3. Here We Go Again
. . .
"God, how many sketchy spaceports are in the universe?" Daisy looked at Loki's broad back and saw the tension ripple along his spine as he input something into his screen. "That's rhetorical, my dude. But this is a different one, right?" The star it was orbiting looked different, anyway. So did the planetoid on another orbital route, where a mining colony kept to a short 'annual' work cycle, returning to the old spaceport apparently every three months or so to route cargo.
"Mm," he said, watching the response come back almost immediately. "Nebula's on time. We're early, turns out. I allowed for incompetent delivery and stumbled on a parcel of useful yokels." He grunted, mostly to himself. "I should stop calling them that."
Coulson swiveled in the chair next to him. "Probably be useful."
"They're still Badoons. I rarely have a good experience with Badoons."
"Kinda granted." Coulson pursed his lips, remembering. There had been a Badoon after him when he'd first gone into space, bulky and reptilian and not easily slowed. It had been a moderately intimidating experience. "Still, these guys have been really on the ball. It's nice to be bored in space for once."
Daisy, whose last interstellar jaunt with Loki had involved nearly dying in a stranded vessel, pulled her lips back in a comical grimace of agreement.
"Maybe Asgard's spaceport is a good influence on people," Coulson added, not necessarily trying to massage Loki's ego, but maybe get him pointed in a more cheerful direction.
"That'd be a first. Once again, I'd accomplish something good by pure accident." Loki sighed and pushed himself away from the computer. "Probably a lesson in that." He glanced towards the door of their private quarters, hearing the distant stomp of a heavy foot. "That'd be the captain."
A knock clunked against their door a second later, heavy and booming and actually what passed for polite. It wasn't Captain Mazyur's fault everything he did sounded like a cranky Hulk, the lizardman had muscles to spare. Loki pinged the door to let him in. "Hungh," he grunted at Loki. "We dock in twenty. Good?"
"That's fine."
"Arrival early." Mazyur's eyes glinted, annoyed at himself for something. He tapped at the translator set next to his throat. What came next was an untranslatable but still understandable curse at technology. He could tell his words were coming out crudely. He flicked a glance at Loki and slurred out a bunch of liquid, elegant words in his own tongue.
Loki blinked and inclined his head politely. "I appreciate the offer, but we'll be in no danger if we disembark a little early."
More fluid words.
Loki surprised himself with a smile. "I assure you, it's fine. My reputation tends to precede me, and it's an interesting form of armor of late." He listened to the response with a slight frown. "That's useful to know." He half turned to Coulson. "Some of the crew gangs from the mining colony are attempting to start turf wars on the spaceport, jockeying for whatever luxuries the gang bosses can scrape from cargo haulers on the take."
"So, yet another rough crowd."
"They keep it to the lower decks. Upper transit should be fine. It's more politicking, if a crude kind. It won't involve us directly, but it's still good to know about." Loki turned his attention back to Mazyur. "Our contact has a ship of their own, we'll be transferring to theirs."
A phrase like a pike dancing up a springtime river. Coulson cocked his head, reminded again that the universe seldom matched expectations, and there was weird beauty to be found everywhere within it. He couldn't help a grin.
"I have some faith in their abilities, it'll be a competent vessel." Loki paused to consider something. "If it would soothe your worries, you and your crew are welcome to join us on departure for a while. We'll likely remain in the merchant carousel until closer to our meeting time. These two-" He jutted his thumb at the two humans alongside him. "Are classic rubberneckers. But seeing a group of Badoons with us ought to allow a little pause before trying to entangle us in any trouble."
The captain laughed, loud and vital. Then he nodded, satisfied.
. . .
"This is a nice trip so far." Daisy had her arms wrapped around a heavy bolt of thick, wooly fabric the captain had bemusedly bought for her while Loki was elsewhere with Phil, examining mechanical trinkets. "Like, they were super cool about walking around with us, and I'm definitely down with nice Badoons. The captain was a real one." She gave the fabric a squeeze. It was going to make a terrific blanket when she got home.
"It benefits their reputation as well, and having gone above and beyond, I expect they're hoping I'll say something in their favor back on Asgard to further bolster their operations." Loki shrugged, watching Phil still rummaging through a tub of small ship parts, looking for matches off a list Rocket had given him a while ago. "Which I will, of course. Knowing the game doesn't mean they didn't play it well. And as honestly as such men can, really." He reached over to take the fabric from her, secreting it away magically without being asked.
She shoved her hands back into the pockets of her jacket, palms still a little sweaty from too much cozy warmth. "I'm gonna say it again. It is really nice to go five minutes without disaster out here. Do you think it'll last?"
Loki chuckled. "Not a hope in Hel."
