyal soldier to Zarkon’s empire and one of the king’s admirals with whom he had served in the royal fleet for some time. For a good portion of that time, and discreetly behind closed doors, he was also his lover. The man lounged somewhat lazily on one of his couches, already having made himself quite comfortable in Yurak’s absence. He was already out of uniform, clad only in his pants with his hands folded across his bare blue chest, his sock-clad feet up on the arm of the sofa, and his sandy hair somewhat wild in disarray while his helmet lay tossed aside on an empty chair.
Although discovering Admiral Cossack waiting for him in his quarters was a pleasant surprise, Yurak still frowned a bit as he engaged the lock on the door. “I’d ask if you were here on fleet business but I probably already know the answer.”
Cossack sat up, picked up a golden stein set aside on a nearby end table, and grinned back at his host. “That’s what I told your slaves before I sent them off to their quarters.” The slaves Cossack referred to were a pair of timid humans assigned to the housekeeping chores of Yurak’s quarters that waited on him when he was present. Though they knew full well the reason for Cossack’s frequent visits and long stays, they knew better than to acknowledge that and certainly never spoke of it knowing that doing so was a good way meet the unfriendly end of their stern master’s blade or his companion’s electrolash.
Given their prominent positions in Doom’s royal fleet, both Yurak and Cossack were careful to keep their personal reputations clean of that sort of scandal. Whispers of indiscretion bred a lack of respect and a lack of respect meant subordinates that were difficult to control. Additionally and especially in the case of Yurak, anything that reflected badly on anyone the king’s inner circle would in turn reflect badly on Zarkon himself, and Voltron had already done enough damage to Doom’s image as it was without the ugliness of any personal scandal sullying it further.
There were some rumors, but they were harmless, little more than the typical conjecture made about anyone in a position of prominence. Hushed whispers here and there about why someone of Yurak’s station never kept a harem or even a single pleasure slave when he could easily have his pick of any taken from planets he had helped conquer, or speculation as to why he spent most of his nights in his quarters at Castle Doom as opposed to his family’s estate. Elsewhere on Doom Yurak had a wife, a nobility-born bride his family arranged for him to marry eight years prior, and one child, but given the amount of time he spent with either, one might have wondered about his parentage had the boy not had oversized blue ears and facial features that were a dead ringer for his father’s.
Whatever speculation there was about Yurak and his private life, however, none of it involved Admiral Cossack in any way, which was exactly how Yurak wanted it. The issue of scandal aside, there was a strict taboo against officers fraternizing in such a way, especially at such high rank and profile. The other factor that worked in their favor was Cossack himself. The notoriously impulsive and brash admiral was not known for his subtlety in any matter—battle or otherwise—and therefore he was rarely looked upon as someone with something to hide. Those that wondered why Cossack had yet to be married off as most men his age in the nobility were figured the answer was simply that his big mouth rubbed someone, especially the uptight or stuffy, the wrong way at least once a day.
It certainly had Yurak at one point, years ago when they had first met. In fact it was his task of having to discipline Cossack as his subordinate so often and so heavily handed that originally spawned his attraction to him. Cossack had been a challenge to try and break of his bad habits—his ill-timed wisecracks, his blasé attitude, and his frequent tap-dancing around rules and regulations when it suited his purpose. At the time Yurak assumed that Cossack’s former superiors had been too easy on him, and he had intended to correct that error and force him to toe the line under his command. Yurak had his work cut out for him, and although Cossack drove him up a wall, it did not take long for him to also drive him to distraction.
As the weeks had passed Yurak grew to respect and even admire the other man’s strength of will, not to mention the strength of body and fine skill with which Cossack handled his electrolash in the practice arena. At the same time Cossack had come to equally enjoy sparring with, and tweaking, his gruff commanding officer, and by that time the attraction had become not only mutual but also very tense. Their interactions had become increasingly loaded with challenge and lust, and although they fenced around a dangerous flirtation for a while alternately feeding it and trying to pretend it did not exist, eventually temptation proved too difficult to fight. Once they succumbed, neither regretted a moment of it since.
Oh, there was the shadow of what the consequences would be if they were discovered hanging over them, although if Cossack worried about that he never let on aside from being as discreet about the situation as it merited. Yurak was more mindful of it, and he knew that on some level that they gambled dangerously with fate. He chastised himself for allowing it to continue, but he was beyond doing anything to stop it with how the other man made him feel when they were alone together. He supposed that when it came to temptation from the right individual, he was even more undisciplined than the one he so often criticized for being such.
“Did anyone else see you come here?” Yurak demanded of his visitor.
“Relax,” Cossack said dismissively, and strode over to the other man’s side. “The hall was empty when I showed up.”
“Good.” He relaxed and smiled a little. “I didn’t expect you to be here at this hour.”
“I got word this morning that your ship was leaving Nemone today,” Cossack said, and took a swig from the stein in his hands. “The tin heads down at the command center were buzzing about the Voltron bullshit that happened there. I figured you might need to relax a little when you got back.” He held the golden tankard out to Yurak. “And judging by the look on your face, you do.”
Yurak grumbled under his breath and took the offered refresher, but he only took a sip from it before he set it absently down on a table beside him. “Prince Taybor was an inept fool. He managed to let a human slave, a child no less, escape and bring the Voltron Force to Nemone. They caused a messy uprising that interrupted the Nemonium mining operation by at least a week’s worth of time. We were able to put Nemone back under our control once Voltron left, but we lost a fair number of slaves in the process and the repairs to the facility will keep slaves that should’ve been mining otherwise busy.” He growled in frustration as he removed his cape, belt, and weapons. “The only satisfying part about that entire trip was when Zarkon ordered me to dispense of that worm.”
