Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy

by David McDonald

  “As long as the raw materials are there, they can still be hitting each over the head with rocks for all I care,” Rocket said. “Just get me what I need, and we’ll be planning our holidays before you know it.”

  Quill nodded. “I’m setting the course now. At sublight we should be there within the week.”

  As he punched in the coordinates, Quill couldn’t help but notice the other crew members retreating to their own corners of the ship. Whatever tensions were between them had not dissipated with the talk of holidays. The enmity was still present, submerged like jagged rocks beneath the water’s surface, and would emerge again.

  Chapter 2

  Even Drax had to admit that the planet they found themselves on was lovely. The climate was just right, not too hot and not too cold. Their landing site was in the middle of unspoiled forest, and the birds that had fallen silent at their intrusion hadn’t waited long to start singing again. The sun was bright and a gentle breeze rustled through the leaves.

  “Well, this isn’t so bad, is it?” Quill asked.

  The others just glared at him, and went about the business of setting up the sensors, consisting of three poles made of a dull, black metal crowned with what looked like an inverted umbrella missing the webbing between its spokes. The poles were linked with copper cabling that was lit up with crackling spirals of blue energy that pulsed along its length. Another cable ran from each of the poles to a computer mounted on a portable stand, and at which Gamora stood punching in commands.

  “I am going to do another scan and map out the best concentrations of the minerals we need. I’ll also see if I can shed some light on that unreadable area.”

  “The question is, how long will it take to refine crude ore into what we need?” Rocket asked. “I know the ship can do it, but it won’t be a quick process.” He tapped some figures into the portable computer he was carrying. “You have got to be kidding!”

  “What does it say?” Quill asked.

  “Best case scenario, eight months,” Rocket said. “Worst case . . . three years.”

  “You mean I could be stuck in the middle of nowhere for three years?” Drax bellowed. “All because this clown couldn’t control his base impulses?”

  “I resent that,” Quill said. “Besides, you were all saying how you wanted a holiday. Look around, this is a lovely place to spend some time in.”

  “There is a complete lack of casinos here, unless I have suddenly been struck blind,“ Rocket said. “I wanted a real holiday, not some get-close-to-nature, tree-hugging waste of time. Ah . . . no offense, Groot.”

  “I am Groot.”

  “This is not acceptable,” Drax snapped. “I will not waste my time here. I have revenge to exact.”

  “It seems that we don’t have much of a choice,” Gamora said. “And this isn’t that bad when it comes to places where I’ve been stranded.”

  “All places are bad when you are stranded,” Rocket said, “A cage is a cage, even if it is planet sized.”

  Thinking about some of the stories Rocket had told him about his past, Quill actually started to feel guilty. It was an odd sensation, and one he didn’t relish.

  “I’m sorry, Rocket,” Quill said. “I just don’t know what choice we have.”

  “We could build a beacon,” Gamora said suddenly. “We’ve got all the parts we need.”

  “We’re in the middle of nowhere—uncharted space,” Quill said. “Who do you think is going to come get us? Even if they do get the signal, which isn’t guaranteed, it’s a long way back to known space.”

  “I don’t know, Quill. I think we could pretty easily deal with the distance issue,” said Rocket, intrigued now that it was a technical challenge. “We could boost the signal and target that anomaly. It got us here, so it stands to reason it might be two way. What is it going to hurt to try?”

  “Exactly,” Gamora said enthusiastically. “Encode the hyperspace coordinates, and whoever comes for us can do it the easy way instead of being chewed up and spat out by that thing like we were.”

  “You’re forgetting something,” Drax said. Everyone turned to look at him. “There are a lot of people out there with no reason to love us. It could be one of them who comes after us, all guns blazing—or who simply melts the planet down to slag because we are here.”

  “You’re paranoid, Drax,” Rocket said, but he didn’t sound like he believed it. “I’m not going to stay on this planet just because you’re scared of something that might never happen.”

  “Scared? Are you calling me a coward?”

