Chapter Five: In a Cave, with a box of Scraps.
Part one: Make me Smile.
Prologue:
Peter Jason "Starlord" Quill stared up at the unforgiving desert sun as he tried to remember why everything hurt.
He coughed weekly, and spat out the unpleasant tongue-drying amalgam of sand, jet fuel and, he suspected, racoon fur, that had somehow filled his mouth.
What the fuck just happened? He thought, as his Walkman squeaked and scraped its way thought a tinny rendition of the Doobie brothers somewhere in the flaming detritus around him.
And then he remembered.
"Yeah." He Croaked. "Might not have been the best idea."
Twenty hours earlier
The convoy rolled along the scarred and dusty surface of Arrakis five to the tune of Back in Black
And then to the tune of Long train running by the Doobie Brothers.
… and then Make me smile by Steve Harley as Feather-Pen indecisively played with his Walkman, trying to get his new dongle to sync the output from his tape-player to the Landship's internal tac-net.
"You know, if I'd know that was what you were going to use that for, I wouldn't have frickin' made it for you." Said Rocket
Benoit Kar suspected that the mercenary's real name wasn't Feather-Pen, no more than the others were called Nez Irebohw, Arth Blackstream or Rocket (because come on, who's called Rocket?), but he was a man who'd had his own persona security detail since the age of five, and one thing you learnt early on was that if you wanted to keep down your 200 unit saltimbocca al Xandar you didn't pry too deep into the backstory of hired thugs. In an industry where pseudonyms and aliases changed frequently you got used to some odd names. But still, he knew clearly fake names when he saw them, and between that and the music he was getting a little pissed off.
"Why what did you think I asked for it for?" asked Feather-pen.
"I dunno, somehow when you said you wanted something that would take an electromagnetic feed and patch it through to standard com's relays I imagined that you wanted to integrate your stupid frickin' helmet with a C2 system. Something sensible like that." Said the small furry one, taking the magnetized clip off the side of that primitive sound-player and sticking it to the folded-down survival helm that Feather-pen wore around his neck.
"Okay, can you hear me now?" asked the furred one.
Feather-pen stared. "Ummm, yeah because you're sitting opposite me!"
The small one snorted, and placed a finger to its throat.
"How about now, big shot?" it asked.
Feather pen leapt back in shock, clutching his ears as if in pain. He stopped and stared. The small one grinned, nastily.
"Synced it to my laryngophone earlier. Figured if we got in another firefight you might actually like to be able to hear me over the shooting."
"It's hardly likely we'll be getting into any firefights." Said the woman, Nez, stretching and leaning back. "A few more hours and we'll be off this rock." Kar tried not to stare: he hired local guides and security experts on every planet he went to, in addition to his own bodyguards, and although these five had come suspiciously late to the bidding process, they had come very highly recommended, and the woman was considerably easier on the eyes than the last local thugs he had hired, and it was this that had got them hired despite the clearly fake names and, frankly, odd behaviour.
The large one, Arth looked like most of the security he'd hired in the past, and the creepy little talking rodent was armed with as impressive and psychotic a collection as he'd ever seen, and that coming from a major arms dealer, but this Feather-pen seemed both unprofessional and physically unimpressive, and although she had clearly had some combat bionics added over the years Kar knew full well that customers for that sort of modification were usually show-of oligarchs trying to impress rivals, and given how physically impressive the woman was he was willing to bet she was more military-bling than combat effective. Not that he minded. As she said, the test had worked like a dream and it was just a case of get back to the yacht, upload the test data to his personal computer, and get off this dust-ball as soon as possible.
If that oaf would stop playing around with that music device the journey might go that much faster, he thought. Although that last one had a pretty good tune he thought.
There was the peep-peep of the landship's com getting an external call, and the small one, Rocket, stood up and pressed an Info-glass to the com. He frowned.
"What are you doing?" he asked
"Using my glass to rout the call via the ship behind us, dummy." he asked, without bothering to look at him, or address him as sir. He frowned. He'd already knew he'd not be re-hiring these four, but things had been going cordially enough and this creature had no cause to be impudent.
