Memories: growing pains.

"Groot, come on buddy you can lick this, Groot, don't you dare go quiet on me now, I frickin' need you pall Groot, come on, knock off this BS, we need to walk out of here and stick one too this computerised fuck, come on buddy! Groot! Groot!"

Quill sighed. "Rocket, Dude…"

"He's not gone!" Snared Rocket, turning so quickly tears went flying, one striking Quill a good ten paces away.

"He's not gone! I only just got him back! He's not fucking gone!"

"You only just got him back?" asked the Collector. "Ah, regeneration after the incident on Xandar. Well, that must have been quite a re-leaf."

Rocket, clearly in no mood for dad jokes, snarled and leapt in the vague direction of the binky light, teeth bared and paws outstretched as if seriously considering throttling a computer-program. He didn't even seem to remember that he had a gun. Or that each and every time he took a step-


The phalanges hurt, and his sternum ached and he had to swing his tail back and forth to balance, but as he pulled himself up by the wall…. Subject 89P13 took his first tottering steps into the world.

"I… I can walk." He said, supplied with himself.

"Release the wall, subject. We need to test your balance."

89P13 paused, braced, muscles burning, and then pushed off the padded wall, tottering unsteadily over to a medical cart that he used to stabilise himself as he walked along. "I'm waking, Doctor!"

"Release the cart, P."

Tears of joy rolled down subject 89P13's face. "I can walk!"

A researcher reached over, gently put a steadying hand on the cart, and knocked 89P13 down with a ferocious backhanded slap.

"Walk on your own, you little gargoyle! I need to record your gait for Dr K, so back to the corner and this time do it right!"


The memory of the slap floored Rocket, and Quill and Gamora both winced, each reflexively raising a hand to their cheeks.

"Temper, temper." Muttered the Collector bot. "that step wasn't even in the direction of the doors. You're doing yourself no favours."

Rocket lay on his side, pushed himself up with one elbow and begun rubbing at his cheek, quietly seething, and Quill honestly didn't want to speak for quite some time, because Rocket looked about ready to kill someone and he wanted to let the moment pass before they tried speaking to him again.

"You okay?" he said, after a while.

"Never better." Said Rocket, not taking his eyes of the blinky light, and he stood up, waves of cold fury pouring off him.

"Let's finish this." He said. And Quill and Gamora both nodded in turn.

"Yeah, sorry to be party-poopers Tivan-bot-thing, but I've got to say that not only is your little shindig a real sausage fest, I mean invite more than one girl, that's just a given, but also there's no booze, no music and the entertainment sucks. So, seeing as none of us want to hang out at your slumber-party any more. I'm walking out, and you know what? I reckon that if I can get out, I Can get help and come back and save the others, and yeah,. I don't want you to see my most painful memories, but you know what? at no point did anyone open up my chest and poke around in there, so I guess that means I'm going to be the one heading for the e door now."

"Oh, by all means." Said the voice. Quill nodded, and was about to take a step forwards, when the robotic voice, and Quill swore there was no other possible word for it, tittered.

Quill froze. "Okay, that was needlelessly creepy."

"Just take the Damn step Quill." Muttered Rocket, glaring angrily at Groot. "Were already down two people and like you say, you're memories are probably the least fucked up out of us."

He looked to Gamora, who nodded.

"Do what you need to do peter, we'll be okay.

"Yeah.. Somehow not feeling okay right now." He muttered, putting his foot down.


The drill bit started whirring an inch above Peter's eye.

"Woah! Dude, not my memory, what the shit is this?"

"Oh, I said that each step a Guardian took would cost the Guardian's a memory, I never said it had to be from the Guardian who took the step, and besides: I've established I'll change the rules as and when it suites me. Rocket and Gamora promised each other to, as they put it, do the wetwork. Take hits on your behalf. It would seem churlish not to give them the chance to demonstrate their commitment to that promise. And besides, I think we were just starting to get genuine emotions out off the two of them.

"With a fricking Drill?" muttered Quill, desperately trying to ignore the sensation of being strapped down to a table. "This isn't Dallas dude, you can extract thing without using industrial drilling equipment. Of shit, this is another Rocket memory, isn't it? And why does this memory out of all of them have to be first-person viewpoint?"

"Actually, I don't recognise this one…" said Rocket. "Unless it was from before they fucked with my memory… too many times strapped to a table, difficult to keep track of it all when someone's accidentally lost their contact lens in your brain. That took them a while to sort out, I can tell you… I was smelling fucking colours for weeks."

"I think it's mine." Said Gamora, sounding sick. "Orbital implants, by the looks of it." she said, sub-consciously rubbing at her eye.

"You sure? Looks like overkill to me, you could use frickin' micro-dermal laser ablation, scoop the eyeball out and just pop the implant and eye back in… no need to mill out that much bone. It'd be quicker." Said Rocket.

"But less durable, Thanos tended to over-engineer: nothing too good when it came to his daughters." Muttered Gamora, darkly.

"Oh that's nice." Said Quill. "By the way guys there is a fucking drill bit coming at our eye right now! How are you two that okay with this?"

"Meh, technically it's a milling bit, and eyeballs don't actually have pain receptors, it'll only hurt when they hit the bone around the eye-"

"Not helping Rocket!"

"Whoa, is that a silicone carbine drill bit. Fancy. That'll go thought bone with almost no friction, like butter. See, Thanos has all the nicest stuff, I mean do you have any idea what I'd have given for the skeletal work they did on me to be done with a silicon carbide…"

"Shut up Rocket." said Quill and Gamora at the same time, then, just as the drill bit was millimetres from the eye, and they all felt the body on the table twitch, and a voice said. "Dad… I'm scarred…."

There was a re-assuring pressure of a parent hand squeezing the subjects, and Thanos's face came into view, he was standing just behind the robotic arm with the drill-bit, leaning over the table.

"It'll be okay Gamora." He rumbled. "This will make you strong. And I'll be right here for you…" he said, as the drill bit plunged down towards the eye.


Quill swore and staggered as the memory abruptly ended in a flash of pain.

"NOT! COOL! No, I was going to be selfless and take all the steps myself and take the damage for the others but oh no, we' can't have that, can we! You've got to suddenly throw that sort of shit at us! I'm starting to work out why you collect stuff, Tivan, or robo Tivan or whoever, it's because you've got no friends! You're basically the galaxy's richest crazy cat lady!"

"Ahh, my true organic self has his motives, and I am not a liberty to discuss them, and I am, regrettably, just a holding program, designed to prevent valuable samples from escaping before they can be properly curated. I'm doing the best I can with what I have to keep you here and to… pacify you suitably for long-term storage. I'm starting to suspect that my humour module may have sustained some degradation over time, but you can't deny that it's effective, I've already pacified forty percent of you for curation."

"Yeah well, the rest of us might have something to say about being curated." Muttered Quill.

"Give me time. So, who wants to go next?"

"Question: why the fuck does it matter who goes next if you're going to throw random memories at us? If it could be anyone's memory, what difference does it make?" asked Rocket.

"None whatsoever." Said Robo-Tivan, happily.

"You have to admire just how simply that robs you of any motivation to move or any face sense of agency you might have still had."

"Yea, well, admire this:" said Rocket, flicking him the bird. "Sorry, bub, but I ain't taking instruction on agency from some flickery lights.

"Really?"


The subject sat naked in its enclosure, watching the lights, paws hovering eagerly over the rings.

Don't think about how thirsty you are. Don't think about how thirsty you are. Don't think about how thirsty you are….