Leaning over the back of Yurak’s chair, Cossack reached and smoothed his hands along the commander’s shoulders over his armor. Although little of Yurak’s cybernetic gear was actually part of his body—his eye, specifically—the chest plate was only heavy battle armor and the arm a compression gauntlet. The eye had been put in voluntarily to replace a naturally weak one, and the arm had been customized and fitted to him several years earlier. Compression armor was not easily or quickly removed without risking electrical shocks and as a result Yurak tended to leave it on much of the time, even when he was not on any sort of duty. Cossack did not mind; he found the cybernetics a point of uniqueness, and in close contact he enjoyed the unusual contrast of smooth metal and blue fur against his skin. An impish smile tugged at Cossack’s features when he heard Yurak say that he had killed the prince of Nemone. “Ran him through, huh?”
“More like sliced open, but close enough.” Yurak’s tone became somewhat more relaxed as Cossack’s fingers massaged the side of his neck.
“Bet it was satisfying.” He enunciated the final word with enough of a suggestive undertone to make it not subtle in the least. Then again, Cossack rarely was.
“Yes,” Yurak murmured, and reclined for a moment before he turned his head upward to meet Cossack’s gaze. He looked down at him with an eager look in his golden eyes that Yurak recognized quite well, and he sighed. For someone as impulsive and undisciplined as Cossack could be at times, in some ways he was hopelessly predictable.
When he noted the mildly critical expression that flashed across his lover’s features, Cossack frowned slightly. “What?”
“I should’ve known that was why you were here.” Yurak’s voice had a growling edge to it, although it was not true anger, more bemusement than anything else.
Cossack folded his arms across the seat back and looked down at him, and a lock of his hair flopped down onto Yurak’s shoulder as he did so. “Aw, cut me some slack. I just thought you’d want some company after all that bullshit. I know I’d be pissed if that was how my mission went.”
“Knowing you, you’d have blown something up.”
A grin spread across Cossack’s face. “Probably.” He leaned closer and nuzzled against the other man’s large blue ear. “And knowing you, you probably yelled a lot and wanted to, but didn’t.”
“Mass destruction might’ve been satisfying but it wasn’t exactly a constructive solution. Voltron did enough damage to Nemone already.” A pleasant tingle went through his spine as Cossack’s warm breath stirred the fur on the edge of his ear.
“Sometimes a big release is what you need.”
Yurak looked up at him directly. “What I need or what you need?”
“What we both need.” Cossack drew his hands over his shoulders again and began to unfasten the armor. “You’ve had a shitty mission, I’ve been on really boring duty, and we haven’t seen each other in days.” He grazed his lips with the barest hint of a kiss. “Besides, I missed you. Nobody’s given me a hard time for at least seventy two hours now.”
“So you decided that cornering me in my quarters in the middle of the night would be a good way to get a hard time?”
“That or a good way to get hard, but either works for me.” When Yurak only made a semi-amused snort in response to that crude statement, Cossack took that as encouragement. “So what do you say about getting out of that armor so we can go relax, and you can vent all you want about what happened on Nemone and get it off your chest. Maybe give you a massage?” he added to sweeten the deal.
“Talking about it will only irritate me more,” Yurak stated flatly as he stood.
Cossack watched him slip out of the chest plate and carry it over to the unit that charged its electrical properties. “Then how about we skip the talk and just unwind?”
“Sometimes I think you have a one-track mind, Cossack.” Yurak wandered toward his bedroom.
The other man followed, and pushed the door back into a semi-closed position behind him as he passed through. He went up behind Yurak and circled his arms around his waist. “Is that a complaint?” He nipped lightly on the edge of his ear as soon as he said it, and Yurak immediately relaxed and leaned into his embrace. His ears were sensitive, and having them touched or kissed in such a way never failed to garner a positive reaction from him. Cossack knew that quite well, and in moments like that he shamelessly exploited it to his advantage, as evidenced by the way only seconds later one of his hands crept to Yurak’s other ear and stroked its edge while he continued to nuzzle the first with his lips. “Well, is it?” he pressed after getting no response other than the quickening of his lover’s pulse and the deepening of his breath.
“No, just an observation.” Yurak savored the touch for several moments before he broke away to go to the bed. He pulled off his boots while Cossack flopped down rather gracelessly beside him.
The eyebrow above his natural eye rose when he noticed that Cossack still had his socks on as he pulled off his own. “Your dirty socks are hardly an aphrodisiac.”
At that Cossack made a face and removed the offending articles, giving them a careless toss over his shoulder and onto the floor while Yurak, now clad only in his black uniform pants, stretched out comfortably on the bed. A moment later Cossack joined his side and pulled him into another embrace. “I’m glad you came,” Yurak murmured against him.
Cossack could not help but snicker at the unintentionally suggestive words. “But I didn’t.” He smoothed his hand over the silken blue fur of his partner’s torso. “Well at least not yet.”
Yurak grumbled again, although that time it was only a playful grouse. “I believe you offered a massage?”
“And I’ll get right on that, sir, as soon as you get out of these.” He hooked his thumb around the waist of his pants.
In response to that Yurak rolled over and slipped out of the last of his clothing while the other man watched. Although he was hardly a stranger to the sight by that point, he always appreciated it. Even before they were so intimate, he’d admired Yurak’s strong, muscled form. Cossack patted the pillows and assumed a playfully authoritative tone. “All right soldier, lay down.”
Yurak chortled as he settled back onto the bed. “I thought I was the ranking officer here.”
“You are, but it feels good to give you orders anyway,” Cossack admitted while he wriggled out of the last of his own clothing. Once that was taken care of he climbed on top of his partner and smoothed his hands along his bare back. “And sometimes I am the one on top.”
“Is that a hint?” Yurak asked while Cossack’s hands began to work their magic on his tired muscles, and a contented smile spread across his lips as he rested his head lazily upon the pillow. Though Yurak generally favored a dominant position, he was not absolute about it.