  “Let’s not start this again,” Gamora said. “I think Drax has a point, but I’m not sure we have a choice. The scan should be done shortly—let’s just wait and see what the sensors tell us. Maybe we’ve missed something—”

  She cut off midsentence as the clearing filled with a strange whistling noise that increased in volume with every passing second.

  “Take cover!” Drax roared. “That’s a missile!”

  They looked at each other in horror, and then bolted for the trees. They had just taken cover behind a massive log—the remains of some arboreal giant—when there was a surprisingly small explosion followed by a blinding flash of light. The group thought they were out of the blast range, but suddenly Rocket cursed furiously and inventively.

  “Damn it, that hurt,” he growled.

  Quill glanced over, scared that the raccoonoid had caught a piece of shrapnel or something. Instead, Rocket was looking down at his wrist, where what remained of his wrist comp was a smoking ruin. As they watched, it burst into flame, and Rocket yanked it off, throwing it to the ground and stamping out the fire.

  “What the . . . ?” Quill asked, trying make sense of what he had just seen.

  “That was an EMP,” Rocket said. Drax looked confused. “An electromagnetic pulse,” he continued. “Designed to destroy anything electronic.”

  “The ship!” Quill shouted, horrified.

  They sprinted back to the clearing and stopped cold, looking with shock at the scene that confronted them. There was little structural damage, as the blast itself had been fairly contained, but the high-energy pulse had wreaked havoc—the sensors were canted at crazy angles and smoke poured from the computer. Some of the spokes had melted and drooped towards the ground, and the cables had become lines of fire on the grass. This seemed like the least of their problems, however, since more smoke poured from the ship itself. Fortunately, when they opened the hatch—with Drax and Groot lifting the slab of metal by hand—there was no sign of fire. Still, what they found was bad enough. All of the computer systems were dead and refused to power back up. The fail-safes had kicked in, and so the high-tech fuses had blown, preventing the complete destruction of the delicate circuitry. Quill had spares, but he expected to need only two or three a year—and there were at least a hundred fuses that needed replacing. He didn’t even want to look at the engine room.

  “Quill, you should see the engine room,” Rocket called out. “It’s pretty bad.”

  Quill sighed; that was the last thing he needed to hear. He started to inventory the rest of the damage. Besides the main computer systems, the EMP had also fried the backups. Then a terrible thought struck him. He hurried to his cabin and pulled a footlocker from underneath the bed. Aside from the ship itself, the locker was Quill’s most expensive possession, and he hoped that it had been worth the credits he hadn’t really been able to afford to spend on it. He punched the keypad and heard a whirring noise as the chest unlocked—that was a good sign at least. He lifted the heavy alloy lid with trembling fingers and pulled out his face mask and element gun. Relief washed through him—they looked undamaged and the brief diagnostics he ran confirmed it. The dodgy-looking Flb’Dbi who had sold him the locker had sworn that it would protect against fire, blasts in the two kiloton range, and EMP weapons. Quill had only half
-believed him, but was happy to have been proven wrong. His equipment had gotten him out of many tight spots, and been with him so long, that it would have been awful to lose it. He placed the pieces back in the locker, armed the lock, and then slid the chest back under his bed. Everything would be safer there for now, especially with someone—or something—launching missiles at them.

  When he returned to the control room, Rocket was elbow deep in the console, with Gamora passing him tools in response to his barked commands. Groot was smiling at nothing in particular, and Drax was leaning sullenly against the wall, his muscular arms crossed in front of him.

  “Is it as bad as I think it is?” Quill asked.

  “Worse,” Rocket replied. “Not only do you lack spares for even a fraction of the parts that need replacing, I’m not even going to know if the subroutines have been wiped until I power the console back up.”

  “Well, the good news is that I do have a backup of the operating system in a blast-proof locker,” Quill replied, “and I think it made it though okay.”

  “Good news, huh? Well here’s the bad news,” Rocket countered. “Without the ship’s computer, I can’t fabricate the parts we need to repair it—and I can’t get the ship up and running without those parts. See the problem there? It’s a vicious circle.”

