Chapter Four: Gainful Employment.

Different people, Quill observed, get used to new homes and different rates.

Drax seemed anxious and distracted for his first month or so on the Milano, and even after that he appeared to have some problems adjusting to the confined spaces, tight corridors, sudden, strange vehicle sounds and the continual presence of his crewmates. He was a married man entering middle age before he first went off-world, and when he'd travelled before it had usually been on large vessels, where it was easy to forget, unless you looked out a porthole, that you were in space. The engine noises were more muffled, the air and water re-filtration better, the gravity more predictable, the rooms more spacious, and you had things you just didn't have on the Milano to take you mind of things: shops, bars, cinemas, real showers, laundrettes. The big ships that carried people en mass between the worlds were more like cruise ships of earth than anything else, and even traveling cheap in search for vengeance, you travelled pretty well. The Milano was, Quill guessed a lot more like a submarine. His granddad's older brother Uncle Jack had served in Navy and British navy subs in Korea and his descriptions of "boats" as he called them could pretty much describe small space ships too, (although Quill had to admit that his idea of keeping cans of beer in the torpedo tubes to cool them like British submariners didn't work so well with air-locks: As space was a vacuum it didn't cool quickly, if you forgot it eventually it froze solid , and he still remembered the trashing Yondu had given him after he accidently fired the Ravengers entire black-market supply of Bling Blue Ribbon into the side of a Nova revenue-cutter after his first experiment with alcohol at fourteen). There just wasn't much space and Drax didn't like it.

Gamora was a far more seasoned spacer, so for her the problem wasn't so much the conditions as the company: she had always worked alone, or in conjunction with one of her "sisters", and although she had travelled in small ships many, many times before, she's never had to share one with two other people, a pot-bound toddler and a tiny furred misanthrope who considered wiring the toilet seat to a solenoid a good as way as any to relieve boredom and get a good laugh. Drax needed space: Gamora needed her own space, and that just wasn't happening. The Milano might be big on the outside, but most of that space was power cells, engines the awkward pipe-and-wire intestines of the life support and the huge, scary bulk of the FTL drive. The Milano's oval blister of a cockpit might be pretty spacious, but from there the living quarters ran backwards in a thin, awkward strip like that weird little vein in the back of a shrimp that no-one wants to touch, squeezed where it could around the thrumming and vital machinery that kept the Milano flying. A narrow set of steps lead to a viewing cell and airlock on one side, and on the other Quill's bedroom-cum-med-bay were she now found herself sleeping under the watching gaze of all the medical scanners bolted to the top of her bed.

Needless to say she was having a little trouble adapting , and all the sword practice and meditation could only relieve so much tension when every day decided to heap on just a little more of Quill's music, Drax's silence and Rocket's complaints. Also, as the most fastidious person on board who owed a shirt, the lack of laundry facilities started to get to her: like submariners spacers generally stripped down to "steaming gear" when they left port: the absolute minimum you would willingly wear, usually a loose t-shirt and short pants. This was because unless your ship was big enough to contain a laundrette you'd be stuck in what you were wearing until you made landfall, and the more you wore the more you dirtied. You couldn't even hand wash stuff in the sink as there was no-where to dry wet clothes that didn't run the risk of a stray drop of water shorting out the electronics. The best you could do was wear your clothing in the particle shower and use the cleaning powders on it as well as yourself: this is why when a small spaceship or sub docks with a larger vessel, the very first thing you do is after you've got the pleasantry's done is raid their laundrette and hog their showers. Between that and the fact that no water-reclamation system would ever be 100% perfect Gamora was rapidly learning the truth of the old spacer proverb: everyone else's ships stinks, but yours smells of home. She was wandering, dully, how long it would be before Quill's ship stopped counting as "everyone else's" in her mind.

Groot, insofar as anyone could tell, was bored out of his mind, and although he seemed good natured, he also seemed to be going through a tactile, see-it-want-to-grab-it baby stage that stopped being cute pretty fast. Also, fun fact here, apparently even if they don't cry, tree-babies can still wake you up in the middle of the night when their questing roots discover the general alarm. Quill had wanted to move the pot to someplace where he couldn't reach any buttons, but apparently the number of places on the ship like that were approximately zero and even the slightest suggestion of moving him away from Rocket's sleeping area turned him from the shoot first ask questions later Rocket everyone knew and sort of tolerated into an I'll hollow out your cold dead body and use it as a toilet Rocket no-one wanted to see ever again. Female bears named Mrs Bates were less protective.

As for Rocket himself: as a veteran and owner of a dozen small crappy space vessels each smaller and crappier than the Milano (Quill soon learned that he'd captained his own ship the Rack 'n' Ruin until he'd lost both ship and his prized Rocket-skates in a drunken bet with a talking walrus) and a hardened jailbird he, frankly, couldn't have been more at home; not that he'd let any of these bleeding- heart grasping bald-bodies know that.