Cossack leaned over him to pay special attention to the top of his shoulders, and pressed his naked body partly against his. “Well, I am feeling pretty energetic tonight…”
The lazy smile on Yurak’s lips broadened. “Then energize me.”
“You got it.”
Any further conversation was cut off as Cossack descended upon him with renewed vigor. Hungry kisses coupled with the pleasant kneading of his hands, sensually touching and exploring him all over. That lasted only a short while before the embrace became more intimate and insistent, and Yurak felt almost the entire length of the other man’s body against his, leathery skin pressed against coarse fur. The telltale throb of Cossack’s arousal hinted that his patience for foreplay would be finite, but Yurak was not inclined to keep him waiting long. He rolled over to make that point, and in that new position their mouths met in a powerful kiss that engaged them and erased any pretense of a massage.
Exploring one another with unfettered abandon, soon their contact became even more intimate, and before long they were utterly lost in their own world of lust and pleasure—so lost, in fact, that neither noticed the subtle creep of the bedroom door as it opened an inch or so farther, or the soft gasp of the individual who spied them in that private moment before retreating back into the shadows.
After their tryst was complete, Cossack murmured into his lover’s ear, “You don’t look so somber now.”
“No,” Yurak admitted with a satisfied smile on his usually stern face. He drew his hand along the other man’s torso in fond caress. “You have that effect on me.”
“Heh, well someone has to keep you lightened up.” Cossack nuzzled against him, and lapsed into a somewhat serious for a moment. “And lately that’s been a full time mission.”
A tense note crept into Yurak’s voice. “Blame Voltron. That damn robot is going to be the ruin of me the way things keep going.”
Cossack frowned and sat up beside him, an even more serious look on his face as he regarded him. “Don’t talk like that.”
“It’s true.” He sighed and stared at the ceiling. “You know how King Zarkon feels about failure. If I don’t defeat Voltron soon, I’m finished.”
“Zarkon wouldn’t execute you for that,” Cossack insisted. “I mean, yeah, we’ve got our asses whomped out there with the forces you deployed, but it’s not like it was because you fucked it up personally. You’re one of his best tacticians. I don’t think he’d kill you for a run of bad luck.”
Yurak frowned. “Wouldn’t he? I’m not so sure of that; he’s threatened as much more than once. And even if he only relieves me of my command, I might as well be dead. My fleet service has been my life.”
Cossack slapped his forehead. “Oh, stop being so melodramatic.”
“Melodramatic?” Yurak retorted with a raised eyebrow, and an irritable note in his tone. “Would you call it that if you were in my position? If you were being threatened with losing everything you worked for, everything you earned and did, for failures out of your control because your enemy is some robotic monstrosity touched by divine favor?” He glowered. “I led the conquest of many, many planets before Arus, and I’ve never racked up a string of defeats like this before Voltron. Never.”
“If I was the one in your position, I wouldn’t sweat what I couldn’t control,” Cossack answered honestly, and then added in a lower tone that held a touch of emotion, “and I hate it when you get like this.”
“Like what?”
“You get your pride so hung up on things like this Voltron bullshit that I worry you’ll do something really stupid one of these days to prove yourself against Voltron and wind up...” He cut himself off and sighed wearily, refusing to even indulge that depressing chain of thought further. “I just don’t like it.”
“I don’t like it either,” Yurak informed him flatly, and returned the volley that stung his pride right back at the one who stung it. “And you’re a fine one to talk about being stupid.”
The remark had its intended effect, and a hurt and angry look flashed through Cossack’s eyes. “Yeah, I’m stupid. I guess it was real stupid of me to think that something other than your command post might matter to you.” His voice was thick with sarcasm, and as he looked away into the darkened corners of the room he started to say something else, but chose at the last moment to leave it unsaid. Instead all he did was rise to his feet and say, “So much for unwinding.”
“Cossack.” Yurak’s tone was sharp and authoritative.
The other man did not say anything, but stopped and turned toward him.
He lowered his voice and added with a note of emotion in it, “Don’t leave.”
After a long look, Cossack wordlessly returned to the bed. Yurak pulled him back into the warmth of the sheets and held him close as they had been only a short while before. “You matter,” he told him in a low murmur. It was all he said, but it was enough for Cossack who knew better than to expect any more than that as far as an apology went.
“Then stop spouting all this gloom and lighten up, will you?” Cossack retorted, clenching at the thick lock of blue hair at the base of his lover’s neck. “I worry enough about you as it is. Every time I hear a report that you had a run-in with Voltron it makes my blood run cold. Only it’s not your job I’m worried about, it’s your neck.”
Yurak closed his natural eye as he leaned against a soft kiss Cossack left upon the neck he just spoke of in the figurative. “And would I still appeal to you if I was stripped of rank and made a nobody, an outcast, a failure?”
Mildly surprised and amused to learn that Yurak actually thought he, Cossack, the guy who found stunts such as ordering robots to moon stuffy dignitaries funny, cared enough about image for that to be a factor, he smiled back at him fondly. “Sure, sleeping with an outcast on the sly? Sounds pretty exciting to me.” He rubbed the back of the other man’s neck. “Look at it this way, if Zarkon exiled you to a frost planet, I’d just station myself in the quadrant and requisition vacation quarters in your neighborhood.” His eyes sparkled with amusement as he continued to ramble, “Or maybe I’d lock you in my closet, or even hide you under my comforter to keep my bed warm…”
Yurak’s foul mood subsided at the sheer inanity of Cossack’s fantasy. “Quite a risk for an admiral to gamble his career in Doom’s royal fleet on.”
The smile on Cossack’s face broadened to a mischievous grin that bared his fangs. “Yeah, ranks up there with boffing your commanding officer.” He leaned in and kissed him. “But you know me, I like to push it.”
That time Yurak smiled despite himself, and as he felt the wandering hand of his lover touch him fondly, he returned the favor. “That you do.”
