Summary: The team has to sneak off of Volta Six in a hurry.

Warnings: brief mention of sex

Chapter 12-A Favor in Every Port

Several hours later Quill tore into the Admantine like a miniature ion storm, trying to juggle two calls at once on his communicator. "I don't care what you're in the middle of, just get back to the Admantine now!—Groot, I swear, if you don't put Rocket on..."

Quill glanced at Garthan. "Please tell me Drax is still here."

Garthan nodded, then waved Quill away from the control board. Garthan was not ultra confident in Quill's piloting ability when he gave it his full attention, let alone when he was trying to have three conversations at once. It might have been unfair, considering that Quill had done most of the flying so far without incident, but Garthan was growing overfond of the Admantine.

"What's going on?" he asked.

"We're leaving. Immediately, if not before."

"What did you do?"

"Nothing. There are Ravagers on Volta Six; I swear I saw Kraglin, which means that Yondu is either on planet or in orbit, which means we're getting the hell outta Dodge before he notices I'm here, if he hasn't already."

Garthan was familiar with both Yondu's rap sheet and the fact that he and his Ravagers had helped in the Battle for Xandar. "Aren't you two allies?"

"Um, more like friendly enemies. Last time I saw him, he threatened to kill me unless I gave him the infinity stone. So I gave him a fake, and he didn't find out until after Nova Prime hid the real one wherever you folks hide creepy shit like that. I'm pretty sure he's gonna kill me for real this time."

Quill glared at the communicator again. "Where are you jerks already?"

For the first time the answer was not a slightly fritzy I am Groot. "Just wait five minutes. I'm not leaving this radar scrambler after what I had to do to get it, and it's huge. What did you do, anyway?"

"What? I didn't do anything. Yondu is here."

Rocket and Groot showed up a few minutes later, lugging a wagon of scrap and electronics that was bigger than the two of them together. Gamora, surprisingly, was last to wander in. She was flushed and looked rather disheveled, in addition to being in different clothes than when she had left this afternoon. They were slightly too big for her. There were smudges of purple—probably lipstick, Garthan thought—on her collarbone.

"Were you out buying new attire, Gamora?" Drax asked, looking curiously at her clothing.

Gamora looked thoroughly ticked; she glared balefully at Quill. "I was having sex. Really, really good sex. Until Peter insisted that it was a matter of life and death that I come back and I grabbed her clothes instead of mine. So who is dying, Peter?—because someone had better be. What did you do?"

"Why does everyone assume I did something? Yondu is here."

"Does he know we're here?"

"I don't really want to stick around to find out. Rocket, go tie down all your junk. We've gotta swing up the magnetic pole to skip customs and it's going to be a bumpy ride without a loop in orbit first."

"Don't take the pole. We should go through customs," Garthan said.

"Saal, now is not the time—"

"No, listen. Nova Corps is well aware that the magnetic fields at a planet's pole screw up our radar projections. Do you know why we never do anything about it? Because it makes the poles the perfect place to ambush smugglers as they're coming up blind. I wouldn't put it past Udonta to know the trick as well. Now if he knows you're here, where do you think he's waiting for you?"

Quill's shoulders slumped. "The pole orbit."

"Where we can't see him and he can see us no matter which route we take out of orbit," Gamora finished.

"So we go the one route he won't follow us: customs."

"Ah, Saal, we're not exactly clean as a whistle, here," Rocket said.

Garthan shrugged. "I only know how to catch smugglers, not how to be one. Aren't there ways to get around a customs search?"

"Bribes, when you're not dealing with Nova Corps," Quill said. "Rocket, can you build something that will scramble their scanners? Then we'll only have to be polite enough that we don't get searched."

"Eh... I'll see what I can do. Come on, Groot."

They almost, almost got through. Rocket turned the radar scrambler and a couple scraps of an old satellite into a fairly inconspicuous source of 'white noise', but unfortunately it also fritzed the Admantine's radio transmitter, and the customs officer got suspicious.

"Seriously, man, this rust bucket may look pretty on the outside, but she's a piece of crap inside. You do not want to have to come in here. Hey, it's probably all the dirt that's interfering with the radio, haha..." Quill was lying as fast as he could, but the corpsman was distinctly unimpressed.

"I still have to detain you and your ship for search."

"Literally all we're hauling is scrap. There's nothing for you to see, I swear."

"I'm rather thinking the opposite. Please remember that resisting a customs search is a minor felony."

Garthan suddenly realized that the corpsman's voice was very familiar. "What is your name, Corpsman?"

"I am Millenian Zhola Dolm."

Garthan smiled at his luck. "I see you still prefer the midnight shift. Congratulations on your promotion."

The Millenian's tone immediately lost its professionalism. "Denarian Saal? Oh my stars, it's been forever. I heard you died."

"Sorry to disappoint you."

"Don't be silly. I didn't believe it for a second. You'd probably find death too exasperating and refuse to cooperate."

Chandra would probably say that's exactly the truth, Garthan thought wryly. "Dolm, I need a favor."

"It wouldn't have anything at all to do with what's blocking my scanners, would it?"

"Yes. It would be really helpful if you could become selectively blind for the time it takes us to clear customs."

"What exactly am I ignoring?" Dolm sounded skeptical, and Garthan mentally gave him points for it.

"Half a dozen DXs and assorted energy weapons, plus spare charges—which we got off a fence named Vermeil; do make sure you book him for it—"

"Hey! That guy's one of the only jerks in this quadrant who will sell me shit without trying to pick up the bounty on me first. What the hell are you having him arrested for?"

"Because he's selling illegal weapons. Don't interrupt." Garthan continued his inventory for Dolm: "...some conventional explosives, a radar scrambler and about a quarter ton of satellite scrap that will probably be reported stolen in the morning."

"Not all of it," Rocket muttered.

"Damn, what are you going to do with all that?"

Garthan glanced at the Guardians of the Galaxy, knowing the answer was probably "cause mayhem while breaking too many laws to count." Garthan said: "Topple a malevolent Kree dictatorship."

"Well if anyone can do it, you can." The millenian paused, and then his tone picked up its officiousness again. "Mr. Salt, I am afraid I have been called away to deal with a smuggling charge. Please wait here until another corpsman is available to finish processing your ship."

Garthan smirked at the alias; Dolm had always been cheeky. "Thank you. One last thing: there may or may not be a Ravager ship hanging around the pole orbit, but if it is, it's not expecting to be ambushed."

"Thanks for the tip."

As they pulled out of orbit, completely unchallenged, Quill gave long whistle. "First Dey, then that engineer, now this guy. You know Saal, the saying goes 'a lover in every port' not 'a favor in every port'."

"Favors are more useful."

Notes: I am absurdly fond of the Admantine. I have this thing for fancy cars even though I hate driving, and I picture the Admantine to be rocket ship version of a Bentley.

Saal may not be nice, but he's kind. People remember that kind of thing. Millenian Dolm is the corpsman from the flashback in the previous chapter, in case you didn't catch it.

You can take a cop off the force, but you can't stop him from being a cop. Saal is a lawman through and through and of course he's going to have the weapons smuggler arrested.

So, in the comics Gamora is apparently highly sexually active, and she takes no shit about it either. I wanted to do the same thing here, but I headcanon her as a lesbian. I haven't personally ever put on the wrong clothes leaving a squeeze in a hurry, but I've heard from friends whose lives are far more exciting than mine that it's a thing.