I woke up to blaring alarms. Shiro’s voice crackled over the ship’s speakers.
“Paladins, get to your lions! We’ve sighted another hive-ship.”
I tucked Mari in a little tighter, yanked my armor on and raced for the lion hangars. As soon as I was in Black, Shiro’s face popped up on one of my screens.
“It’s smaller than the ones we faced last time, we think it might be some kind of scout.”
“Perfect for our plan, then.”
“I’m still not sure about that plan. It’s pretty risky.”
“Oh, you guys did things that were way riskier. You survived.” I said, waving him off. “Everybody here?”
“Red here.”
“Yellow.”
“Blue is good to go.”
“Jason? JASON!!”
“Oh, yeah. Here!”
I sighed in exasperation. “Alright, guys. You all remember the plan?”
“Yep.”
“Then let’s go.”
We took off as the hangar airlocks opened, and I saw the Green lion ripple out of sight as Jason activated its cloaking mechanism. Hopefully, he’d be able to fly up and attach the tracking device while we distracted the Archanai. The four of us opened fire with the lions’ mouth rays, dodging and weaving around the beams coming from the hive-ship’s cannons. This was the tricky part. We had to scare them off, but still leave enough of a functional ship left to follow.
I heard a whoop from Leilah as she somersaulted through a maze of enemy fire.
“Nyah-nyah, can’t catch me!” She taunted.
“Uh, Leilah, they can’t hear you.” Linnea said.
“Who cares? It’s satisfying.”
“C’mon, guys, we need to focus here.” I said.
“You, Great Leader, are starting to sound like Shiro.” Xaroc teased.
“I’m starting to see how he felt, too.” I retorted, landing a shot right in the hive-ship’s cannon port. “This job is literally herding cats. They’re giant robotic space cats, but still. Look out!”
We all scattered as another, larger cannon beam shot past us, humming and crackling.
“Hurry up, Jason.” I muttered. “We can’t keep this up much longer.”
“I’m done!” Jason’s cheery yell cut through the static coming over my helmet’s speakers.
The Green lion rippled back into existence right next to Black. I grinned.
“Okay, he’s back. Now we can really scare them off. Form Voltron!!”
I pushed with my mind, guiding us all together, feeling the same rush of interconnected strength as I had last time, a hyper-awareness of my friends and their lions as well as Black. In a blinding flash of light, we transformed. After that, it only took a few warning shots for the scout ship to turn tail and run. Phase one of our plan was complete.

Once we were back on board the Atlas, Jason rushed to the lab with the rest of us following.
“Okay, it looks like they haven’t noticed the tracker. It’s still on there and broadcasting just fine. They seem to be heading back out to a mostly uninhabited spot in this quadrant here. What info do we have about that area?”
“Not a lot.” A scientist I didn’t know came over, skinny cornrows falling over her shoulders as she leaned in to see what we were doing. “I’m Emma Kincaid, by the way. All the systems there have mostly barren planets and asteroids, the few planets in the habitable zones tend to be waterworlds. Little or no land, just ocean. Oh, and there’s Narilex-E5.”
“What’s that?”
“Nobody’s exactly sure. It’s just some weird anomaly. Galra scientists first detected it several years ago.”
“Oh, yeah, I heard about that!” Jason said. “It’s the one where there’s every sign of a planet, but no actual planet, right?”
“Wait, what?” I asked. “What are you guys talking about?”
Jason and Emma both started talking at once, finishing each other’s sentences.
“There’s this spot of mild gravitational distortion in the fabric of space-”
“-Exactly like the kind that would be caused by an Earth-size terrestrial planet. It orbits a star, it’s in the habitable zone of the star-”
“There’s even a small moon orbiting the distortion itself, but-”
“-no actual planet.”
“Yeah, all the tests anybody’s done, they’ve come back negative. Every unmanned probe we’ve sent has either disappeared or-”
“-gone right through the area without detecting anything. No planet.”
I raised an eyebrow.
“Or, whoever lives there just really doesn’t want to be found. Have you guys tried scanning for any kind of cloaking tech?”
Emma shook her head.
“No, that’s impossible. Like we just said, all the probes have literally passed right through the distorted area.”
“I’ll bet there are ways to mimic the probe transmissions, or interfere with them somehow.”
Jason and Emma looked at each other for a moment.
“There . . . are ways to do that.” Emma said hesitantly. “I think Karah might be onto something.”
Jason nodded.
“We’ll need to explain this to everyone. Wow. We might be the first ones to make contact with an entire new race!”
“Or it could be where the Archanai base is.” Xaroc pointed out.
That sobered us all up.
“Well, the scout ship is still heading roughly that way, so we’ll find out soon enough.” I said.
“Everybody grab some food and drink while you can. We’ll need it.”
“Are you always starving?” Leilah asked.
I think it was meant to be friendly teasing, but something in her tone got my hackles up. She’d never grown up not knowing when her next real meal would be. She was fine with joking about that. She probably didn’t even think twice about it. I stood from my chair and glared at her.
“If you think starvation is funny, you’re wrong. Don’t joke about things you don’t even understand.”
As I stalked off, I heard the other girl mutter, “What is her problem?!”