“And you love it.” The conversation then ended with another kiss that led to them getting to sleep much, much later.
* * *
It was an hour before sunrise when the buzz of Cossack’s comm unit went off, waking up both him and Yurak. At first Cossack was loath to admit it was his and tried vainly to remain asleep in cozy confines of the bed, but he had no such luck. The sound of a communicator woke Yurak up instantly, as he was used to having to answer his at all hours given that the fleet commander was rarely not on call, and once he determined it was not his he gave Cossack a pointed shove to motivate him to get up and answer it.
“Aw man,” Cossack grumbled, eyes still closed as he clung to the last remnants of his pleasant dream and fished around on the nightstand looking for it.
“Open your eyes and try the floor,” Yurak suggested gruffly, and then added as an afterthought, “And make sure you don’t let on where you are.”
Acknowledging him with only a grunt, the bleary-eyed Cossack looked around and realized his unit was still in the pocket of his pants, which were in a heap next to the bed. After fishing it out he flipped it on and muttered a rather unenthusiastic, “Cossack here.”
The robot on the other end proceeded to inform him that he was to report for duty in 45 minutes and that High Admiral Mogor wanted him to oversee a mission to planet Maura, a world that Doom had recently taken over. They had a strong occupying force there presently, but some rebels were giving them trouble, and they wanted reinforcements stationed locally in the event that anything came of it since there were high priority plans to build a secret weapon there slated to commence in the very near future.
“Maura,” Yurak remarked after Cossack hung up, having overheard the conversation. “I asked Mogor to keep an eye on the situation there. Guess it got worse in the last 48 hours.”
Cossack sighed and rubbed his eyes. “Wish you could’ve recommended him a different admiral to take care of it.”
“If I knew you’d stay all night, I would’ve.”
Cossack’s eyebrow rose suggestively as he regarded the higher-ranking officer. “It’s not too late to pull rank and order me to stay here, you know...”
“For what kind of service?” Yurak asked with an incredulous look.
He responded with the first thing that popped into his mind. “Personal?”
At that Yurak let out a short bark of a laugh and shoved a pillow at him. “That wouldn’t be at all suspicious.”
“Well it was worth a try,” Cossack said, and rose to his feet. He scooped up his pants in one arm and immediately headed into the main room of the quarters while Yurak hastily put on a robe before following him out.
“You’re lucky the servants aren’t in yet,” he admonished as he joined him in the empty room. “You need to be more careful.”
“And you worry too much,” he retorted unconcerned as he fastened his pants. “They don’t clean or bring breakfast this early. Besides, what’re they going to do? You’re their master. It’s not in their best interests to provoke you.”
“No good will come from anyone, slave or otherwise, seeing you stomp naked out of my bedroom first thing in the morning.”
“I got an easy twenty minutes to spare. And really, even if I had my pants on, like your hypothetical witness wouldn’t think the exact same thing anyway?” He pulled his shirt on. “Like I said, you worry too much. I got us covered. Nobody’s gotten any idea what kinky things you do to your favorite admiral in your spare time yet.”
Yurak’s left ear twitched almost imperceptibly as he handed Cossack his helmet. “It’s not the first time you’ve cut it close. Remember the hour you spent in my closet hiding during that annoying surprise visit from Haggar?”
“All things considered, I’d rather hang out with your cleaning supplies than gawk at the old witch’s ugly mug first thing in the morning anyway, so it wasn’t so bad.” He put his helmet on and circled an arm around his lover’s waist affectionately. “And you didn’t mind the extra time in bed I spent waking you up.”
“No,” he admitted with a grudging smile before he added, “I probably wouldn’t have minded this morning either.”
“You’ll have to take that up with High Admiral Mogor.”
While Cossack sat down to put on his boots, Yurak’s gaze lingered on him. “Keep me updated on the Maura mission.”
“Sure. I’ll even give you a personal briefing when I get back, sir.” A playful leer crept across his features as he drew Yurak into a parting embrace, “or a debriefing if you’d prefer.” Before Yurak could respond to that, however, Cossack’s mirth faded briefly. “And seriously,” he said as he searched the other man’s face, “don’t let Voltron’s BS get to you.”
“It’s hard to ignore the blazing sword when it cuts your forces into pieces.”
“That’s not the BS I meant and you know it.” He stroked the side of his face meaningfully for a moment before the usual jovial gleam returned to his eyes. “I don’t want to get back from Maura only to have to spend all night cheering you up again… well, not that it wouldn’t be fun, but I’d like a better reason.”
“Since when do you need a reason?” Yurak murmured just as their lips met in a parting kiss.
A moment later they broke apart and Cossack stepped to the door, flashing him a warm smile as he did so. “See you later.”
Yurak echoed his smile as he watched him leave. “Goodbye.”
* * *
After three tedious days stationed near Maura without any real incidents necessitating the presence of extra forces, Cossack was called back to Doom for a high priority briefing. That was nothing new; it happened quite often. What was new, and what left him feeling so unsettled was that the order came not from his fleet commander, but from King Zarkon.
Cossack was already edgy, even before that bit of news. He had last spoken to Yurak a day earlier, when he had called his comm unit on the pretense of giving a report. Anyone that asked would have thought nothing amiss with that, for Cossack had made it a point to mention casually to High Admiral Mogor that their commander had seen him in passing prior to departure and requested direct updates on the Maura situation. Of course, he did not say anything that hinted at anything illicit between him and Yurak on a military frequency, but Cossack was good at being cagey, using double meanings, and ferreting out tidbits that said plenty between the lines so that was not a problem.
That call was the main reason he was wound so tightly. When he last spoke to Yurak it was right after he’d learned that the latest mission to Arus had gone badly, very badly. Even worse, he knew there was an ongoing conference on Doom at which several governors of allied planets in the empire were present, and rumors were circulating that Prince Lotor was returning to Doom to handle the Arus situation. Cossack had no idea how true they were, but he knew that if they were, it did not bode well for those currently in charge of it, especially his commander.
