Two person Job: Gamora's Day

Part one: Office Politics.

Altair four turned out to be a surprisingly nice m class whose slow, lazy rotation, extreme permanent tilt at the polls and nearby red giant bathed of the planetary capitol in rose-coloured light for two weeks at a time, broken up with week long nights. Gamora had heard the term "dormitory settlement" applied to commuter towns on the outskirts of cites that practically emptied during the working day as people commuted into the city to work, and filled up again in the evening when people finished work, but the Altairians seemed to have perfected the idea. A glittering band of outlying settlements across the darker side of the planet, were people commuted each day, before returning to the near permanent day of the capitol to work. She checked her final approach vectors, and begun to bring the Milano in, keeping her face neutral as Quill, an appalling backseat driver, stood down the steps from the cockpit and shouted helpful advice.

Gamora ignored him, already mentally running through her plan for the Job as she verbal fended of his attempts to help. Briefly distracted by the shear oddity of Terrans in general and their temperature scales in particular, she went down to the quarters/medbay/storage locker she shared with Quill to change for the mission. Pausing, she considered whether or not she needed to pull the privacy screen she'd installed across her half of the room down: for such a famous womanising letch, Peter was actually quite gentlemanly around her on ship, possibly, she felt, because that the Milano was his private space and he understood that everyone needed somewhere they could just relax without that sort of pressure. He still flirted shamelessly, but she suspected that it was just force of habit, like Rocket's bomb building or Drax's knife-sharpening, and she didn't pick up any pressure from him, and weirdly he'd never done it on ship when it was just the two of them, so perhaps this was something he needed an audience for. Gamora was trained form an early age to read people, and she'd rapidly learnt that there was quite a gap between the extrovert showboating Starlord people saw out and about and the far more laid back Peter that existed on the Milano.

That said, Quill and Rocket had a tendency to engage in alpha-male posturing if left together unsupervised and she wasn't sure if it came to it that Quill wouldn't be the first of the two to try scent-making territory, so she pulled the screen closed just in case Quill felt the need to live up to his reputation for Rocket's benefit.

Although knowing Rocket he'd probably just shove Quill down the stairs, cast or no cast. She thought, pulling the screen shut. Not one to pull his punches, even in posturing.

Changing with the brisk efficiently of someone who has had to strip out of blood-stained clothing before the security detail arrives more than once, Gamora fell into that "shower ideas" half-trace unique to mundane and purely physical activities like changing or brushing your teeth or stashing a body inside a mattress and striping a room to remove forensic evidence, where your hands get on with it and the higher brain is free to wander as it will. As a trained professional, she used the time to run-over possible access and escape routes to the target in case things fouled up, make a final weapons check, and go over her fake credentials looking for inconsistences: the point where she started planning out the next weeks food shopping or the swearing as the subcompact maser got tangled in her bra and unceremoniously discarded in favour of the sleeve mounted garrotte barely breaking her flow.

She'd got as far as looking over the air-vent schematics and thinking perhaps suggest a chowder to Drax for mid-week when Quill interjected on her train of thought like a penny on the tracks immediately before the propane tanker stranded on a level crossing.

"Hey Gamora!"

"Yeah?" she called back, struggling into suit-pants before ditching then for a skirt..

"Is Death female?"

Gamora Froze up so suddenly that she nearly fell over. A whole gamut of emotions running across her face as the fear kicked in.

Panic.

How? How much does he know? How much does he suspect?

Anger.

How Dare he bring it up like this if he does know.

Blame.

Rocket. He knew my reputation at the Kyln, before we met. He must have told him.

Betrayal.

I opened up to him about my insomnia. I thought he was starting to open up to me too.

Confusion.

Why now, what's Rocket's play. What does he gain? How did he even find out about Thanos's little obsession?

And, as ever, the final application of common sense.

There is no way Rocket could know that. And Quill does ask stupid questions some times. It's a coincidence.

"Yes." She replied, trying very hard to keep emotion out of her voice.

"You sure?"

"Defiantly." She said, striating up her clothing to distract herself from herself. She glanced in the mirror for a second and stared unseeing as Thanos filled her mind, before starting up the steps trying not to feel shaken by it and wondering if her attire for the job was suitably business-like: she'd gone for a style that outer net searches had indicated were popular on this planet. It seemed both overly masculinised and somehow also sexualised to her, but that could be an advantage in distracting potential marks that she knew how to play when she needed.