"That is a private call for me, what gives you the right to re-rout it?" the creature snorted with a wry amusement.
"I dunno. Maybe the fact that I was hired to protect your ass and I wouldn't want anyone tracking the signal to be able to lock a missile onto the vehicle that answered the call. This way, anyone is monitoring the com-fed for this convoy, they'll think you're in the vehicle behind us. But whatever, it's your call. Personally I love a nice little high explosives to the face at the end of an otherwise successful trip. Stops life getting boring or, yanno, long."
"… who's the call form?" asked Ker. The creature glared at the glass, and then handed it over.
"Some ugly grox-mother called Illzo. You want me to hang up?" Ker Sighed.
"I'd love you to, but unfortunately, that's my senior vice president and second in command."
The creature considered this. "You could always play dead. Sir." It added, just late enough to make it clear it didn't care, without it quite reaching the level of studied insult. By mercenary standards that was practically friendly.
Ker snorted. "Tempting, but he's got the shareholders ear and I don't want to spook them." he said accepting the glass. Give them their credit, these guys were certainly more entertaining than the last set of hired guns he used. "Hey, Illzo, bubby, how's things in the land of the bean-counters?"
"Well you know, we can't all spend our time playing with Gravitonium and plasma coils and getting paid perplexingly well for it. How did you latest science fair project go?"
"Well the baking soda volcano was a let-down, that the balloons I was going to use for my talk on static electricity popped, so I had to settle for the demonstration of a targeted kinetic kill-vehicle that allows selective bombardment of up to 10,000 separate hostiles with smart relativistic sub-munitions. Same old same old." Said Ker, stroking his goatee. "Teachers seemed impressed 'tho."
Illzo smiled grimly "Will they be more or less impressed that the kid in the next class pulled it off just as well?" I'm sending you a file: Broken Blade just offered an identical weapons system over the outer net to a Crakili arms dealer. We have another leak."
Ker swore, loudly. "How are they dealing with the backscatter problems? You fire anything solid though space at close to c, you'll rip particles from the interstellar hydrogen and generate hard rads: anyone with backscatter radiation nets will see the shot coming."
Illzo shrugged. "Same way we are, Gravitonium alloy on the projectile to absorb and muffle the radiation insofar as possible. No chance this is an independent invention, it's a clone or our system down to the last weld."
"Can they produce it cheaper?"
"No."
"Are our patents going to hold? Will our intellectual property division keep this thing off the shelves?"
Illzo nodded. "No legitimate government will touch the leaked version with a lascavarian passion-pole, I can guarantee it. Won't affect our sales, our lawyers have the design too well protected. It won't stop the leaked version ending up in the hands of every terrorist or weapons-embargoed regime in the quadrant, though." Illzo paused "If this thing is out there in the open, the demand for a mark two, something better than what the terrorist have, will be through the roof. We need to start crunching the numbers on the mark one and laying the groundwork of an advanced model pronto. Do you have the test data? Send it to me and I can get them running sims for 2.0 right away."
Ker looked to Rocket. "Is this thing secure?"
Rocket looked to Feather-pen, who nodded. He then turned back to Ker. "Computer security is a thing of mine." said Rocket, completely honestly. "If anyone was trying to hack your data, they'd have to be pretty damn good." Again, not technically a lie thought Rocket, smugly.
Ker nodded, and sent the file. Illzo sent his in return, and in nova HQ a central computer logged that the Trojan Rocket had added to both files as they passed through his glass was up and running.
"Got it?" asked Ker. Illzo nodded.
"Yep, I'll get the guys in advanced tech to start going over the results, draw up something for you to play with when you get back. You'll be back soon?" asked Illzo.
"Don't worry. We just passed marker seven, we'll be back in no time." He said. "Peace." He added, jokingly, before hanging up. He handed the glass back to Rocket.
"I thought that thing took a plasma round at Fairport?" asked Feather-pen, nodding to the glass. Rocket shrugged. "I got a new one of the Sherriff there." He said, rapidly flicking through channels as he tried to un-sync his glass from the landship.
