Guardians of the Galaxy: Rocket Raccoon and Groot - Steal the Galaxy!

by Dan Abnett

  Within half an hour, under my guidance, we have the sublight working again.

  “Now, the FTL,” I say, turning to page one thousand and eight. “It says, ‘Insert a ratchet driver into access port viii, and remove the cover plate to expose the outer warp-ignition circuit. Then—’ Uhm.”

  “Then what?” asks Rocket, his welding goggles pushed up on his brow and his overalls stained with oil spots.

  “Nothing,” I reply. “Just a part about needing an accredited warp engineer to do this, in case of cross-mixing the antimatter core and thus triggering a chain reaction that could blow a planet in two.”

  “Ah, that,” says Rocket with a dismissive wave of his disconcertingly human-like hand. “It always says things like that. Go on.”

  “I am Groot,” says Groot.

  We both look up. Groot is correct. Nova Centurion Grekan Yaer is indeed walking across the bay toward us. He looks alarmingly pleased with himself.

  “Not him again,” says Rocket. “What does he want?”

  “Gentlemen,” says Yaer, coming to a halt and staring at us. “A little issue.”

  “Yeah?” says Rocket.

  “You talked and walked your way out of everything. I’m impressed. Believe me, I am. But there’s always one thing that trips you up, isn’t there? The little thing?”

  “Go on,” says Rocket warily, hoping that the little thing is not him.

  “I checked. This ship has no valid insurance. Not anywhere, on any system.”

  Rocket shrugs.

  “I got behind on the payments. So what? You’re going to bust us for insurance, after all we went through?”

  Yaer thinks about this.

  “Yes,” he says, amused. “Yes, I am. It’s a thousand-unit fine or two days in lockup. You see what I did there? I formally explained the charge and penalty, as per code, and now I’m going to read you your rights. Would you like a beverage before interview?”

  “A mocha would be nice,” says Rocket.

  “Do not speak,” I say, rising to face the Centurion. “I see what you are doing, Grekan Yaer. You are going by the book, so we can be arrested and processed with no technical problems. Once arrested, we can be re-examined for all the other charges on the rap sheet. You have reopened the investigation on a technicality in order to reapply the more serious charges.”

  “Yeah. Smart, right?”

  “Very smart.”

  “Any clever rule of law or code citation you want to throw back at me to stop me?” Yaer asks.

  I think. There are none.

  “No,” I say.

  “Good,” says Yaer. “So how’s this going to go? The easy way, or my way? Go on, flarks, make my day. Resist arrest.”

  “Do not resist arrest,” I tell my new friends. “We will find another course out of this.”

  Yaer shakes his head sadly.

  “Ah, you spoiled it. Okay…Recorder 127, Rocket Raccoon, and ‘I am Groot,’ I am arresting you on suspicion of Using a Jump Vehicle Without Valid Insurance. You do not need to say anything, but any comment you make may be recorded and used in court. Follow me.”

  He pauses.

  “Oh,” he adds. “Is that a broken taillight I see? Fifty-unit spot-fine.”

  “You can’t be serious about this,” says Rocket.

  I am sure that Yaer is, but we never have time to find out. Something very curious happens.

  I get a presentiment of it for a second, like dramatic foreshadowing. I get a whiff of twisting plot and a hint of reversal of fortune.

  There is a crackle of light. It appears between us and Yaer, on the impound-bay pad. Reality bulges, buckles, and bubbles—like a frame of old cine film caught in the projector and melting as it heats from the light.

  Reality pops open like a blister, and suddenly the matte-black Spaceknight is standing there.

  “Who the flark are you?” Yaer asks angrily. He steps forward, his gauntlets rising.

  The Spaceknight suddenly has his nullifier drawn in his hand. The squat-nosed, boxy weapon fires once, emitting a shriek of power. The vicious beam puts Yaer through the dock wall.

  Nova techs run for cover. Alarms wail.

  The Spaceknight turns to us. Evil red light simmers like furnace coals behind the eye-slot of his visor.

  “You know what?” says Rocket Raccoon. “I think I preferred the other guy.”