In their brief chat, Yurak had not looked well at all. Though he always looked a little rough around the edges, the haggard stress lines on his face were deeper than Cossack had ever seen them, and his harried, gruff tone had a miserable note to it that made Cossack yearn to be with him, even if only for a short time, in person. Their conversation had been short; Yurak told him that he was on his way to speak with the king and the look on his face made it clear that he dreaded it. When Cossack said in as non-suspicious a way as he could that he wanted to know how things turned out, Yurak’s hurried response was to say he’d be among the first to get the full report. He knew that was Yurak-code for “as soon as I can,” and that was usually fairly prompt.
Only that time it wasn’t.
In the time since that conversation, Cossack tried to find out whatever he could about the Arus mission and what was going on back on Doom but to little avail. The command center became increasingly ambiguous about what was happening, and even his direct superior, High Admiral Mogor, did not seem to know much. Cossack supposed he would find out when he got back to Doom, but as it turned out, he found out fifteen minutes before landing there, when the command center released a general report to all of the admirals, and his entire body went numb when he heard it.
The rumors were true.
Prince Lotor was back home planetside.
Commander Yurak had been stripped of title and command for his repeated failures to Voltron.
Lotor was being given said command.
And Yurak—his Yurak, his commander and his lover—was being given to the witch Haggar to be turned into a robeast to fight Voltron.
Cossack could hardly believe what he heard and he desperately did not want to.
“A robeast?” The words caught in his throat as he repeated them incredulously. “That was his punishment?”
“His choice, if you can believe it,” Mogor explained as Cossack tried to wrap his mind around the concept. “Originally Zarkon only ordered his rank stripped and him banished from Doom.”
“Then how the hell did that come about?” Cossack demanded in a flash of emotion that surged to the surface. In retrospect he realized he probably should have been more mindful of that, but at that moment he was far more concerned about Yurak than he was the thought that someone might do the math and realize he cared more than he should about him. “What happened, did he mouth off to the king or something?” He found that hard to believe knowing Yurak as well as he did, but he knew there had to be more to the story.
Mogor shook his head. “Apparently he pleaded for one last chance. He didn’t want to give up.”
All but the sound of Mogor’s voice faded into white background noise for Cossack and a fresh bolt of dread numbed him; the words rang horribly true. That sounded exactly like something the Yurak he knew so well would do, and it rattled him to the core.
“He refused to accept exile, and wanted to redeem himself,” Mogor went on. “Zarkon didn’t want to hear it, but Prince Lotor proposed a solution to give him that last chance that his father was amenable to.”
“To become a robeast? To fight Voltron?” It was not an unheard of concept; many a fine
Doom warrior had taken the path of becoming a gladiator or champion for a cause
that meant something to them, especially as a means to save honor or face, gain
glory, or both. But combat in an arena
was a far cry from that, and robeasts deployed against Voltron had a very grim
track record no matter how good a fighter they were to begin with…
Mogor nodded. “One last chance to defeat him, hand to hand. If he wins, returns home a hero. If he loses—”
“He’s fucking dead!” Cossack exclaimed, and his agitated voice echoed throughout the bridge of the ship. He clenched his fists and slammed them both on the console. “Of all the prideful, arrogant, stupid—”
Mistaking Cossack’s outburst as concern for a battle comrade and nothing more, Mogor acknowledged him with another nod. “Not a gamble I would make. I’d choose exile myself. A civilian life on, say, Tyrus, wouldn’t be so bad.”
“Of course you would, anyone sane would!” Cossack forced himself to rein in the surge of emotion and panic that welled up inside him. The joking remark he had made during their last night together about locking Yurak in his closet on a frost planet if he were to be exiled seemed quite cruel in its irony for it was at that moment Cossack realized how much truth there was in what he’d said in jest. Had there been a way to stop Yurak from his suicide mission, he would have found a way to keep him in his life, exile be damned.
Mogor meanwhile remained impassive and unaware of the depth of or reason for Cossack’s distress. “Heh, Commander Yurak has always been a little intense, and as of late I think he’s gotten a bit overzealous. Cocky, even.” He shook his head and mused, “I think someone’s been a reckless influence on him.”
Cossack also felt the sting of truth barbed with guilt in that remark, knowing full well who it was that regularly encouraged Yurak to lighten up and throw caution to the wind, and it made him want to reach across the console and beat the crap out of Mogor for reminding him. The only thing that stopped him was the sudden realization that Mogor had not referred to Yurak’s insane mission in a past tense, which might mean it was not yet a done deal. Clinging to that thin hope, he looked to Mogor anxiously. “So when’s all this going down, anyway?”
“From what I was told, they depart for Arus tonight.”
* * *
Once they landed on Doom the first thing Cossack did was bolt for Yurak’s quarters. He was on the verge of losing it, but the hope that he might have time to talk Yurak out of his ego-driven suicide mission enabled him to hold it together at least that long. Maybe if he saw him face to face he could convince him that death really was not better than exile, and that his pride was not worth his life…
When he reached the fleet commander’s quarters, for once without a care who saw him going there, he was abruptly stopped by two robots stationed outside it to deny access. Not at all in the mood to be thwarted by a couple of metal flunkies, Cossack demanded with an impatient scowl, “Where’s Yurak?”
“He is gone, Admiral Cossack,” the robot on the left told him. “The witch has already begun her work on him. Only family is allowed access to his personal affects.”
The words sank his heart like a heavy weight. He is gone, enunciated in that cold metallic voice, echoed in a cruel playback in his mind.
“The witch’s lab,” he repeated, wondering if he still had any time as his hopes withered further. Cossack then decided that even if he could not change Yurak’s mind or stop him, he wanted—no, he needed—to see him one last time, even if only through the glass of a bio chamber.
