4. Family Style

. . .

Eight men and Graff himself, surrounding a woman not much taller than Daisy. Nebula's arm stayed up, telling Loki and his human friends to keep out of it. The blue arm didn't waver as the first man lunged towards the courier, getting a shot high through his forehead for his trouble. The courier's free hand snapped to her side as the second one approached, pulling him in, using him as a shield when the third took his shot, killing the wrong target.

She drew down on the shooter, one shot. Five left, and Graff, the leader. It had been two seconds since this new start of conflict. Graff was only now turning towards the mess behind him, his face drawing slack.

One man dived for the courier, trying to tumble her to the ground. She locked her leg wide, ate his impact without a waver. Her arm wrapped tight around his neck, dropping him without a glance when the pop of his bones cracked through the air. She shot the next attacker, a bulky Kree, twice in the chest and once in the skull, an optimized kill maneuver for shooters the galaxy over. Four seconds. She reached down and without looking fished a reload chip for the las pistol out of Corsig's waist, refreshing the weapon as smoothly as if pouring herself a coffee.

"She's Asgardian," blurted Phil, realizing something familiar about the way she'd dismantled the body of a man almost half again her size. Three men left in under a minute. Graff broke for the door she'd come in from with a yell.

"Yeah," said Daisy, sounding hushed and still as if she knew something he didn't. She watched as one of the remaining men shoved himself between the courier and the fleeing Graff. The woman bent low, socked him in the crotch, then drove her fingers into the soft place above his knee. He began to fall, howling, and she finished up by locking her left arm around his neck. He died as she shot at Graff, blowing the ringleader's left ankle off its leg entirely.

Graff fell, screaming like a child. Two men left. One tried for Corsig's console, got as far as hitting a button before she shot him three times in his three different intertwined spines. A distant klaxon went off and the woman swore as she stepped backwards into the assault of the last man standing, grabbing his arm as he tried to wrap himself around her, and pressing it at the wrongest angle humanly possible. He dropped to his knee, his hip hitting the ground next. Then he died, too, a second later.

The courier walked over to the screaming Graff and unceremoniously shoved her hand inside his vest, pulling out the data stick. "You were warned, and more than once," she told him, not looking as if she cared if he heard her or not. Her voice had lost its dockworker's easy drawl, gaining an elegant, prim edge to it instead. Like Loki's accent. "Could have been a nice, simple trade."

Graff pulled it together enough to try and slap up at her, white fingers that ended in filthy, sharp reaching out to claw at her face. She broke his arm, and then, like many of his men, his neck, too.

The bay went silent after that. The courier walked towards the barricade and casually tossed the stick to Nebula. She tapped at a comm device hidden in the collar of her jacket. "Engines hot. ETA five."

A chime of acknowledgment came through the device and she turned it off again. She flicked a glance at Loki, still staring at her. "Not yet, Prince." She looked at Nebula. "Dock four."

"Their backup's in dock three. On alert."

"Yeah." The woman looked down at the las pistol in her hand, then dropped it with a look of disgust. "That's all they could afford. Not even a recent model. That's a niner-jay. I'm bloody lucky I didn't blow my own hand off."

"It's what happens when junkyard children think they have control." Nebula's voice turned bitter. "They had a choice."

"That they did." The woman turned another quick glance towards Daisy, this time probing. She seemed to let it go for now. "Nebula give you three any advice?"

Coulson spoke up, watching her. "Don't get involved."

"Perfect. Stay with that. You're guests, apparently." She turned to Nebula. "Rifle's latched outside in the cub where my escort couldn't see it. All yours. Stay four steps back. I'll be moving quick once we're in Three."

. . .

The courier kept to her word. From here, the docks were connected, allowing them to be chained together into one massive bay should a 'naught or other capital class vessel require an emergency stop. Two were empty, but she passed into Three and started a jog towards the first person she saw, her voice rising into a shrill cry of feminine dismay. "They're dead in there! They're all dead in there!"

The guardsman, obviously one of the late Graff's companions, jerked towards the crying woman in alarm. She dropped him easily while Nebula started shooting anyone that popped out to see what was going on, never stopping, still leading Loki and the two humans through the long dock despite the lack of cover. The woman dug into her pocket and took out a small cylinder, pressing its lid and then rolling it towards the sound of stomping feet. Smoke billowed out from it a second later, thick and choking, and she jogged to bring up the rear of the group.

"Don't stop," said Nebula, marching them through the sudden shrieks of chaos and into the next bay. Four seemed empty, until Coulson realized there was an airlock latched into the wall with a series of lively LEDs dancing along it. She pushed him towards it, looking back towards the woman and the remnants of her next melee. "Don't play with your food."

"Wouldn't waste my time," she said. She looked back as Nebula took aim at the far door, hitting the wall with her elbow as the airlock scraped slowly open. "Gods, I told her to look for that."