"Dangit."
. . .
After Phil came up empty for more trinkets to soup up his space-capable car, the trio ran out of things to do in the merchant area. As a group, they knew this was when they started to get into trouble if left too long to their own devices, so of course, the first suggestion became to wander down to the arranged meeting point, to wait for Nebula's arrival.
According to Loki, it was a disused bay in one of the lowest sectors of the spaceport, the sort of dank, smelly place that held the occasional wrecked ship looking for a scavenger and, no doubt more than once, a body that someone didn't want found until the killer was well out of the sector.
Daisy watched the corridors grow darker and more narrow as they descended through the place, not looking too troubled. "What are the odds that by showing up early we walk into, like, an actual space cartel murder scheduled just before our shady intel drop?"
"Pretty ruddy good, actually." Loki sounded bored. "Why?"
"Uh, wouldn't we be in danger?" Her untroubled expression turned into one that was moderately perturbed as they came up to the heavy door that locked off the bay.
"You act blind, turn around, and walk away, unless you're feeling particularly heroic. Neither possibility is exactly unusual." He keyed something into the door's lock.
"Okay, but-" She almost walked into Phil's back as he stopped abruptly. The anxiety was almost instantaneous. "Seriously? Is it actually a cartel murder?"
"Not sure yet," said Coulson, stiffly. "Loki?"
He was stopped in place, too, which did little for Daisy's confidence. "Hello," he drawled, in a faux-companionable tone of voice that suggested something entirely the opposite. "I'm afraid we ran a mite early."
. . .
Nebula didn't turn around to look at her guests. She kept her cybernetic stare locked on the decently sized group of mostly humanoid men on the other side of a slapped-together low barricade, the sort of ad hoc construction used in cheap films about hostage standoffs and bribery schemes, and the occasional weird Hydra shootout. Apparently it showed up in space, too. Phil Coulson darted a look around the scene, taking it all in, tactically doing the math that came up zippo on anything good, mentally adding the suitable musical score by Ennio Morricone, and decided he wouldn't clear his throat to try and cut the tension.
There was a lot of tension.
"Backup?" The leader of the men was a huge, off-white figure with a face smooth enough to give his dark eyes a salamander's gimlet glare. "Not in the contract."
"Intel handoff, meant to arrive after I paid you, Graff." Nebula lifted a hand, slow and unarmed, her palm towards them. Her voice was robotically even, but with a tiny grate of annoyance under it. "Nothing to do with the two of us."
Graff flicked his empty stare towards the newly arrived trio, then back at her.
Nebula turned her head maybe an inch, just enough to give them the side of her too-black eye. Her voice pitched low, knowing it would be overheard. She kept it terse. "Don't get involved."
Loki nodded and took a step backwards, his arm out to corral the two humans back into the corridor.
"Now wait a mo," said Graff, silky now. He stepped towards the barricade between him and Nebula, a grin splitting that too-smooth face. "They're already here. Be rude to shoo 'em out, hey?"
Nebula didn't say anything. One of the other men smacked at a console set into the wall by him.
"Best get all the way in 'fore the door chops your arses," said Graff, seconds before Daisy finished her jump into the room. He laughed, unpleasant and gooey sounding. "There, now we're all cozy." He turned his stare back onto Nebula. "Boy's got your courier by now."
"Pointless extra step." Nebula grimaced at him, still toneless somehow. "I leave the money on the barricade. You leave the datachip. Could have been simple."
"Naw." Graff grinned, a grimace that showed a number of sharp teeth, paradoxically jagged and uneven behind the smooth white lips. "I want to keep the odds on my side."
Coulson watched Loki, marking him for cues on how to proceed. His friend was watching Nebula, his tension visible but his hands well away from any of his hidden weapons. He saw none of the usual signs of magic about to happen, either. Do nothing, just like the blue robot lady said. At least for now.
"Good for you playing like I told you, though. Shows you can obey orders, wannabe shadow broker." The man laughed. Nebula didn't so much as twitch. "Corsig."
Corsig was one of the other toughs, his skin sometimes flickering with strange dim light. He jerked his head up from the console to look at his boss, showing the tiny horns on his brow. "They're on their way up. Courier logged in right where the girl said."
A faint sound from Nebula, not quite a growl. If it carried across the barricade, the leader didn't bother to react to it. "I don't lie, and I don't make mistakes."
"Hm. We'll see in a moment, hey? If your courier's got all the money, then we're doing well, right? Right." Another meaningless sharklike grin.
Loki lifted his head, the sounds of some other approach audible to him alone. A second later Nebula heard it, too. Coulson saw the tension deepen across her back, the empty hands looking dangerous somehow. She was a heavily-altered cyborg, he knew that much. Maybe she had a few secrets of her own built into her fingertips.
