Summary: "Yondu Udonta, my name is Denarian Garthan Saal of the Nova Corps. It is my great pleasure to inform you that you are under arrest."
Notes: Part 2 of the Asteroid Trap. I will combine these two in a few days after chapter 15 [ie. the real chapter 14] is written.
Warnings: none.
Chapter 14-Asteroid Trap, Part 2
Their three minutes were up. Yondu was hailing them again, and this time his ship was far too close for Garthan's comfort. Garthan filed away his intrigue with Quill's sudden bout of selflessness for a point in the future when they weren't in danger of being a violently exploded or boarded. "Rocket, switch the master controls to my console and then put up our shields."
"We're making a run for it?"
Garthan smirked. "We're making an arrest." He answered Yondu's hail, and didn't wait for the outlaw to start yelling again. "Udonta, if you want Quill, you're going to have to catch him."
"I taught that boy everything he knows. He can't outfly me."
"He's not the one flying." Garthan cut the call and switched his attention immediately to the piloting controls. He cut power briefly to thruster B to send the Admantine into a sharply accelerating spiral. It was technically a very bad thing to do to your thrusters but the resulting wheeling and jerking could be used to give the impression of having taken a bad hit—or to just confuse the hell out of someone. It worked; Yondu's craft didn't move or fire. When the Admantine was oriented towards the asteroid belt, Garthan returned the thruster to full power and took off like a bat out of hell towards it. The Admantine's artificial gravity was excellent and mostly compensated for the sudden acceleration. A glance at the radar readings told Garthan that Yondu's ship was sluggishly changing direction to come after them. It was only a brief head start, Garthan knew. Yondu would catch up. Garthan just needed it to be later rather than sooner.
"Saal, you're heading straight for the asteroid belt. Ya gotta pull up or we'll get crushed in there for sure," said Rocket. Smart pilots avoided asteroid belts because they were inconvenient and dangerous. Debris and asteroids crowded radar readings and even going slowly there was chance of missing something and ending up with a deadly hole in your craft—or even ending up smashed between two asteroids. It was easier and safer to go around belts when you came across them.
Garthan didn't change course and the belt quickly approached. "No, we won't."
"The mining installation is screwing up the scanners. Ya take us in there we're practically going in blind."
Garthan dismissed the various operations on the main view-screen and set it to transparency mode. Outside the ship, the belt was clearly detectable by sight and only getting larger. "I can see fine."
"Please tell me you're not trying go through an asteroid belt using line of sight," Quill moaned, still restrained by Groot. Gamora and Drax watched uncertainly; Quill appeared to be the only really competent pilot of the group besides Rocket.
"Done it before," Garthan replied. "Rocket, forget about the asteroids. Can you get a general direction on the mining installation?"
"Yeah, you just centralize the interference pattern. Give me a sec… it's on our far right."
"Good. Let me know if I veer off. Where's Yondu?"
"Catching up, fast. I hope ya know what you're doing."
Garthan did, even if it had been quite a few years since he'd pulled a stunt like this. The time span didn't bother him in the least. He'd spent his whole career chasing and being chased in various ships from his tiny Nova fighter to a craft-carrier bigger than ten Admantines. Piloting was piloting, and as Garthan dropped their speed to sub-light and ducked behind the first few asteroids, he realized with a thrill that he hadn't lost his edge.
The Admantine performed beautifully, accelerating or decelerating as fast as the laws of physics would allow and slipping into hairpins turns with barely a lag from the controls. Her only flaw was her low mass; many of the asteroids were significantly larger than the Admantine and the gravitational interference jerked the ship in chaotic directions. Garthan switched his entire attention to weaving around obstacles towards the mining installation, leaving the crew to panic or complain as they would and trusting Rocket to keep him posted on Yondu's position.
Yondu ship was larger than the Admantine and could fend for itself gravitationally, but had to give up much of that maneuverability because it simply couldn't fit through all the places Garthan could. Garthan wondered if Yondu was flying or if he had another pilot in his crew.
"Too far left, Saal."
Garthan swerved to correct and nearly lost a thruster fin when a miniature asteroid, which he'd thought was a depression in the larger one behind it, got in his way. Asteroids were moving more quickly now, against their normal rotational pattern—they were getting close to the mining installation.
"Damn, you did it. Yondu's falling back."
Garthan spared a glance for the radar console, and immediately slowed, pulling the Admantine upwards so he could get a line of sight on Yondu.