"It's fine," said Nebula, taking the shot as one last brave soul tried to press an attack. He fell back with a surprised yell. "Guests first," she said, shoving Coulson with little grace into the short umbilical revealed a second later.

The airlock slammed shut behind them, and lights flickered on. Nebula led them through a narrow door and into a wide space.

They were now in the cargo bay of another ship.

"Wait," said Daisy, almost gurgling it. Coulson looked at her, sharply. Had she gotten shot in the press? No, she was unharmed, looking around with a wild and confused look on her face. "Oh my god, wait, no way."

That new question had to linger a moment. Coulson felt Loki sweep by him, stepping with his usual flair for the dramatic into the center of the bay, his attention fixed on the woman who was now ripping off a leather jacket that had a couple more holes in it than it had started the day with. She looked at a fresh wound burning the back of her left arm, then at Loki, tired and annoyed, as if waiting for something obvious to happen.

"Lady Kara."

"Your inimitable Highness."

Loki made a face almost impossible to describe, like a thousand lemon drops had been shoved into his mouth, each one coated with a hundred different obscenities. "Do not call me that."

She looked at him, wildly unimpressed, then at Daisy with that same probing look she'd had earlier. Nebula wordlessly passed her a small tube of something, and she sprayed it on her wounded arm without looking at it again. "Have we met?"

"I-no! Nope!" Daisy shook her head, her eyes flying wide as Loki turned to give her the rare stare of pure threat. "I just… you seemed Asgardian. It's the accent. I was right, huh? You… uh… You're totally from Asgard!"

Kara's lips pursed, clearly not quite buying it. She glanced at Phil. "I am. And you're Director Philip J. Coulson. Of SHIELD."

He put his hands together and bobbed his head at her, amiably. "You're well informed. Friend of Loki's?"

She barked a laugh.

"Yeah, that's a common reaction."

"Hel are you doing here?" Loki swiveled his head back to Kara's. "You-"

"I'm what? Supposed to be swanning it up in the Vanaheim countryside with a fancy title and some freshly dyed yarn draped coquettishly over my arm?" It came out deadpan, but she quirked a faint and not entirely hostile smile. "All right, I might do on occasion. But it gets boring in the long term, so I take a few commissions here and there to keep sharp."

"Commissions." Loki practically spat the word at her.

"I'm too young to be a retiree. Take it up with your father." Kara turned away from him, draping the ruined jacket on the back of a bolted-down repairs chair and ignoring the near explosion starting to happen behind her.

"Odin? What does Odin have to do with this? What is going on, how did-" At this he gestured at Nebula. "Who's paying who, I-" He faltered, temporarily out of useful words. "Shit!"

The two women glanced at each other. Nebula's expression was unreadable bordering on annoyed, while Kara's continued to hold that faint, amused sparkle. A moment later, Kara started to walk away, towards the entrance to a gangway.

Loki looked around himself, recalibrating, and catching up to what Daisy had immediately noticed. "Hey-"

A tall, broad figure slid down the gangway and blocked Kara's exit. The new arrival ducked her head to avoid slamming it on the small portal, stepping the rest of the way into the bay. "We're locked on course, I'll have us back in the slipspace within a few hours, oh, hey, kiddo. Nice to see you again."

Daisy gawped up at the huge woman, delighted and shocked into a mess all at once. The mercenary captain. The blockade runner with a heart. "Tam!"

"Yup, that's me," said Tam. She looked at Kara. "Fucking hell, you took a shot?"

"They had niner jays, Tam, a fart on the trigger could have accidentally shot me." She waved the already healing arm at her. "It's fine. I'm fine."

"What is going on?" roared Loki.

"Okay, no, but more calmly, what is going on?" said Coulson, putting his hands up. "I feel like I'm the only one in the room that's really lost right now."

Daisy's mouth opened and closed a few times, still trying to piece things together. "Dude. Tam. Captain. Everett Ross. Dead in space. Her ship. There were these fuzzball guys that were like engineers. She rescued us. She rescued us and we blew up the guys that sold vibranium on Earth together and like… holy shit."

"Did she now?" Loki's voice had turned cold as he continued to stare at Kara's back. "I find I have fresh questions."

Tam put her hand up, sober. "I never lied to you. I swear. On my blood, I swear."

"She's telling the truth." Kara glanced back at him, then gestured at Tam as if to get by.

"How about you, then? What's Odin got to do with this, how do all of you-"

"Ask. Odin." Kara didn't look back.

"Enough!" Nebula slammed her hand on a metal table, hard enough to ricochet the heavy sound throughout the bay. Coulson winced and this, finally, drew Kara's attention back her way. "You hired me to be your intel advisor. I am advising you. Start talking right now. Quit the games, I don't care what's going on. Get back on task." She pointed at Loki. "Or this one will become our next problem."