Quill makes quite a good test in these scenarios. Like those finches they used to use in mines. She thought, cresting the stair.

"That's funny, because in English…Guh?"

Gamora caught Quill's expression and, completely miss-reading it, adjusted her clothing in a way that gave Quill a reason he'd find it difficult to rise from his chair other than three limbs in plaster, and said "You look shocked, you don't think this is too assertive, do you?" she asked, realizing that the suit had worked even better on Quill than she had hoped. By the looks of it my finch just fell off the perch.

"Gah… No, no. Powerdressing, we have that back home. I think the shoulder-pad look for women was due to come back in 'round about now anyhow. It… it looks good."

Rocket, however, snorted. "Yeah, because when you're in infamous daughter of the mad Titan Thanos absolutely no one will recognise you if you're wearing glasses." He said, but he was watching her in a far more quizzical manner than Quill, and Gamora reminded herself to smile and join Rocket in mocking Quill: it's didn't pay to let Rocket see when you were getting emotional. Not unless you wanted him to dig until he got to the bottom of it.

"Quit ruining this for me." Said Quill. "Besides, they may not even notice." He said, with complete honesty.

Rocket snorted. "There is that. Covering the exposed bionics with foundation should fool the casual observer. The concealed dagger as a hairpin is a nice touch." He said maintaining eye contact with Gamora as he worked. Rocket tilted his head very slightly, in a way that Quill wouldn't see, and Gamora realised that Rocket was making a conceited effort to fight down his natural controlling instincts and not pry into her private affairs. She guessed their awkward late night truce seemed to be making progress. She gave him a very slight nod of thanks, confident that Quill's gaze wouldn't go high enough to notice.

"Ceramic, neurotoxin coated, lacquered sheath, very classy." Said Rocket. He looked genuinely puzzled, and gave her a little you need to talk? Look she shook her head. Later. Outwardly she smiled.

"That you Rocket, I thought you'd like that. I've gone for a monomolecular garrotte in the left sleeve and a hidden recording device in the glasses as well, just in case."

That little moment over they ran though the usual pre-mission pleasantries: bickering, arguments, Drax's refusal to sensibly wear body armour, Rocket's refusal to sensibly avoid confrontation, Quill's refusal to sensibly, period, and as usual she left the ship wondering whether or not they needed some sort of rota to remind them whose turn it was to be the one responsible adult. Drax had vengeance issues, Rocket had control issues, Groot was a tree and Quill…. She sighed.

It's not like I don't have parenthood baggage of my own. I hope Quill gets over this Yondu stuff soon, before I'm carrying the whole team. She thought as she climbed down the lower airlock ladder and into the swimming-pool hot-wet-clean sensation of the city's sea air. Drax followed her down, surprising light on his feet for such a large man, and two off them scurried away from the backwash of the Milano as it blasted off, filling the clean Mediterranean sunset with the burnt-tin stink of repulsors. I hope the three of them are okay. She thought, before dismissing such a silly thought as beneath her: even wounded, stuff didn't happen to Starlord Rocket and Groot, Starlord Rocket and Groot happened to people.

Gamora stood up and took the time to straighten up her suit and fix her hair as she looked over the inland see and enjoyed the moment. She'd been trained to extensively clear her mind in times of stress, even before Thanos's had taken her from her homeland, and she found it easier to put aside worries or non-constructive feelings if she focused on a neutral but pleasant mental image, and you could do a lot worse than that sea view.

She had almost finished when she noticed the lack of any sort of banner between her and that magnificent view, and sighed.

"Great; it's one of those planets that doesn't believe in safety rails for some reason."

"Perhaps they still use rotary flyers, or some glider that launches off the pad." Said Drax. "That or the architect thought that the clifftop drop was dramatic." He added sourly.

Gamora snorted. "Yes, I suppose they could have been a little more inventive with such a good location." She said, turning her eyes to the building and shielding them with her hand. "Looks like there is a warehouse on the ground floor of that cube: I can see a loading bay. Are those tracks?" she asked, shielding her eyes from the sunset and squinting at the building. The bottom floor looked pretty industrialised for what was supposed to be a glorified cubical farm.