"Oh, no you don't." Not when they were so close. Garthan split his attention dangerously for several seconds to activate one of the Admantine's plasma lasers. Rocket must have been fiddling with it at some point because it jumped to life without asking for confirmation or sounding the ship's battle alarms. Garthan sent a blast into an asteroid close by Yondu's port side. A warning shot, really, but hopefully enough to tick Yondu off. "Chase me, you bastard."
Garthan was vaguely aware of Quill making a ruckus but ignored him. Yondu was turning back towards the Admantine. Garthan smirked and dropped the Admantine back into her original trajectory, heading for the mining installation. Mining rigs like the one the Admantine was rapidly approaching were huge autonomous structures that collected material from a given region of space—an asteroid belt, an ice ring, or a dust nebula—to await refinement. They worked via progressively smaller one-way force-fields and a massive artificial gravity generator. Nearby objects were attracted by pulses from the generator, and once they passed through the force-fields' boundaries, no object could pass back out again—including ships. Even pilots reckless enough to brave an asteroid belt still avoided mining installations.
"Saal, this is the third time I've had to pull you out of one of these. What the hell do you think you're doing?"
"I was testing a theory, sir."
"Experiment on your own time. If you follow a smuggler into a force-field again, I'll take you off this assignment."
Yondu was following so tightly behind the Admantine that, although Garthan had no fears about Yondu pulling away before they passed the mining rig's first force-field, he was worried Yondu might be angling to take a shot at them. The first force field came into sight between the now very crowded asteroids: a barely visible translucent plane of blue light that did not look nearly as dangerous as it actually was.
"Eh… Saal, you do know what that is, right?" Rocket said uncertainly.
"What? What is he doing now?" Gamora asked.
"Leading us into a fucking death trap." Quill, as a pilot, had to be well aware of the dangers of mining rigs and other autonomous space structures. He was, fortunately, still sulking in Groot's grasp. "Drax, Gamora! You have to stop him."
Garthan threw one arm out to stop them from coming any closer to the controls. The motion almost sent the ship careening into a nearby asteroid. "I know what I'm doing, trust me."
"What have you done that we should trust you?" Gamora said vehemently.
Garthan did not have time for this. The Admantine was going to get crushed if he didn't focus on flying. "Rocket."
Garthan knew he didn't have to say anything more for Rocket to understand the request. Still, Rocket hesitated, glancing from Garthan to his team.
"I am Groot."
Whatever ze said, it resolved Rocket's uncertainty. "Alright, back off. This ain't any crazier than half the shit we do."
Then the Admantine zoomed through first force-field—and so did Yondu's ship—and it was too late for any of them, including Garthan, to have second thoughts. "One," he breathed. Garthan once again tuned out the rest of the cockpit. He had to time this just right.
Twenty seconds and two close calls later, they hit the second force-field, and Yondu's bigger ship was having trouble keeping up in the tighter space between the asteroids. They moved erratically as the gravity generator further in pulsed on and off. Maneuvering grew increasingly more difficult as the pulses interfered with Garthan's controls. He slowed the Admantine slightly. "Two."
After the third force-field would be the central structure of the rig, which housed the artificial gravity generator: two intersecting circular rings, whose patterned rotations created the pulsing effect that kept the asteroids moving in a tight, rough orbit around them. Those rings were Garthan's back door. If a pilot could get between them just after a pulse, while the generator was effectively "off", the next pulse would automatically propel the ship away, at right angles to the gravity field and out of the plane of the asteroid belt completely. The catch was that the interference from the generator grew so strong after the third force-field that most ships could no longer change their direction. It was a very risky trick, since if a pilot{s timing was off even the slightest bit, a ship would at best be stuck floating in the inner ring and at worst sliced in half by the rotating rings of the artificial gravity generator. Fortunately, Garthan had done this plenty of times before. He was betting that Yondu hadn't, however, which meant Yondu would remain caught in the trap until Nova Corps showed up to shut down the rig and arrest him.
By the time they were came up on the third force-field Garthan realized that something was very wrong. The asteroids beyond the force-field weren't floating in an orbit. They were still disorganized. Garthan couldn't spot the generator rings, either. Had he gotten turned around? No it didn't make sense: the gravitational interference was growing stronger, not weaker. Then it occurred to Garthan that in the time since he'd been a millennian, they must have started making rigs with more than three rings. Garthan didn't know if the Admantine could handle more than three.
There was no choice but to move forward. Garthan didn't show his concern to the others. He was very glad the Admantine was such a finely-tuned craft, otherwise they would certainly be doomed. As it was, they sailed through the third force-field, and Garthan hoped that there would only be one more ring as he navigated the dangerous terrain, cutting turns and dodges very close at times to conserve as much momentum as possible. At he didn't have to worry about Yondu, who was lagging quite a ways behind the Admantine because of his bigger ship.