Anger drifted across Kara's face, clear enough to sit there a moment. Then she folded her arms against herself and shrugged. "You're right."

"Since fuck knows you don't listen to me."

Kara elbowed Tam in the side for her blurted addendum, looking at the floor of the cargo bay. "He'll become a pain in all our arses if he gets the chance. You're right there, too." She sighed and unfolded her arms, shaking her head. "Fine. The All-Father hired me last year, said you had some powerful enemies looking to take their share. Invoked the name of the Queen. Told me about the remaining Children of Thanos. I've been running an intelligence operation since, staying dark." She glanced back at Tam. "Tam's a friend."

"Oh, shit, you're the hired muscle Tam talked about." Daisy breathed out the realization.

"That coincidentally wasn't on board when we were," finished Loki, his voice still grating with fresh gravel. "May I ask why?"

Kara lifted a finger. "Growing calmer. That's better, Prince." A wry smile. "I was on Sakaar, tracing a few curious threads. Trying to find out where the Children were getting their backing. They've got a lot of new ships, you see. Plenty of toys to their cause."

"Sakaar." Loki gave the name a sour drawl.

"Proxima Midnight's drawn the Grandmaster himself into her graces." She stepped towards Loki and began to pace around him, reciting. "See, a few years back, someone meddled with one of his big games, a rigged match between a popular pilot team and a Makluan space dragon. Ran off with a hefty trove of the Grandmaster's own money. He did not take it well. Proxima told him she could prove who it was. Give him the name he sought. In exchange for sponsoring them against that very person in the future. She, along with another general I've still little information on, swayed him rather easily after that. And gave him your name. Accurately, of course."

Loki stared at her, glitteringly, taking that in. "And Captain Tam."

"I was on the ground in Sakaar and caught an intercept. The Grandmaster had some hirelings in Earth orbit, running a game of Proxima Midnight's design. I heard things hit a snag, that it had come to conflict. I got a message out. Tam got into range. The rest is the truth."

"It is." Tam looked apologetic, pressing her palms together. "I really am a blockade runner in a family fleet, like I told you, and I really did have to trace your signal to pick you up, and it was still a bloody near thing. The blockade I used to run most was the one around my home. That's how I got to know Kee, my little wind-sister here. I've been her pilot a long time. Auntie Farbie needed to be careful, always. We couldn't use portal magics to run supplies or info between the queens, or anyone else, really, not safely, so we'd run ships. My mum's mum actually set it up before the big wedding, shitfest that was. My mum's our fleet command." She grimaced. "I'm sorry, little garbled there, but you get the gist. Now we run odd jobs together, Kee and me. Like this one."

Daisy spoke up. "Auntie Farbie?" She looked at Coulson, mouthing the name again.

Coulson got it, the realization dawning on him with a smile. "Queen Farbauti."

Daisy whipped her head back towards Tam, Loki seemingly frozen in place next to her. "You're a frost giant, that's why you're so big!"

Tam ran her hands back across her face, peeking out between her fingers a second later with a face turned fresh and bright blue, cheerful red eyes winking at her under a mess of black hair.

"THAT IS AWESOME!" Daisy reached out and up to grab her azure-lined wrists, delighted.

Tam snuck a glance at Kara. "I love Earth. So much."

Kara was rubbing the heel of her thumb between her eyes, suddenly looking tired. "I know you do."

Then Tam nodded to Loki. "Cousin."

"Yeah. Yeah, I suppose I should have seen that coming." Loki sighed.

"I can't lie to family, not on my honor. I won't lie to Kara, and I won't lie to you."

"And I'd never ask her to. She treated with you fairly." Kara reached up and put a hand on her friend's arm. "She helped you out beyond our plan by her own choice."

"'Bout gave you a stroke when I told you I did, but hey."

Kara shook her head with a small smile. "I'm used to it." She jutted her chin towards Loki. "That's the high points to now."

"Barely a competent synopsis, but it'll do." Nebula lifted the data stick, gave it a little snap with her fingers. "I need time to decode this. Initial scan verifies that it's what I asked for, but I need finer details."

"Of course." Kara nodded to her. "We'll be in the slip soon, we'll get you back online with your network there."

"And lay low a while." It came out like a warning purr. "We made a lot of noise at the port. More than I wanted. It's too soon to draw eyes to us."

"Agreed." Kara looked from face to face. "Well. Short of further screaming at each other, I think we've some time to rest." Her smile turned wry. "I gather you lot can find the residence bays just fine."

"The druffs are currently in the mess hall, just so's you know." Tam looked at the one person she didn't know. "Coulson, yeah? I say that right?"

"Yeah. Good to meet you, by the way."

"Mutual. Druffs are the fuzzies your young friend mentioned. Don't freak out when you see them."

Coulson chuckled, stuffing his hands back into his pockets and feeling like he was slightly firmer footing now. "I appreciate the warning, ma'am, but I'm getting harder to faze every day."