Drax said that they were, and he filled her in on a spectrum of other architectural incontinences that suggested that the building was not exactly as the Nova intel had suggested it was. She wasn't surprised: all they had been able to get was the original pre-construction architectural plans, and given he building had been put up quickly with 3D pre-formers and construction drones, any half-skilled operative with a familiarity with the software could change it: the building was so new that it hadn't yet been formally asses by the local fire-department, and they wouldn't legally have to revel changes in the internal layout until then. Nothing too suspicious as yet, she thought as the hover-car approached.

She was surprised to find how relaxed she felt working with Drax, given they had first met when he tried to kill her. Then again he had tied to kill Quill when they first met, so she supposed they couldn't judge as a family. Other than a mutual interest in killing her adoptive father, they had very little in common, but she guessed that was made it easy: there was no pressure to get on and each knew the other wasn't trying to get into their head. That and if he did something weird and embarrassing it was unintentional, unlike certain terran's she could name.

The cart rolled to a halt in front of them and her heart nearly stopped as she noticed the Kree officer in the front seat. A smiling Kylarian businessman stepped out to greet them. She reached forward and shook his hand eagerly and presented her credentials, very carefully not looking at the Kree: he was an accuser, judging by his uniform, but the diplomatic stripes indicated no longer in military service. A Military attaché she would guess, she noticed him staring at Drax, and decided to explain away the presence of the large armed man behind her.

"-and my bodyguard, as discussed."

"Charmed." Said the Kylarian, giving Drax the kind of two handed hand-on-shoulder handshake only ever used when someone is trying to sell you something. "Drid Wulkr, corporate hospitality at your service. May I be the first to welcome you to EIR industries!"

"I don't know. May you?" said Drax, unsure as to where his strange question was leading.

Gamora's composure momentarily flickered and she decided to suitably approach the Kree to fix Drid's attention on her and take the Kree's away from Drax.

"-and may I introduce Ro'aath the seeing, Kree military attaché."

"Charmed." Said Gamora, holding out a hand in greeting without meeting a beat.

The Kree made no effort to take her hand, but merely looked her up and down, before saying, in the court dialect.

"This idiot informs me that you are part of the trade delegation heading to my homeland. I hope you will maintain suitable decorum and find less ridiculous attire for the trip there. Why are your shoulder's so enlarged?"

"Prosthesis under the suit lining, an attempt to masculinise the silhouette to make females appear more male and integrate into the inherently sexist workplace environment this planet apparently has. For Kree court wear I was thinking the Tokorar verdansk with suitable Nova empire diplomatic core rank pins, worn of the left as befitting a civilian and foreigner."

The Kree nodded approvingly. "You speak the court dialect well." He replied in flawless Xandarian. "Where did you learn such a feat? Surely not on Xandar. Nova and the Xandarians lack the patience to properly respect a tongue. "

"Patience and tongues can be learned, and the Nova Empire is much much more than Xandar." She replied primly, siting in the cart as indicated by Drid. Drax pushed past Drid to claim the seat next to her, possibly just to avoid the Kree.

Drid drove them in. Gamora didn't have Drax's eye for it, but the landscaping at the garden looked rushed, as if it had recently been re-done.

As they entered the garden Ro'aath stopped verbaly sparing with Drax and turned right to her and said "I was surprised that no official announcement of your trade delegation was made in the press, nor was one handed to my embassy here. I could in fact find no trace of its authorisation by the appropriate bodies within the Nova establishment." He said, quite calmly, as if laying out points for consideration in a debate. "I could at first fathom no reason as to why such a delegation would be permitted to form, nor and means why its existence would remain unannounced. It was puzzling. I could come to only one rational conclusion…"

Gamora kept her body language neutral and her face politely puzzled, but she felt Drax shift next to her and ran-thought her combat drills in her head. Armoured Kree: don't try to piece the thorax armour, go for the carotid synapse left exposed by the open throat amour, throw the body of the cart, drid too, and run like fuck and hope Rocket can pick us up before the local cops do…

She and Ro'aath stared into each other eyes coldly for a moment, before he shrugged.

"But then I remembered I would need to apply the ridiculous Xandarian political dialectic of 'democracy' and it became clear; such a delegation would be both necessary to secure trade, and deeply unpopular with much of the public who would share Nova Prime Rael's objections to arming the Kree. It is necessary, but an electoral liability. I deduce then that your mission will not be officially announced until after you have conducted the appropriate negations with my government at a level to which I am not privy, possibly with the Standing Committee for Defence itself. Only after you have achieved some level of success will the existence of this delegation be announced to a hostile electorate, yes?"