I went to the room I shared with Mari, but she was in there right now, wearing her new glowing boots and scribbling in the color on a blocky stick-figure drawing of Voltron.
“See, Karah? It’s you and our friends. There’s you, and Jason, and Xaroc, and Linnea, and Leilah too. And there’s the big sword, so you guys can chop up the bad spaceships like this! Hiyah! Hah!”
After a quick crayon duel to satisfy my sister, I left her to her art and went in search of somewhere to be alone. In the end, I found myself in the Black lion. I flopped down into the pilot’s seat, leaning my head back against the thick, worn leather. Actually, I didn’t know if it even was leather. It was a question I’d never really bothered to ask, what the seats in the lions were upholstered with.
Hey, dude. I thought. I haven’t talked to you much lately, huh?
I felt a sense of annoyed agreement from the lion.
“Sorry.” I said out loud. “I’ve been pretty busy, but that’s no excuse. How can I make it up to you?”
No response. I kept talking. “It’s been pretty hard, lately. Juggling all of this. Raising Mari, leading Voltron, trying not to strangle the other paladins when they get on my nerves. And, you know, the Archanai. Those things scare the crap out of me.”
Finally, Black sent me a feeling, a strong one that took me a few tries to decipher.
“You want to show me something?”
This time the response was a definite “Yes.”.
“Okay.” I said, still a bit confused. “I’m all eyes.”
On instinct, I closed my eyes, feeling for my bond with Black. In response, I got a surge of memories that gradually dwindled to one image. Keith, younger and angrier, sitting exactly where I was right now. He reached his hands out towards the controls, clearly expecting, hoping, that nothing would happen. But the Black lion chose him. He slumped forward, head in his hands.
Keith had told me about this himself, when he’d had to start leading Voltron after Shiro disappeared. Seeing it myself was different, though. He’d clearly been just as scared and upset as I was. And he’d done this anyway.
“So is this your way of telling me to quit whining?” I asked my lion as the image faded. “Or are you saying I should have more faith in myself?”
All I got from Black was the same feeling of warmth and trust it had given me that first night, when it chose me as its paladin. I smiled, a bit shakily.
“I’m going to guess it’s more the second one, then. Thank you. I just wish I could understand the other paladins like this.”
Black sent me a feeling that translated roughly to “Have you actually tried?”, plus a stern eyebrow raise.
“Okay, okay.” I muttered. “I’ll work on it.”
Another “You’d better.” sort of feeling from Black.
I sighed. “I’ll go apologize to Leilah right now, will that satisfy you?”
A definite “Yes.” this time.
“Alright then.” I grumbled. “See, I’m going.”
I walked out of the lion’s mouth and through the hangar doors, footsteps echoing slightly on the bare floor.

I was on my way to Leilah’s room, trying to think of a good apology, when she actually ran right into me.
“Karah! I was looking for you!”
“You were?”
She twisted the corner of her hijab, looking sheepish.
“Yeah. I, uh, figured I should apologize for earlier. I don’t know why that freaked you out. I, I guess it’s not really my business, but like, if you have an eating disorder or something, I just wanted to let you know you could talk to me about it. Nobody should have to deal with something like that alone.”
She was worried about me, I realized. Leilah was worried about me. On impulse, I leaned over and gave her a hug.
“I’m sorry too. I’ve been on edge lately, but I shouldn’t have snapped at you like that.” I paused, stepping back.  “If, if you really want to know why I got upset, I don’t mind telling you.”
That was a barefaced lie, I was completely terrified about telling her this, but I also felt like it was necessary.
“If you don’t mind, then yeah, I’d kinda like to know.”
“Alright. Let’s find somewhere where we can sit down.”
We quickly found a deserted spot near a window, where we could sit, leaning back against the thick glass that separated us from the colorful nebula passing by outside. I took a deep breath, folded all four hands in my lap, and started to talk.
“I don’t know how much you know about where Keith found me, before I started at the Garrison.
But I’m an orphan, and my sister and I were . . . we were homeless, living on the streets for a little over two years. We were barely surviving for a lot of that time. I couldn’t find a job, so I was just stealing the bare necessities, or paying for them with money I stole.
I’ve made my peace with that, for the most part. I didn’t want you guys to know before, because I thought it would just make everything harder. I . . . I didn’t think anyone would want a criminal leading Voltron.”
“Karah, that’s . . . awful. An awful situation, I mean. But you’re not awful, and you never will be. You’re still our leader, and you’re still my friend. Got it?”
I nodded, wiping my eyes, which had gotten treacherously wet while we were talking.
“Got it. Thanks, Leilah.”
“Good. Now, let’s go get that food, and then we can see if the tracker’s sent back any more info yet.”
“Yes, Ma’am.” I said, giving a salute.
Maybe working on my bonds with the other paladins wasn’t such a bad thing, after all.