Sure, the engine noise was annoying for about half an hour, until he worked out what it all meant and then it was just there and the only time it bothered him was when he started to hear a component failing, long, long before the ship's self-diagnostic software would pick it up. And sure, it was messy and improvised and nothing quite worked right, but if he was honest with himself so was he, so he kinda liked that. Okay, he could do without the smell of his crewmates, because cooling your body down by sweating rather than with spit was just plain disgusting when you thought about it (although he had to admit the just-after-rain petrichor smell he got when he watered Groot was weirdly satisfying), and yeah, he could do without the looks they gave him when he built bombs (but when we need to blow something up, who's complaining then?) or when he stopped to wash his paws and face every ten minutes (But the ship was filthy, Quill, and his paws and whiskers were how he really explored his surroundings, and when they got something in their eyes, they were pretty fast to clean it out, and he didn't give them funny looks) and yes, they did occasionally back away slowly when he gave them a straight answer to something they asked (Because if you didn't want to know what I was working on, why did you ask? And no, it's not weird at all to count every rivet on ship because I might need to scavenge a few redundant parts from the Milano latter on so I want to know which ones I can take and were they are, idiots. And the collecting the bottle tops from every bottle I drink and building little hidden cashes of dry rations, and the fact that I need to do that thing where I touch Groot for luck or we'll all die is none of you frickin' business.) All in all, Rocket was about as contented with life as he ever got, which meant that he only spent about 30 per cent of his time plotting the murders of everyone on ship who wasn't named Groot or Rocket, and could very nearly sleep without a medi-aids or a little C2H6O anaesthesia. It was for this reason that he was stilling on the fold-down couch in the communal area drinking beer and pretending to be interested as Quill tried to teach his crew about terran sports.

"-and that's pretty much how baseball works."

The crew stared a Quill politely.

"That's retarded." Said Rocket. "This has got to be the stupidest game ever invented." He said, looking to the holo-screen: Quill hand found some intercepted "TV" transitions from earth and had found the 1988 Mets-Dodger World Series game.

"It is quite boring." Agreed Gamora, getting up and walking off to do something, anything else. Quill frowned, and looked to Drax for support. "It is mildly impressive that a man who could barely walk managed to complete a traverse of that small quadrilateral." Said Drax, watching Kirk Gibson grin like a loon. "But the game itself is dull: I preferred the other game; the one that was like Scrumball, but with padding for tiny men who fear to injure themselves."

"Football?" asked Quill. "Hey, don't knock football, it's a sport for real men, strong and noble and true in purpose, unless you're the Patriots in which case you can just cheat your way to the top. But baseball? Seriously, none of you like baseball? It pretty much is America, my home nation."

"It would explain why you are so good at it: a disproportionate number of these 'World Series' teams appear to be American." Said Drax.

"Um, yeah about that…"

"This sport is stupid and anyone who likes it is stupid too." Said Rocket. "The only way this would work is if people did what we're doing now and just use it as an excuse to sit around and do nothing but eat crap and drink beer."

"That's the point!" Yelled Quill, indignant. "Look the point about baseball is-"

"Is this about sex?" asked Rocket, suspiciously. Quill gawped "No! Why the hell would you ask?" Rocket shrugged.

"I dunno. Maybe because you've got a bunch of sweaty men in needlessly tight pants taking it in turns to swing the most phallic object they could find and then run around a big chalk vagina that someone's drawn on the grass."

"They have put the man who throws the little white orb near the top of the v, near where you would find the clitoris on many humanoid species." Added Drax. "Seeing as the aim of the game is to make contact between the orb and the shaft of the bat in exchange for permission to traverse the v-"

"STOP RUINING BASEBALL! No! Just no just… although actually it would explain why first second and third base mean first second and third base…." Drax and Rocket stared.

"Where I come from we use-"

"The progression from one base to the next as a metaphor for progressively deeper levels of intimacy, no doubt." Said Drax. "That was clear from context." He said, looking unbelievably smug to have worked out a metaphor on his own. He stood up. "Nova will be calling us shortly. I am going to go sharpen my knives."

"Why? You can't stab and holo you know." Said Rocket, examining the terran snack of "nachos" that Quill had (Unsuccessfully, by his own admission) tried to re-create. It looked and smelt not-quite-but-entirely-similar-to vomit, and as a result Rocket was debating whether to risk stealing and eating it all, his usual MO with food, or just steal it and hide it in Quill's bed to spare his feelings.

"Yes, but the call will use up some of my time leaving only eight hours of the day in which to sharpen them, so I want to get it out of the way first." Said Drax, before turning on his heal and dramatically striding the whole five paces from the couch to his bed. Again, he'd not quite got the hang of the whole spacer thing yet.

Quill looked to Rocket, who was placing an improvised nacho on his tongue with the care and deliberation of a priest might show with a wafer at mass if he suspected he'd somehow got the miracle of the transubstantiation horribly wrong and somehow turned the body of Christ into raw nitroglycerine. Rocket tried a few experimental, exploratory chews as Quill eyed him up hopefully.

"Not bad." He begrudged "Is it supposed to taste of grease and salt?"

"Of course: it's an all American classic!" said Quill, making a fist out of pure undiluted victory. He then paused and looked up. "… but Mexican, I guess." He conceded, not moving the fist.

Rocket stared. "And you're the planet who somehow fought off a Chitauri invasion? What did you do? Inflict your lifestyle on them for a few decades and wait for the heart-attacks to kick in?" said Rocket, reaching for some more nachos. Once you started, they weren't that bad actually.

"So baseball?" asked Quill. Rocket sighed.