"The sheriff there provided you with a replacement glass? That was extremely kind of him." Said the big tattooed one, Arth.
Rocket froze up, awkwardly "Suuure. Let's go with that." He said.
The green skinned one was about to lean in to remonstrate with him, Ker thought, when the landship exploded.
Quill was still playing about with the new toy Rocket had given him, fast forwarding and then going back through the tape looking for a suitably cool song to bare out of the landship's speakers when there was a bang so loud it put the ever popular tinnitus mixtape on for him, and the entire vehicle lurched sideways violently, throwing him into Gamora's lap, which might have been a pleasant experience if it hadn't also sent Rocket flying violently skull-first into his crotch. As Quill doubled over in pain and Rocket fell backwards with possible concussion, there was a second bang and the ship suddenly stopped moving, throwing everyone violently forwards, and the plush inner carriage of the vehicle almost immediately filled up with an oily black smoke that made it impossible to see anything. Or, yanno breathe.
"Everybody out!" yelled Gamora, somewhat needlessly Quill thought, but if he was honest with himself he'd have yelled that first if he could talk. Drax helpfully grabbed him by the back of his coat as he lay doubled-up and trying to coax his genitals back onto the outside of his body, and Gamora grabbed Kar with one hand, and drew her sword (still folded up) with the other and pulled the emergency exit lever. There was the sharp pop of explosive bolts, sudden ear-pain as the pressure equalized and light and heat so intense Quill thought it was another explosion before he realised that that was what this damn planet was like if the air-conditioned atmosphere escaped. There was an instant wiz and ping of old-fashioned projectile weaponry, followed by the familiar near-deafening chatter of Rocket's favourite gun set somewhere between stun and fuck you AND the species you evolved from Buddy. Gamora had already pushed Ker down and under the reassuring bulk of one of the immobilised treads and was combat-rolling towards something-or-other, as far as Quill could see. Drax then threw him and he rolled, that effort alone instantly drenching him in sweat in this heat. He activated the helmet before he even hit the ground, a good call as it turned out the sand was hot enough to burn his hands and he'd have hated to land face-first in that shit. Yelping to himself and fumbling for his guns in his own private tangled sweaty hell as his coat caught on something, Quill got his first view of the enemy.
Oh my god…we're being attacked by distant blobs! He thought, much like everyone else who has ever had to try and work out who the hell is shooting at them through all the heat-haze. Rocket, however, must have been able to see them a lot better, or had just stopped caring at all, because as Drax leapt down and begun to sprint for cover, Rocket dropped down onto his shoulder and begun to blaze merrily away at something or someone and screamed what sounded suspiciously like "Get some! Get some!" over and over. Quill wondered how hard he hit his head. And I have gotto stop showing him terran movieshe thought.
There was a sudden arch of glittering sparks, and the land ship behind them exploded into a column of flame. With a sick feeling Quill spotted that they had hit the front and rear vehicle in the convoy first, and that the rest were bogging-down in the soft sand to the sides of the track as they tried to break file and go round the wrecked vehicles. Clearly their attackers new their work well, and had picked an ideal spot for an ambush. The front treads on their vehicle were shredded, and the surviving vehicles were being picked off like flies by some high-power energy weapon; as Quill watched the last landship brought three of its main turrets to bare and begun to hose-down the dunes with mazer-fire glassing the sand, before it too took a hit and began to brew up. Then a round pinged off the treads near him, and he stopped gawping and buried himself into the scalding sand. There were a few screams and pops that could be the explosive bolts on an escape hatch, rounds or fuel-cells cooking off, or a trapped driver ending it before the flames did, but Quill couldn't see more than the few inches of sand in-front of him so he couldn't tell. The tinnitus still drowned out most things, and his crotch still hurt. It couldn't have been more than twenty seconds since the first hit, and already the convoy was toast and two-thirds of the people in it dead.