The light blinked, and the there was a loud beep and the holographic timer suddenly appeared, counting the seconds since the exercise started.

89p13's paws moved in a blur. There were three rods, and on the first rod 8 rings of different sizes stacked neatly, each smaller than the one beneath it. He was trying to move one ring at a time from one rod to another to move the whole stack, in correct size order, from the far left rod to the far right Rod.

He'd already worked out that the minimum number of moves you could beat the exercise in was 2 to the power of n minus 1, where n was the number of disks. This was an eight disk stack: 255 moves. He had to beat three minutes, 255 moves, 180 seconds, one move every 1.416 recurring seconds…

Don't think about how thirsty you are. Don't think about how thirsty you are. Don't think about how thirsty you are…. Forty, forty one, forty two moves,

He'd got this down to muscle memory, near enough. Tiny paws moving in a blur, panting and grunting and biting his tongue in quiet desperation and he tried, tried so hard to make the moves he needed too…

Don't think about how thirsty you are. Don't think about how thirsty you are. Don't think about how thirsty you are…. One ninety four, one ninety five, one ninety six moves…

Eventually, after a small ages, he slammed the last ring in place and rotated the board back around so the rod on the left was now on the right and it was re-set and ready to play again.

Panting, he starred at the red light above the game for a long, long time, panting and begging mutely.

That was under three minutes, surely. I saw the counter. It was under three….please, oh please…

There was a second loud beep, and the red light went green.

Gasping with naked relief, 89P13 leapt at the polished steel water-bowl in the corner, sticking his snout in greedily.

The electric shock flung 89P13 across the enclosure, slamming it into the opposite wall, and burning it's delicate nose and tongue. The thing yowled and chittered for a moment, before stropping, suddenly making excess nose was malcompliance, that was how it had gotten into this mess in their first palace.

"the… the light was green. I saw it, the light was green!" hit wailed, striking he floor of the enclosure with a tiny paw, struck by how unfair that was.

Beep.

89P13 looked up horrified. "No… no!"

The timer was back up, and the red-light was on. This time, he had only two minutes thirty.

Tears streaming down it's face, 89P13 scuttled back to the towers of Hanoi on all fours, and started desperately moving disks.

One move, two moves, three moves…Don't think about how thirsty you are. Don't think about how thirsty you are. It won't happen again if you don't think about how thirsty you are. Don't think about how thirsty you are…


The memory ended, and Quill gestured to the others.

"Rocket, are you okay?"

"Fine. Peachy. Willing to kill, still trapped in a cage playing stupid games, but just peachy."

"Cool. Oaky, Robo has thrown the rules out of the window, we're down two people already and I for one am getting really sick of this shit, so let's just tank this: one step in front of the other, all of us just try and get to the door as quickly as we can, and no fancy plans. Agreed? "

"Sure, what have we got to frickin' loose?" muttered Rocket, glancing angrily at Groot sitting and shivering to himself. "But I get first crack at this guy's circuit-boards when we get out of here. Deal?"

"You're welcome to. Gamora."

The assassin paused, and then nodded. "Okay, Peter, let's do this."

"Hi five?" asked Peter, holding out a hand. The other two, each several paces form him paused and stared at him. "Never mind, just feeling a little nervous, is all. Okay… he said, taking a step forwards. "Showtime."


Gamora stepped down from the shuttle cautiously into the main training-hall on Sanctuary, looking around.

A huge hand gently touched her shoulder, and she filched before remembering who it was.

"Gamora, do not be frightened." Rumbled Thanos. "This place was built for you and those like you. You are safe here, my daughter."

"I… there are so many strangers!"

Thanos smiled at that.

"Strangers? No. There are only your sisters here…Nebula, Rhia''?" he said, calling out.

Two girls sparring with shock-sticks in a floating combat-ring stopped their fight, and looked down. one was around Gamora's own age, panting and sweating, shaven-bald and with a perfectly normal blue skin tone, the other taller and older, with pinkish skin and shockingly dark-red hair that she flicked out her hair with a strange , unthinking gesture. After a moment both hooped down of the floating combat ring, and landed, dropping to one knee before Thanos of the stone flags of the floor. Thanos idly gestured for them to rise, dismissing the formalities.

"Girls, this is Gamora, you new sister. Show her around the palace and take her to physical conditioning. Nebula, she is your new training partner, Rhia', you are her mentor. Take good care of her and show her every kindness. Do not disappoint me."

"Yes father, muttered the two girls, before Thanos nodded and, taking the time to give Gamora one last hug, strode of on some task or another.

The blue-skinned girl circled Gamora a few, as if sizing her up, before Gamora stuck out a hand in greeting, startling her slightly.

"Ummm, Hi. My name's Gamora."

The girl looked at the hand, suspired, as if she'd never seen one before, but then she tucked one of their combat sticks under her arm and took the hand and shook it, warmly enough.

"Nebula. Advanced close combat training. If you need anything don't bother going thought that worm the proctor, I can get it for you."

"The proctor?" asked Gamora, confused.

"The Other." Said the taller Girl, who Gamora was realising must have been nearly twice her age. "Father's second in command. He sees to our material needs here, after a fashion. If you need medical care or food or weapons he's okay, but trying to get decent clothing or toiletries off the man is a nightmare. Father is generous with gift, thought, and we've got a pretty good black market in bartering them sorted out."

"ummm… thank you?" said Gamora, feeling he most awkward first day of school vibe ever.

Both other girls laughed.

"Don't worry Gammy, you'll get used to it." said the taller girl walking away, Gamora hurried after nervously, clutching her small bundle of things.

"Um, my name isn't Gammy…"

"So Gammy." Said Nebula. "Where did father find you? What species are you?"

Gamora mentally recoiled, trying to catch up. "I… I… Zen Whoberi, my planet was attacked. The Church of universal truth… "

Rhia' and Nebula shared a meaningful look at that, and Rhia' started talking in a gentle, breezy tone that Gamora at the time assumed was meant to re-assure her.

"Yes… here, it's okay. Look, we're all orphans here, and nearly as hundred different species" she said, pointing. "Kree, Skrull, Badoon, Centaurian, Aaskvarian… oh for goodness sakes Johanne, put the tentacles away or I'm telling dad… god she's such an exhibitionist… carbonic a-morph, replicant, duplicant, Hork-Bajir.. don't mind her, she's actually really nice, duplicant… again… xenomorph, Thylacineowray, Da', Kestal, Hawk-person, duck, Xandarian,…"

She shrugged, and indicated Nebula and herself "Half-Luphomoidand, I'm an Inhuman. Father takes in pretty much any orphan girls he encounters. It's okay, don't feel alone or left out. No matter what you were before, once father takes you in, you're one of us now."

One of us thought. But I still miss my home.

"I…. thanks." She said, and the tall inhuman stopped, and knelt down before her. "Hey, hey Gammy, it's okay: you'll get used to it all. It's okay to still miss your home." She said, running a hand past Gamora's head and smoothing her hair down without actually touching it, and it was only then that Gamora realised that she hadn't said that last bit out loud.

Rhia' smiled. "Ah, sorry. I'm a psionic, I should have mentioned: all inhuman have unique powers, mine are limited telekinesis and telepathic reading."

"And showing off, said Nebula, and while it was said in a jokey manner, there was just a trace of envy there. Rhia' rolled her eyes.

"Yes… things can get a little competitive here, and father can play favourites. You'll get used to it." she said, walking Gamora along to the dormitories. "Here, I'll help you get settled in and then we can start with some basic exercises and… oh gods no, not now…" said Rhia, freezing up.