"Okay, let me dig deep…" Rocket begun to feel around in his pockets, and then the between the sofa cushions, all the time saying "Oh, oh, nearly, nearly, There it is! There it is!" in a talking-to-dog voice. Rocket held out his paw, clenched to mirror Quill fist-o-victory "I got it! I got it!" Rocket suddenly spasmed, and mimed the clenched paw being pulled away from him and splitting open. "I don't got it! I don't got it!" he yelled, lunging and grabbing at nothing, before sighing and sitting back down, looking exhausted.

"Harsh dude." He said, mimicking Quills accent "I thought I found a shit to give about baseball, but it got away from me." He held up a paw and squeezed two fingers together until they were a millimetre apart and squinted at Quill through the gap.

"And I was thiiiiiiiiissss close, too."

"Ha ha ha." Laughed Quill, sarcastically "That's so funny I forgot to laugh."

"You just did!" said Rocket, helping himself to another beer. Quill stared.

"Shut up ringtail. So seriously, baseball?"

"Fails as both a sport and an excuse to drink at mid-day, because watching the grass on that pitch grow would be a better excuse to drink. Might work as a metaphor for sex, if that was the intention." Said Rocket, Chugging a beer.

"If you're reading this much into it, then you definitely need to get laid." Said Quill. "We gotta find you a girl Racoon somehow."

"Firstly, stop saying racoon: I don't know what that word means. And secondly good luck with that."

Rocket noticed Quill staring. "What? When I said 'ain't no thing like me, 'sept me' I meant it. You been thinking there's a planet of little female me's out there? Well there ain't" He said, pulling on the beer. "Although if there is and you've seen it, feel free to share that shit." he glared at the holo-screen, unseeing "I know the…. I know that when they made me, they made other things, but they had a pretty strict policy of only making one of anything: you're making an experimental AI, you don't want it to be self-replicating. Hell when I got out, no-one even tried to explain the birds and the bees to me: you wanna try going to a bad prion in an undeveloped quadrant not knowing that shit? Hell of a fucking learning curve, pal. Could have been worse: I was still kinda small and fluffy then, so the guards looked out for me. Only problem I had reaching the soap was that it was on a string two feet above me."

Quill stared. "You never…"

"… never even seen a member of my species other than me, so it don't really come up." he watched the baseball disinterestedly. "Hell, since I've never met another me, I guess I can't even say with much certainly what team I'm playing for." He paused, and looked to Quill. "Does that work, as a baseball metaphor?"

"Yeah that works, in fact if you say "Pitcher" and "Catcher" it means-"

"Of course it does. Terrains are stupid." Said Rocket He caught Groot looking at him. "What? Hey, don't bring up Lylla in this: star's knows whatever I felt for her was just plain confusing, what with almost getting killed every few hours, and mentioning it again won't help."

Quill looked from Rocket to Groot "Is… is he talking to you?"

Rocket looked at Quill with his mouth part open and eyes narrowed in confusion. "Hey, did you hear talking? No, he was not talking to me. Don't mean I don't know what he's thinking. Frickin' Hummie." Muttered Rocket. Quill graciously chose to ignore that.

They sat in silence drinking their beers and watching baseball for a good twenty minutes.

"So you never…"

"Never met another member of my own species."

"Is that to say you never or that you never-"

"None of your fucking business Quill." Said Rocket, drinking Beer. There was an awkward pause.

"Still, I'll say this:" said Rocket. "Thank fuck for opposable thumbs."

And with that, it was time to call Nova HQ.


Nova prime Rael leaned back in her executive swivel chair, and drummed her fingers on the glass top of her desk. She swivelled left. Out the window she could see construction crews gutting the beached whale of the Dark aster for materials that would be used to help re-build Nova city. She swivelled back to her desk, frowning. She swivelled Right. Denarian Dey stopped tapping at his faulty oculight and stood back to attention as if he hadn't been playing with his armour. She swivelled back to her desk. Kashleel and her other interns stood there, hopefully.

"All right. On the condition that no one speaks unless I speak to them, you may be present when we call Special Consultations 616." As the interns broke into huge grins, Rael held up one warning finger. "And no one is to refer to them as either the Guardians or as the Guardians of the Galaxy: they are private security consultants, nothing more. I will not have any suggestion that we endorse or condone their actions in any official capacity as either corpspersons or individuals and I'm not about to fan the flames of their collective egomania by using that ridiculous name."

"In all fairness Nova Prime, I don't think they chose that name for themselves." Said Dey. Rael raised an eyebrow. "If Quill had had anything to do with it, they'd have got a far more ridiculous name." he concluded. Real considered this and then frowned.

"Are we sure that Peter Quill is their de facto leader, given the volatile group dynamic?" she asked. She glanced at her glass desk-top and criminal records and psychological assessments begun to scroll around two holo-cast faces, one green one furry. "Both Gamora and the… the cyborg, have far more extensive criminal records, better connections, vastly higher IQ's , and far great knowledge of Thanos and his operation and the criminal underworld respectively. Our records suggest that Gamora is driven and intelligent, and Rocket both violent and manipulative. Both are far more ruthless, and both can be darkly charismatic if they want to. Criminal gangs, in my experience, tend to be led by the smartest and most driven. Failing that by the strongest. Quill is the least combat effective, isn't the physically strongest, and is by far the least bloodthirsty of the group. How could he could them together?" Nova prime Real had been as grateful as anyone that the Guardai- that Special Consultations 616, had saved Xandar from Ronan, but that didn't change the fact that they were hardened criminals and that upon meeting them she seemed to be the only person who'd seen through the playful bickering and seen the real problems underneath. Gamora frankly scared her: she'd been polite and well behaved and pleasant, and the knowledge that she could behave like that, and also be responsible for a dozen high-end assassinations of targets with far greater personal security that any Nova Prime had ever held was genuinely worrisome. She just couldn't get a read on her.