Luck and the Admantine's excellent craftsmanship brought them all the way to the fourth force-field before the controls stop responding reliably. Garthan spotted the generator rings just past the stream of orbiting asteroids, and managed to duck the Admantine below a group of them and into the blank space beyond. Unfortunately, that was where Garthan's luck ran out. The gravity disruptions were rendering the controls mostly useless and the Admantine was slowly being pushed into an angle that would take her into orbit around the rings rather than straight at them. Garthan could power up the thrusters to give them more speed, but it wouldn't do any good if they were headed in the wrong direction. Garthan ran through their options very quickly. None of them looked good.
"There are two kinds of people in the Nova Corps, Dey: those who treat the Nova Force like money and those who treat it like luck. The first kind spend as much as they've got. The second only use it when necessary."
"Which is better, sir?"
"You'll get different answers to that. Personally, I think that luck is something it's wise not to depend on."
Garthan would have to use the Nova Force. It was the only option that didn't include being smashed to bits or floating around potentially for months, waiting to be rescued by a maintenance crew that may not even notice them. Garthan hadn't called on the Nova Force since the battle, but this would only be little bit. Even a millennian could do it. Chandra's warning rang in Garthan's head. Chandra had many flaws, but exaggeration was not one of them. To use the Nova Force right now would be riskier even than setting this trap in the first place.
It was only a little bit, though.
Garthan was surprised by how effortlessly the power came to him. It was no trouble at all to summon up the amount of Nova Force he needed to will the Admantine to move in the right direction. For a brief moment, Garthan was tempted to use it to slow down the generator rings as well, but he shook off the idea immediately. He was already pushing his luck. He could get through the rings on his own. It was a pity to let the connection go, though, almost like coming down off an endorphin rush. Garthan didn't have time to dwell on it, however, since the Admantine was now headed straight for the generator rings and he had to watch both their speed and the rings very closely. The timing had to be perfect.
"Saal, what are you doing? We're never going to fit inside there."
They were five seconds away. The generator pulsed off. Garthan increased their speed.
"Those will tear us apart. Are you crazy? Stop!"
Two seconds. The generator pulsed on.
Garthan cut power to the thrusters and suddenly they were coasting. The generator pulsed offñ the rings opened wide—the Admantine was through. Exactly three seconds later the Admantine own artificial gravity suffered a momentary hiccup that left everyone disoriented and dizzy, but when the galaxy stopped spinning, the Admantine was floating peacefully in open space, and the asteroid was far, far above her. Garthan grinned. There was not a single malfunction alert on the control board, a result he'd never been able to manage with any other ship.
"Stars, I love this ship." Garthan resolved for the millionth time to heap praises on Vakiri next tiem he saw her.
Drax cheered, perhaps overly loudly. "We have escaped. Your plan was an excellent one, Denarian, and courageously executed."
Rocket seemed to be laughing out of relief. "Saal, if you were wondering what my standard for 'batshit crazy' is, that was it."
"Where did you learn to do that?" Drax asked.
"Chasing smugglers off the Spartax mining strip back during the tritium embargo."
"Man, that was like, a million years ago."
"Thanks, hamster."
"What about Yondu?" Gamora interrupted, her tone not the least bit celebratory.
"Oh, he's probably just now figuring out that he's stuck." Garthan turned to the control board and hailed Yondu's ship. The call confirmation didn't come back for almost a minute.
"Where the hell did you go, sunspot?"
Garthan tried to stop himself from grinning. "Yondu Udonta, it is my great pleasure to inform you that are under arrest."
Notes: So does anyone get the double meaning on the chapter title?
Thank you to the folks who leave reviews, including the Magnificent Rogueshadow on Ao3, and the Intrepid Chemical30 on FFN [where it is very difficult to reply to reviews]. I would also like to thank my Part-Time-but-no-less-Wonderful Beta, Xandri.
So we're at chapter fourteen and even though this plot is gonna get hot real quick, we still got a lot of adventure left. This fic is going to be a long one, probably thirty chapters, forty tops, I should think. Thanks for coming along for the ride!
A belated comment on the title, "The Only Sane Man": it's a trope listed on [a wonderful site], and in the movie, it is actually Peter who serves as the only sane man among his much crazier team members.
How are you ya'll feeling about the description of technology? I'm trying to leave hints and the rest to the imagination.