10. Han Shot First

. . .

It was the first time Coulson ever saw a nebula in such close detail, in such haunting massiveness, in such a vivid swath of deep-space oceanic colors that bled into the edge of what the human eye could absorb and identify. It went on for light-years, trailing thin veils of translucent organic material against the black. Beyond the haze were still-visible stars, twinkling in defiance against the impossibility of that anomaly in space.

There was a ghastly severed head, impossibly huge and demanding at least some awe from any first visitor, nestled within these galactic wisps. That was about the end of what Phil could take without desperately wanting a stiff drink and a few hours to re-assess his place in the universe. It must have showed in his slack-jawed, startled expression. Rocket rustled under the panel of the ship and came up with a flask of something, shoving it wordlessly at the human. He took a tiny, cautious sip and tasted little, but it felt like his head got knocked sideways for a second. It also calmed his newly unsettled nerves. He coughed hard and handed the flask back, feeling his way back to a mental balance. "Thanks."

"It's a stumper alright. The nebula's formed from the gases and suchlike the head gives off while it decays. They been at it in there for who knows how long, digging up what they can out of the rot and selling it off. Rough neighborhood, but if you need it, you can get it here. If you can find it, that is – ain't nothing found here don't want to be found." He hummed a little as he deftly piloted the ship towards the head. "And if you got the flash, you're as safe as anything. 'Till the money runs out, anyway." Rocket checked local starway traffic with a plinking nail against his nav screen and picked a lane of approach through a frantic knot of merchanter ships. They twinkled individually tiny against the sprawling backdrop of dead flesh, pixels of metal against an eternity of bone.

"What's the head?"

"Some kinda dead God, if you go for that sort of thing. I mean, it's so frickin' huge, 'God' works just about as well as anything else. There's a bunch of thinkers somewhere in there, pretty much a cult, right? They say, based on the way the throat's ripped up and some other scientific crap, that it got murdered and that's why it's out here like this. Now chew on that in the dark while tryin'a sleep." Rocket rumbled a dour laugh. "What kills a God that was bigger'n most planets?"

Coulson chewed that over for a moment, considering the scale of what Rocket described. "Gimme the flask back, please."

"Go easy there, pinkie. I also use that stuff to polish the contacts on the drive coils. Takes like six months to brew." Rocket watched him take a second sip, equally as small as the first. The human turned a deeper pink than usual. It made for a neat effect. "Yep. Okay, still with me here?"

"Mhm." Coulson nodded, tugging his tie just a smidge looser than usual under his throat to find the recycled but mostly clean air again.

"Thinkin' straight?"

"Always."

"'Kay. We'll be dockin' here momentarily. Think over your notes, humie. Cuz if you don't have a clue what you're looking for here or where to start... we're gonna have a rough time."

Coulson sat back in his chair, the fleeting buzz of Rocket's homebrew making way for harder contemplation. No, he had to admit to himself. On this leg of the trip, he didn't have a clue. He'd expected – he didn't know what, really – something like the last spaceport, or maybe some big and strange yet familiar land like Asgard. The head was a world entire, full of people that weren't going to just drop information for him like candy. The truck stop motif was gone. And somewhere in this vast stretch of weirdness, tiny and lost, were Loki's old trails.

He studied the approaching dead God's skull with numb awe and found himself looking in its filmy, pockmarked eye. It gave him no answers. It was frozen in unfathomable questions of its own.

Murdered. Unwillingly, his gaze took the long drift towards the floating vertebrae and the drifting trails of torn flesh along them, each one some impossible river of skin following the currents of space at the slowest pace imaginable. Yeah. He could buy that theory.

. . .

He played like he knew what he was doing from the first steps onto the plated gangways across vats of unknown liquid, but he knew instantly he was now beyond the limits of his earthly experiences. There weren't harbormasters here, no central grid of information. There were flimsy, half-built buildings wrangling illicit transmissions every few hundred meters or so, but without an in to get to their intel grids – much less a good reason to give their tenders, who didn't give two rips about distant Asgard – they were useless to him. It would take time to find his feet, adapt to the rules of this road. Time that he might not have.

If Rocket could tell he was at a loss, he didn't bother to push on it. Groot ambled alongside, his black eyes watching the unending press of people from every corner of the galaxy with quiet and intense interest. With the various fees paid, nobody was going to mess with their ship here at least. Credits spoke the single universal language, and Knowhere listened close.