He looked sideways, Ker was staring wide-eyed with shock, his three-thousand unit suit smoke-stained and crumpled, and his personal bodyguard, a taciturn man who had barely spoken all trip and whose name Quill hadn't bothered to learn, had produced a huge lazer-pistol from no-where with skill that Rocket would admire, and had a hand on Ker's back, keeping him down and under cover of the vehicle. Both stared at Quill, and he realized that they expected him to know what to do. That realisation would have caused to his balls to clench up to his armpits, if they were in fact still there (and that wasn't by any means a certainty at that point), so he just did the best he could and yelled "Stay down! Down!" as he drew both of his guns and, what the hell, ran for the crest of the nearest dune. He didn't want to get shot, but he felt a total idiot just lying there while the rest of his team was out-there fighting somewhere, so he ran towards the sounds of destruction. As he did, he saw the two-story ruin of the landship they had been in less than a minute before, now smoking and with its own little novelty halo of corpses in a ring around it. Only imperial stormtroopers strike with accuracy a voice in his head said, before his far more familiar default sarcastic voice added boy, Ben Kenobi must have been high as a kite: those guys couldn't shoot for shit thought Quill, just before he got shot.
Having grown up in the 80's Quill of course knew that the good guys could just shrug off bullets as "fleshwounds" in the same way he knew the sky was blue. He'd never quite forgotten the first time Yondu took him off-ship, once he could be trusted not to run away screaming, and he'd looked up and seen a whole lot of orangey-purple looking down at him. Coincidently, he'd seen his first kinetic- energy weapon wound the same day. Like Yondu put it: "Turn's out flesh-wounds ain't so trivial when you're made of flesh, eh now Boy? Oh what the ruttin'…. Kraglin, your turn to clean up the terrain vomit!"
So all in all it was lucky that the aerodynamic lump of metal that would have been almost certainly fatal had it hit him in, say, the leg, hit him in the head instead.
There was a moment of beautiful peace, and then his helmet squawked impact detected, possible micro-meteorite strike on sector seven g. Would you like to run diagnostic? In his ear, and he pushed himself up from the ground, feeling very, very heavy. Like there was a donkey or something on his face, and it had brought all its friends, and they were all total dicks. His vison swum as the helmet's HUD rebooted, and instead of the Jawas he'd assumed he'd be fighting, he saw a group of long-limbed tan-furred aliens with broad snouts like deer running away as fast as they could. For a moment Quill wondered why they were fleeing, before he realised he'd got turned around and the fight was behind him. He struggled up to the top of the dune he's somehow rolled down, and having got there groaned as he looked down.
A group of Sakaarans were advancing in good order on the wrecked landships from a concealed necrocraft. From his vantage point he could see Ker and his bodyguard hiding under the treads, but they wouldn't stay hidden long. He couldn't see his team, but the streams of tracer and occasional flying body part gave a good indicator as to where Rocket and Drax where and that they were both still alive and kicking ass. God knew where Gamora was, but he figured she'd find him rather than the other way round.
Quill checked his pistols. Both still good. Inside his damaged helmet, he set his jaw grimly. We have a job, an actual honest to god lawful paid job, dammit. Paid.
He was going back down that slope, and he was going to rescue that industrialist.
After all, he had a cunning plan.
Ker having just had his landship blow up, having just been thrown to the ground by a remarkably psychotic young woman who then vaulted off to dish out horrible randomized surgery with a sword, and then watched the bodyguard he'd paid far above the market rate run up to the top of a dune and promptly get shot in the head, was no necessarily in the best mood he could have been, but he was at least feeling reasonably safe under the vehicle away from all the shouting and needlessly primitive chemically-launched metal slugs. It was therefore with a curious alloy of grudging respect and bowl-loosening trepidation that he spotted Feather-pen wriggling his way down the slope of a dune towards him, like someone who has spent years teaching a dog to fetch, for it to finally catch on the day he happened to be ice-fishing-with-dynamite.
Don't attract their attention, Don't attract their attention, oh dear gods please don't-
"Okay, so that didn't go as well as I had planned, but I have this covered, so we need to go, right now." Said Quill, from behind a helmet that looked like a hyper-equine had kicked it.
Ker and his bodyguard stared.
"What?" asked the strangely robotic voice from behind the helmet. "Do I have something in my teeth or something? Time to move: Jonny five says haul ass or get disassembled!"