  “I fought in a vicious circle once,” Drax said. “Well, that’s what the spice cartel called it, anyway.”

  “Not helpful, Drax,” Gamora said. “Just in case I am misunderstanding, Rocket, you’re saying we are trapped on this planet indefinitely?”

  “Yes, that’s exactly what I’m saying. Even if we get the materials we need, I don’t know how to go about fabricating some of the components. The only way we’re getting out of here is if someone else lands here—and what are the chances of someone being as unlucky as us and hitting that nebula anytime soon?”

  Everyone started yelling at once, venting their frustrations. The cacophony went on for a few minutes until Groot ended it by yelling at the top of his voice.

  “I am Groot!”

  His bellow echoed in the narrow confines of the ship’s control room, and the rest of the group went abruptly silent, ears ringing. Groot just smiled and went back to examining his leaves. When he could hear again, Quill spoke.

  “Look, we know there’s at least some technology on the planet,” he said. “Maybe the inhabitants can help us.”

  “Yes, because they seem so friendly,” Rocket said sarcastically. “We are outgunned. Well, we would be if we had some guns. And the longer we sit in one place, the greater the chance of another attack. We need to get moving. Now.”

  “We should at least investigate the possibility of help from the locals. What have we got to lose?”

  “Other than our lives?” Gamora asked.

  “Since when has that stopped us?” Quill turned to Drax. “We know you don’t want to stay here. Don’t you think we should go and investigate at least?”

  “We? I remember before there was a ‘we.’ I seemed to be doing much better for myself,” Drax said. “I think perhaps it is time for me to try being alone again.”

  Quill was at a loss for words for a moment.

  “You can’t be serious. We’re a team, and if we’re going to get out of here, we need to stick together.”

  “It was following your lead that got us stranded here,” Drax said. “That seems to be a good reason to ignore your suggestions. Besides, all of you have held me back too many times.”

  “All of us? What’s that supposed to mean?” Rocket snapped. “I’ve bailed you out more times than I can remember, and so has the big guy.”

  “I am Groot.”

  “Drax doesn’t need help from a rodent and a walking plant,” Drax said.

  “Why I oughta . . .”

  “Enough!” Gamora yelled. “That’s it, I am done. I am sick of your squabbling. I wanted time alone as well, and I am going to take it. You can all do whatever you want, but I will be somewhere far away. Maybe after you’ve all grown up a bit, I’ll go investigating with you, but the truth is that this planet has everything I need—and what I need most is some solitude.”

  She started towards the exit, only to stop as Quill cut her off.

  “Gamora . . .”

  “Get out of my way, Quill, or I will go straight through you,” she said, danger in her voice. “I haven’t forgotten that we wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for you.”

  Not wanting to give away how much her words had hurt him, Quill stepped aside without saying anything, and then she was gone. He turned back to the others.

  “You guys aren’t leaving, too, are you?”

  Drax straightened up and walked to the door. “I need time to think and decide my next course of action,” he said.

  “Don’t be stupid, Drax,” Quill said. “What are you going to do out there? Become a woodcutter? All you know is fighting. You need us.”

  The moment he said it, Quill knew it was a mistake.

  Drax drew himself up. “I do not need anyone.”

  With that he left, not looking back even once.

  “Good work, Quill. I don’t think that you could have stuffed that up any better if you’d tried,” Rocket said. “You know what Drax is like about his stupid honor. Very prickly.”

  Quill rounded on him furiously.

  “He’s prickly? Pot. Kettle. Black. Couldn’t you have been a bit more polite?” Quill asked.

  “Hey, don’t blame me, Quill. Gamora was right. We wouldn’t be in this situation if it weren’t for you. Don’t take it out on me.”

  “If you had to deal with this group, you’d be looking for some distraction, too.”

  “Is that right?” Rocket asked. “Well, I guess you won’t need to worry about dealing with us anymore. The others are gone, and I don’t really feel like hanging around here, either. C’mon, Groot.”