  • CHAPTER THIRTEEN •

  A SUDDEN SURPRISE TWIST

  SO THEN—

  {Oooops! I am sorry, genial and forgiving reader—I realize I have done it again. Foreshadowing, that is. I am like, I suppose, the jerk in the movie house who talks all the way through the flick and gives away the ending. Calling this chapter “A Sudden Surprise Twist” sort of spoils that twist and its surprise quality, doesn’t it? I realize that now and apologize for any detriment caused to your robust enjoyment of this narrative. Maybe I should start again. I think I will. This is Chapter Thirteen, a number considered unlucky by twenty-seven hundred cultures, so maybe it would be altogether better to make a fresh start with Chapter Fourteen and forget about this whole affair. Okay? Right. Let’s do that.}

  Resume—

  {Just a thing, though. Forgive me. Am I getting the Contemporary Terran terminology right? I worry. I want to make this accessible to you, kind and increasingly patient reader. For example, “movie house?” Is that what you call them? What about “Cellulose Image Projection Theater” or “Grand Cinematic Hall” or “Moving Picture Building?” I must make a note to revisit Earth again soon and catch up. Please, do tell me where my vernacular is outdated or obsolete.}

  Resume—

  {Cineplex! Cineplex! THAT was the word I was searching for! Anyway… }

  • CHAPTER FOURTEEN •

  IN WHICH THERE ARE NO SUDDEN SURPRISE TWISTS WHATSOEVER

  [DISSEMBLING MODE ACTIVATED]

  RESUME—

  The matte-black Spaceknight steps slowly toward us. The malevolent and ruddy light of stars burning out at the end of their lives throbs behind the slit of his helmet visor.

  “Hello,” I say, tentatively, over the wailing of sirens.

  “Forget ‘hello,’ lock and flarkin’ load!” Rocket yells. He has fetched an unfeasibly large weapon from his secret stash aboard the White Stripe.

  “I do not think it would be advisable to shoot at this fellow,” I suggest, but I am outvoted by Rocket’s trigger finger and simultaneously drowned out by the roar of the Plasmatica Arms Inc. 50 Energy Bombard.

  The Spaceknight is knocked back a few paces by the horrendous blast, but his null-fields absorb the lethality of it.

  “Bad move,” he growls.

  “As I think I pointed out,” I add.

  He aims an armored finger at me.

  “I want him. The Recorder,” he says.

  “Well, you can’t have him, pal!” snaps Rocket Raccoon.

  “Give me one good reason,” says the Spaceknight.

  Groot does so. He uppercuts the Spaceknight in the face so hard the Spaceknight achieves low orbit.

  “Cool,” whistles Rocket Raccoon.

  It is, I suppose, in a purely “Man, did you see that?” kind of way. But it has not resolved our issues. In the cloudy skies of Xandar above us, the Spaceknight arrests his upward trajectory, turns, and starts to powerdive back toward us. We hear the high-pitched whine of his armor’s propulsion system.

  “I think we should—” I begin.

  “Take cover!” Rocket yells.

  The first blasts rip down out of the sky: dazzling orange beams of quanta-laser fire, utterly deadly, emitted by the heavy blaster weapon the diving Spaceknight has drawn.

  The blasts strike the ground around us—blowing craters in the bay’s concrete floor, scattering grit and debris in flaming cones of detonation. Each time we try to run, a beam strikes the ground in front of us.

  I feel he is herding us, containing us.

  The six automatic defense cannons atop the bay walls wake up, sensing an aerial ass
ault. They start firing, their twin pneumatic barrels pumping bolts of gravimetric energy that look like streams of tracer rounds. The ground-to-air defenses lock in, and the six individual pulsing streams sweep together to triangulate the diving Spaceknight. He is fast, and he banks to evade the chasing firepower, but his null-fields start taking hits.

  Without slowing, he adjusts his aim and fires six perfect shots with his blaster. Each one annihilates a defense cannon. Around the wall top, the batteries explode, showering debris and flames down into the bay—and causing some of the inspection-light arrays to come crashing down, too.

  The Spaceknight is a formidable shot. I am convinced he was containing us with his earlier blasts. If he’d wanted to kill us with a direct shot, he would have been able to do so effortlessly.

  Another thought strikes me. I am the one he wants. I am the individual he wishes to capture intact. He has shown restraint toward Rocket and Groot thus far, but he has no particular reason to continue to do so if he decides they are hostile or simply in the way.

  Indeed, Rocket is being both of those things. He has opened up with his Energy Bombard, streaking deadly red beams of light into the sky in an enthusiastic but wildfire fashion.

