Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy

by David McDonald

  Quill tilted his head back to stare at the slopes above them. The peak was so far away that all he could see were clouds.

  “That’s just wonderful. Because I love heights so much.” He squared his shoulders and picked up his pack. “No time like the present, I suppose.”

  They climbed for hours. At the beginning, there were well-defined paths to follow, some with ropes strung through iron bolts that had been drilled into the stone. As they moved farther up the slopes, though, the signs of human presence began to fade and the well-trodden paths became nothing more than winding goat tracks. The air began to thin and the travelers struggled more and more to breathe—with the exception of Groot, who seemed oblivious to the changing altitude. By the time the sun began to set, they were exhausted, and there was no arguing when Quill suggested making camp for the night. They managed to find a flat piece of ground surrounded by scraggly bushes that provided a bit of cover from the cold wind whistling around them. After gathering up enough brush to build a small fire, the companions huddled around it.

  “Isn’t this fun,” Rocket said. “I’ve missed this. Haven’t you?”

  “I am Groot.”

  “I knew you’d feel that way, big guy,” Rocket said.

  “Actually, I really have missed this,” Quill said. “The Duke’s court was a lot of fun, but no one there had quite your way with words.”

  The others laughed.

  “Seriously, though, it is nice to see you all again,” Quill said.

  “You aren’t going to get all emotional on us are you, Quill?” Rocket asked. He made a retching noise.

  “I hope Drax will be as happy to see us,” Gamora said. “You never know how he’s going to react.”

  “Yeah, he might be so angry to see us that he crushes us,” Rocket paused for effect, “or so happy to see us he hugs us . . . and crushes us.”

  “Very true,” Gamora said, chuckling. “But I’ve missed him. I’ve missed all of you.”

  “Fine,” Rocket grumbled, “I might have missed you . . . a little.”

  “I am a Groot.”

  As they kept talking, Gamora leaned forward and scratched something in the dirt. Quill could barely make it out.

  Don’t say anything, but there is someone hiding in the bushes.

  Quill’s eyes widened, but he managed not to react beyond that. Keeping one ear on the conversation, he listened carefully with the other. There. The one with the oddly-shaped leaves. Slowly he began to inch his way around the fire, moving ever closer. When he was within reach, he made a show of standing up slowly and stretching.

  “I’m going to fetch some more wood. I won’t be long.”

  He casually turned, and then lunged for the bush, reaching in with both hands and closing them around a spitting, squirming creature. He pulled it free, holding it at arm’s length to avoid its vicious attempts to swipe at him. Just then the fire flared up, and Quill almost dropped his captive as he recognized her.

  “Ansari!” he exclaimed.

  “What?” Gamora leaped to her feet. “What are you doing here?”

  Ansari didn’t answer, and stared sullenly back at Quill.

  “If I put you down, will you behave?” He shook her slightly. “Will you?”

  She nodded, and he placed her on the ground. For a moment he thought she was going to bolt, but before she could Gamora grabbed her arm.

  “What are you doing here? You need to explain yourself.”

  “I’m your apprentice! I am meant to be with you, watching your back,” Ansari said.

  “This is far too dangerous a journey for you. I left you behind because I didn’t want you getting hurt.”

  “It’s not fair, mistress. You told me that my training was to prepare me for the real world, and that I needed to find out what real combat was—but then when you come out here, you leave me behind.” She sounded close to tears. “Don’t you think I’m good enough? I thought you were proud of me.”

  Gamora seemed genuinely taken aback.

  “It’s not that, Ansari. You are the best student I have ever had,” she said gently. “It’s just that you are too young for this.”

  “And how young were you when you first fought for your life, mistress?”

  “That’s not the point, Ansari,” Gamora snapped.

  “Isn’t it? You’ve been telling me since you started teaching me that you wanted me to be able to make my own decisions, control my own life. Well, this is what I want. I want to help you stop anyone else losing their parents . . . like I did.”

  “I think she’s got you there, Gamora,” Rocket said.

  Gamora glared at him, and then her shoulders slumped.

  “Fine, I suppose she does.” She turned to her student. “But you need to obey every command you are given, even if you don’t agree. We’ve been doing this sort of thing for a long time. Agreed?”