Gamora smiled sweetly back "Exactly." She said.

They made it to the foyer of the office without anyone getting brutally killed. So far so good.

Gamora looked around, and, noticing the odd security arrangements and the fact that Drax was eyeing up Ro'aath's head like a melon he particularly wanted to smash, pulled him aside to give him a quiet word.

"Still no security." She muttered. He looked around carefully, and then nodded, his eyes hardly darting murderously to Ro'aath at all. . She took this as a good sign and pressed on.

"After the tour I'll get Drid to the management suites, try to hint that were' working for Nova and that they are on to them, ratchet up the tension, hope they panic and do something stupid. Try and make a nuisance of yourself on the tour, annoy the guy, put him under as much stress as you can before we get to the management suite, to soften him up."

"If you needed me to soften him up I could just break all of his bones, easily." Said Drax calmly. He noticed Gamora's shocked look. "A Joke." he said. "I am learning."

She snorted and adjusted her knife automatically, just in case it did come to combat. "It may yet come to that, but for now, keep to the plan." She said. Drax nodded. "And try not to antagonise the Kree. One wrong com's call from him and our cover is blown." She added, feeling remarkably like a schoolteacher trying to steer an awkward student though a museum room full of valuable breakables.

"I could break all his bones too." Said Drax. Gamora snorted and moved to catch up with Drid, not even wanting to work out if that was a joke or not. Drax followed.

After two hours, she was felling that perhaps letting Drax let rip would have been preferable to listening to Drid prattle on with his insufferable marketing speak with his eye glued firmly to her boobs. That said, she did derive some quiet amusement from watching Drax and Ro'aath share identical evil looks each time Drid said something and accidentally keep mirroring each others body language. They were really very similar people, it seemed. A fact that would have been far funnier were it not for the very real risk that they might murder each other.

Finally, they came to something interesting.

"And now the highlight of our tour: Our future weapons division. This is the real bread-and-butter of EMI, novel applications for novel technologies, taking the unknown," he said, approaching a pair of frosted glass doors and throwing them wide "- and unlocking it's potential." He said, pushing open the door into a long, low but very well lit room that stank of disinfectant, coffee and hard science. At least thirty researcher were working. God's alone knew what on, but it sure as hell wasn't what they had zoned the building for.

Gamora cooed enthusiastically, eyes gleaming.

"An actually research laboratory, how wonderful!" she said. Got you. She thought, looking around. This was all she needed. Payday. And no-one died. A new record.

Then again, what are they up to? If it's infinity stone related, we have a moral duty to find out. She thought, as she begun to lead Drid away from his own tour and mentally prepared which warrants and files and proof of how much trouble he was in with Nova she would show him first. Someone should still check this out…

Her eyes met Drax, and after a moment he nodded. Perhaps they got a better read on each other than she had thought.

"Perhaps my bodyguard could take in the rest of the tour and make some notes for me while we discuss this." She said. "If you could meet us in the office opposite promptly so we could conclude this?"

"Well, if you insist. " bleated Drid, as she lead him away and ensconced him in the glass-walled office next door . The sound and smell of the lab was instantly muffled, but she could still see shadowy figures moving thought the half-fogged glass., Drax and the Kree a clear head taller than any other.

She looked around the office. Rather than the usual fishbowl conference suite decorations of adverts for the latest product, there were a surprisingly good series of framed Holographs of a startlingly abstract starscape with a central galaxy, each viewed though a different coloured filter. White-yellow, blue-grey, deep red, orange, green, purple.

"So, of our product lines, which ones are you interested in?" asked Drid, retreating to the relative safety of a desk and no doubt fondly imagining his bonus. He was sure in for a disappointment before the end of the day, Gamora thought.

She was not wrong.

"All of them." she said, moving to the front of the desk and standing, not sitting, to maximise her height advantage.

Drid snorted with shock, and had to put down the info-glass he had just picked up with an idiotic grin. "Really? Wow, we I must say we had high hopes for your visit, but nothing so great. I must say, that in terms of a business opportunity we mostly sell via trade shows, but If I had known you'd take such an interest I'd have recommended far earlier that we focus on trade delegations!"