Graff turned as a filthy door slid open on his side of the split room, rubbing his burly, whitish hands together as another of his men, this one with pitch black skin and red cyber-rod hair, shoved a woman in front of him. She had her head down as she stumbled in, an oddly mundane-looking knapsack slung heavily over the shoulder of a simple leather jacket and nearly unbalancing her. Her hair, long and messy, swung over her face. "Hey!"
"Shut up," said Graff, glancing back at Nebula. "Corsig, check the bag."
"It's all there," snapped Nebula.
"Said you hired this bitch runt off the catwalks, broker. I'm double-checking for you as well as me. Wouldn't want to get skimmed, lose face, eh?"
"I only had to hire a courier because you had to make this difficult." Nebula spat the words, not looking at the hired courier as Corsig wrestled the bag off of her. "The money-"
"It's physical. I wanted physical latiu bars, and you're smart enough to not mark 'em, aren't ya? Smart enough to not get on my bad side. So I'm gonna count how many bars there are."
"Do you think I shoved one up my narrow ass? I walked here just fine." snarled the courier, still mostly masked by her own hair and the rumple of her jacket. "Hey, dickhead, my job security relies on not spitting on the packages."
Coulson, still watching for cues, watched Loki jerk suddenly. He looked up into his friend's face, saw the eyes widening slightly. Recognition? How could that be? He looked at the courier, saw nothing familiar about her. Dark hair, average height for a human woman, though she really did seem as human as their group. She looked up through the tangle of her hair, reaching up for a moment to push it back. If not do much for its taming.
Loki's chin raised.
The woman locked eyes with him, and something in her face turned as hard as steel - but only for a microsecond. Coulson caught it. They knew each other, and Loki stayed silent. He turned carefully towards Daisy, slowly, to ask for her opinion, and saw an oddly similar expression on hers. That same recognition. "The hell?" he whispered.
"Dude," was all she said, and then she shut up at a warning glance from the courier.
"Count it, then," said Nebula, pulling focus of the situation back to her. She gestured at the heavy bag. "Count it, then give me the data I'm paying you for."
Graff kept his stare on her as Corsig rummaged through the bag. "Yeah?"
"Clean."
"Right amount?"
"Aye, boss."
Graff reached inside the vest he wore, plucked out a tiny plastic sliver. A data stick. He looked at it, then at Nebula. "You're not too shabs, broker. You follow the bark, you pay the price, you don't get shady. Can even give the surprise arrival a pass, they're behaving."
Nebula watched him, her implanted eyes glittering with distrust.
He put the stick back into his jacket. "Good dog like you, you'll pay a little more. For the convenience, say. To know you've got a seller you don't want to mess with."
"That's not the deal, Graff." She bit the words off.
"It's the deal if I say it's the deal, broker."
"Come on," whispered the courier. "Don't do this."
"Corsig?" Graff didn't turn around as his man grabbed the woman by her jacket, dead in the center of her back. He shoved her forward, closer into the knot of other men, milling around. At least nine. All armed, Coulson noted. They weren't. "She freelance?"
"Walker's mark on the bag."
"Broker can eat the insurance, then." Graff smiled down at Nebula, benign, sharklike fangs peeking out from behind the nothing lips. "Little extra on the table."
"Graff." Nebula went quiet.
"Corsig, kill the courier."
"No, wait, come on, man! I just did the job!" The woman looked wildly back at Corsig as he let go of her jacket. He came up along her side, his hand going to a weapon at his waist. "I'm not part of this, don't do this!"
"Don't," whispered Nebula, stepping back from the barricade. She put her arm out, like Loki had, another divider between his group and their enemy. "Don't break the deal. You can change your mind. Right now. Last chance."
"Fuck your deal, broker. We're going to make a new one." He tapped at his vest, still grinning. "I'll call you tomorrow with the terms. Let this settle in a bit. Make sure we're all on the same page next time we meet."
"No, no, no, wait!" The courier had her hands up, waving them in increasingly shaky franticness as Corsig brought up a las pistol, unlocking its safety. "You don't want to do this!"
"Fucking shoot her, mate." Graff sounded bored now.
"Yeah," said Corsig. He pushed the gun towards the woman's face, a faint whine in the air as the weapon heated up. "Bye now-"
The gun fired. The room jerked in different directions as the men realized the shot cut strange through the air - and through Corsig's disintegrating face. What they saw caught up to their thoughts a second later. The woman's hands snapping the gun around in Corsig's grip, turning it, forcing the finger down, and then the remaining hot chunks of the man, limp at her feet.
The courier began to move as time seemed to speed up.