  The girl’s face lit up. “Oh, yes! You won’t regret this, I promise.”

  “If you keep me awake any longer you’ll be the one regretting things,” Rocket growled, showing his teeth.

  Ansari looked at him with wide eyes, then scuttled over to the other side of the fire and curled up near Gamora’s bedroll. Rocket winked at Quill and settled down next to Groot, and was soon snoring softly.

  The ground was rocky and uncomfortable, and it took Quill a long time to get to sleep. When he finally awoke, he was stiff and sore, and his eyes felt like they were full of sand. The group didn’t even have coffee to help them wake him up. After a perfunctory wash, they set off again, Ansari indecently enthusiastic for that time of the morning. She seemed to have twice as much energy as the rest of them, and had to be called back a number of times when she got too far ahead. But Quill had to admit that her high spirits were infectious, and gradually she even got Rocket smiling and cracking jokes with her. They were halfway up a particularly nasty slope when Ansari, still laughing at the punch line of Rocket’s latest joke, suddenly stopped and frowned.

  “What’s that noise?” she asked.

  “What noise?” Rocket asked. Then his eyes narrowed. “Oh, hell.”

  The rumbling grew louder, coming from upslope but getting rapidly closer.

  “Brace yourselves!” Quill yelled.

  Below him he heard a muffled, “I am Groot!” and then the snow and rocks hit them, sweeping them down the slope. They had rounded a corner only a few hundred feet below, and Quill knew that a straight line down the slope they were on would end in a sickening drop. He reached desperately for a ragged looking shrub, his hands closing convulsively around its trunk, rough bark abrading his skin, and for a moment thought he was safe. Then, there was a ripping noise that he felt through his hands more than he heard it; the bush pulled free of the flinty soil, and he was again sliding towards death. Suddenly, he came to an abrupt halt hard enough to knock the breath from him. The snow and rocks were still pounding him, pushing him up against the barrier, but it didn’t yield, and cradled him until the worst was over.

  Once he had caught his breath, he opened his eyes, wincing at the bright sunlight. He was suspended in a web of branches, and mere inches from his were a big pair of eyes and a happy smile.

  “I am Groot.”

  Groot had literally put down roots deep in the side of the mountain, while others had wound around a nearby boulder. He had grown a number of extra arms—or perhaps they were branches, Quill was never sure—and had spread them like wings, blocking off the slope. Gamora and Ansari clung together close to his trunk, while Rocket hung upside down at the left-hand edge of Groot’s reach, a tendril wrapped around his ankles and holding him safe.

  “Let me down,” Rocket yelled. “Right now.”

  The tendril suddenly unclenched, and Rocket dropped to the ground, only just missing landing on his head.

  “Yeah
, thanks for that,” he grumbled. “But I guess I owe you one, big guy.”

  “I think we all do,” Gamora said. She and Ansari descended much more gracefully than the raccoonoid. “It is a long way down.”

  Quill clapped Groot on the shoulder, wincing slightly at the splinters.

  “Good work, you saved us all.”

  “I am Groot,” he said, beaming.

  “You sure are,” Quill said, “and I, for one, am very glad of it.”

  Chapter 10

  Quill dragged himself up the last few feet of cliff face, and then over the edge. Rolling onto his back, he simply laid there for a few minutes, trying to catch his breath. Every muscle ached, and he was covered with bruises and abrasions. Finally, he staggered to his feet and joined the others, who stood waiting for him over near a cluster of low, stone huts.

  “Glad you could join us,” Rocket said. “You humans and your lack of claws. It’s sad, really.”

  “Didn’t stop us,” Gamora said, motioning to her student. “We beat all of you.”

  Ansari smiled at her. “We had an advantage—we aren’t weighed down by our egos.”

  “I think I liked you better when you were too scared to speak,” Quill said, but he was grinning, too. “So, what’s all this?”

  “There used to be a tribe living up here. The details are fuzzy, but from what I have heard, they died from some plague.” She saw Quill flinch. “Don’t worry, it was decades ago.”

  “And they tamed the creatures you were talking about?” Rocket asked. “If they even existed, of course.”