Gamora leaned past her too look.

Thanos, father, was negotiating with a tall alien of a species that Gamora didn't recognise in the middle distance, one who seemed to be made out of frost and wearing a loin-cloth. While the frost-person showed father a holo of other frost-people breaking into some sort of vault, and being driven back by a walking metal suit that spat fire, the man seemed to be making his apologies to father.

"That dammed glove again…" she heard Rhia mutter. "They failed to get it…."

And quite suddenly, father grabbed the frost-person by both arms, and kicked them in the chest, snapping both shoulders back and throwing them to the ground, and while Rhia winced and nebula looked away as Father started to beat the person to death, Gamora suddenly found she couldn't focus on it. It was drifting away in her mind.

After all.A voice that didn't; sound like her own said. It's not like anything father does could ever be bad. She thought, rubbing sub-consciously at the first of her body implants, the perception filter mounted just behind her ear.

She smiled sweetly at Rhia' "So… where do I bunk?" she asked innocently, as her new father ripped out the frost-giants frozen heart with his bare hands, and she didn't' notice that or the look Nebula and Rhia' shared.


Quill blinked. "Whoa Gammy... that's messed up."

"I don't want to talk about it Quill I… look it was hard for me to focus okay? Thanos had some pretty powerful tech and abilities designed to prevent his daughters ever noticing or questioning that what he did was evil or bad.

"Yeah, I guessed, but talk about de-sensitised to violence. What did he do, play the Evil Dead on repeat or paly D&D endlessly until you went psychotic Dr Radecki style?"

"No Peter. He used a Perception filter. It's hard to explain, but you know that 'Not my problem?' feeling you get sometimes when you see bad things happen to other people?"

"Clearly not otherwise I wouldn't be in a giant severed head in space fighting other people battles, but I've heard of it, yeah."

"Well, it's basically a weaponised one of those. You still see the stuff, it's just suddenly very hard to focus on it or pay attention to it or do something about the problem, and it slips form your mind."

"Like laundry?" asked Quill. Gamora sighed.

"Yeah, I'm all sympathetic and shit, but we still need to get out of here, so if you two are quite done…" said Rocket, meaningfully wiggly a foot at them. "Brace up… here comes the next memory."

Quill and Gamora looked to each other, and nodded.

Rocket took a step forwards.


Gamora ducked under the armature as it swing at her, the barbs whistling by her head, and blocked Nebula's shock-stick with her own and turned her body to avoid the second thrust, shifting her footing cautiously on the thin wooden bar she was balancing on. In the year she had been there she'd sparred with Nebula most every day, and her bunk was next to Nebula's, between hers and Rhia's. She liked Nebula more than most any of her other sisters, exempt perhaps Rhia'.

She flicked her eyes sideways to Rhia, standing with Father and the proctor a cluster of the older sisters, watching the combat assessments. Father leaned forwards on his throne, eyes missing nothing, and smiling faintly. She flicked her eyes to Rhia, standing with her hand gently on the back of one of the other elder sisters, a Shand with tusks the size of Gamora's fore-arms who even under all of the fur must have weighed a thousand kilograms. Rhia's eyes flicked sideways in pay attention gesture, and Gamora snapped her focus back to the fight just in time to block one of Nebula's sticks with two of her's and duck the second one .

"Am I boring you gammy?" joked Nebula, switch her stance so her left foot was not facing Gamora and her blow were coming from the other direction. Gamora adapted quickly, not shifting her own stance because she knew if she did, nebula without go for her feet and trip her.

"Just bored of you trash-talking me every single session." She riposte, flicking a shock-stick at her eyes, before they both had to jump the arm swinging past at shin-height.

"At least come up with some new insults."

"Sorry. Forgot seeing Shandi made you envious." Said Nebula, grining good naturedly and indicating their tusked sister. "It must hurt you to see people with less prominent teeth." She said, knowing that Gamora had only just got used to her new braces and was still sore, and launching a flurry of attack driving Gamora back along her pole, wobbling over the vertigo inducing drop beneath them.

"What about you?" she said, grunting to keep the flurry of blows back. "Jealous to see someone who actually has hair?" she asked.

"Oh, low blow Gammy." Joked Nebula, pushing her farther back.

"No… but this is." Said Gamora, flicking out a stick under Nebula's guard, and catching her around the navel. She shrieked with shock and leapt a pace back, and Gamora suddenly pressed forward, making her attack, moving quickly, switching her leading foot, and then back again as she launched attacks for un-expected angles, and drove her sister back and back, her face growing wide with surprise and she focused all she had on blocking, and then reversing the flow of blows, taking all that Gamora had to throw at her, and then going on the attack herself…

… and getting smacked in the chest by the swinging arm she forgot to duck as she focused on her sister's attack and tumbling to the hard stone below, only being saved from falling out into the asteroid field around Sanctuary by the force-field below her.

"A-ha ha!" said Thanos, standing up and clapping, huge, slow booming claps that the rest of the sisters watching politely echoed, or at least those with the appropriate limbs did.

"Excellent, excellent. A classic use of misdirection. Well done Gamora! Come!" he gestured, calling her over. She put down her sticks at her side, and bowed, formally, before walking over the swinging arm she was standing on, stepping over the other beams as they swung past her. As she did, she glanced to nebula. She was sitting below, looking up with surprise as Gamora walked over to the throne, and she didn't.

That made Gamora feel bad, actually, but she tried not to show it. This was an important day, and she mustn't ruin it for father. So she did what father had taught her, and pushed the feelings down, and stepped calmly off the end of the arm as it swing past the throne, and bowed before it.

"Excellent, Excellent Gammy!" he said, ruffling her hair good naturedly from his throne.

"A near perfect final combat assessment, and your scores in other areas are exemplary child!"

"Thank you Father. "

"ahh, I can see my faith in you was not misplaced. Name your reward and you shall have it! I can see you being most valuable an asset in the wars to come… Nebula, stop sulking and pick yourself up, you must not spoil this for your sister." He turned to Rhia'. "Do you think that they are ready?"

Both Gamora and nebula held their breath, and a whole spectrum of motion flickered across her face, dominated, Quill and the other spectators noticed, by sadness and fear.

"I… No father. I think they are both too young."

"Humm…." muttered Thanos. "Perhaps… perhaps… but soon, no doubt. That will be all." He said, a portal opening in the ceiling above them and his throne starting to ascend thought it. "Soon." He said.

Gamora squawked with Joy, and ran to hug her sisters "Rhia, he said I'm nearly ready!"

Rhia' smiled sadly "Yes. Yes he did." But Gamora wasn't listening.

"Nebula, did you hear, he thinks we're nearly ready!" she said, running up to Nebula as she waked out of the combat room bad-temperedly striping of her helmet and padding

"Yeah, brilliant sister. I'm so happy for you." She said, scowling as she pushed past Gamora's attempt to hug her, and stormed off to the shower block.

Gamora stood there for a moment, looking at her sisters discarded helmet, and realizing that for the first time, she had come between Nebula and Father.

And then she shrugged.

Nebula would get over it, she was sure.


The memory ended, and Gamora sighed. "Well, I'm picking up a theme here." she said.

"Hey, I got shit memories thrown at me too you know." Muttered Rocket. "But yeah, I did kinda provoke him both times: he's gunning for you now."

"Off Couse he is." Snapped Gamora. "I'm closest to the doorway other than Peter, and he'll have to detour around Groot to make it. I'm the biggest risk of one of us getting out of this stupid trap." She said, glancing up. She was within six paces. "I'm going for it."