And as for the cyborg… Rael had been prepared to discount him as a petty criminal with an unusual talent for escaping from custody, right up until she'd met him, and then she realised that because of his small stature and animalistic appearance she'd fallen into the same mistake as everyone else and underestimated him. He was just wrong. As a corps-person for thirty years Rael had spent her time with some of the worst criminal scum the galaxy had to offer and it didn't bother her, but after five minutes with the creature she felt she needed a bath, and that wasn't just because of her fur allergies. He extruded some sort of aura of low-level criminality that corroded the discipline of good corpsmen around him, and up close you could practically feel the anger coming off him in waves as he built hyper-advanced weapons out of whatever he had to hand, just because he felt anxious if he didn't. And the way he looked at you and spoke…. you just knew he knew what you were thinking. She'd always known that there were people out there who were smarter than her, it was a big galaxy, statistically there always were, and she'd always known that were was an apparently bottomless supply of the violently deranged. It was just that she'd never expected the Ven diagram for those two groups to cross over at a point marked "Talking animal who loves guns and a potted plant." It was difficult to mentally prepare for something like that, she thought sourly.

That and the guilt.

She looked to Dey, who had the good grace to look a little unsure, but replied anyway "I'm not saying that the others won't challenge his leadership every chance they get, but is Quill in charge and likely to stay that way… yeah,. I would guess so."

"Why?" asked Rael.

"Could you imagine Gamora and Rocket taking orders from each other?"

Rael considered this and then nodded.

"Quill is the mental mid-point of the crew, I see: he's the most stable and the easiest for the other members to relate too."

Dey Nodded back. "Look at his upbringing: he was raised By Yondu Udonta; if he didn't know how to stop professional bad-guys fighting amongst themselves, he'd never have reached puberty." He said, as the various Interns crowded around the back of Nova prim's desk to get a glimpse of the Guardia- Of Special Consultations 616. Shit, they've got me doing it now. Thought Rael. Whatever else these former criminals might be, they had saved the planet from Ronan, and Rael had taken the tactical decision to get them off-world as soon as possible, so there was a lot of interest in Special Consultations 616 from both the general public, and the corp. She had been torn between using them for their propaganda value, and between covering up their involvement, but following the shock from Ronan's attack, she had decided that the people of Xandar needed a few hero's to believe in, and had allowed a carefully managed media campaign to highlight the good their saviours had done whilst glossing over the fact their they were a bunch of barely-functional individuals who had on more than one occasion in de-briefing managed to get stuck in the elevators at Nova HQ when they'd somehow managed to punch the control console out. Given how little info on them she'd shown to the public, it was unsurprising that curiosity and speculation about who they were and what they were like was running at fever pitch on Xandar, and it appeared her own office staff were no exception. She'd been shocked, at first, but given how hard some of her younger inters had been working in the wake of the incident with Ronan, she felt that she owe them a break and if they really wanted to see Special Consultations 616 that much, then she would go along with it.

After all, she could think of no better way to kill of their burgeoning hero-worship that to actually see their heros in their natural habitat.

She noticed the grim on the face of her personal secretary and sighed.

"Really Kashleel, you too?" the young Kylarian started, but then grinned as it her birthday and Life day had arrived at once.

"I'm sorry Nova Prime Rael, it's just that I minored in the anthropology of primitive systems at collage, and I've always wanted to see a real-live terran. It's so exiting! I wonder if he'll be wearing his traditional ceremonial dress" said Kashleel "The fanny pack."

"He was last on Terra in the 1980's: it's possible" said Rael, who had kept a far better eye on that isolated world since it had suffered a Chitauri invasion, and was more worried the more she learnt. Any planet that could invent the selfie-wand was a planet on the verge of irreparable social break-down, in her opinion.

Ignoring the increasingly dewy eyed her secretary got at the thought of seeing a real live terran (Half terran, and the fewer people know that the better she thought) and the shuffling and complaining as the other corpspersons behind her tried to look like her entourage and not a gaggle of curious onlookers, Nova Prime Rael looked to Dey, and singled with a finger.

"As good a time as any to test the baby-monitor." She said, sourly. She'd been amongst the first to advocate pardoning Quill et al and unleashing them on the galaxy in a way that was vaguely law-abiding, better them inside pissing out that outside pissing in being a lesson that she'd learnt long ago, but even so, you didn't give a bunch of convicted felons their heavily armed spaceship back and set them free on an unsuspecting universe without building in at least a few basic monitoring an surveillance systems.

As Dey hit a button on his wrist-mounted com-controller, the fine glass walls of the office faded and, square by square, dissolved into a verity of views form hider holo-imagers inside the Milano. Quill had contacted Dey to arrange the meeting the day before, and Rael was a firm believer in not entering a negotiation without full info on what the other party was planning. It would be interesting to see what the Guardians were up too before they called her. What preparations they were going though, how they prepared for the oncoming negotiations, what psychological preparations they made to put them in the best possible bargaining position for the upcoming….

