by Alex Irvine
“Lucky for you my word don’t mean squat,” Yondu said. “Otherwise I’d actually hand you over.”
Some of the Ravagers had started to laugh again, but now they stopped as they figured out what Yondu was saying. “Otherwise you what?” one of them said.
“We’ll take those batteries,” Yondu said. “They’re worth what, a quarter of a million on the open market?”
“That priestess offered us a million,” the other Ravager said. He was big and scarred and ugly and looked like he only lived for the next fight. “A quarter is only one-third of that!”
The other Ravagers started arguing about this. Rocket noticed none of them were very good at math. “Enough!” Yondu said. “The point is, we ain’t stupid enough to kill the Guardians of the Galaxy! The whole dang Nova Corps would be on us!”
“That ain’t right!” Kraglin called out. “I just gotta say this, Captain. No matter how many times Quill betrays us, you protect him. Like none of the rest of us much matter. I’m the one what sticks up for you!”
“Take it easy, Kraglin,” another Ravager cautioned.
“He’s gone soft,” the ugly Ravager said. “Suppose it’s time for a change in leadership!”
Weapons were raised. Voices got loud. Yondu’s arrow lifted away from Rocket and hovered by Yondu’s head, waiting for a target. “Whoa, whoa!” Rocket shouted over the tumult. “There must be some kind of peaceful resolution to this, fellas. Or even a violent one where I’m standing over there.”
The Ravagers were still staring one another down. Would they mutiny against Yondu? Rocket started looking around for the quickest way out of the circle of knuckleheads with guns. He kept his eye on Yondu, figuring that if anything was going to start, it would start there—and it did, but not in the way he’d expected. Rocket was shocked to see the fin on Yondu’s head, which he used to control the arrow, shatter in a burst of sparks. The blue-skinned Ravager looked stunned and woozy. He sank to his knees, revealing who had shot him.
Nebula.
Uh-oh, Rocket thought. One of the deadliest assassins in the galaxy was loose. How had she gotten out of the cuffs? Where was Groot?
He didn’t have time to think it all through, because she shot him next, zapping him with a powerful stun charge. It knocked him flat on his back. “Well, hello, boys,” Nebula said to the Ravagers. She coolly bit into a piece of fruit from the bowl Drax had kicked out of her reach, eager to taste what had been denied her this whole miserable time with the so-called Guardians of the Galaxy.
Then she grimaced and spit it out in disgust. “It’s not ripe.”
CHAPTER 10
From space, Ego’s planet was red and glowing, with circular areas of bright blue where a powerful energy shone through from the interior…but when Ego’s ship dropped through the atmosphere and neared the surface, it was a completely different story. Brilliant sunshine, perfect temperatures, the air full of wonderful smells…and everywhere Peter looked he saw lush forests, fascinating buildings, monumental art. He still wasn’t sure this Ego person was on the level, but man, this planet would be worth exploring either way.
As the ship landed, a part of it separated into a hovering platform that flew smoothly toward a magnificent palace surrounded by statues. There was no sun nearby, but somehow a golden light suffused everything. “Welcome, everyone, to my world,” Ego said proudly.
“Wow,” Peter said. He felt like a kid again…maybe because he was around his father. “You have your own planet?”
“Well. No larger than your Earth’s moon.”
“Humility,” Drax said. “I like it. I, too, am extraordinarily humble.”
Rainbow bubbles floated nearby. Drax touched one with his finger and it broke apart into a cloud of smaller bubbles, each dancing with color. Drax laughed with delight.
Only Gamora seemed immune to the general mood. “You own a planet and can destroy two dozen spaceships without a suit. What are you, exactly?”
“I’m what’s called a Celestial, sweetheart,” Ego answered without missing a beat.
Peter had heard of the Celestials. Was this possible? If his father was a Celestial, what did that make him? “A Celestial…like a God?”
“Small g, son. At least on the days I’m feeling as humble as Drax.” Ego chuckled and led the way into the palace, Mantis next to him and the three Guardians following behind.