Without another word, Cossack ran as fast as his legs could carry him through the corridors.
* * *
It took less than two minutes to reach Haggar’s lab, an impressive sprint considering the distance between the fleet commander’s quarters and the witch’s lab and the number of floors separating the two. On the way he heard the buzz of his comm unit, but ignored it since he did not care who was calling him or what they wanted. There was nothing that could not wait.
On his way into the lab he nearly barreled over several individuals emerging. He did not recognize them anyhow, and he could not have cared less about the shocked glare at least one gave him when he nearly gored her on his helmet in passing. There were armed robots stationed around the area, but they recognized him by uniform and rank and since they took no issue with his presence, apparently admirals had high enough clearance to get in.
The unnatural, eerily mechanical noises that came from the old witch’s laboratory normally did not bother a hardened Doom soldier like Cossack, but knowing who was on the receiving end of them changed that significantly. That time it seemed to him that the sounds melded together and played some twisted mechanical dirge, and he would never forget the awful symphony of hissing, welding, and mutation.
However, that was nothing compared to the sight that greeted his eyes when he reached the bio chamber. Where Yurak should have been instead was some enlarged, eerie caricature of him that was more armor than man, clad in metal clothes with weapons embedded all over his body and ears so large that they could have doubled as antennas or receivers—which he realized a moment later they probably were. His altered form was still, tangled in a mass of wires and surrounded in stasis fluid that was just as much mechanical as it was biological. His face, however, remained painfully recognizable. The old witch had not mutilated or changed that in any way.
As Cossack stood rooted to that spot in front of the bio chamber in silence, he came to terms with the crushing realization that not only was he indeed too late, but that it would be the last time he would ever see him. In those moments he found himself searching Yurak’s face—with his natural eye still open and both it and the cybernetic lens cast in Cossack’s direction—for the answers to two questions.
Do you even know I’m here?
And more urgently, with a lonely ache that he felt down to his very core…
Why?
* * *
Had he been able to hear and answer them, the semi-conscious Yurak would have answered Cossack’s questions concisely with a “yes” and “you already know.”
From where he lay immersed in the sustaining fluid of the bio chamber, Yurak was fully aware of what happened around him, although he could feel very little at that point. That was not to say he felt nothing, but his senses were in a strange state of numbness, and what he did feel he did not experience quite like one would in an organic body—at least not as far as physical sensation went. Emotion, on the other hand, was intense as ever.
A part of him had been elated to catch the sight of Cossack beyond the glass. To know that despite the fact that he knew Cossack would never understand his decision, that he still came to him eased one nagging regret. He had never gotten the chance to speak with him a final time, either to offer his reasons or to simply bid him the face to face farewell he deserved at the very least. To go to Arus without at least that much closure would have been far more painful to live with, or die with as the case would likely to be, because as he had told Cossack the last time they were together, he did matter. More so than he might ever realize.
The other part of him found it all the more difficult to see the distressed face of the other man with it in mind that not only was the last time he would see it, but that there was nothing to be done at that point to change it. For a moment Cossack’s silly quip about storing him in a closet came to mind, and had he still had enough control of his faculties in that chamber, he would have smiled, for as ridiculous as it was, in that brief instant he actually considered whether it might have been a better option. But even in that state he knew that such a thing, farfetched as that fantasy was or even one more realistic, could never work. What Cossack did not understand was that while Yurak knew Cossack did not care what station he held—fleet commander or outcast—and he loved him all the more for that unconditional acceptance, Yurak himself did care. What point was there in living a life of miserable obscurity, stripped of all rank, title, and importance, a failure, a shame, and an embarrassment to everyone he knew and loved, especially to those he loved?
No, he could not live with that.
It was better to take that dismally slim chance against Voltron, and if he was destined to meet his end at his hands, at least he would be remembered for his accomplishments, for all he had worked so hard for, and in his death honored a brave warrior that went out in a blaze of glory. And when it came down to it, he could think of no better way he would have Cossack, that impulsive and foolhardy admiral who watched him so intently through the glass and whose favorite pastime was pushing the limit, remember him.
* * *
Though it was in actuality only a matter of minutes that Cossack spent by Yurak in the bio chamber, it felt like forever, and still he was not very pleased to have it cut short by a rough tap on the shoulder.
“Admiral Cossack,” High Admiral Mogor’s voice invaded into his thoughts sternly. “Did you not receive your orders?”
Cossack blinked and turned around to see Mogor and Prince Lotor both standing there. He straightened and saluted his superior quickly, then bowed, as was protocol. “No sir,” he said honestly, only then remembering that his communicator had buzzed about six times, all of which he had ignored.
“You were paged to report to a briefing upstairs and you didn’t show up,” Mogor stated, his expression indicating clear disapproval. “Why?”
Feigning innocence, Cossack picked up his communicator and pretended he just now had noticed it had buzzed. “Oh wow, look at all those missed messages,” he covered with false apology. “The batteries in this thing must be going bad, sir, I’m so sorry. I’ll have that fixed A.S.A.P! What are the orders?”
“The briefing involved your new orders under my command,” Prince Lotor explained with arrogant superiority. “You and all the admirals. Given the nature of this mission to Arus and its level of importance, I’ve reassigned a number of you. I’m taking two admirals for command backup on Arus and that means the rest of you have to cover any vacant posts.”
Cossack nodded and felt a sudden burst of hope at the prince’s statement. If he could go to Arus, maybe he could help cover Yurak, and do whatever he could to tip the odds in his favor. “I’ll be happy to go to Arus, sire,” Cossack told the prince. “It’ll be an honor to serve in your command on this mission.”
“I didn’t say you were going to Arus; I said that was what the meeting was about!” Lotor said with exasperation.