"Be careful." Said Quill. "If he is gunning for you, this could get nasty."

Gamora nodded. "It's okay Peter: I can take nasty." She said, taking an athletic leap that took her two steps closer to the exit.


The war between Nova and the Kree had raged for ten centuries, and in that time as the tides of battle and influence and politics had ebbed and flowed between the two superpowers, a whole slew of nations and worlds and empires along the long and contested border between the two had made a pretty good living off being professional client states: selling their power to whichever of the two of their larger neighbours would pay the most for it at the time, and growing powerful off the two because if either moved against them it would bring the other in with their full force. The more successful of these soon grew to be considerable powers in their own right and the largest of them could now actually maintain a position of armed neutrality, needing and giving nothing to or from either of the two combatants anymore: Spartax alone had become the third greatest power in this part of the galaxy simply by continually threatening to join the war and deliver a deceive blow to one side or other but never quite actually managing it.

But for each successful border world that played the great game and won, there were ten that got too greedy, or were too slow or to cautions to capitalize on options, or who managed to really piss off Nova or the Kree or both and discovered why they were superpowers, or who simply got overtaken by natural disaster or the other border systems and fell to get picked off by their fellow vultures riding the winds of fate.

Coravinius was one of those worlds, and the vultures were circling.

Quill groaned as he saw the single gigantic structure of the citadel rising up over the blasted and ravaged core of the planet and sticking out of the smog like turd that just wouldn't flush. The planet looked like a giant prune, the outer rocky mantle striped off when its star had gone nova eons before and left the metallic heart of the planet as bare and exposed as roadkill, orbiting the sullen ember of the red dwarf. Life had returned, the deep canyons settled by hardy terraformers bent on harvesting it's mineral wealth in times long forgotten, at least until the pollution from the adamantium mines had poisoned what little atmosphere they'd been able to establish and forced the population to retreat to the protective domes and spires of the citadel, a structure so heavily defended it should have been able to resist anything the galaxy could throw at it.

Should have. Even hiding behind the best walls in the universe, you still needed to be able to eat, and with the biosphere fucked, that meant grain imports.

"Oh god, the siege of Coravinius." Sad Quill. " I remember this Yondu got us involved in this mess and we were lucky to get out alive again. I mean, we got paid so no-one complained, but it was a close run thing. I was still a kid, musta been twelve I think, but even I could tell some folk in our crew were less than happy with how it panned out. " he narrowed his eyes suspiciously as he glanced sideways at Gamora.

"People never exactly worked out what happed here… talk was the political situation only went downhill as fast as it did because Thanos was involved somehow."

"Yes." Said Gamora non-committedly, before sighing. "Yes: but to be fair," she said gesturing past her younger self at the blizzard of hostile contact items ridding in orbit. "It wasn't like this situation was ever going to end well." She said as the small vessel they were in gilded past a warship the size of a small city.

Quill had to admit she had a point.

The Faith-Fleet of the Church of Universal Truth had broken the systems outer defences and entered orbit two weeks ago to find the Spartori and the Badoon already there, having arrived as soon as it had become clear that the last productive adamantium mine had run dry and the Kree had subsequently withdrawn their protection from the planet, and as the jackals strutted and postured over the choicest chunks of the kill, and lesser scavengers waited their turn, all the parasites were fleeing their host before it kicked it's last: ship after ship trying to flee before the final blow fell, and requiring expressive mercenary protection to run the blockade the Badoon and Spartori had thrown up around the system.

With all the mercenaries busily wheeling and dealing and looting what they could, and the planetary Council of Electors desperately trying to decide which of the three would-be conquers would give them the best terms in surrender, and what the response by either of the two superpowers would be to this, there were opportunities presented that would not be repeated for some time, and in the buzzing cloud of merc's and bounty hunters swarming around the system, no-one would notice the Void-flayer until it was too late.

Or that was the plan anyway, young Gamora thought, as the tiny stealth ship ploughed on towards its target.

Rhia' leaned in. "Are you two sure you're ready for this?"

Nebula looked up from her shock-sticks and sneered. "I was ready a year ago, sister. If it wasn't for father's favouritism I'd have had a solo mission by now-"

Rhia' silenced her with a glance, and flicked an errant strand of Silvery hair back. "Gammy?" she asked.

Gamora felt sick to her stomach, but nodded anyway.

"You don't have to take the wetwork, you know." Rhia' said, not unkindly. "You can run extraction..."

Gamora froze up for a moment, and then shook her head.

"No, this gives us our highest probability of breaching their security. Based on the intel, I'm the right age and body type…" she tried not to even think about that. "… and besides," she stopped, and looked coolly into her older sister's eyes. "I need to do this: it's not just that it's the right thing to do. This one's personal."

The tall inhuman signed, and flicked a strand of hair out of her eyes with a brief burst of psionic power.

"It's never personal unless you make it, little sister." She said, glancing out of the void-flayer's viewports.

Gamora wasn't sure how to respond to that, so she put it out of her mind and focused on the mission in front of her, pushing all her thoughts and feelings and self down deep inside like father had taught her. She glanced out of the viewport as they came in on the target.

"And we're sure of the intel?" asked Nebula, more to be contrary than because she doubted it, Gamora suspected.

Rhia' shrugged.

"The Church of Universal Truth always try to convert a world before they attack: the Badoon are just here to pillage what they can and the Spartori have their own objectives unrelated to the rest: the Council of Electors will strike a deal and convert to the worship of the Magus to save their own necks, because neither the Badoon or the Spartori are here to offer terms. They've met the Spartori and Badoon representatives to stall them, but there's a Grand Inquisitor and delegation here, has been for ten days, proselytising and negotiating at the highest level. They'll go to the church."

"No. they won't." said Gamora, sheathing her sword as their ship plummeted downward towards the citadel.

Nebula frowned, trying to ignore the increasingly disturbing whispering sounds as their tiny ship's void engines warmed up. "Why don't the Spartori and Badoon just attack? If it's so clear that the Council will collaborate with the Church, why not go in before they get the chance? They were here first."

Rhia' indicated the trio of capital-ships riding in geosynchronous orbit over the citadel. "The Council aren't stupid. One they realised the Kree were withdrawing their protection, they hired the best merc's they could to buy time to weasel their way into one alliance or other. Those aren't just capital ships, they've also got the cargo capacity of a heavy merchantman, repair bays for fighters and transports and life support for thousands of troops. A whole fleet rolled into one."

Nebula frowned, surprised. "Privateer war-junks. The base of operations for a free company of some size."

"For three free companies of some size." Corrected Rhia'. "And formidable reputations: the Grey Company, the Solarwindblown, and the Bridgebreakers. Lesser groups as well: the Thousand Blades, the Thirty-Century Landsknecht, the Ravengers, dozens more."

Rocket groaned when he heard those names "Shit me, I used to run with some of those units. "

"Don't tell me you were here too?" asked Quill. The racoon shrugged.

"Siege of Coravinius? Pffft. Before my time. This would have been when Lady ran the Greys and Dancer and Wiskey-j the Bridgebreakers, the glory days for both companies. I wouldn't join until after they were long-gone, and no office to the Ravenger's Quill, but you shouldn't have been tangling with guys of this calibre."

"Tell me about it, this went south pretty fast, and I'm starting to guess why…" he said as Nebula waved a hand dismissively, clearly no more impressed by the mercenaries that Rocket was.