Ker opened and closed his mouth like a guppy a few times, before regaining the power of speech and all the vitriol that came with it.
"Idiot!" he declared. "We're…" he fell silent as a Sakaaran walked by "We're under cover, and hidden here! The landship convoy had a transponder with a dead-man's switch, the second they hit us air-support will have been scrambled! All we need to do is lie-low until the cavalry gets here!"
Starlord, paused, his face unreadably behind the helmet. He looked to one side for a moment.
"This transponder… it wouldn't be some sort of transmitter would it? Broadcasts continuously, Looks a bit like a listening device?"
"Why?"
Starlord put down a pistol and reached into his armour. "Because I found this on the Necrocraft these guys have and I thought it was some sort of spy thing and it looked fancy so I took it." He said, pulling out a large Ker industries transponder. Ker stared.
"Oh my gods, they spoofed our signal, no one will notice the dead-man's switch. They've been tracking us the whole time. " He looked at Starlord with a renowned respect. "There is a second transponder in the crew compartment of this landship, if it's still working, I can use it to interfere with the signal of their spoofer, use it to alert the re-enforcements.
Starlord paused again.
"Huh. And that, that would look like a bug, wouldn't it?"
"Yes, but I don't see…" started Ker. Quill pulled another, smaller, transponder out from his coat.
"Okay, probably should have mentioned this earlier… Rocket thought it was a listening device so I kinda stomped on it while you were out testing your weapons-thingy." he held it out to Ker. "Can you fix it."
Ker took the transponder in one hand. It folded in half in the middle, and the end fell off with a sharp fizz and a whiff of ozone. He looked at Quill, and he was glad that under the helmet Ker couldn't see him redden. Ker begun to hit him with the broken transponder and it Quill tried to slap it out of his hands, and just when it looked like it was about to turn into a good old-fashions sissy-fight the bodyguard shussed them both as another Sakaaran walked by.
"Well that's done it, imbecile! You've got to get us back to that necrocraft now! If you do, I can re-modulate the spoofing signal into a distress beacon, but I'll need the transmitter on the necrocra-"
An explosion ripped through the dunes, and Sakaarans begun to shout and run back over the dune to see what was happening. Ker and his bodyguard stared at the carnage, and then both silently looked to Starlord.
"Okay, now I realise that with hindsight this is gonna sound kind of dumb, but I thought that we needed a distraction to get out from here and I found some grenades and the necrocraft was unguarded so-"
"Can I shoot him?" asked the bodyguard. It was the most Quill had heard him say, and the sudden verboseness was not entirely welcome.
"Woah! Woah chill dude, I got this" said Quill holding out his palm in a gesture of peace only lightly ruined by the fact he was still holding a blaster.
"Got this? In exactly what way have you got this! We're a hundred clicks from anywhere in the middle of a d'asted desert world with no water and you just blew up our only transport! What exactly were you planning, that we'd just escape our attackers at a light walk? That we'd just jog on over the dunes to beer and freedom?"
Quill considered that. "Okay fair point, but in my defence I do have this." He said, pulling out what looked like a small handheld games-console of the type that realistic virtual sex programs had almost killed off. "It's a remote control hooked up to my ship's autopilot. I already called it. The Milano will track the signal and land within one mile of wherever the hell we are now, and then we can follow the nav-point this do-hicky of Rocket's projects to find it. All we gotta do it slip away now while these guys are distracted and hold out for the time it will take the Milano to get here. So time to go!" said Quill, shoving Ker lightly and rolling out from under the wrecked landship. Ker hesitated for a moment, and then swore and scrambled up after him.
Quill Jogged along the back of the landship: most of the Sakaaran troops had been on the other side anyway and he guessed that the necro-ship exploding would have drawn most of their attention. He saw only one Sakaaran, on the lip of a dune above him, with his back turned. It looked like he was taking a leak. Didn't know they needed to do that. The more you know Quill thought. Quill sprinted up the dune behind him, cursing silently each time his feet slipped in the loose sand, and got to the guy just as he was shaking off. The Sakaaran tucked himself back in and had just enough time to turn around and look extremely suppressed as Starlord leapt up to him and smashed him in the face with the butt of his favourite pistol, sending him cartwheeling over the edge of the dune . Quill paused for a moment to try and get his breath back, unsure weather to go with a line from Predator or My name is a killing word as his witty one liner, when Ker materialised at his shoulder and startled him so badly that he nearly went rolling down after the unconscious Sakaaran.