“You’ve been assigned to Maura,” Mogor informed him in a no-nonsense tone. “Recent reports indicated a force had to be sent in to their capitol. We need coverage there again. You’re to depart immediately and assume command of the operation. Obviously Captain Glarth isn’t competent to keep things under control without a babysitter.”
“Maura, sir?” Cossack repeated, and looked anxiously between the two of them. There was no way he wanted to be on the other side of the galaxy from the very spot where Yurak would need him most. “But isn’t Arus—I mean, the Arusians have been such pains in the asses, wouldn’t some extra help there be good?”
Lotor narrowed his eyes. “Are you questioning my authority, Admiral?”
“No sire,” Cossack amended quickly, the last of his hope of getting to go along to Arus dissipating like smoke in the air. He was ballsy, but he was also smart enough to know that royal limits were not ones to test. Hardening his gaze he added, “I just wanted to help. I want to see Voltron go down in flames.”
“You and the rest of Doom,” Mogor grunted humorlessly.
“And he will, now that I’m here,” Lotor stated confidently, and cast a satisfied smile in the direction of the bio chamber. “And now that we have such a powerful robeast with such a personal score to settle with him.”
Cossack followed the prince’s gaze to Yurak incubating in the chamber and felt the baleful ache once more. How he wished he could echo the prince’s enthusiasm…
“Admiral,” Mogor said with rising impatience, “You are dismissed. The force to Maura is to depart immediately.”
“Yes sir,” Cossack said, and with one long final look at Yurak that conveyed all that he wished he could have told him in private, he turned and left, offering prayers, supplications, bargains, and bribes to whatever gods were listening.
* * *
The situation on Maura turned out to be worse than anticipated. The planetside rebellion in the capitol had gained strength, and some of the slaves had gotten their hands on weapons which was making it more difficult than it should have been to quash. Cossack had not had much chance to find out what was happening on Arus with all that was going on in his own post, although in every second that did not demand his concentration that was all that was on his mind.
Fourteen hours into the battle, however, there was enough of a lull with his command ship standing by while a ground force engaged the rebels directly for him to take a quick breather. As it had been previously ordered, a robot called for his attention. “Admiral Cossack, the command center has issued a report on the Arus mission.”
His heart instantly began to pound. “Well what is it? Put it on screen, now!”
The robot did as instructed and a moment later another robotic voice dominated the speakers. “Arusian strike mission led by his honorable highness Prince Lotor has ended. Planet failed to submit and invading force was neutralized.”
No, Cossack thought desperately, as it seemed that his pounding heart stopped altogether for that moment.
“Survivors en route to planet Doom now to plan retaliatory strike,” the bulletin continued. “Recorded battle footage to follow.”
He lost…
Though he knew that was how it would turn out, until that moment he had held on to that very thin hope, the odds against all odds, that he would be wrong.
And then the footage flashed on the screen. There he was, larger than life, Yurak the robeast. Cossack was unable to look away, simultaneously horrified and impressed at Haggar’s handiwork. He looked so menacing, mean, and deadly yet still… still so much like him.
Cossack clenched his jaw tightly as he felt his heartbeat pick up again once more and pound with a new surge of adrenaline. The battle was hard to watch, as he found himself watching Yurak thrash the lions and gain a seeming advantage only for it to turn so quickly as soon as Voltron showed up.
“That’s how it turns out for every robeast no matter what we send at Voltron,” a soldier in the back of the bridge said with a disgusted sigh as he watched Doom’s latest champion fall to their loathed enemy.
“He wasn’t just a robeast,” Cossack said under his breath, forcing himself to remain steady and his voice barely a whisper as he watched Voltron deliver the cruel fatal blow that sliced his once lover in half and triggered the explosion that destroyed him completely. “He was…” He cut himself off, unable to put his feeling into words.
An alarm sounded on another panel, and immediately the Arusian footage disappeared from the screen to be replaced by feed coming in from one of the ground forces. “We’re cornered in the city—overpowered—ambushed,” a lieutenant’s panicked voice told them. “Send reinforcements—losing—said they were going to call Voltron—hurry!”
The transmission abruptly cut off, and Cossack’s crew looked toward him for orders. “Call Voltron to save them? Not fucking likely,” he snarled in cold rage. He decided in that moment that though he had been powerless to save Yurak, he could damn well avenge him by stopping Voltron from ruining the conquest of another planet. “They want to play hardball?” Cossack said, his eyes narrowed with renewed purpose. “All righty then. See that whole city? Level it. Order our ground forces back and open fire. Hold nothing back! I don’t care if we kill every last one of them. By the time Voltron can show up here,” he seethed, “see to it there’s nothing left to save.”
“Yes sir,” came the unanimous response of his soldiers, and he stood and watched Maura’s rebel city fall in flames.
* * *
Two days later Cossack was back on Doom standing solemnly with all of the other fleet officers that attended Commander Yurak’s funeral. Given that he chose to die fighting Voltron, in light of Yurak’s many years of loyal service to King Zarkon, he had been merciful enough to restore his title to him for the burial of what few robeast pieces were retrieved from the Arusian battlefield. Cossack’s demeanor remained amazingly impassive through the proceedings, although inwardly he still felt as though someone had stuffed his heart through a meat grinder. Although a part of him had known that it could have ended in such a way at any time, it did not make it any easier to endure.
Once the ceremony was over and the cleric gave the final rites, the crowd slowly thinned out as all those who had known Yurak paid their respects and left. Cossack remained for a longer time than many, and it was only when he heard a voice beside him that he tore his gaze away from the gleaming metal casket. “Admiral Cossack,” a haughty feminine voice greeted him, “‘the Terrible’ they now call you after that battle on Maura, am I right?”
“Yeah.” He glanced over at the woman, a tall and gaunt Doomite noble with rather sharp features. She looked somewhat familiar to him, but where he knew her from he could not quite place.