"Idiots with Gauss-flayers, badly-dressed fops with monomolecular Zweinhaders and gap-toothed pirate scum. No doubt they've already started looking the positions they were sent to defend." She sneered, strapping herself into the grav-couch.

Rhia' looked at the tactical display "That and offering to rescue VIP's for a fee only to sell them to the enemy..." She said, while both Quill and Rocket nodded knowingly and Rhia' studded the tactical displays.

"…But they will fire on anyone who interrupts their looting, and the three main free-companies are even more defensive of their booty, they may be stealing everything not bolted down, but they're buying time for the Citadel as they do so, like they were hired too. The situation is still fluid, no one group has enough control to move in yet without it turning into a fire-fight that befits no-one except father." She looked up. "So let's start a shooting war. You both understand your roles?"

Nebula and Gamora nodded.

"Good." Rhia' grinned. "Hold on to something, I'm sure you remember from training that the transition between real-space and void can be somewhat… jarring." She said, just as Gamora realised that the humming sound she'd been hearing build for some time had reached a particularly painful frequency, and then there was a ripping sound and the taste of coconuts, for some reason, as the ships void-engines ripped a hole in the universe and plunged into the darkness beyond.

Gamora looked around, awestruck. With so many ships cluttering the skies and with the citadel's force-fields still up there was no actual way into the citadel that its inhabitants didn't control: the space-elevator at the tip of the citadel had fallen the week before in an argument over expenses, the Bridgebreakers living up to their name again, and although the spire of the citadel still pierced the Kármán line of this planet's atmosphere like the head of a zit, it was too heavily shielded for drop-pods, assuming one could get though without someone noticing and taking a pot-shot at it. The ships in orbit could still teleport in and out, but only if they had the shield's frequency, and given it switched every few nanoseconds, teleportation required perfect timing and the co-cooperation of the citadel. The besieger's ships were well shielded themselves, and no-one was talking their way onto one with the situation this unstable. Most of the conventional insertion methods were out.

So that just left ripping a hole into the marcoverce, the gap between universes, moving to the co-ordinates of your target, and trying to punch your way back into the right universe. The void-flayer had been built very early on in the history of the universe to do just that, a last ditch effort in a dying race's futile war against the Celestials according to some, or a relic of the dark-elves war with Asgard according to others. Thanos's wouldn't say which, or where he'd got it from. He just smiled knowingly if you asked. Either way, it remained the only ship in existence that could pass thought any shield at will. Judging by small bomb-bay, it looked like it was meant to drop a munition directly into an enemy bridge.

Or deliver an infinity stone to a planet's surface. Realised Quill with a jolt of paranoia, taking in the bizarre effects off traveling un-shielded thought the macroverse.

As a ship it left a lot to be desired, thought Gamora as the walls of the ship faded and bizarre images, past, future and things that were neither flashed in front of her eyes. She struggled to ignore them. In theory the void engine worked fine: it was just a pity that the ship drove two-thirds of the crews that ever used it insane, and even with the training to resist the bizarre side effects of stepping however briefly outside the universe, and its re-entry accuracy was plus or minus five kilometres, assuming you even re-materialised in the same time-line you started in (Gamora had no desire to see that zombie timeline from training ever again, nor the one with the big Green Guy with horns). Even aiming at a ship the size of a Kree dreadnought, you'd be lucky if you re-materialised inside the right ship, let alone close enough to the bridge to do damage with its tiny pay-load.

A hundred-kilometre tall archology, on the other hand, was a little harder to miss.

Closing her eyes, Gamora snarled and tried to blot out the images that bombarded her mind: her parents, a pond full of dead fish, a steel tree exploding, an alleyway and grasping hands, the viewport of a minding pod as she burst through it into the cold of space, a blare of unfamiliar music, a glowing stone, the stink of burred fur and an animal snarl, a blood-stained red leather coat and the sound of her own tears, Thanos's grinning face. She closed her eyes and blotted them out. Past, future or neither, you didn't focus on them or you went mad, that was the second most important thing after remembering to anticipate re-entery to the materium-

The Void-flayer re-entered the universe prematurely catching everyone off-guard about a quarter of the way down the citadel, punching its way through a habitation block and a series of shops until it hit the reinforced concrete of the local deck between a sewage plant and a heat sink. Gamora screamed as the secondary inertial buffer blew, whipping them all forwards against their crash-webbing, but the main buffer held so no-one got more than bruised. Rhia' was the first up, getting to the control lectern and checking the ship was still intact enough to get them out again and that the engines weren't going to go critical and cook them all before they got out of here.

"Gods, I hate this ship." Muttered Rhia' slamming her palm down on a particularly annoying flashing alarm to shut it up. "I knew we should have taken the Shockwave Rider and tried to make it up the air-vents." She muttered, before turning to her sisters.

"The main engines are fine, but the control systems are shot. I can fix it, but it'll be a close run thing to see if it's done before we get discovered. The chameleon circlets and dad's perception filters will buy us some time, but we missed the abandoned adamantium processing sector we were aiming for, badly, and even with the occasional pot-shot from the rival merc' factions hitting the citadel, someone will notice a ship smashing a populated interior level with no corresponding breach in the outer armour. You have an hour, and then I need to get the ship out of here before it's located."

Nebular sneered, dismissively "The plan was for a day's reconnoitring and time to bypass the-"

"You have an hour." Repeated Rhia' "Gamora, that means, you have forty-five minutes. Hop too it."

Gamora and Nebula looked to each-other and then grabbed their kit-bags and double-timed it out of the downed ship, scrambling over the tangle of rubble, insulation foam and piping that smelt of burnt dust as they danced around a vertiginous drop into the depth of the internal heat-sink and made it to a maintenance panel in good time, one that was only part-buried in wreckage from the crash. Gamora grabbed the slanting beam that had fallen blocking the lintel and strained and shoved it upwards, a faint whirring from synthetic muscle adding to the grunting and sweating as she made just enough room for nebula to wiggle into the tiny gap between the rubble and Gamora's body and start bypassing the security codes of the door.

"Hurry!" muttered Gamora, as the beam slipped in her hand, perhaps millimetre.

"I don't know how long I can hold this-"

"Done." Said Nebula, as the door clicked and whirred sideways and she rolled thought the gap without a backwards glance at her sister. There was a momentary pause as Gamora closed her eyes and focused on not dropping the beam, and then a monosyllabic "clear" from Nebula as she confirmed the corridor was empty and reached back thought the door, grabbing the kit-bags and unceremoniously throwing the light one though and lugging the heavy one rather more carefully over the threshold, before reaching over and grabbing the beam for long enough for Gamora to scramble through before the beam fell with a sound like an accident in a bell-foundry.

The two teenagers paused for a second, and then shrugged.

"Guess we won't be getting back thought that door." Said Gamora, heading off down the rather shabby maintenance corridor at a trot.

"Rhia's plan for extraction is already deeply flawed, I doubt this will impact on in." muttered Nebula as she kept pace with the unconscious ease gained by hundreds of hours on assault- courses

"You have a better idea?" asked Gamora, pausing at the intersection with a larger corridor and glancing in both directions.

"Father could glass this entire miserable planet from orbit." Said Nebula, barely even joking.

"True, but hardly a deniable op." said Gamora, realising that there were too many people about, and so just walking out into the larger street-sized corridor calmly and confidently in the hope everyone would be too busy trying to work out what the impact alarm was to notice her. Nebula sulked along after her, and while a couple of people glanced suspiciously at their dust-stained clothes until the perception filter hit them and they forgot to be suspicious, Nebula's expression of surly teen was so perfect that they did what adults aways do you spot surly looking teenagers hanging around street corners, and ignored them so long as they didn't do anything suspiciously purposeful, like get up before noon.

