For The Stars

Chapter 15: Divide and Conquer

Everyone had been gathered in the base's large briefing room. On the Castle of Lions the main bridge played the role of command centre, briefing room, and cockpit in addition to its many smaller uses. In contrast, the Blade's main briefing room was used for the sole purpose of preparing operatives for missions and doling out assignments, as well as the occasional meeting for strategy planning amongst the highest-ranking members of their order.

The large room was made of mostly the same dark metal utilized throughout the base, while also taking advantage of the natural rock formations, given that the base was carved deep into the heart of the asteroid. Each wall had thick metal beams as support structures holding up the metal ceiling, with the majority of the wall itself having been dug directly into the rock. Bands of purple light weaved their way across the metal floor making the main briefing room quite dim compared to the rest of the base, which itself was considerably dimmer than the Castle ship had been. Keith knew his eyes would be giving off a faint yellow glow in this room, allowing him to see clearly in the darker lighting. However, he could tell that Allura and all 4 of the Human Paladins were struggling. They were slowly migrating closer and closer to the screens in an attempt to see each other more clearly. Kolivan quirked a brow at him and Keith shrugged off their strange behaviour, joining his Leader as they approached the primary console.

In the centre of the large room was a low platform that held the large diamond shaped console with a flat interactive surface. The three walls not made of rock were actually screens on which intel needed for this, and any other mission, would be displayed. Two of these screens were only half the height of the room, while the centremost screen filled its wall fully. Underneath the side screens were large panels that opened up filing cabinets containing hard copies of all the Blade operative ID's, their missions, their codes, and more. After he'd passed his trials, Antok had taken him on a tour of all the places that had been restricted to non Blades, one of which was this briefing room. The Blade of Marmora's second in command explained the purpose of the files as well as their emergency protocols.

In the event of a security breach, the cabinets were to be opened and the room set ablaze, allowing all of the top-secret information to burn and protecting the identities of their undercover operatives. On the other hand, if their systems were to go down due to an outside force gaining remote technical access, then the documents in this room were the only connection they had to their operatives and hard earned intel. In that situation, all of their servers were to be destroyed, blocking the attacker from gaining any more information. These were the contingency plans that Kolivan had come up with, and they were just the tip of the asteroid – or 'iceberg' as the Human Paladins would say.

"This base was, until recently, run by an Empire Commander named Ranveig." Kolivan pulled up some information on the screens as he spoke, drawing the attention of their guests in the process. Without their helmets on, none of the Paladins would be able to understand a thing that Kolivan was explaining had it not been for Regris. The Blade's resident tech expert had developed, and implemented, a general translator for this room, similar to the ones the Castle-ship utilized, and it facilitated open communication between all present. Unfortunately, even he wasn't capable of creating a translator that allowed for instant visual translations of the text, charts, and graphs on the screen before them. This left the four Humans unable to follow along with any non-verbal information. Keith noticed Allura struggling to read modern Galran as well, and made a mental note to update the Castle's language archive. If anything, it would help Pidge with their experiments and programing.

After waking up this quintant, the entire team had chosen to switch into their casual clothing instead of their armour. All except Keith, who was now happily wearing his Blade suit for the first time in phoebs. Kolivan continued the debriefing by explaining the information displayed on the screens regarding Commander Ranveig's assignment. "He was developing a super weapon of some sort. We're not sure of the weapon's specs, but we do know that it is both incredibly powerful and dangerous."