"Trade delegations? What trade delegation?" Asked Gamora, crossing her arms in front of her chest and taking a moment to enjoy the emotions that ran across his face. Panic, Anger, Blame, Betrayal, Confusion, And, as ever, the final application of common sense.

"This, this is a joke? Right? an office prank? Are you form corporate?"

"I'm afraid not. It's far worse than that. "

Drid 's face contorted with fear. "Oh god, I'm not on a reality Holo, am I?"

"I'm afraid not. What exactly is that Lab working on? Because I'm utterly sure that not legal under the zoning laws."

Drin looked waxy and was rather unsuitably mashing a hidden button under the desk silent alarm? She wasn't sure. "You're, you're an investigative journalist?"

"Sorry. Three strikes and you're out, to quote one of Peter's terran sayings. Peter Quill, also known as Starlord. It's funny really." She said. "Bentiot Ker tried dealing under the table and when he didn't play ball when Nova tried to find out what he was up to, he somehow got flattened under the Guardian's of the Galaxy's ship. That big nova base in orbit have wanted a reason to poke around here for a while now, and I would hate to have them clutter up your nice, stylishly bleak hallways or mess up your landscaping with their big boots, so why don't we keep them out of it and you can save yourself a lot of time and bother and just tell me what's going on, and that way you avoid nastiness and I don't have to get my good friend Drax the destroyer there to hose any more defence contractors of the front of our ship. Deal?" she said leaning in.

"Oh, and by the way, my eyes are up here. It's a push up bra, not a talking tree. You want something to ogle I can provide, but I warn you, his career gets a bit violent."

"i… I… I… I need to go and… er… I think I left the tap running somewhere and…. Look, I don't earn anywhere near enough for this, can I just go and have a quick conference with my colleagues?"

Gamora stepped to one side, gracefully indicating the door. "By all means." She said. The man fled with gratifying haste. Without even bothering to look back, she walked over and picked up his info glass, still logged on with his privileges, and added Rocket's back-door to the system. She then sat in his chair and waited for the panic to spread up their command structure. It should be informative.

As she sat there, she swivelled back and forth a few times, admiring the holos.

She paused.

One of the galaxies in the photos was Square.

She got up to look. A Dyson sphere or something like it? The next one, the red one, was a nebula as wispy as gas, insubstantial as ether, the green to one side more dense and rounded, but the white-yellow one was unmistakeably cuboid, set in its own starscape of orbiting lights.

She leaned in and squirted at the photo, before checking the room Yellow, blue, red, orange, green. Purple. She looked at the Holo again.

"Oh no. they're not stars, they're stones."

It was at this point she got distracted by the general alarm going off. She heard Drid';s voice and his silhouette moved in front of the frosted glass and shouted some sort of muffed objection: and objection, not a scream, he knew who he was talking too. Then the scream came along with a weird bouncing noise as something hit the glass that was repeated a couple of times before the screams stopped abruptly and the frosted glass shattered. It was tempered and polymer backed safety glass, so it stayed in place, it just spider-webbed into a mosaic and a foot long hole the size and shape of an athletics discus appeared in it, exactly where Drid's neck had been and a deranged hocky-puck, humming like a hornet trapped under a glass, smashed though and landed on the floor spinning dementedly and filling the room with the sound of it's drone before it's battery died. It was hard to tell if Drid was okay through the smoked and fractured glass, but the fountaining blood and the fact his head silhouette visibly fell of his silhouettes shoulders before he slumped down would normaly indicate a no.

A few moments later the woman Gamora recognised from Drax's past, Isha, opened the door and swept the room with a stunner raised. Two Drones appeared by her, one at each shoulder as she searched the room and, cautiously, peered under the desk and conference table that were the only furniture. She looked sideways at where an air-vent hand been ripped open, swore, and ran out of the room again, scream at someone to check the vents.

A full minute later, when the shouting had moved to a different part of the building, Gamora carefully eased herself down from the corner over the doorway. She examined the dead drone for some time without touching it and, after one last scan of the room and quick check to make sure she still, had her hairpin knife and rocket's plug in beacon, walked out the door after Isha, leaving only the suits ridiculous shoulder pads behind her.

Just another days work.

Awesome Mix tape: 9 to 5 Dolly Parton