  “You don’t have to go anywhere, Groot. You can stay here,” Quill said.

  “I am Groot,” he said sadly, moving to stand with Rocket.

  “Look, Quill, maybe this is for the best. We can all take some time to regroup and calm down a bit. But if we don’t do something, someone is going to say something that can’t be taken back, and it will tear the group apart. We’ve been through too much together for a setback like this to divide us—I think we just need a bit of a break,” Rocket said, not unkindly; Quill’s despair must have shown on his face and the raccoonoid was trying to console him. “There’s no rush—we aren’t going anywhere. Come and find us after a while, and then we can take it from there.”

  Rocket grabbed his backpack. “Good luck, Quill.”

  He turned and walked to the door. Groot reached out and placed a hand on Quill’s shoulder, and Quill felt a wave of calmness wash over him.

  “I am a Groot,” Groot said in a soft voice, and smiled. Then he followed Rocket, and Quill was alone.

  Quill sat in the pilot’s chair and buried his face in his hands, wondering what he was going to do now. Then, with an almost physical effort, he shook off his despair and stood up, filled with a new resolve. It was a brand-new planet, after all, and he was going to find himself some adventures.

  Chapter 3

  Three months later . . .

  The Duke’s daughter definitely didn’t take after her father. She gazed back across the table at Quill with eyes of such a dark blue as to seem almost violet in the flickering lights of the vast feasting hall. Long, blonde hair cascaded down her back, but was bound up around her temples with a fine silver mesh studded with sapphires. Her delicate, fine-boned features stood in stark contrast to the Duke’s jutting jaw and the bent nose that had been broken in some long-ago battle. All in all, Quill was much happier looking at her.

  “So, Lord Quill, tell me about this strange land you come from,” she said. “
Are all the men skilled warriors, as you are?”

  “Well, Karyn . . . if I may call you that, my lady?” Quill had quickly fallen into the archaic and formal speech patterns of the court’s nobility. A hundred scams and heists had made him a natural mimic, able to be all things to all people.

  At her nod, he continued. “I have had the advantage of traveling to many different places and picking up bits and pieces of their fighting systems. Added up, the variety gives me an edge when it comes to many things.”

  Karyn nodded, immediately grasping his point. Quill knew that a number of suitors had missed the intelligence beneath the beauty and paid the price, and he resolved that he would not make the same mistake. He had been trying to get to know her better for almost three months, since he had first laid eyes on her, and this was the deepest conversation they’d had in all that time.

  “I actually haven’t been back to the city where I was born since I was young, so I can’t tell you too much about it.” He paused, and then continued on in a much quieter voice. “In fact, only one good memory from that place has stayed with me.”

  Karyn leaned towards him. “And what’s that?”

  “My mother. The last time I saw her was the night she died.”

  Karyn’s blue eyes softened and she leaned farther forward to take his hand in hers.

  “You poor man,” she said gently.

  Before Quill could say anything more, a crash echoed through the banquet hall as the doors flew open hard enough to bounce off of the walls on either side of the doorway. There, silhouetted in the light streaming through the entrance, was a massive figure. Quill was not a small man, but the newcomer would tower over him side by side, and was at least twice as wide through the shoulders as Quill was.

  “Ah, our guest has arrived!”

  The Duke’s bellow cut through the silence that had descended after the newcomer’s dramatic entrance. An older man, but still vigorous, the Duke of Vylara’s voice carried the unmistakable air of someone used to having his words listened to and obeyed, and the fifty or so nobles who had gathered to witness the night’s proceedings turned their eyes towards him. The banquet hall could have held ten times as many, but much of the nobility had retired to summer estates. Even so, the chamber was still an impressive sight, with tattered banners and other trophies of war hanging on the walls alongside exquisite works of art. The graceful arches of the roof gave it an airy feel, and polished silver lamps threw soft light that created the illusion of the night sky under a full moon. The Duke was himself an imposing figure, clad in rich blue robes of a simple yet obviously expensive cut, and bracelets of beaten gold glimmered at his wrists.