The main hall of the palace was stupendous, with ceilings a hundred feet high supported by ornamented pillars. Light shone down through circular skylights twenty feet wide. Lining the hall on both sides were rows of oval fixtures three times the height of a human. The nearest one lit up with a holographic display: a glowing blue brain against a background of stars.
“I don’t know where I came from, exactly,” Ego said. “The first thing I remember is drifting in the cosmos…utterly and entirely alone. Over millions of years I learned to control the molecules around me. I grew smarter and stronger.” In another oval, a new image appeared: a cross-section of Ego’s planet, with the shining blue core of Ego’s self at its center. “And I continued building from there, layer by layer, the very planet you walk on now. But I wanted more. I desired meaning. There must be some life out there in the universe besides just me, I thought, and so I set myself the task of finding it.”
He walked to the next display, where a blue column rose from the center of the planet to the surface. Within it, a human form took shape: Ego, looking as he had in 1980 when Meredith Quill had fallen in love with him.
“I created what I imagined biological life to be like. Down to the most minute detail,” Ego said, proud of his accomplishment.
“I’ve also got pain receptors and a digestive system and all the accompanying junk. I wanted to experience what it truly meant to be human as I set out amongst the stars. Until I found what I sought.”
A new display showed Ego and a small pink alien. “Life!” he went on. “I was not alone in the universe after all.”
Peter was fascinated by the story, but he wanted Ego to get to the point. “When did you meet my mother?”
Ego turned to face Peter. “Not long after,” he said. The next display showed Ego and Meredith Quill. “It was with Meredith that I first experienced love. I called her my river lily.” The oval fixture closed and opened again, like an eye. Ego and Meredith still stood together, but now she was pregnant. A blue glow shone from her belly. “And from that love, Peter…you.”
Peter looked up at the image, overcome with emotion. After so long not knowing his origins, at last he was seeing them come to life, with his father telling the story he’d always yearned for.
“I’ve searched for you for so long,” Ego said earnestly. “When I heard of a man from Earth who held an Infinity Stone in his hand without dying, I knew you must be the son of the woman I loved.”
This was the moment when Peter’s amazement collided with the sadness and anger he’d felt his whole life at not having a father. Looking Ego dead in the eye, he asked, “If you loved her, why did you leave her?”
CHAPTER 11
On board the Ravager ship, things had gone from bad to worse almost as soon as they left Berhert. The talk of mutiny that had begun back on Contraxia exploded into violence. Yondu’s own Ravagers betrayed him. They ambushed him and tied him to a chair before turning on the members of the crew who stayed loyal. Now they were dragging the loyalists one by one to the airlock and casting them out into space to die. As each one went out the airlock, a bloodthirsty cheer went up. Rocket was tied to another chair next to Yondu. In a cage hanging from the ceiling, Groot trembled in fear as the Ravagers shouted at him and taunted him.
All Yondu could do was watch.
“You’re the one that killed those men,” the ringleader of the mutiny said to him. “By leading them down the wrong path. Because you’re weak!” He punched Yondu hard in the face. “And stupid!” Another punch. Yondu took them without making a sound. At least if he was getting punched in the face, his friends weren’
t going out the airlock.
The ringleader turned to the assembled Ravagers. “It’s time for the Ravagers to once again rise to glory with a new captain—Taserface!”
The mutineers roared and cheered, but behind that was another sound.
Laughter.
Rocket sat in his chair, laughing so hard he strained against the ropes that bound him. When he saw Taserface glaring at him, he tried to stop. “I’m sorry. Your name…it’s Taserface?”
“That’s right,” Taserface growled.
“You…shoot tasers out of your face?”
“It’s metaphorical!” Taserface proclaimed. Another cheer went up.
“For what?” Rocket asked.
“For…It is a name what strikes fear into the hearts of anyone what hears it!” Taserface expected another cheer, but this time there were just murmurs among the Ravagers.