Rael raised an eyebrow.

"Dey." She said, quite calmly. "What am I looking at here?" Dey, who knew trouble when he heard it as only a married man can, shuffled awkwardly

"They appear to be sitting around in steaming gear drinking beer and watching sports." He answered, very aware that he'd put his career on the line to try and convince Nova prime that these were people they could trust to take any job Nova gave to them seriously.

"That's what I thought." Said Rael, watching as Drax got up and begun to sharpen his knives. "Dey, get the audio working, please." Rael looked sideways to Kashleel, who was watching with, and she felt almost ashamed to say this, genuine wonder.

"Terrans", she sighed with fangirl glee. "They're so…"

"Majestic?" said Rael sarcastically, watching Quill scratch his ass.

"Exactly!"

Rael sighed. She just didn't get kids these days.

After a few second of watching majestic terran scratching, surly knife sharpening and the last survivor of the noble Zen Whoberi people try and floss a troublesome obstruction out of her teeth, Dey finally got the sound patched through.

"-as both a sport and an excuse to drink at mid-day, because watching the grass on that pitch grow would be a better excuse to drink. Might work as a metaphor for sex, if that was the intention."

"If you're reading this much into it, then you definitely need to get laid. We gotta find you a girl Racoon somehow."

Dey raised the eyebrow to defcon two, and Dey gawked open mouthed as the head of the Nova Corp and the entire intern pool got subjected to what followed.

"Are… are they talking about the Cyborg's sex life?" asked a terrified intern, after a pause.

"It appears so." Said Rael, drumming her fingers on the desktop. A quarter of a million units, they spent re-building that ship for them, a quarter of a million.

"Well that's just plain unsettling." Said Dey.

"Still, I'll say this: thank fuck for opposable thumbs."

One of the inters frowned. "Did he just-"

"I really don't want to read into that, thank you." Said Nova prime, primly.

Apparently neither did Quill, who chose that point to get up and stretch theatrically and say

"Well, would you look at the time. Better get everyone together and call Nova about this business proposition." Rocket shrugged and helped himself to more nachos.

"If you like. Seems like a waste of time, seein' as they're already listening."

Nova Prime Rael's seldom cheerful prosopon took the sudden aspect of someone chewing on pickled Limes. "What."

"What?" echoed Quill. Rocket gestured to the Holo-cine scree with a beer bottle.

"You know that transponder leading to the encrypted hard line me and Gamora found? The one I told you about off-ship? It's started making a noise as the capacitors warmed up about twenty minutes ago. Probably someone hacking the outernet cam on top of the Holo-screen. " he reached out and put a hand on Groot's pot. "The hidden mic in Groot's pot has warmed up too. Probably the rest of the bugs nova laced the ship with as well."

"You sure?" asked Quill. Rocket, without taking his eyes of the holo-cam on top of the TV, lobbed a beer bottle sideways. On the other side of the split-screen at Nova HQ, one of the feds dissolved into static and a deafening crunch echoed over the sound system. When the feed came back, all it showed was an extremely large fish-eye view of a giant racoon nose, as the camera as viscously sniffed at.

"Pretty sure." Said Rocket, siting back down on the sofa. He regarded the ceiling contemplatively.

"Nova Prim, that's a given. Denarian Dey as well, no doubt, to play the good cop. Probably have stuffed the background with a load of useless warm-bodies in uniform, to remind us that we're outnumbered and make her look more important by having an entourage. If she's feeling threatened by us she'll have put them in full armour too, oculights switched on, all the military symbolism, but helmets off to try and make them look more like a people-friendly organisation-"

The holo-screen flicked on, Nova prime Rael glaring and drumming her figures on the desk as behind her Dey Fiddled with the defective Oculight on his armour. "Have you quite finished?" She asked.

Rocket grinned. "Lady, I haven't even started."

"So you found the transponder?" asked Rael. It was a calculated risk, but having them upset because they found out was always the lesser of two evils compared to leaving an asset proven to be able to wield infinity-stones un-monitored.

"I got Rocket and Gamora to strip the ship top-to bottom, soon as we were on board" said Quill gesturing Drax and Gamora over. "We kinda guessed you'd be stupid not to bug us, all things considered." said Quill, eyeing Nova Prime Rael meaningfully.

"Would you have done anything different in my position?" asked Nova prime. She sounded almost amused.

"I'd have made a better job of it." Said Gamora. "Some of the positioning of the devices was… amateurish."

It was supposed to be: decoys for you to find so you'd stop looking. Thought Rael. Thank fuck the flexi-needels are undetectable. And the rest.

"How did you find them, may I ask?"

"I picked up some on an electromagnetic sweep. Once I'd found one, Rocket took it apart and tried to get a scent off it, took apart anything on ship that had been touched by the same technician the placed the first bug." Said Gamora, folding her arms.

"Also took apart every area of ship where I would hide anything I wouldn't want smelt." Said Rocket, grinning nastily as he waved a signal-booster that would increase the rage of a dozen smaller bugs "Under the head was a good spot, but not for any hardened jailbird. Always the first place I'd look. Oh, and buy that way? Putting an un-tested piece of electronics in Groot's pot? Where his roots would grow around it and it'd get incorporated into his body over time?" Rockets eyes flashed and he smiled, or at least showed a lot of teeth. "I'd like to have words with whoever thought that one up."

