Not even one standard year had gone by since Peter Quill had been beamed aboard the Eclector before they were commandeered by squadron of thugs.
They came in surprising numbers, prompting Yondu to consider whether the Nova Corps were doing one of those honeypot operations on illegal Ravager activity. It was the kind of down-and-dirty idea Nova Prime had concocted not long after she was sworn in – an attempt from law enforcement to narrow the number of professional criminals in the free network of space while also "rehabilitating" crooks and offenders that had previously been caught.
There wasn't much time to waste thinking it over, not as Yondu sprinted through corridors and through hauls filled with low-hanging pipes to get to the hangar bay. He'd sent the Terran brat to help with unpacking loot that a group of loner Ravager trainees had come back with. It had been a prime opportunity to get some peace after Peter had, as usual, attached himself to Yondu at the hip for most of the day, as well as a way for Yondu to let him pick out something shiny that would fit on Yondu's control console. The captain's collection of trinkets had not grown in months, and odds were that Peter was growing bored of having the same little toys to play with.
But of course, the minute Yondu got some time away from Peter was the minute when everything went to shit.
"Where are ya', kid?" Yondu shouted once he stepped foot inside the hangar. Chaos forged on around him, making it difficult to get a good read on what was what and who was where. Yondu dodged both fists and lasers as his men struck out wildly against their unexpected enemies, glancing beneath ships and around crates to see if Peter was hidden somewhere. The boy was young, but he was quick and he was adaptable. He also had plenty of hiding places if a fight broke out or one of the crew came after him for any fool thing.
Then he heard it. Above the din and fray there was a tinny voice calling out to him from below. Yondu looked at the floor before him, red eyes flicking between dead bodies before he saw the hint of a slanted grate and small, pale fingers sticking out from beneath.
"Dad!"
Hearts beating furiously in his chest, Yondu rushed to shove a corpse that had fallen directly on top of Peter's sanctuary out of the way. He caught a glimpse of the boy's bloodless and terrified face before he began to lift the heavy grate. It moved at an agonizingly slow pace, but once Yondu had managed to budge it enough for Peter to climb out, he hefted the Terran up into his arms and carried him out of the hangar, whistling as he did so.
"What's happening?" Peter whimpered.
His nails dug into Yondu's shoulders beneath his coat, but Yondu remained silent, ignoring Peter in favor of making it to the bridge with as little distraction as possible.
The Centaurian marched through the same halls and corridors that he'd just come through without being touched. He spared no attention toward the men that fell around him, whether they were part of the nameless, classless lineup of thugs that had boarded his ship or his own men in Ravager reds. There just wasn't enough time to even consider them.
"Fuck!" Yondu shouted.
He stopped mid-stride and turned on his heel to shield Peter from a sudden blast of high-powered electricity. The circuits that manipulated their nearest exit had been tapped, by what Yondu had no clue as those that had been in the hall when they'd arrived were all dead on the ground around them. Maybe a detonator. These sons of bitches looked about as smart as a flock of ten-toed raptors, maybe they'd rampaged through the Eclector to commit mass suicide and were planning to blow up the entire ship and everyone inside of it.
Electricity and steam surged from the entryway, knocking them both of their feet and onto the metal surface below.
The Ravager captain shoved Peter and himself behind a large covered engine hub and waited for the worst of the blast to subside. In the time it took for the charge of voltage to mellow into static, Yondu gathered that this path to the bridge was useless now. There was no telling if the magnetized entryway here, now a charred black and crumbling metal and pulsating red wires, would electrocute them both as soon as they attempted to go through it.
Yondu considered his options in a flash. There were others way to get to the bridge, but this was the most efficient and the one less likely to end in the pair being confronted by thugs.
Yondu cursed. Following through with his initial plan was off the table, but they needed an alternative solution now. Thinking hard and fast, Yondu let go of Peter to reach for the child's Walkman.
"We're gonna go below deck, alrigh'?" Yondu began to untangle the cord that attached Peter's headphones to his musical contraption. He fit those headphones over the boy's head and onto his ears before pulling him closer and resting his forehead against his so that he had Peter's full attention.
"You 'n I are gonna go below so I can show ya the escape pods. We'll stay there till everything quiets down cause it's safe." He said. "Alrigh'?"
Peter's eyes began to water and his lip started to tremble.