  “That’s right. They had some secret method that they refused to share, but if we can find it anywhere, it will be here,” Gamora said. “Now let’s split up and search the huts to see if we can find anything that looks useful.”

  Quill looked at the squat buildings, and then at Groot.

  “Groot, perhaps you should wait out here and guard our belongings?”

  “I am Groot.”

  Groot went and stood near their pile of gear, then turned his face up to the sunshine. The rest of them made their way over to the huts, taking one each. Quill chose the largest one that sat in the middle of the rest, like a planet surrounded by its moons. Ornately carved doors nestled in a low-linteled opening that gave way to cool darkness as Quill stepped inside. The hut was built on a hexagonal pattern, giving it a vaguely insectile feel. The building gave no sense of being someone’s home, instead having an official air. Moldering maps were pinned to the walls of one of the rooms, and in another a rack of swords still gleamed, as if they’d just come from the forge. But the biggest shock was the shattered remains of what were unmistakably primitive calculating machines. A jumble of transistors and fragments of glass lay on the floor near a table surrounded by ominous but faded stains. Quill tried to piece together what had happened. There was no real damage to anything other than the computer, so whatever had done it had come with a very specific mission—this was no random act of violence.

  Quill knew that he was merely speculating, but the side-by-side existence of a computer with a far more primitive material like parchment pointed to a society just starting to open up new possibilities, not a well-established one, and the swords showed that they hadn’t been as invested in weapons development—meaning they probably hadn’t been militaristic or expansionary. So who would have wanted to do this? A rival culture worried about these technological advances, and wanting to nip them in the bud? That would indicate a level of forward planning that was downright concerning on a planet like this. Quill shook his head. He might never find out what had happened, and he was on a deadline—he had no time for mysteries. If he survived the next few months, there would be plenty of time to come back. Resolved, he continued searching.

  It was in the second-to-last room that he found what he was looking for. The whole room was taken up with a massive rack of pegs, and from each hung a harness that—while different in size and shape still suggested a horse’s bridle—and a flutelike instrument. Despite its obvious age, the leather of the harnesses was still soft and flexible, and the brass fittings were untarnished. Quill brought five of the harnesses and five of the instruments back out into the sunshine and joined Groot, laying the harnesses out on the grass while he waited for the others to return.

  “Well, we have the harnesses, what about the steeds?” Rocket asked when he got back. “Any ideas where we might find them?”

  Shyly, Ansari pulled out a rolled out parchment.

  “I think I do,” she said. “I found this in one of the huts.”

  “Great work!” Quill said.

  Ansari blushed. “I’m not sure you are going to like what it says. As far as I can work out, they’re up there.”

  Quill followed the line of her finger and groaned in dismay. She was pointing at the very highest peak of the mountain, three or four hundred feet above them, and high enough to be wreathed in cloud.

  “More climbing. Well, the sooner we start, the sooner we’ll get there,” he said.

  In the end, it took them the best part of the day to reach the top of the mountain. The only things that made the climb possible were the handholds and occasional steps hacked into the mountainside. The companions were obviously not the first people to come that way, and at one time it was likely a well-traveled pathway. The climb ended at a rock shelf that stuck out from the mountainside about fifty feet below the pinnacle. There was another abandoned hut and a large doorway in the mountainside. Quill couldn’t tell if it was artificial in its entirety, but if it had started as the mouth of a natural cave, it had been widened and adorned with carved friezes showing insectile bipeds engaged in activities ranging from hunting to feasting.

  The travelers cautiously entered the doorway and stopped in amazement. The inside of the peak was completely hollowed out, falling away from the ledge on which they stood to unfathomable depths, and reaching up to a tiny square of daylight far above. The walls moved and rippled, and for a moment Quill thought that they had triggered some ancient trap that would bring the cavern collapsing on top of them. Then his eyes adjusted, and he saw the movement for what it was.

  “It seems we have found our steeds,” Gamora said, her voice breathless with wonder.

  The walls were crawling with thousands of winged creatures, each with a body as big as a knight’s charger and with a wingspan to match. They looked like a cross between bat and bee—long, membraned wings covered with iridescent scales, and bodies covered with a delicate fuzz. Their heads had an almost comical appearance with curled, fernlike antennas, but there was nothing funny about the jagged fangs that were revealed when they opened their mouths to yawn, or let out low mournful cries—or to snap at any neighbor that dared come too close.