"We're having words now." Said Rael, calmly. "I'm sorry, but I don't want to work with anyone careless of foolish, consider this a test. Now, I understand you had a proposition that you wanted to make to us?"

"Yeah." said Quill. "We've been sending you a hell of a lot on intel on Thanos and what he's up to, we propose you send us a whole bunch of money and be real nice to us in return."

"Now come on Star-lord." Said Dey, on cue. "We rebuilt you ship for you, stocked it out, fuel and food."

"And bugs." Said Quill.

"what about the bugs we removed? The Kree ambassador got to the wreckage before we did, put on a tracking device. As did the lascavarian high altarch, a suspected agent of the Tavian group, and your old buddy Yondu Udonta. You'd've been picked up in orbit for your bounties within hours of leaving Xandar if it wasn't for us. admit it Quill, you're playing in the big-leagues now, and you need our protection as much as we need your intel."

Quill shifted uneasily. "Yeah, well I still kinda feel upset, seein' as you had my toilet bugged and all. You can understand how that's gonna cause some trust issues."

"Somehow I didn't' have you down as an anxious pee-er." said Rael, flatly. Rocket choked on his beer as he tried not to laugh. Quill frowned.

"All we're saying is we're all kind of new to this whole questing hero thing, and we'd like a steady, non-criminal source of income."

"No one thinks of you as questing heroes." Said Rael. Quill looked startled.

"Not even a little?" he sounded disappointed

"Not even slightly." Lied Dey.

"Look." said Gamora. "The intel we have provided you with so far represents the biggest lead you've had in decades on Thanos and his operations, intel that could have fetched a good price on the black market. All we are saying is we'd like our efforts not to go unrewarded."

"We did save twelve billion people."Said Rocket.

"I'm sorry? I thought you were Questing heroes. Surely the act is its own reward." Countered Rael.

"Well apparently no-one thinks of us that way." Said Quill. "The point is we couldn't have gone black-market with that info, and we didn't."

"Yondu could have let his men eat you, and he didn't" said Dey. "Not doing a horrible horrible thing doesn't necessarily earn you a reward."

"Besides." Said Rael. "We paid you the full bounty for Vince Sandhurst, plus expenses."

"Yeah, and what did you pay us for the dossier on potential Thanos leads?"

"I'm sorry, would that be this dossier? The one compiled by Jim Star'l'in, for his own use, that you took from him whilst he was hospitalised and sent to us without his prior consent." Said Rael, indicating a holographic image of the archive.

"He was cool with that!" Said Quill, defensively

"After the fact." said Rael. "You'd just saved his live, he could hardly say no."

"But apparently saving an entire planet does not elicit the same inability to refuse a request." Said Drax. The others started at him. "What?"

"Actually, that's a really good point." Said Quill. Even Nova prime grudgingly nodded.

"Look, we're not ungrateful for what you've done, and given the… negative press that would occur if you returned to a life of crime, we've more reason than most to wish you find a legal source of income , but our resources have been starched to breaking point by Ronan's attacks, and there are several bodies questioning our handling of the situation. We can't be seen to be giving away money for nothing."

"I sense a but coming." said Quill. Rocket nodded.

"But." Said Nova prime. "We would really like to work with you for a considerable time-period, and so would be willing to offer you a series of contracts, as well and a small retainer to remain on our list of trusted contractors."

"Come again?" said Peter.

"They want us to run black-ops." Said Rocket. "Right?"

Rael ignored this. "Contracts would be awarded on an ad-hoc basis, with no guaranteed income in any quarter, and payment on completion. We would require full mission reports and a compliance with our code of conduct but also a sworn avadavat stating that you are in no way working for us, and giving us the right to deny all knowledge of your involvement as a when it becomes provident for us to do so. We'd also put you on our Thanos task-force as consultants for a monthly fee."

"How much" said all four of the guardians able to talk. Even Groot waved. Nova prime smiled, very slightly.

"Our standard consultancy fee would be five hundred units per person per month-"

"Two thousand." Said Quill."

"Seven fifty."

"One grand?" Nova Prime Rael considered this.

"Done." She admitted grudgingly. "Paid one month in arrears!" she said, holding out a cautionary finger. "The four grand-"

"Five." Said Rocket, Holding up Groot.

"-Five grand will be paid into your account, as legitimate earnings for consultancy work rendered. We'll also pay the higher end of standard bounties on any wanted criminal you apprehend and bring in. Alive" she added, looking over Rocket and Drax meaningfully. "Payments from contracts completed will be paid into an untraceable account with the bank of your choice." She considered this. "As gambling earnings, I believe. That way strange amounts paid in at odd intervals will not garner any suspicion."

"How will we receive these contracts?" asked Gamora, curious.

"Denarian Dey here will provide you with a quantum Kea, used to encrypt and decrypt data encrypted missions will be sent piggybacking on legitimate consultancy queries."

"And the info we've already given you?" asked Quill. Rael shrugged.

"Technically, the info you gave us belonged to either Jim Star'l'in or Baz Sandhurst. Sandhurst is off grid, and so can't provide info on how he would like the intel to be used, so we can't offer a reward on his behalf. Jim Star'l'in was grateful for you saving his life and his life's works, and has agreed to split any reward arising from the use of his works by Nova with you, sixty forty."