Gamora noticed an air-lift-chamber, and nudged Nebula and they crossed the street towards it, feeling people's gaze skitter off her as soon as the perception filter her father had given her kicked in, but she knew she didn't yet have the force of personality to keep it working for long, and she would need to save it for the wetwork, so she powered it down with a nerve impulse as she stepped into the chamber, and promptly fell two hundred feet down an elevator shaft.

There was a noise from Quill as his stomach turned a little, and then logic re-asserted itself: young Gamora was angling her body like a sky-diver, and Nebula had followed without any sign of distress. Also: none of the people on the street they'd just left seemed surprised by this, and after a second Quill saw why.

The hugely tall bulk of the citadel created gargantuan problems for itself with convection, as the heat from the wider base of the pyramidal stricture rose up it and created dangerous heat blooms and air-currents higher up. In order to stop the richer citizens at the top by getting cooked by the accumulated body-heat and exhaled breath from those beneath them, the citadel had been built with air-conditioning on an industrial scale in mind. They were in a giant chimney, shaped to maximize the force of the convection from the lower levels and funnel it to giant radiators on the top levels, above the planet's atmosphere. The air and waste heat of the citadel could be cooled by the vacuum of space, and supper-cold, denser air allowed to flow back down the citadel in heavily insulated pipes. As the hot air rose it was actually forceful enough to lift people and goods up. Quill watched as a brightly coloured parachute with an elderly Aaskvarian woman and her groceries shot past in the other direction, before Gamora and Nebula eased themselves from the side of the chute with the foam baffles designed to limit airflow, and into the other side of the chimney and instantly the force of the air hit them, as did the hot-yoga sensation of intense heat and stale sweat. The air-flow was powerful enough to slow their fall almost to a standstill, and just as the air looked like it was going to push them back up the way they came, the two of then stepped through an oval door in the side of the shaft and onto a landing with a grace that would have done credit to Quill and his rocket boosters.

They walked off the landing and along the floor. It was a super-deck: one of the larger floors every twenty stories or so that was dedicated to shops and infrastructure, or would have been before the adamantium ran dry and the economy collapsed. Other than looters the place was abandoned, and pretty much everything closed down or broken.

Pretty much everything, but not the mass transit system. Gamora and Nebula walked briskly across the abandoned shopping mall layout, steeping to one side as a Centaurian in Ravengers garb jogged across the floor berating his men for inefficient looting, followed by a boy of about twelve pushing a cart laid-down with currency. As the present Guardians did a double-take young Gamora and Nebula ignored the Merc's and pushed on.

"So how fast are the high speed elevators again?" asked Gamora, looking up at the mass transit sign as behind her important mercenary work happened.

"-leave the beer you Gorram idiots! We have beer on the ruttin' ship! Kraglin' get these guy's into gear and help me 'n the terran empty the cash registers and…. NO! We don't need snacks-"

"They'll hit the sound barrier sister. We're twenty kilometres from the top floor, that's under a minute, once they get to full speed. Change quickly." She said, handing Gamora the kitbag. "and good luck."

"-ya all want an arrow to the spine? No? Good, get the cash and run, I gotta bad feeling about this place-"

"You too sister." Said Gamora, hugging Nebula briefly as she nodded, and trotted off towards the down elevator, while Gamora headed for the up.

Quill Rocket and Gamora watched as Nebula got on the down elevator, and as past Quill and past Yondu vanished from sight, and then shrugged, and turned back to Gamora as she shut herself in the up elevator.

"Oh Jesus." Muttered Quill, suddenly looking away and shielding his eyes with his hand: Gamora was quickly and efficiently stripping out of the skin-tight g-force suite she'd worn on the ship and pulling new clothes out of her kitbag, but because the memory's viewpoint was fixed and it didn't matter where you looked, you saw what Gamora remembered, Quill fond looking away did nothing. Quill focused on the kitbag because seeing a teenaged version of Gamora undress made him feel deeply uncomfortable and intrusively pervy. He'd somehow expected the kit-bag would be full of weapons and body armoury, and was taken aback by its contents: something that resembled a kimono, a bangle, and a dun greyish robe that looked like the sort of thing the choirs in the evangelical churches his mom had favoured would wear, embossed with the symbol of the Church of Universal Truth.

Striping to underwear and quickly wiping the dust from the crash off her face and hands with her discarded bodyglove, Gamora was nearly thrown to the floor as the elevator started to accelerate at a blistering pace, but then the inertial dampeners kicked in. Teen Gamora swore, and pulled on the robe hastily, aware she had less than a minute, and then stood on the hand rail for the elevator and pushed a panel in the ceiling up and stashed the bag out of sight inside it.

Pausing a second to smooth down her hair, she checked the ornate bracelet on her wrist, one that complimented the pseudo-kimono nicely checked one large gem that looked straggly liquid to Quill's eye, and then pulled out a second small gem from it with the other hand, carefully pulling it out from the bracelet against some form of invisible resistance. After a second she smiled, grimly, apparently satisfied, and then let the gem snap back into place on her wrist just before the elevator decelerated suddenly, and the lights flickered.

"Warning, approaching restricted level: please confirm identity to access executive stations." Squawked the computer. Gamora licked her lips nervously, and then spoke.

"Acolyte Tan, with the Delegation, Church of Universal Truth." She said, directing a burst of willpower thought the perception filter mounted behind her ear.

There was a brief pause, and she wondered if the Intel they'd had about the citadel's computers being partly organic were true: if its brain wasn't living tissue, the perception filter would fail….

"Affirmative. Access to diplomatic stations cleared. Please enjoy your stay on Coravinius." Chimed the voice, as the elevator ground smoothly to a halt. The doors opened onto a floor decked out with a level of luxury that Gamora, who had spent about half her childhood hanging around a royal place, instantly felt vaguely nauseated by. There was having more money that sense, and then there was plating every conceivable surface with adamantium just to rub in how much of the damn stuff you had. That said, from a security point of view it had its benefits: no one was breaking down those doors, even the delicate filigree ones, and Gamora briefly wondered if her parents could have fought of the Church if Zen Whoberi had had less tasteful furnishings.

Two guards hiding somewhere underneath their mounds of brocade and ornate medals turned to aim ornate adamantium-tipped harpoons at her before registering her Acolyte's robe and getting hit by the perception filter, and then nodding and letting her pass. She ignored them like she belonged here and, moving exactly as if she knew where she was going, headed down the corridor in the vague direction she thought the state rooms would be, almost forced to wade thought a carpet soft and deep enough to have developed its own ecosystem.

After turning a few corners at random and becoming increasingly aware of the time-pressures she was under, Gamora heard raised voices thought a pair of double doors set in the form of an unrealistically large number of various races paying tribute to the wise and powerful Electors of the Citadel and receiving adamantium in return, and finding it unlocked slid through, the light metal making the door surprisingly easy and quiet to open.

The circular room beyond was clearly the antechamber to some sort of meeting room or conference chamber, walls draped in endless richly coloured banners, and the polished doors to the suite beyond flanked by both the ridiculously dressed house-guards of the citadel and the far more threatening forms of the Church's Black Knights in their powered armour, and Gamora suppressed a momentary shudder at the sight as she went and sat on one of the two semi-circular benches running along either side of the room.