  He might as well be wearing a neon sign that reads, “Shoot me.”

  The Spaceknight does.

  It is just a nanosecond of my life, but thanks to the fluid-resolution pico-processing systems with which the Rigellian Colonizers equipped me, I observe and record every detail with absolute clarity.

  The Spaceknight shoots Rocket Raccoon. The orange quantalaser beam sears down to obliterate him. The predictive subroutines of my pico-processors flinch as they anticipate recording the sight of a small Raccoonoid disintegrating in an explosion of light, heat, and tufts of fur.

  This does not, however, happen.

  About one Raccoonoid arm’s length from Rocket, the beam stops short in a huge flare of dissipating energy as something blocks it.

  Rocket opens one eye.

  “Am I dead?” he asks. “Is this the afterlife? Because if it is, it looks oddly identical to regular life, and that comes as a disappointment.”

  The Spaceknight swoops into the bay, lands on his feet, and starts running toward us. He aims the blaster at Rocket and takes another shot.

  Like the first, it is mystifyingly stopped short.

  “Not going to happen,” says Centurion Grekan Yaer and knocks the Spaceknight flying with a gravimetric blast from his right gauntlet.

  I realize Yaer was protecting us with a gravimetric field. The applications of the Nova Force are many and various.

  The Spaceknight comes flying back at Yaer, but the Centurion is ready for him this time. Yaer’s first punch smashes the Spaceknight’s head sideways, and a deft gravimetric pulse rips the blaster out of his hand and crumples it. The Spaceknight hits back with a chin jab that staggers Yaer and splits his lip. Yaer blocks the next blow with his forearm, then delivers a straight punch that connects with the Spaceknight’s visor. The Spaceknight lashes back. Yaer ducks, then comes up hard to put a super-mortally enhanced fist into the Spaceknight’s midriff. The Spaceknight returns with a devastating spin kick that sends Yaer stumbling.

  Then they start trading blows seriously.

  We, meanwhile, take advantage of the super-mortal combat to seek cover.

  “Why am I alive?” Rocket asks.

  “I am Groot,” says Groot.

  “Groot is quite correct,” I affirm. “The Nova Centurion screened us from harm with a gravimetric force field.”

  “Okay, again,” says Rocket, “why am I alive? Why the d’ast would that flarkhat Nova-dude bother protecting us? Just a second ago he was gleefully trying to send us to the Kyln for life times twenty hard labor without possibility of parole!”

  “It is his ethical duty,” I reply. “Not only is it a Nova officer’s sworn obligation to protect any and all individuals from the aggression of others, it is enshrined in their Code of Conduct, item 1246613, that they are morally responsible for the welfare of any individual or individuals in their custody or detention. Yaer arrested us, and thus he must do everything at his disposal to protect us under the terms of that arrest.”

  “Our problems just became his problems?” Rocket asks, with what seems to me to be a little too much relish.

  “Just so,” I reply. I am about to go on to add that the same edict applies to the Nova Corps as a whole—we are detained by the Nova Corps, not just an individual officer, and have thus become the responsibility of each and every officer—when events themselves demonstrate this fact.

  Eight Nova Corps officers, including Centurion Clawdi, arrive at rocket speed to assist Yaer. The alarms are still blaring, and it would seem that the entire (and vast) Xandarian Hall of Justice complex is on high alert. The impound bay itself, one of many on the western fringe of the space-terminal facility, is being locked down to contain the incident. Heavy blast doors are sealing the bay’s exits (not that we could reach any of them, anyway, due to the extremity of the combat). Very soon, more officers will be overhead, along with riot teams and heavy-duty squads. Meanwhile, we are trapped in the impound bay with all the combatants.

  It is mayhem. {Note previous definition, and raise it.}

  We have found insufficient shelter behind a maintenance trolley parked close to one wall. There really isn’t enough room for all of Groot.

  “We’ve got to get to our ship and make a fast goodbye!” Rocket declares.

  We start to move, edging along the wall to avoid the shock wave blasts of energy and occasional tumbling Nova Corpsman. The matte-black Spaceknight is taking them all on. If anything, he has upped his game. I do not know how he intends to get out of this with the whole of Xandar closing in on him, though I assume he is confident that whatever strange process conjured him here will also conjure him back out if the need arises.