"Sixty forty? Miserable old bastard I knew we couldn't trust him." Muttered Quill. "I mean we saved his life!" Rael raised an eyebrow. She's really good at that thought Quill.

"That is presumably why he is offering you sixty per cent and claiming forty for himself."

"Sixty forty? I knew there was something about that guy I liked. "said Quill, with no sign of guilt. Rael sighed. "So, Starlord do we have a deal?"

Peter Jason Quill stood up, placed his hands on his hips and dramatically declared. "May I have a moment to discuss the matter with my crew?" Rael nodded. Quill strode over to the ships galley, and got the crew to form a little huddle.

"What are they doing?" asked Nova prime, muting their feed to speak. Dey looked at them and sighed.

"Well, if I know Quill, he's pretending to consider the deal so we take him more seriously."

"People actually do that?" asked Rael. "What am I saying, the man calls himself Starlord: I'm lucky he doesn't pretend to take notes."

"Peter, what are you doing?" hissed Gamora, as Quill begun to tap random buttons into an info-slate.

"I'm pretending to take notes on what Nova prime just said. Seriously, you've got to look like you're taking at least three full minutes to consider any of these offers of people will think you're a pushover." Said Quill.

The team glared. Or as much as you could in a huddle.

"Yeah, because if you sit and pretend to take notes, you don't look like a pushover at all, just an idiot." Said Rocket. he shifted uncomfortably. "Can we stop huddling now? I think I'm getting back-ache." He said: to be at the same height as the others, he had to balance on the kitchen work-surface.

"No. now, are you sure you found all the bugs? I don't want to think that everything I do on ship gets overheard by someone." Said Quill.

Rocket snorted "Ship this size and hearing as good as mine? Good luck with that. But yeah, the decoy ones were pretty obvious, the micro-needles pushed into the inside of the cushions were the real listening devices. Record all the time, compress the audio and broadcast in short-bursts undetectable against the background cosmic radiation each time we pass in range of A Nova station, which with these contacts we'll do fairly frequently I guess, and soft enough you don't feel them if you sit on them . I'll edit the info on them, loop the audio so Nova thinks they've still got us by the nose, and we can take most of them and re-use them for our own jobs as needs be."

"Cool. So… who's on shower cleaning duty today?" asked Quill."

"Rocket." said Gamora. "it's his giant hairball blocking it." Rocket winced. "I still don't see why I should have to clean the Frickin' shower when I hardly ever use it. You four are the species with sweat-glands here: it's bad enough I have to put up with you stinking the place up, let alone clean up after you. Can't I swap for something else?"

"You could swap with me." said Drax. "I have to empty out the ship's septic system at the end of the week."

Rocket considered this. "Fair enough, I have to maintain it anyway. Swap you all future shower cleaning for all future septic duty?" Drax nodded "Shake on it?" asked Rocket. He and Drax were at an odd angle compared to each other in the huddle, so it took the entire huddle shuffling sideways a few feet, and Rocket now dangling suspended between Quill and Gamora before their hands could touch.

Quill shook his head sadly. "Oh man Drax, you really aren't a spacer, are you? The ship's septic system has no radiation shielding: with the water reclamation sucking all the moisture out and the constant neutron bombardment form the FTL core, all the crap in the septic system gets baked into something like petrified wood by the time you need to clean it out: it's the least messy job on ship."

Drax glared. "What?"

"Yeah, forgot to mention that, you just climb in the centrifuge, smash it all up with a hammer, and throw it out. Sterile, odourless, barely even hard work. Sells as charcoal on some undeveloped worlds. Just wash your hands afterwards for psychological reasons so you don't feel dirty, and that's it." Said Rocket grinning.

"You deceived me!" said Drax.

"Sussshh!" said the others. Drax lowered his voice. "You tricked me, Ring-tailed charlatan! That deal was made based on incomplete knowledge and should not stand, tiny fur bearing villain!"

"Let's put it to the vote." said Rocket. "All who think that was a fair deal…" Quill and Rocket raised a hand each without breaking the huddle. Groot, seeing Quill and Rocket doing something, automatically copied them. Drax glared at them and looked sideways to Gamora, who reluctantly, raised her hand "You did offer that duty to him, it's not like he specifically asked for septic duty." She said.

"Four to one, vote carried." Said Rocket, starting to slip out of the huddle with one hand voting, so he grabbed Quills shirt to stop himself slipping to the floor.

"I do not like this huddle of deception." Muttered Drax. "Can we go back to addressing Nova? How much longer must we stand here while Quill pretends to think?"

"Another thirty-odd years so his life will be symmetrical?" suggested Rocket.

"Ha ha. But you're right, that's probably enough. Now, we all put a fist in the middle and then jerk it up and break the huddle."

The team stared. "Why?" asked Gamora.

"I have no idea" admitted Quill. "It's just the done thing to do. Preferably with a freeze-frame and some end-credits music." Gamora, who was trying to make an effort to understand terran customs, shrugged, and put her fist out. Drax and Rocket followed suit. Quill yelled "one two three, Gooooooo team! " and they all jerked their hands up, sending Rocket flying backwards out of the huddle and bouncing of a bulkhead with a display of eye watering profanity that impressed even Nova Prim Rael, who when she wanted to could swear as only a disgruntled police officer could.