From the far end of the room, Nebula watched silently.
“Uh, okay,” Rocket said, still trying not to laugh. “Whatever you say.”
Taserface whipped out a knife. “You shut up. You’re next.” He turned back to Yondu. “Udonta. I have waited a long time—”
Rocket was laughing again. Taserface spun around and screamed, “What?!”
“I’m sorry. I am so sorry,” Rocket said. “I just keep imagining you waking up in the morning, start looking in the mirror and in all seriousness saying to yourself”—he dropped his voice into a bad imitation of the Ravager—“‘You know what would be a really cool name? Taserface!’” The Ravagers laughed, and so did Rocket. “Hahaha, that’s how I hear you in my head! What was your second choice?”
Taserface lunged forward and put the knife to Rocket’s throat. “I’m killing you first.”
“Well, dying is certainly better than having to live an entire life as a moron who thinks ‘Taserface’ is a cool name.”
Taserface bared his teeth, but Nebula stepped out from the shadows. “That’s enough killing for today.”
“I thought you were the biggest sadist in the galaxy,” Taserface said.
“That’s when Daddy was paying the bills. The priestess wants to kill the fox herself.” She nodded at Yondu. “And he has bounties on his head in at least twelve Kree provinces.” Taserface moved to confront her, but she didn’t look afraid. “I’m not as easy a mark as an old man without his magic stick or a talking woodland beast,” she said. Taserface stopped. “I want ten percent of the take…and a couple more things.”
Taserface glared, but he backed down. Nebula could have killed him, but she knew she’d made her point. A few minutes later, she went with Kraglin to see about updates to some of her cybernetic components that had been damaged when the Sovereign bounty hunters captured her. “We got a whole box of hands if that one don’t work out,” he said as she tried one.
“It’s fine,” she said, flexing the fingers.
“You, ah, think them Kree is gonna execute the cap’n?”
“The Kree consider themselves merciful,” Nebula said. “It will be painless.”
Kraglin took this in. “Well, uh, here it is,” he said, showing her a docked fighter ship. That was the other thing she had demanded. “Best ship we got. Location of Ego’s planet is in the nav. We’ll wire you the ten percent once we’s paid. What are you going to do with your share?”
She looked at the ship and spoke slowly, not looking at him. “As a child, my father would have Gamora and me battle one another in training. Every time my sister prevailed, my father would replace a piece of me with machinery, claiming he wanted me to be her equal. But she won. Again and again and again, never once refraining. So, after I murder my sister, I will buy a warship with every conceivable instrument of death. I will hunt my father like a dog and I will tear him apart, slowly, piece by piece, until he knows some sort of resemblance of the profound and unceasing pain I know every single day!”
“Yeah,” Kraglin said uncertainly. “I was talking about, like, a pretty necklace or a nice hat. You know, something to make the other girls go, ‘Oooh, that’s nice.’”
She didn’t answer him. “Anyways,” he said. “Happy trails.” He clapped her on the shoulder and left. Five minutes later, Nebula was at the controls of the ship, heading for the nearest jump point.
CHAPTER 12
In a plaza outside the palace, Peter and Ego walked alone past a huge statue of Meredith Quill. They’d taken the conversation outside when it started to get personal.
“My mother told everyone my father was from the stars,” Peter said, looking up at the statue. “She had brain cancer, so everyone thought she was delusional.”
“Peter,” Ego said, but Peter wasn’t done. He had to get this off his chest.
“Listen,” he said. “I’d love to believe all of this, I really would—but you left the most wonderful woman that ever was to die alone.”
“I didn’t want to leave your mother, Peter. If I don’t return regularly to this planet and the light within it, this form will wither and perish.”
“So why didn’t you come back? Why did you send Yondu, a criminal of all people, to come and fetch me?”
“I loved your mother, Peter!” Ego’s voice rose with emotion. “I couldn’t stand to set foot on an Earth without her living! You can’t imagine what that’s like!”