Where would Loki have gone? There were thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands of nooks, hollowed out neighborhoods where beings lived. They ranged from desperate squalor to palatial criminal mansions. Somewhere among these were the vast and private territories of someone or something named 'Tivan.' Rocket waved it off when they heard the name in passing, telling him that unless he absolutely had a need to know, knew for a fact that his trail connected there, just to let it go. The tension in his voice told more of the story. So he left it aside, at least for now.

There were almost as many places were services had set up shop to tend their more transient businesspeople – 'street' food, kiosks, bars, bars, and more bars. Coulson ducked into one hoping his instinct might press him in the right direction and turned around again. It was a bettor's bar, noisy and half-blocked off from casual visitors. Not the right call. Loki never outright gambled, not unless he fixed the odds well in advance. That recollection gave him the familiar nibble of doubt. What were the odds really fixed at here?

Rocket offered up nothing. Why would he? He was a paid babysitter, a guardian, not actually a guide. He'd already got his money and he'd been more help thus far than he had any need to be. Groot watched over them both with little to say, no whisper of his single unmistakeable line. Coulson shoved the sudden, hollow feeling of being lost and far away from home away and kept pressing, kept looking for the places a man would go when he didn't want to be found.

And in the middle of the next day in port he gave in and suggested they find something better than dive food to eat while he regrouped his thoughts. Rocket accepted that with a shrug. "All expenses paid trip, humie. Maybe something'll strike ya over some stir-fry."

. . .

Groot watched the human wander away from the table, his voice low. "iamgrooooT?" He finished his worried words with that hard noise of question, searching his partner's face for answers that clearly weren't satisfying him.

"He'll be fine. He ain't leaving sight for more'n a couple minutes." Rocket wrestled deftly with a fork too big for his hand, beady eyes always darting around for anyone who might dare to make fun of him for the way he was. "Never see a guy give that much of a rip about his job. You figure any of this?"

"IamGroot." Groot sighed, cupping the wide bark of his chin with a splayed branch-finger hand.

"Yes, Groot. I know you like him, and I know you feel bad that you can't help him out more. I don't know why you like him-"

"Iam Grooooot."

Rocket shook his head. "Whatever, big guy. Listen, why don't ya wander around that concourse the other way real quick? See if you spot anything that can help the human. You won't, but you'll feel like you're doing something and that's almost as good." He snorted down at his food, ignoring the pointed look Groot gave him. "Go on. Take a shuffle." He dropped his fork and scruffed his claws across the white marks of his brow until Groot wandered off. "Okay, loser. Your turn," he muttered under his breath, waiting for it.

The guy Rocket saw on their trail since maybe an hour after their docking waited until Groot was nearly out of sight, the tree-being pausing by a half-hearted attempt at setting up a little enclosed garden by one of the more upscale bars. Groot reached out to play with the leaves of the false plants, his expression no longer visible. The Ravager slid into the empty seat across from Rocket, hands on his knees under the table.

Rocket flickered deep brown-black eyes up to regard the scraggly little blue guy in the crappy red jacket. "Wondered when you'd come out. Thanks for not keeping me waiting too long, gets boring. You here from Yondu?" The guy blinked hard, clearly pissed and a little nonplussed that his appearance didn't impress the hairball. "Ain't Quill, he just calls. And calls. I got like fifty messages backed up. Whatcha want? C'mon, spit it."

"I got a counter-offer on the human you're shipping around."

"Course you do. Ain't nothing this big ever goes down without somebody throwing some more cash at it." Rocket flicked a sharp nail at the guy. "Let's hear it."

"Return on investment, plus more. Double your payout, Rocket."

"For looking the other way when you paste my charge?" Rocket snorted derisively. "My rep costs way more than that."

"We're not going to kill him. Just take him off the board for a little while. He can go home when the Asgardian gets executed. Everybody's happy that way. Y'know. Except for the dead guy." The Ravager snickered at his own terrible joke.

"Aw, how ethical." Rocket leaned back in his seat. Something sent his hackles up as he did so, the distinct sense of being stared it. Rocket ignored it, making his fur along his spine settle back down. It was just Groot, his mobile and leafy conscience. He wasn't anyone's fool; he knew what was going down. Rocket sighed for himself alone, then picked up his fork again to toy with it. "Who's your buyer?"