"Did they just have an 80's sport movie huddle?" asked Kashleel to Rael, the one serious student of terran customs present to the other. She shrugged. "He was a child when Yondu took him, most of his knowledge of his own culture will come from 1980's TV." Kashleel sighed, privileged to have witnessed the most sacred of terran customs. Without realising, she begun to hum suitable musical accompaniment to this moment under her breath.

Kashleel 80's montage playlist: Stand On Your Own; Paul Gilreath.

Gods, that girl needs to get laid. Thought Nova Prime.

Walking over with all the dignity he could muster and truing to ignore the swearing racoon at his feet, quill sat down in front of the Holo-screen. "You, ma'am, have a deal."

Nova prime Rael grinned. "Excellent, when do you feel you can start?"

Quill grinned back, all cocky confidence. "As soon as you need us to."

The com's console in the corner of the room pinged. The team looked from that, to Rael on the holo-screen, and back again.

"One of our major defence contractors will be undergoing a weapons test in a warzone on Arrakis five, a neutral non-nova world, but we believe someone in his organisation has been dealing under the table with the Kree, both before and after the treaty was signed. We'd like you to take the role of his private security detail, and use the job as an excuse to get close to him and hack his computer for clues."

"Risks?" asked Quill. Nova prime shrugged. "It's a war-zone, but unless someone leaks his itinerary he should be in an out without risk: it's just a demonstration for some general. He should not be there long: he's something of the playboy and will be flying out on his private yacht soon after. Thirty grand, payment on conformation of successful hack. Needless to say, whatever happens, this guy must make it out of there alive: whatever else he may be, he's still a major player in our war machine."

Quill looked to the others, and nodded. "Piece of cake."

"Where?" asked Drax.

Nova prime sighed, and hit the button to hang up. As she did, the damn cyborg begun to wave her listening device signal booster at her mockingly.

"Pricks." She muttered.

Back on the Milano Quill turned to the others, palms part raised in victory. "Eh? What did I tell you? A grad each per moths, and a thirty grand contract. Not too shabby."

"It will do as a start." Muttered Drax. "So long as it brings us closer to killing Thanos."

"Peter, are you sure about this?" asked Gamora."

Rocket nodded. "How far can we trust these people?"

"Oh come on." Said Quill. "Billionaire playboy arms dealer. Weapons test. Desert world. What could go wrong?" he joked.

Next week: Chapter five: in a cave, with a box of scraps.


After Dey and her interns were gone, Nova Prime Rael closed the security shutters to her office, and sat there alone, in the quiet and the shade. She still wasn't sure that she knew what to think about Special Consultancy 616… fuck it, about the Guardians of the Galaxy, but she had to admit they had talent. She hoped it would be enough.

The job she's sent them on should be simple enough, gods willing, and it that worked, then maybe, just maybe, she could ease them into the role she felt they'd have to play.

She hoped they were up to it.

The Terran, Quill, seemed stronger than he looked. His careful façade of harmless goofiness hiding someone with real talent and in real pain, she felt. These terrans were proving to be stronger than people had thought.

She'd read the report from the Chitauri invasion of Terra. I looked like they had brought it on themselves, experimenting with infinity stones. She's used that as an excuse to deny access to some of nova's top scientists when they asked to see the power stone. But they'd fought the Chitauri off. This terran, Nick Fury, had had a power he couldn't possibly comprehend dropped into his lap, and he'd had to take the best call he could with it, as far as she could tell from the reports.

He was reported missing, presumed dead. There was a moral in that somewhere.

She hoped she'd not repeat his mistakes.

She looked at the holo of Gamora and of the Cyborg Rocket again, and zoomed in on Rocket, the layers of rendering melting away to show the bionics. She zoomed and panned through. So much, so strange, so experimental.

She stopped deep inside his brain.

And there it was, familiar and accusing. Two electrodes in the part of the brain that controlled the body's reaction to adrenalin. He'd feel it like any other, but then the electrodes would fire, and his hands wouldn't shake. A simple mod, but invaluable for a marksman in combat.

She held out her own hand. It did not shake, it never did.

"Computer: open files on R and D department seven: Advanced Game Theory."

Pause.

"File not found: redacted."

"When? On whose authority?" she asked.

"Redacted fifteen years, four months, three days and two hours ago: Authorisation Nova Prime Valt."

She frowned. She'd been a centurion fifteen years ago, when the Nova Corps officer cadre had voted Valt down unanimously.

"Computer, open up all records relating to Galactic Shipping and Holdings Incorporated."

"Files Redacted fifteen years, four months, three days and two hours ago: Authorisation Nova Prime Valt."

"Redefine search terms: Project Alcyone."

"Files Redacted fifteen years, four months, three days and two hours ago: Authorisation Nova Prime Valt."

"Redefine search terms: Military contractors; Tivan group, Keystone Life Sciences."

"Files Redacted fifteen years, four months, three days and two hours ago: Authorisation Nova Prime Valt."

That would be the day he died. Irani Rael realised with a chill.

"Computer, redefine search terms keyword." She paused and took a deep breath. Did she really want to know? "Keyword: Toy-war."

"Files sealed: Five years, one month seven days ago. Authorisation: Nova Prime Rael."

The die is cast she thought.

"Computer: open files."