  “I’m not sure I really want to ride one of them,” Rocket said. “They don’t look all that friendly. How do you plan on getting close enough to get a harness on one without getting your hand—or your head—taken off?”

  Quill had to admit that the raccoonoid had a point. He’d had enough trouble with his horse, and he wasn’t really that keen on getting near any of these creatures. It was Ansari who gave them the answer. She pulled out one of the flutes and gave it an experimental blow. The sound that emerged sounded much like the cries of the winged beasts around them, and encouraged, she started to play a simple tune. There was a stirring among the creatures closest to them, and one emerged from the swarm and crawled down to the ledge. Reflexively Quill reached for his sword, but Gamora clamped her hand down on his before he could draw it, her fingers like bands of steel.

  “Wait,” she whispered.

  Ansari took one of the harnesses and slowly approached the creature, one careful step at a time. It watched her approach through six emerald compound eyes, and as she reached it, it lowered its head to allow her to slide the harness over it. It was a matter of adjusting two straps be
fore it fit perfectly, and then Ansari turned and gave them a broad, triumphant smile.

  “Great apprentice you have there,” Quill said quietly. “You should be very proud.”

  “I am,” Gamora said. She played a tune on her own flute, and soon had another of the creatures in harness. Each of the travelers followed suit, Quill watching in a sort of horrified wonder as Groot partly absorbed the flute into the cluster of branches at the crown of his head and then played it without having it anywhere near his mouth.

  “So, what now?” Gamora asked.

  They had mounted the creatures—the narrow waists behind the wings a perfect place to sit—and had been able to get the creatures to move around using the reins. But Quill didn’t know what other commands the creatures might be expecting.

  “Well, I guess there’s only one thing to try now,” he muttered. “Faint heart never won fair lady.”

  He directed his beast to the edge of the ledge, trying not to stare down into the chasm in case his nerves failed. With a sudden shout he dug his heels into the creature’s sides and leaned forward as it lurched out over the brink. For a moment he thought he had killed them both as they hurtled straight down, wind whistling through his hair, but then there was a whip-crack of sound and a jaw-clicking jolt as the creature extended its wings to their full span and they filled with air. Their descent slowed and then the huge wings began to beat. The beast didn’t so much seem to fly back up towards the ledge as claw its way back up through the air. There was a definite updraft coming from the depths of the cavern, and as the beast came level with the ledge, it almost hovered, using only the occasional lazy beat of its wings to stay stationary.

  “What a rush!” Quill yelled to the others over the vast flapping sound. “That was amazing. Come on, you should all give it a go.”

  One by one, the other travelers urged their mounts over the edge. Each one experienced the same sickening drop and the same laborious ascent. Groot must have weighed a good two or three times as much as Quill, and his fall seemed to go on forever—for a moment Quill feared they might have lost him—but soon they were all in the air and circling one another. Through trial and error they worked out how to direct their steeds through the air, and Quill gave his mount another heel in the side and sent it towards the square of sunlight far above. As they approached, the opening seemed to grow larger and larger, proving wide enough to fit three of the beasts flying wingtip to wingtip. Quill grinned as they emerged, blinking in the bright daylight, and he gave his mount the freedom to fly. It opened its mouth and let out another bugling cry, this one filled with unbridled joy. Their mounts answering their leader’s summons, the others followed, and soon they all wheeled and circled the top of the mountain, discovering just what their steeds were capable of. The creatures were surprisingly agile for their size, capable of turning almost on a dime. They wouldn’t obey any commands that asked too much of them, but what they would do was amazing. Each of the beasts showed itself able to pull out of dives so steep that they almost ended up brushing the ground, and was capable of astonishing bursts of speed. After an hour of sheer exuberance in which they gloried in the wonders of flight, and which was full of hard-fought races and mock dogfights, the creatures showed no signs of fatigue, and Quill realized that, with these wonderful creatures, he might just be able to keep his promise after all. Reluctantly, he flew alongside Gamora.