"Confidential." The ravager took one hand out from under the table and rested it along the top instead. There was a small pulse gun in that hand, and the finger was lightly laying on the trigger. "Come on, Rocket. You're never allergic to more money."

"I'm allergic to threats, though." Rocket gestured at the weapon on the table. "So what's the play, get paid or else?"

The Ravager jutted his chin towards the hallway Coulson went down, his eyes never leaving Rocket, "I've already got my boys stuck on his tail. We're not going to lose track of him, no way no how." His voice was obnoxiously confident. Rocket pulled his muzzle along his teeth. It wasn't a smile, but let blue boy here think it was. Blue boy's attitude and tone already told him more than he thought. "All I gotta do is hold you here and the hard part of the job's done." He grinned.

Rocket shifted in his seat, turning just enough to see Groot. Yeah, there was the big ol' log. Staring stakes at him. He sighed again, much more dramatically this time. "All this over a deck of cards. Frickin' humans. Frickin' Knowhere." He looked at the Ravager, rolling his eyes as if to say do you believe this?

"You gonna play nice for some easy dosh?"

Rocket leaned over as fast as a weasel and stabbed clean through the guy's gun hand with the fork. "Ahahahahaha hahaaa, no." When the blue space pirate realized what happened and started to screech in pain, Rocket whirled himself out of his chair. "GROOT!"

"IAMGROOT!"

"GET ON COULSON. I'LL CATCH UP!"

. . .

Coulson stayed low behind cover, the plasteel chair leg he'd torn free hanging easy in his hands. He'd already brained one of the jerks in the red coats when they got too close, taking off further down the winding halls and open crossways and trying to lose himself in the milling crowd. Used to this sort of behavior, the crowd absorbed him like one of their own without complaint. He moved fast, minnowing through them and picking out next moves. A few wild caws of laughter chased him, the hallmark of entertained rubberneckers at the edges of someone else's bad day.

Still, the jerks in the coats kept catching up and now he was down some corridor where he didn't have a clue where it was going to take him. He didn't know how they were finding him - DNA tracking, spotters watching for a human, who knew what? But he was having hell's own time losing his attackers. At least it didn't seem like they were shooting to kill, and that told him a lot right there. Not answers, exactly, but this wasn't some random act of 'terrorize the slightly less hairy than usual alien.' Which was its own kind of contemplation – out here, he was the alien. Not the dozens of different types of people he'd seen in just the last five minutes alone.

He put that aside. Philosophy about his place in the galaxy had to wait. Three more guys – two in varying shades of blue and one looking almost exactly like a human back home – and they were charging up the corridor fast with faces that meant business and stunners in their hands. He braced himself, firming up his grip on the leg.

"I. AM. GROOT."

A vine bolstered with chunks of branch slithered up the corridor whipcord-fast behind his attackers, clotheslining two of them instantly. Instead of freezing, Phil took the opportunity and charged at the remaining one as he twirled to regard seven feet of pissed-off arboreal nature incarnate. The guy's last sight would be the approaching Groot, bark face wide and full of fury, but all he felt was the chair leg conking hard into the back of his skull.

"Thanks," said Coulson as the last jerk dropped, smart enough to not lose the makeshift weapon until he found a better one. No way this was over yet.

"I am Groot," replied Groot, immediately mild again. He reached out and patted Coulson on the head, eyes narrowing down at him in concern.

Coulson felt for a moment like someone else's pet hamster. "I'm okay. This is kinda normal for me, really."

"GROOT! HUMIE!"

"IAMGROOT."

Rocket tore down the corridor, following Groot's voice, and he'd picked up some ridiculously-sized weapon somewhere along the way. It didn't look like it had a stun setting. "We got more incoming. A whole shipload of these turds, frankly, looking for a piece of action to get cut in on."

Oh, have I got a gun back home you'd like, Coulson thought, slowly chewing over to what actually happened in the last forty seconds. "They gotta be tracking me somehow," he started.

"Yeah, I know," finished Rocket for him. He didn't stop running till he got close to Coulson. "Sorry, man." He spun the enormous pulse rifle around and cold cocked Phil upside the head with the butt of it. Then he leaned down when the human dropped into a limp heap, giving him a followup smack just behind his ear.