Perching on the end of one filled entirely with other robbed acolytes of the Church she gave them a polite nod, and they looked at her curiously until the filter took hold and they forgot to. Glancing over, she saw that the other highly polished and no doubt equally uncomfortable bench was populated by a collection of three surly looking individuals who, based on their extremely battered body armour, weaponry, and faces, she guessed were the commanders of the major free companies in orbit, or at least their representatives in the citadel. The tall Kree in the brightly coloured corded armour and the tired –looking Xandarian sapper idly tuning the broken fiddle, who were pointedly ignoring each-other, were no doubt the representatives for the Solarwindblown and the Bridgebreakers : exiles fighting for mercenary companies against their own Empires, who would no doubt regard each other as traitors to their own people, so not the best of friends. The Kylarian in the matt grey EVA suit that did nothing for her complexion kept twitching and glancing around as she sat between them like a buffer zone. Gamora didn't blame her for acting nervy : most mercenary companies had a reputation for betraying their employers when things got too hot for them, but the Grey Company had been on the receiving end of brutal betrayals by their employers so often that extreme paranoia was a survival trait for them, and while her face was as impassive as stone, her eyes skittered from the Kree to the Xandarian like a trapped lizard-rat as if unsure which of them would be the first to try and knife her. The money the Citadel was paying to get these three to work together must have astronomical, because even unarmed and sharing a bench, it was clear that the three would much rather have been fighting each-other than sharing a room, and these were the people supposed to hold off three hungry empires while the Citadel played for time.

Despite the risk of the mission, Gamora allowed herself a very small smile.

After a few moments that seemed like an age while Gamora focused on composing her facial features and worried about if she was waiting outside of the right conference suite, or if the meeting would drag on until her perception filter stopped working, or if someone would challenge her right to be there the door swung open, and suddenly it was too noisy to talk as a babble of voices erupted from beyond, along with the guards snapping their heals together in salute and everyone standing up at one, all three of the merc's from the bench opposite clamouring to be heard as a string of richly dressed Electors of the Citadel marched out, their over-elaborate robes making them look like ridiculous popinjays compared to the unadorned cream robes of the officials of the Church and the single flare of blood red of the Grand Inquisitor's robe marking him out as a Cardinal-Ascendant in the Church's byzantine hierarchy.

The acolytes on the bench all stood up in perfect sync and utter silence, well-rehearsed and nearly catching Gamora out, and even then she was impressed by the contrast it made with the whinging and attention seeking behaviour of the others: it was already clear who was really in control here. The Grand-Inquisitor smiled blandly and looked neither left nor right as he calmly walked thought the crowd, his Knights and robed acolytes falling in behind him like the tail of a comet with Gamora tagging onto the end, as various Electors from the Citadel either wheedled with or cursed and berated him non-stop. Ignoring them until he was almost out of the ante-chamber, the Grand Inquisitor hesitated for just a moment at the doorway, wrinkling his bald, egg-like face in good-natured confusion as if he had just remembered something.

"Oh, he's doing a Colombo." Muttered Quill.

"Ah, one more point of order." Muttered the Inquisitor, so quietly that everyone was forced to shut up just to hear what he was saying. "While I understand that our timetable for conversion and peace offer is less…forgiving… than many of you would have hoped, I must point out that it is the absolute last one you will receive. The Spartori are moving in more ships, if my sources are accurate, and the Badoon are on a schedule for their next great migration. If you do not see the light of the magus soon, you may find the opportunity has passed, and I doubt either the Badoon or J'son will be quite so generous in their offers. Come brothers, we must not monopolize the time of these good people, and we must meditate on or offer… as should they." He said, putting just enough infection on the words to make the instruction to meditate sound like a threat, before walking thought the door every ounce the harmless old man. Gamora followed, and as she'd hoped they were escorted directly to a teleport pad by what had to be a squadron of the Citadel Guards because gilt frogging generally didn't walk about on its own.

As two of them helped the elderly Inquisitor totter onto the pad with doddering steps that would have put an octogenarian sloth to shame, he happened to slip slightly, and having been pushed to the front of the teleporter queue by Brownian motion of the crowd of acolytes Gamora was closest, and reach out and grabbed his wrist to steady him. She felt a vague tingle that at the time she put down to nerves, and then a moment later perceived the skin and flesh sliding around over chicken-like old-man bones.

"Oh, thank you my dear…" he muttered, catching her eye as she helped him up. He frowned. "I don't believe I've had the pleasure."

"Acolyte Alphora Tan, eminence."

"Quite. But forgive me my darling, old as I am, I can no longer peruse outreach and Proselytism as I once did, and dedicate my time to improving my followers so through me the Magus may move through them: I am aware of the names and faces of all my acolytes on this mission, and you, my dear, are not one of them. "

Gamora froze for an instant, and then smiled sheepishly. "I am not my lord, I apologise, but I had to find you. Elector Krassnis sent me."

There was a gauntleted hand on her shoulder, and the whir and buzz of a scanner.

"Unarmed." Muttered the Black Knight behind her, after a moment and let her go.

The old man smiled, vaguely, waving the Knight away. "Mhhhm? Did he now? How considerate of him. We always welcome new converts seeking enlightenment… I think I might have an instructional pamphlet somewhere…" he said, starting to pat down his rob searching through various hidden pockets. "No wait… that's a cough sweet… lint… another cough sweet….more lint…"

"Thank you, eminence, but no. Elector Krassnis did not send me to you for Pamphlets."

"Mhhhm? Are you sure. I believe our current line has some particularly inspiring quotes. And pictures. Happy couples walking on a beach, I believe."

"No, thank you eminence." Said Gamora, aware that two Black Knights had moved to flank her in case she caused trouble.

"Mhhhm? Then why, pray, did he send you to me my dear?" The Inquisitor said as she felt rather than heard one of the Black Knights level a weapon at her.

This is it. thought Gamora. This is when we find out if our intel was good enough.

"He thought that I had sinned, most wickedly, and might benefit from personal correction." She said, opening the front of her robe just enough to reveal the figure-hugging kimono underneath.

She had to admit, the response was every bit as disgusting and gratifying as their intel had suggested. One of the senior acolytes next to the inquisitor dropped a jaw and boggled his eyes comically were as the others instantly looked away and pretended they weren't seeing this.

They've done this before. She realized, suppressing a shudder. Looked away while this happens.

The Inquisitor smiled his doddery old man smile as if nothing more interesting than discussing pamphlets was happening.

"Ah, well I am never too busy to dedicate time to the salvation of a lost soul. Come with me child. Decon Varil, arrange teleportation to my personal quarters…"

"Eminence, is that entirely within our security rituals? Before entering the inner shrine she should be a full convert, sanctified and shriven…"

"That would be an ecumenical matter." Said the Inquisitor blandly. "Arrange the teleport, deacon." He added, with just enough impatience to make it clear there would be no discussion.

"Yes your grace." Said the deacon, waving the two Knights away with visible bad taste. "Teleport to the Cleansing Flame, priority one. Two persons, re-materialise in the Chevet, The Grand Inquisitors quarters." He said, clearly fitted with some sort of internal com-device, because someone from the warship replied over the com.

"Affirmative that Brother-deacon. Next gap in the shielding t-minus five, four, three… Brace for teleport your Eminence."

"As the magus wills." Muttered the Grand Inquisitor, taking Gamora's hand and smiling blandly.

