Deadline
By Cheezey
Chapter Three: Early to Rise
The fiery orange glow of the setting sun in the sky on the horizon made an ominous backdrop as he straightened to face his enemy in a final showdown. He came at him with weapons bared and defenses armed, ready to mete out the same merciless fate to him that he wanted nothing more than to give to his foe first. As his gaze locked on that of his opponent, he could feel the adrenaline coursing through his veins as the vital fluid pounded a driving tune that filled his senses. Pure unbridled hatred was all that was on his mind, that and revenge, catalyzed into one thought that drove his very being at that point. The word echoed through his consciousness as he readied himself for the inevitable battle.
Destroy.
Flexing his fingers in anticipation, he reached for his weapon. He heard himself shout a furious challenge, but his voice only hinted at the sheer rage he felt at that moment. He would kill him or die trying.
An explosion, a flash of light blinded him for a split second. Lazon-powered beams erupted all around, followed by a sharp metallic crack that caused his very senses to shake. A crash? Cossack wondered idly, not sure how he had suddenly gotten into a ship when he was right there on the ground a moment ago. Or was it a ship at all? He saw no craft, only the emotionless face of that despised robot—Voltron.
Arus’ champion stared him straight in the face, his hollow eyes boring directly into his. The sounds of battle grew more distant, muffled, and just as he could swear Voltron’s face formed the slightest superior sneer, he felt rather than heard the screech of metal reluctantly giving way—gods, it was his ship! He was dead! Done for! A goner! His worst fear was confirmed as the unbearable agony of fiery defeat consumed him, and he fell backwards as the world went black, the very last thing he saw being Voltron’s luminous eyes meeting his own.
“Shit!” Cossack exclaimed aloud as he sat up with a start, realizing as his heart pounded at an impossible pace that he was not out in some desert but right in his own bedroom clutching his sheets. Panting from the adrenaline rush that came with the dream, he blinked to clear away the fuzzy feeling of being suddenly woken up, and he looked around. The timepiece by his nightstand, still at a crooked angle from where he’d shoved it the previous morning, blinked the numbers 05:03 back at him.
As he recovered from the jarring shock of the abrupt awakening from the nightmare, he frowned irritably at the time. “Great. Just late enough that going back to sleep won’t do me any good if I gotta go on active duty this morning,” he muttered as he slumped back on the bed. “Maybe Haggar’s right and I am taking Voltron too personally if I’m dreaming about him kicking my ass now. Should be the other way around in my dreams at least.”
He sighed and decided that he might as well just get up and get it over with, and shuffled over to the shower. As he stepped under the stream of water he had another sudden and unwelcome thought, one that occurred to him as his mind wandered over to what had happened a couple of days prior in Haggar’s lab. He’d heard stories of weird things happening to those who were struck by lightning—the ability to heal, to zap others, read minds, and even tell the future.
Psychic? Cossack thought wildly, at first excited by the thought that his misfortune in the laboratory might have granted him a nifty new power. A moment later that enthusiasm was replaced with anxiety, however, as he realized if that was true and what he had was indeed his first prophetic vision, it was not a nice one. I dream up the future just to see me getting my own ass kicked?!
“Man, what a rip-off,” the commander muttered grouchily, and turned up the heat in the water.
* * *
After he finished his shower, ate a breakfast consisting of four cinnamon rolls and three cups of strong coffee, Cossack straightened up his room. He was hardly a model example of good housekeeping, but that morning he found his quarters hideously disorganized and cluttered even by his loose standards of the concept. For some reason, the sight of stacks of media inserts and catalogues too important to have slaves simply toss but too boring for him to want to go through himself set him off, he supposed because it was early and he did not want to be up anyway.
“Maybe Mom and Haggar are right, maybe I am kind of a slob,” he mumbled to himself as he proceeded to spend the rest of his morning organizing his stuff. The time passed quicker than he expected, by the time he got around to straightening the chair and couch that managed to get out of alignment every time he flopped down on one after too many beers he realized he was running behind schedule.