“Decimating an entire rebel city and leaving no survivors, that’s one way to get across the point not to resist Doom I suppose. It would seem your new title was well earned, Admiral.” She glanced at the casket and smiled thinly. “My husband would have approved.”
At that moment he realized who she was, and he also then recognized her as the one whom he had nearly impaled on his helmet in his rush to get to Yurak in Haggar’s lab. He supposed it made sense that she would have been there. Though he was aware of how close Yurak and his wife were, or rather weren’t, he still felt awkward talking to her considering his own relationship with Yurak. “Yeah.” Cossack had no idea what else to say, and eventually just added the obligatory condolences. “Sorry. Must be hard on your family.”
She shrugged somewhat ruefully. “Harder on some than others. For me all it really means is I’ll see him about five times less a year than I already did. For his son,” she glanced over at a slave toward the back of the crowd holding a small male child that bore some resemblance to Yurak, “he was never really around him enough to remember him anyway, and at his age…” Her voice trailed off a moment before she continued. “At least he’ll grow up thinking well of him for trying so valiantly to take out Voltron.” Her attention then returned to Cossack with an unmistakably pointed look. “But I think it affects those closer to him far worse than it does us.”
He was shrewd enough to pick up on the undertone in her voice, and after a fleeting moment of being startled at the thought that his emotions might have been obvious enough for a stranger like Yurak’s wife to read, his defenses raised and he stared her dead in the eye in a challenging manner. “You mean those of us who served with him for years?”
“Oh, is that what you call it?” she responded with a light laugh, not at all intimidated by his defensive glare. Lowering her voice to ensure that only he would hear and leaning closer she added in a serious tone, “Don’t bother to deny it. I know exactly how close you and he were. I saw you.”
Shocked by that bold statement, Cossack’s mind first raced to figure out exactly what she might have seen, while he responded with a startled, “What?”
“Yes,” she said coolly, and after a glance over her shoulder to double-check that no one else was within earshot, she continued. “A few nights ago, in his quarters. You aren’t the only one who has access, you know.” While Cossack’s eyes went wide at the realization that she knew that much, she went on. “He gave me the security codes some time ago; not that I used them much, but I am his wife and there were certain situations where my ability to get to his personal quarters was important. That night I had some things to leave with him that I wanted him to review before his next visit, which would have been next week for the child’s birthday.”
She chortled sardonically. “And what a lovely event this is to have foreshadowing your birthday, hmm? Anyway, when I was on my way in I saw you let yourself in ahead of me. I found it odd that you could simply go on in if he wasn’t there, but I admit I don’t know the details of military security protocol, and I didn’t think much of it. I waited a bit and when you didn’t leave, I assumed something was going on so I left as I had other business nearby and it was just as easy for me to come back later.”
She stopped, and eyed him sharply again. “Imagine my surprise to let myself in and see what business the two of you had going on at all hours of the night.”
At that Cossack swallowed hard. If she had come in at the wrong time on the night he thought she was referring to—although any night he had let himself in to Yurak’s quarters was likely to be a similar circumstance—a convincing explanation other than the obvious would be very hard to pull off, no matter how good a bullshit artist might be. Even though Yurak was gone, the secret of their affair still had the potential to do plenty of harm to Cossack, and dealing with the loss of his lover was enough stress without having to worry about keeping loose lips closed on top of it. “Look—”
“Relax, Admiral, there’s no need to get all ‘Terrible’ about things with me,” she cut him off, holding up a hand. “As I’m sure you’re well aware, Yurak and I hardly had the sort of relationship that lent itself to jealousy over things like that. In all honesty it’s a relief to know that the man was capable of affection. I know in the years I knew him, and in the token intimacies it took to consummate our marriage and conceive our son, he never once looked at me, touched me, and certainly never kissed me with the fervor he did you. I always thought he simply wasn’t interested.” She smirked. “Which he wasn’t, as far as women went, I suppose. It’s nice know that someone could flip his switch, the gods know the man was uptight enough to need it.”
Cossack’s expression darkened as he waited for his lover’s widow to get to the point, which she did a moment later. “Anyhow, Admiral, in light of all that, perhaps it is I that should offer you my condolences, hmm?”
“Thanks,” he said flatly, as he still felt anxious and not entirely pleased that there was another living soul that knew enough to offer said condolences.
She took one last look at the casket and turned to leave. Pausing for a moment she added over her shoulder, “And don’t worry about your little secret. The last thing I want is to have my son embarrassed by a scandal like that in his family when he’s old enough to understand what the gossip mongers are going on about, and since I’m sure you won’t be saying a word, I think it’s best left between us.”
Cossack nodded, relieved that she saw things his way without him having to make the point forcefully. It would have sucked for Yurak’s kid to lose both his parents in the same week, after all, and in addition to being a rather like a big kid himself in many ways, he also had no desire to hurt one of someone that had meant something to him. “Sure. Glad you see it that way. Makes it easy.”
She gave a parting nod of acknowledgment and then left, leaving Cossack alone with Yurak one last time. He stayed for several more minutes, mulling over memories, moments, and a few regrets of what had never come to pass. The latter was what got him most. Though in his heart he knew why Yurak had made the choice he did, it still weighed heavily on him that he’d made it. You were wrong, you know, Cossack mused with a shake of his head. As he imagined Yurak’s response—he could almost hear it in his exasperated tone—he smiled ruefully. But you never were good at admitting that, were you?
The smile deepened as he took solace in fond memory and imagination of the irate response to that, and he put his helmet, which he had taken off for the service, back on. Just before he turned to leave, he flashed the same affectionate, lighthearted smile he’d given him the last time they had parted before his trip to Maura, the same look he offered him every time their time together alone came to an end. “See you later,” he said one last time, and left the cold casket behind.
The End
Back to Evil Fan Fiction