"Nicely done, but you do know that blasters also work as a ranged weapon, don't you?" he said, delicately stepping around the patch of damp sand with a Willie Coyote imprint of a falling Sakaaran in it like the worlds nastiest snow-angel. "I mean if you want a blunt instrument, Ker industries sells a particularly good combat hammer in our T1 civilization catalogue."
"Ha Ha ha." Said Quill, moving into cover and shade on the lea side of the dune with the awkward shuffling run that will be familiar to anyone who's had to traverse a steep slope of loose material. As he did, and as the bodyguard fell into step behind him, he activated his helmets com-unit. Ker, annoyingly, pressed in close to hear what was being said, but the guy had just been shot at and was now running for his life, so he guessed he had a vested interest in finding out what was going on.
"Guys, it's me, Quill, what's your status?"
"Quill?" asked Ker, before the sudden realisation hit. "Why do I know that name…"
There was an incoherent, bowel-loosening scream of pure animalistic range, heavily distorted by the coms-net, and the barking chatter of a seriously overpowered gun. And then, quite calmly. "This is Drax, Rocket and I are pinned down behind the wreckage of the last landship in the column, taking heavy fire, but the enemy have only primitive chemical slug-throwers and appear somewhat reluctant to close the range with us." he said, seemingly disappointed and confused in equal measure as if he couldn't understand why the Sakaarans didn't want to come out and play. In the background, Rocket could be heard laughing his head off about an apparently well-executed groin-shot on his part.
"Any sign of Gamora?" asked Quill. At this point the subunit dropped and Ker caught on.
"Wait… that thing on Xandar… your those guys with the silly name!" Quill ignored him.
"Not at current, no. there are no signs. Except one I believe has been blown off one of the landships by the explosion. It says 'exit'. I don't know if that is relevant to you."
Quill mentally re-adjusted. "Can you see Gamora?"
"No. Can you reach her on the coms?"
"No." said Quill. "I figure she's muted it so it won't give away her location if she's doing her stealth assassin shit. Look get to the east side of the convoy, and over the big dune there, keep heading east: I've called in the Milano, we gotta get out of here, fast."
Drax paused. "Affirmative." he said. There was a brief crackle of gunfire as he held down the broadcast button for the moment, and more of Rockets shouting. "What about Gamora?" Drax asked.
Quill hesitated. "If she's got her com with her, we can try to triangulate off that when we get back to the Milano. If not we'll just have to trey a lifesigns sweep."
"Affirmative, but I cannot see any signs that say 'life' either." Quill sighed and hung up. He pulled out his remote control for the ship and checked it's ETA. Still more than an hour to go, and a mile to where the nav-point indicated it would land. Not a hard walk, even in this god-forsaken desert. Ker Looked at the beacon, curiously.
"That looks like it's based on Nova tech, how in the worlds did you afford that?" he asked, as Quill reached the stunned Sakaaran and knelt down to check it's vitals. "Quill." he added, slightly resentful that they hadn't even bothered with good fake names.
"Yeah 'bout that. I'm gonna level with you, Nova are worried about your leaked tech, think someone in the company is dealing under the table, and what with this whole ambush thing, I think we can add 'trying to murder you' to the list of crimes. They hired us to protect you, but mostly to check you out see if we could find out who's letting this stuff out on the black-market."
Ker paused a moment, and then snorted.
"That damn rodent with the info-glass got into my files, didn't he?" Quill didn't answer but instead, convinced the Sakaaran was out for the count, begun to strip him for supplies. Ker watched, seemingly concerned. "But I still don't see what benefit anyone in the company would get by leaking our weapons designs: no legitimate government would by knock-offs, so the market would be extremely limited."