“Aw shit! I’m late ‘cause I cleaned!” He smacked himself on the forehead. “Haggar’s never gonna believe that even though it’s the truth!” Hurriedly he put on his weapons belt and headed off to meet up with the old witch, which was where he was to report by default on duty for the duration of the ten robeast project.
As it had turned out, Zarkon had been easier to sell on the idea of tossing ten robeasts at Voltron than they anticipated. Once the king had heard what sounded like a surefire way to rend Voltron to pieces, he was all for it, lazon be damned. Oh sure, he had given the standard warnings of “don’t waste all my lazon” and made it clear that he would not be happy if Haggar spent weeks building ten full strength robeasts and using all that fuel only to lose, but he had reasoned that they had easily used ten times that amount in the recent months of the war against Arus anyway dropping them one at a time. He then put Lotor in charge of whole deal, which mildly annoyed Cossack since it had been his idea to begin with, but he knew better than to argue with the royals so kept his mouth shut and just nodded. Besides, Lotor was all right to work with unless he started to get googly-eyed over Princess Allura, and Cossack figured idly as he made his way into Haggar’s lab that maybe the old witch could work it out so one of the robeasts would just rip Voltron’s blue lion leg off and set Allura aside for him when victory time came.
Both Lotor and Haggar were already in the witch’s laboratory, rebuilt to functional status once more, when Cossack arrived. “Well, look who decided to grace us with his presence this morning,” Haggar greeted him sarcastically. “So what kept you this time? A hangover, some fool girl you got drunk in a bar that overstayed her welcome, or did you just smash your alarm clock and oversleep again?”
“Actually I was, uh, cleaning,” he said, unable to get the ridiculous sounding excuse out without stumbling over it even though it was the truth.
Just as he expected, both Haggar and Lotor immediately laughed. “Oh Cossack, that’s a bad one, even for you,” the prince said, shaking his head.
“It’s true!” Cossack protested. “I woke up early, but something about the mess just bugged me so I started cleaning it and I lost track of time.”
“I might’ve bought it if you admitted you lost something and couldn’t find it and that’s why you cleaned,” Haggar said with a roll of her yellow eyes. “I’ve seen that pigsty you call quarters, and you’d probably lose that helmet on your thick head if it wasn’t always glued to it.”
Cossack automatically straightened his helmet at the mention of it, and Lotor turned toward him with a slight frown. “Speaking of which, what happened to your cape, Cossack? Were you playing with matches unsupervised again?”
“Oh that,” Cossack said, and picked up the charred edge of his mustard-colored cape. “Nah, I had an accident a couple days ago. Guess I should get this taken care of, huh? Gotta maintain Cossack the Terrible’s image after all!”
“What kind of accident?”
“The same accident that had my equipment out of commission for a couple of days. He managed to get himself struck by lightning and conduct it right into my bio-chamber.”
Lotor blinked and looked from the commander to the witch and back. “Inside?”
Cossack shrugged. “Don’t ask me why these crazy things happen around her; she’s the old witch with all the magic know-how. I’m just glad to still be alive and kicking.” The memory of his unsettling dream occurred to him again. He considered asking Haggar if it was possible the lightning could have done something to him, but before he got the chance to voice the thought, she cut him off.
“Best I can figure is having three metal antennas on his helmet while playing with a light sword in the middle of a thunderstorm and managing to stand in the wrong place at the wrong time is what happened.”
“A light sword? What happened to your electrolash?” Lotor asked.
“Nothing,” Cossack replied, and tapped his weapons belt where it was attached as usual. The light sword was sheathed beside it, the weight of the combined weapons causing it to hang lower on that side than usual. “I’ve been carrying a spare weapon.” He grinned broadly and pulled them both out at once, the electrolash in his left hand as he could draw it with either, and the light sword in the right, his dominant, hand. He nearly gave himself a nasty gash switching on the light sword before his other hand cleared the area as it whipped the electrolash across his front and over to the left side, but that didn’t stop him from exclaiming dramatically, “I’m going to dual wield!”