"Alrigh', son?" Yondu asked again. He shook Peter in his hands, not too roughly but enough to reclaim the terrified kid's attention.
Peter nodded. "Alright."
Yondu nodded his approval, then stood up again. He took Peter with him, securing him on his hip again. "Don't look up til I tell ya to, neither. Got it?"
Hot tears coursed down Peter's cheeks, even as he buried his snot-nosed face against Yondu's shoulder and closed his eyes tightly for extra measure. He tried to pay attention to the music as they jogged back the way they'd just come from, squeezing Yondu's shoulders every so often just to be sure that he was still in his father's arms and hadn't been snatched up unawares. Peter could feel the scabbed over scars near the base of Yondu's neck, from where the muscle that had once belonged to his dad's original fin before it'd been stripped from his body.
He continued to cling, gasping when his father pulled him away from the safety of his arms and set him down. They'd made it to the niches below, where the Eclector kept storage as well as a roster of round, claustrophobic-looking hulls in case of emergency. They'd been unused for longer than a decade preceding Peter's own existence, but Yondu wiped away the dust that had accumulated on control panel of one pod and opened it up with the push of a button. The rhombus-shaped door opened upward with a snapping hiss and Yondu wasted no time in shuffling Peter inside of it.
Ducking inside, Yondu closed the hatch door behind him and gestured for Peter to sit in one of the only two seats and told him to buckle up. Without waiting to make sure Peter did so correctly, the man climbed into the pilot's seat
Yondu set coordinates for the nearest moon, groaning as he realized that it was unlisted in their index – because of course it was.
"Hold on!" He finally called over the screeching of metal and the truly nauseating sensation of a sudden drop when the escape pod detached itself from the Ravager main ship.
"Peter?" Yondu fought to stand. His knees were shot and he'd been burned from their sporadic crash landing in a few dozen places, but he resisted the urge to just lay down and die. The man tore at the seat restraints that practically branded him and whipped around in circles in search of Peter.
"Here!" The boy, not quite as shell-shocked (or dead) as Yondu predicted, waved both of his arms to catch his father's attention. "I'm okay!"
He smiled up at Yondu as though they hadn't just survived up to three near-death experiences in the past 24 hours. Nevertheless, Yondu exhaled a breath of relief as he made his way over to give Peter a once over and was reassured that the kid wasn't maimed or mortally wounded. That was until his lungs replenished with frigid cold air while he undid Peter's straps.
"Shit, it's cold." Yondu groaned while he fumbled with Peter's belt buckle. Peter leaned to one side to look past Yondu and gasped.
"It's Hoth!" Peter exclaimed. He clung to Yondu's hand and let himself be lifted up and onto his feet.
"Ya know the name of this moon?" Yondu asked dubiously. He turned around to see the permanent winter surrounding them on all sides and didn't bother to hide his disgust. There was no distinction between the snow-packed ground beneath them and the blindingly silver sky above them.
"No!" Peter's eyes remained bright. "It looks like Hoth, from The Empire Strikes Back! I told ya that was the place where Luke and the rebel base was ba'fore Darth Vader came lookin' for 'em!"
They began to hike through the snow, Yondu keeping a tight grip on Peter's hands while he maneauvered them both around the more precarious and large sheets of destroyed escape pod. The damn thing had been absolutely trashed upon entry into this orb's atmosphere, but at least it had saved their skins.
He grunted, "Oh, yeh, I remember dat. Tha' was the one wit' the princess and the walking carpet, righ'?"
"Princess Leia and Chewbacca, Dad." Peter sniffed indignantly. "They're in all of the movies!"
"Righ', righ'. Chewbacon. I's remember, jus' forgot wha' happens when dat lord whatshisname gets there. He kill 'em?"
Yondu couldn't help but smile as his boy laughed at the purposeful misnomer, then went into babbling excitedly about the finer points of Star Wars. He held fast to Peter even after they'd stepped around all the metal, eventually motioning for him to walk while tucked in Yondu's coat. The tundra stretched as far as the eye could see, and there was no sign of civilization in the blur of what snow and white sky. At least Yondu had managed to get them both out of the crash site where sharp debris had strewn about during their landing. He began to trudge away from it, knowing that while it would've been good to stay with the pod so the crew could find them faster, he wasn't going to risk Peter freezing over before they were located.
They needed to find shelter, quickly.