"Sure, but that limited market might be worth it to someone who wanted a few million extra credits off the books and besides, what was that your second in command said? As soon as the terrorists have this, every government in the quadrant will be throwing money at Ker industries wanting the improved version."
"Illzo? You don't think…" said Ker. Quill Shrugged. "You did tell him were you were right before we got ambushed. He seemed pretty sure that the plan falling into the bad-guy's hands would make the company money, he knew about the leak before you did, and with you out of the way he'd be top dog, right?" he said, checking out the Sakaaran's weapon. Ker hesitated.
"Possible, I guess. Look, give me that remote control for you ship, Tech's my thing, I recon if it's linked to the autopilot I could use it to patch a message through, add it to your ships flight-log. That way, if we don't make it out, anyone who finds the ship will at least know to investigate Illzo."
Quill shrugged, and handed over the beacon, taking the Sakaaran rifle in both hands. It was elegantly curved, and the magazine seemed to hold evil looking iron spikes rather than lead bullets, but it was otherwise unmistakeably an assault rifle, like the sort he remembered from TV back on earth. The was a secondary explosion back from the direction of the necrocraft, and Ker jumped and begun to loom around for something to defend himself with. Quill eyed him up.
"You ever fired a gun before?" he asked, Ker looked panicked for a moment, and then smiled nervously. "Not really, designing weapons is more of my thing. Went to one of those combat ranches, you know? With the guns that shoot red paint at each other?" Quill hesitated, but then handed the rife over, swapping it for the beacon. "It's an old-fashioned point and shoot interface, but I recon weapons-expert like yourself should be able to pick it up quickly enough." He said, turning to begin the slog over the next dune towards the nav-point "Come on, we've got to keep moving. Only think I don't understand is why the Sakaaran are armed with this antiquated shit anyways."
"Quill heard the sound of a rifle being cocked directly behind him, and froze up.
"The local tribes use them. It's supposed to make the kidnaping look like their work. They are so found of hostage takings, I gather."
Quill looked at the dune straight in front of him. "I just gave you the beacon so you could implicate Illzo, didn't I?"
"Yep." Said Ker, popping the p sound. In his peripheral vison Quill could see Ker maintaining a steady and well-practiced aim on his head from about ten feet away. The helmet wouldn't stop a dart at that range. He could also see Sakaarans coming over the dunes, gun raised, and hear a barrage of swearing that could only be from Rocket: the lack of shooting spelling out "captured" more that any words the racoon could have said.
"And the transponders, you didn't want me to get, them, you just wanted me to get out of cover so I'd get shot."
"Yep. They don't actually do anything. I saw to that."
"So all, this, just to get rid of your number two, why? Was he looking into the source of the leak too hard, or something?"
Ker shrugged. "Nah, the guy's just too honest, why take the risk? Getting rid of him's a bonus, perhaps. The main point is, it's difficult to get any company off the ground, even with a great product. Open market or black-market, you need start up cash. Stolen weapon systems don't just sell themselves, and I need them to sell to create demand for the legit versions. Ker Industries is a respected company, and publicly traded on a dozen worlds. We couldn't get way with funnelling money into a secret project to sell our weapons to terrorists or develop weapons for rogue regimes without someone noticing, but we needed start up cash to do just that, around two-hundred million units. And you wouldn't believe the coincidence, that I happen to be insured against kidnap for-"
"-about two hundred million. Paid untraceably to kidnappers." Said Quill, seriously contemplating screwing the danger and spinning and shooting him in the dick, until, he saw Drax unconscious and being dragged by two Sakaarans as a third bite-covered individual had Rocket by the tail at a good arm's length as he spat defiance and tried to fight his way out of what looked like an old sports-bag. Quill winced, and dropped his pistols.
"And to think that Nova paid us especially to keep you alive. It was a clause in the deal, and everything."