  The Nova officers attack him from all sides, trying to restrain him. He knocks a Denarian unconscious with a ferocious punch, then draws his nullifier and blasts a female Corpsman back into the bay wall, making a female-Corpsman-shaped dent in the concrete. Two more come at him; he smashes one aside with his fist and sends the other backward, rolling and flailing, with a null-blast.

  Yaer goes for him again, blood leaking from his lip. His uniform is scuffed in places.

  “Stand down!” he yells. “Stand down and surrender now! That’s an order!”

  Yaer dives at him. The Spaceknight meets the attack with a backhanded slap so brutal that the very air winces. Yaer flies backward across the bay and smashes into the White Stripe.

  This does not improve the White Stripe’s air worthiness in any way.

  “My ship!” Rocket squeaks in dismay.

  Yaer rolls clear of the damaged jump freighter, shakes his head to clear it, and then rises. He picks up the White Stripe, which is trailing debris from multiple busted hull plates, and briefly hefts it above his head with both hands before hurling it at the Spaceknight.

  “Hey!” Rocket shrieks in a voice so high-pitched with indignation only canines could hear it.

  The jump freighter lands on the Spaceknight. Its career as a functional space vessel ends as it becomes a pile of crumpled and twisted metal on top of a rogue Galadoran warrior.

  The Nova Corps officers close in, those that were airborne landing on their feet. Their gauntlets seethe with power, ready to fire. Centurion Clawdi sets down in front of us.

  “Stay down,” she tells us sternly. “You are under our protection.”

  She turns her back to us, covering us.

  “You done?” Yaer asks the pile of wreckage.

  The Spaceknight is not done. The screaming blade of his cyclic broadsword rips up through the wreck of the White Stripe as he cuts himself out from under it.

  He climbs out of the wreckage, hunched and glowering, blade in one hand, nullifier in the other.

  “Take him!” Yaer yells.

  They try. Even the lowliest Corpsman is a signifi
cantly empowered being, and the two Centurions present are full-on super-mortal. I doubt the Spaceknight is in any real degree stronger than either of them, nor is his matte black space-armor significantly more durable than their gravimetrically shielded bodies. But he has something. It is, I think, battle-smarts. It is sheer combat experience. The Nova Corps are highly trained and do not shrink from a fight, but they are peace officers. The Spaceknight is a stone-cold warrior. He faces them down with tenacity, and a sheer weight of confidence in his own skills. When he strikes, it is ruthless, devastating, and unorthodox—yet finely nuanced. He has learned tricks, many of them dirty and brutal, during his long years as a warmaker. He unleashes them now.

  As they come at him, he knocks them back with fists, kicks, headbutts, and the frequent use of his nullifier. The screaming cyclic broadsword almost removes Clawdi’s head, but she dodges and is able to wrench it from the Spaceknight’s grip with a desperate application of ultra-high-magnitude gravimetrics. She effectively makes it so heavy he can no longer hold it.

  The combat continues.

  “Now’s our chance!” Rocket says.

  “I am Groot!”

  Groot is quite correct. The impounded Xeronian warp shuttle looks like our best bet. Ducking a Nova Millenian who somersaults over us, we rush for the shuttle.

  “I reckon I can hotwire that,” Rocket says as we run.

  I reckon he’s right. He does not get the chance. Centurion Yaer gets his revenge for the punch that smashed him into the poor White Stripe, and manages to hit the Spaceknight with a powerful gravimetric blast from his gauntlets. The Spaceknight is thrown across the bay, and his bulk demolishes the engine nacelles of the Xeronian ship.

  History repeats itself, in reverse.

  The Spaceknight gets up, seizes the warp shuttle, and throws it at his enemies. Scattering a wake of broken scrap, cables, and drive rings, the ruined shuttle makes a brief, final flight across the bay—not under its own power.

  Clawdi, Yaer, a Denarian, and one of the Corpsmen react fast—as might be expected of beings possessed of the mercurially rapid Nova Force. They blast the shuttle in midair before it lands and crushes them. The combined, tight-focus gauntlet blasts rip the vehicle apart. It disintegrates in a vast blizzard of debris. Many thousands of separate pieces—twisted metal, buckled plating, wires, shards of window ports—rain down on the bay floor or ping and ricochet off the walls. The Nova officers shield themselves from the whirling metallic rain.