Lotor was not impressed. “And remove your thumb if you don’t watch how you switch that on,” he said with a shake of his head. The prince was highly skilled with a light blade himself and he knew firsthand how dangerous they could be if handled improperly. “Didn’t it occur to you to hang one on each side if you were going to overcompensate?”
Ignoring the insult, Cossack looked down at his belt and frowned. “Yeah, it is kinda heavy on the right, isn’t it? Hmm, I could try to get used to drawing the electrolash on the left side since I’ve only practiced with the sword in my right. Though I guess I could draw that across instead…”
“And gut all the innocent bystanders in a three foot radius every time you feel like waving that overpowered flashlight around in some testosterone driven attempt to show off? No, keep it where it is please,” Haggar interjected sarcastically.
That time he did take umbrage, and glared at the old witch. “For one, it’s a military class weapon, so it deserves a little respect, as do I,” he said huffily. “Secondly, I might not be an expert yet, but I am a fleet commander, and I do have weapons training.”
“Why do you need two weapons anyway, Cossack? Paranoid that someone’s out to get you?” Lotor queried as he leaned against one of Haggar’s benches. “Besides, how did you get that through accounting? I’m the prince and I can’t even get a second customized weapon out of them.” He grumbled. “Father gave them a royal order that any orders they reject can only be challenged by him.” That had come about because Zarkon found out exactly how much of the royal treasury was being wasted paying for what the king considered asinine anti-Voltron plans that were little more than schemes formulated after one too many goblets of wine to nab Princess Allura, so he had nipped it in the bud by giving the royal accountants the authority to shoot down any “unreasonably wasteful” requisitions from anyone on the military food chain beneath him, including his son—especially his son. Castle Doom’s accounting was notoriously cheap and fond of creating red tape since their paychecks came from keeping Zarkon’s coffers full, but once they had a royally sanctioned license for extreme tightwaddery they took their power trip for everything it was worth.
“I didn’t,” Cossack admitted. “Those cheap bastards wouldn’t approve new underwear if your last pair of boxers had more holes than a block of Swiss cheese. I found this in Haggar’s closet. You’d be amazed at what she’s got in there.” He switched it off and handed it to Lotor to inspect.
Curiously Lotor picked up the weapon and examined it, and he noticed the skull crest of one of Doom’s noble houses etched delicately into the golden hilt. “Yurak’s? Haggar, you do need to clean more often.” He sneered and handed it back to Cossack. “Maybe you should take after Cossack’s example, old witch.”
“Please. If he was really cleaning, I’ll kiss the nearest robot,” she muttered as she pressed a button on her console.
Cossack let out an indignant chortle as he put the light sword on back on his belt and reattached his electrolash to the left. “You’re lucky I like my robots, otherwise I’d hold you to that. Probably the closest thing you’d get to a date anyway.”
“Well it would be more intelligent company than you,” she retorted as the lights inside the bio chamber came on revealing a hideous and ferocious looking robeast in progress inside.
“Nice work, Haggar,” Lotor remarked coolly. “Your baby looks like you.”
The old witch’s lips parted in a crafty smile as she beheld her creation, a dark green-colored monster with yellow eyes, sharp teeth, four powerful arms, long horns, and claws that extended all the way to its knees with spikes protruding from its joints. “Thank you, sire! I am proud of this one, I must say. He’ll look even more impressive once fully charged, and once he’s deployed he can really show off his stuff. He’s got retractable tentacles that extend and electrocute on contact to give Voltron a real surprise.”
“Kinky,” Cossack quipped.
Haggar shot him a glare. “Don’t be disgusting.”
Lotor nodded. “He’s a good start. When will he be ready?”
“Once the final touches are complete, he’ll be in stasis until deployment. He’s only number one out of ten, after all.” She flipped a switch, and the lights dimmed in the chamber.
The prince gave a satisfactory smile. “Well keep up the good work. There’s still nine to go, and then we tear Voltron into ten little pieces!”
Haggar nodded in agreement and glanced over at Cossack, who had pulled out the light sword again and swished it absently in his right hand. “That is, if Cossack’s sword play doesn’t do in my lab first.”
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