"I'm touched. Really, I am." Said Ker, lowering his gun as two Sakaaran goons came up to Quill and grabbed him by each arm. "I mean, it's really going to make all the torture there going to do to find out about what Nova knows, how much they suspect, how to get the computer system free from their spying and all really, really tough for me. And to think, if you hadn't just said that you were working for Nova, the plan was just to kill you all relatively painlessly!" he said, shouldering the gun and putting on some shades. "So I guess this is ciao for us. I've got places to go, people to see and all, and you've got an appointment with some electrodes: we've got a nice little cave-system in the next whadi over all set up, pretty much as a prop, so that when they pay the ransom and the army comes in to see where I was held, they find a nice believable rebel base. Now I guess they'll find you guys, too. Bloated corpses add that certain touch of realism to any story. Hey, maybe I can work that into the biography of my ordeal: those things always sell well. I'll find a nice ghost-writer for you dead-guys. That's seems fitting."
"Sir, they can't find the female. Three of the Sakaaran are also unaccounted for." Said the bodyguard, as Ker's private Yacht appeared hovering over the next dune. Ker shrugged. "She'll never survive alone in this desert. Fuck her. Clean up the Sakaaran bodies, and add a few of those dead locals we've got on ice to make it realistic, and let's get out of here, I'm sweating like a Oscavarain whore on overtime here." he paused "Oh, and one more thing." He said, as a second Necro-ship arrived and they started to load Drax onto it, throwing Rocket's bag at it like an airport baggage handler with a grudge against your breakables.
"What?" asked the bodyguard, as Ker leaned in close and looked Quill in the eye.
"By the way, Nice taste in music there my man." He said, helping himself to the Walkman and slipping it on.
Quill watched him march off. Right. This just got personal he thought, just as the first Sakaaran rammed his gun-butt into his ribs, and another smashed him in the head knocking his helmet into lowering and damaging his com-unit, causing it to broadcast random white noise. The rest piled in and begun to brutally pummel him into unconsciousness as Ker danced along to the music into his luxury Yacht, grabbed a cocktail, and took off.
Awesome Mix tape volume Two: Make me smile (come up and see); Steve Harley.
Epilogue:
Gamora maintained the pressure on the Sakaaran's windpipe until the kicking stooped, and counted to two hundred before dropping the body. Limping slightly, she made the way to the other two, and removed the sword pinning them together, before making her way up the dune. She heard the yacht coming in to land before she saw it, and ducked under cover. And by cover she meant bodies. Wriggling her way to the top of a convenient dune, she peered down and switched on her com-bead. She spent a few moments listening to the conversation between Ker and Quill before noticing her com bead was faulty. It gave a better signal when Quill was to her left than to her right.
She smiled, grimly. That was enough.
She watched what happened, dispassionately. Getting emotionally involved right now wouldn't help Quill, so she pictured Thanos's face, and pushed the feelings down with the ease of long practice. It was only afterwards she realised she has thought wouldn't help Quill and not wouldn't help the others. She'd feel bad about that latter, but now there was nothing. Like there should be.
She watched the necroship and the yacht leave. Different vectors, but similar enough for her to guess they were heading to the same place, and leaving by different routes to throw off any observers.
She looked down. A dozen or so Sakaarans were still at the site of the ambush, cleaning up their own dead and arranging the scene to loom like a local ambush. She watched for a moment.
Canteens. They had water. Not much, but enough for what she planned.
She stood on top of the dune; eyes closed, and turned her head left and right. There was a burst of static each time Quill was to the right of her, and silence when he was to the left. After a moment's practice, she found she could use it to reliably tell if she was facing him or not.
Water. Quill. Revenge. Simple priorities.
She took her sword, and begun to walk towards the twelve reaming Sakaarans.
She wondered, idly, how many bodies you needed to spell out "Ker did this" on the ground.
Water. Quill. Revenge. Simple priorities: if you're ever in a survival situation, you set yourself simple priorities, and you always put water at the top of the list.
Gamora walked downhill.
Authors Note: because, let's face it, we all wanted to see Quill get viscously beaten to upbeat 70's pop. Again.
Sometimes I worry about this fandom.
In the Next Thrilling instalment, can Gamora save the team, Will Quill get his Walkman back? And why, exactly, is letting Rocket design stuff a very, very bad idea?
Tune in for Chapter five part two: Long Train Running.