“I know exactly what that feels like!” Peter shouted back. “I had to watch her die!”
Ego paused. When he spoke again, his voice was low and sad. “Over the millions and millions of years of my existence, I have made many mistakes, Peter, but you’re not one of them. Please give me the chance to be the father she would want me to be. There’s so much that I need to teach you about this planet and the light within. They are part of you, Peter.”
“What do you mean?”
“Give me your hand, son.” Ego took Peter’s hands and brought them up level with his waist, as if he were about to catch something. “Here. Hold them like that.” Ego stepped back. “Now, close your eyes and concentrate. Take your brain to the center of this planet.”
Peter did. He didn’t know what Ego wanted, but…
Blue energy flashed in Peter’s hands.
“Yes!” Ego shouted. “Yes!”
“Whoa!” Peter jumped and the light flashed out. “What was it?”
“Just relax,” Ego said. “Concentrate. You can do it.”
Peter tried again. The light came back and stayed this time, shimmering between his hands. “Yes. Now shape it,” Ego said. “Feel that energy.”
Slowly, eyes wide, Peter shaped the energy into a ball.
“Yes,” Ego said. “You’re home.”
Peter grinned. Ego took a few more steps back and held out his hands. “Peter.”
Peter tossed him the ball. Ego shaped it more and tossed it back—and just like that, Peter Quill was playing a game of catch with his father, just as he’d always wanted.
Near another door into the palace, Drax and Mantis sat on a broad golden staircase. “How’d you get to this weird, dumb planet?” he asked.
“Ego found me in my larval state. Orphaned on my home world. He took me in and raised me as his own,” Mantis explained calmly.
“So you’re a pet,” he said.
She considered this. “I suppose so.”
Drax enjoyed talking to her. She took everything he said at face value instead of getting offended at everything, like Quill. “People usually want cute pets. Why would Ego want such a hideous one?”
Shocked, she said, “I am hideous?”
“You are horrifying to look at, yes,” Drax said. “But that’s a good thing.”
“Oh?”
“When you’re ugly and someone loves you, you know they love you for who you are. Beautiful people never know who to trust.”
“Well,” Mantis said with a smile, “then I am certainly grateful to be ugly.” They sat for a moment, looking out over the beauty of the planet without speaking.
Then Drax remembered something. “Those pools,” he said,
pointing to a courtyard at the bottom of the stairs. “They remind me of a time when I took my daughter to the forgotten lakes of my home world. She was like you.”
“Disgusting?”
“Innocent,” Drax said softly.
Mantis reached out and touched him gingerly on the shoulder. Her antennae glowed and she started to cry, feeling Drax’s sadness at the memories of his family. “Drax?” she said when she stopped crying. “There’s something I must tell you.”
Gamora came through the door and Mantis stopped speaking. Gamora looked from her to Drax, sensing she’d walked in on something. “What’s going on?”
Drax looked up at her. “This gross bug-lady is my new friend.”
“I’m learning many things,” Mantis said with a bright smile. “Like I’m a pet and ugly.”
“You’re not ugly,” Gamora said.
Amazed, Drax said, “What are you talking about?”
Gamora ignored him. “Mantis, can you show us where we’ll be staying?”
Mantis walked them to another part of the palace complex. “Why are there no other beings on this planet?” Gamora asked.
“The planet is Ego,” Mantis replied. “A dog would not invite a flea to live on his back.”
“And you’re not a flea?”
“I’m a flea with a purpose. I help him sleep.”
Gamora waited a beat, then asked the question she’d wanted to get to all along. “What were you about to say to Drax before I walked out?”
Mantis looked uncomfortable. She glanced at Drax. “Nothing,” she said. Then she started walking again. “Your quarters are this way.”
CHAPTER 13
After Nebula left the Ravager ship, Taserface and the other mutinous Ravagers threw Rocket and Yondu into a cell. “We deliver you to the Kree in the morning,” Taserface gloated. “Neither one of you will last much longer after that.”