There was a flash of rainbow-coloured light and the usual falling sensation of a teleportation and Gamora staged slightly, looking around the unfamiliar room. It was sparsely furnished, but every item that was there was of a simplistic and elegant beauty, all incense, honey-coloured rare woods, low tables and elegantly hand painted screens depicting deviational rights of the church. The Inquisitor smiled, and held her arm to steady her, his hand brushing up against her bangle as he did so.

"Steady, my dear, I know, the sensation can be a little jarring until one becomes inured to it." he muttered, leading her past the command lectern and the huge armour-crys wall that gave a commanding view of the citadel and rival fleets in orbit, to a pair of chairs and a spindly table with a crystal decanter of some amber liquid on it.

Try riding the void flayer. She thought, smiling nervously and exaggerating her disorientation for his benefit as she let him help her to a chair. She got a good look at the command lectern as she did, noting the biometric lock. You could command the entire Faith-fleet from here, with the right palm print. She realised she was staring, and shrugged of her outer robe to reveal the kimono, knowing that it would distract the old pervert while she assessed her surroundings. There were no visible guards. That was good.

"Now, my dear, you need a drink. That will help settle you after the shock of the teleport…" the man muttered, fetching two shot glasses, his fingers inside them, pinching the two glasses together as he tottered over with the decanter in the other hand a placed the glasses on the low table between the chairs.

"Here." she said, stepping forwards. "Here your grace, I will pour, it is part of my training." She said, taking the decanter and the two glasses, each slightly greasy from the old man's touch, and kneeling at the table opposite him.

"And you are well trained, no doubt." Said the Inquisitor, sitting down and enjoining the view.

Gamora laughed sweetly. "Oh, you'd be surprised." She said, completely sincerely. As she poured the drink she leaned forwards slightly so that the inquisitor could get a good view down her top, not that she had much down there to ogle at yet, but his eyes were still riveted to her as she casually tapped the rim of one glass against the liquid looking gem on her bangle and melted the crystal's shell with an electric pulse, sending a single fat gobbet of colourless liquid into the glass, before delicately unwinding her legs, making a show of it, as she stood up and offered him the glass, keeping the other for herself. He nodded benevolently, taking the glass delicately with a thumb and finger holding it by the very rim, and to Gamora's disappointment rather than necking the shot he patted the empty chair vaguely, indicating she wanted her to sit.

Great. A talker. Drink your damn poison and die. I have shit to do. she smiled demurely, and sat as indicated.

"ah… so young and so pretty. It is indeed a great tragedy that you find yourself in such a profession. How did this happen, my child?"

"My parents died when I was very young." She answered completely honestly. Never lie unless you have too. "A kindly man took me in, but insisted I train for this role to serve him. The training was hard, and painful, but it has made me a valuable asset to him."

"Oh how sad, my dear." He said, moving the glass to his lips and then lowering it again to speak just as he was about to take the first sip, still holding it in that ridiculous finger-tip hold as if he was showing off how little he could touch and still keep a hold of it. "My heart bleeds for you, truly it does child…"

Not yet, she thought.

"Tell me child, is this your first time? I don't mean to pry, but I fear I must know."

"Yes." She said, completely honestly. "Yes it is."

He smiled. "It must be rather strange, to train so long and hard for a thing, and to know that once you have actually done it, then that's it: There is no going back. You just have to hope your training has fully prepared you for it, and trust in the strength of your body and skills. Tell me, child, are you nervous?"

"Yes." she said, surprised to find that it was true.

The man smiled kindly, and patted her hand reassuringly.

"Well don't worry my dear, it gets easier." He said, raising his glass as if to drink, and then sighing sadly and lowering it again.

"Trust me, it gets easier. Ahhh, so sad that your father could not have trained you in a safer profession my sweet."

"I never said that the man who trained me was my father." Said Gamora, carefully.

"No." said the man. "No you didn't." he waved as hand dismissively, still cradling the shot in the other with steeped fingers.

"But if you lost your parents at such a tender age, then it is only natural to assume that he endeavoured to take on the role of a father to you in order to aid your training. And such a dangerous profession he trained you in." he said, looking at her with narrowed eyes over the top of the glass.

"I mean, ignoring the exploitation and the risk of casual violence from a drunken John, even a girl as high-class as you, you no doubt must be aware that prostitutes have always been the favoured targets for serial killers. It's not just that people are less likely to report the disappearance of a harlot as they generally have fractured family lives, it's that they are perfectly willing to enter vehicles or travel home with strange men without making sure of their surroundings. Kidnap a woman form a public street and kill her? Almost imposable, even with drugs. And yet a prostitute will not only go willingly, but lead you to a place she knows you are unlikely to be observed. "

"I suppose." Muttered Gamora, shifting un-easily, and trying to ignore the nervous tingling spreading up her arm.

"I suppose." Echoed the Inquisitor knowingly. He sighed, and stared into his drink thoughtfully.

"Then I suppose it cuts both ways doesn't it my dear? If you wanted to kill a man, a John would always be easer as he sneaks strange women into his room, no? I mean just the other year the Arch-tyrant of Kernic, one of the most heavily guarded men in the galaxy was assassinated in his own bedchamber. It turns out the man was a homosexual, quite taboo in Kernic culture, still illegal there I believe, and due to the fact he could not openly pursue his interest, he was in the habit of dismissing his guards and inviting various young men to enter his private chambers via a secret tunnel, a hilariously apt metaphor right up until the point one of them sunk a foot-long blade into his skull and declared a revolution for the People's Front. If he had been seeing a female courtesan, the people of Kernic would have let him bed her publically in the plaza of government with all his guards watching, but the more taboo a relationship is, the more people have to hide it, and the more willingly they will circumvent their own personal security to allow it… although admittedly in the case of necrophilia or zoophilia you have little to fear from your beau assassination-wise unless some has gotten very creative with the concealment of explosives.

"That's why the higher you rise in the church, my dear, the more frequent and invasive your Engram Auditing sessions. We don't permit our members to have secrets that could be used against them. We just like people to think that they do. The Paedophile Priest is a trite and overused trope, but you put that rumour out there, and it's astounding how readily otherwise intelligent people will believe it. Once that's the case, you really just need to act under the assumption that any jailbait that turns up is definitely an assassin, and it saves so much time all round. "he said, raising the glass in a toast and maintaining cool and composed eye contact as he poured the drink out onto the floor in front of her.

"Don't you agree, Miss Gamora Zen Whoberi Ben Titian?"

And that was when the tingling and numbness spreading up her arm reached her shoulder, and Gamora remembered that it was possible to poison the outside of a glass too.

Gamora leapt out of the chair screaming, and threw the glass at the Inquisitor with all the force she could, feeling the deadness seep up her arm. It bounced of his forehead harmlessly, shattering the perception of the harmless old man, and before she could even register it, the dark-haired, strong thirty-something Xandarian kicked her square in the chest with enough force to break ribs and sent both her and her chair flying back across the polished floor.

"The thing about perception filters, Miss Gamora, is that when two people using them come into physical contact you get a distinctive tell, a tingling at the point of contact and a delayed response to what the filter wants you to perceive. You get used to it after a time, a luxury I'm afraid you will not be getting." He said, as two Black Knights in full powered armour ripped their way through the delicately painted paper screens in the corners of the room.

She screamed, as the combination of the pain and the poisoning triggered her bod-mods and fired a huge jolt of adrenaline and combat-drugs into her system, stabilizing her, and she kicked herself upwards and onto her feet, grabbing the decanter and a stick on incense of the table and flinging them. The inquisitor just leaned out of the way of the shot, the servos on his crimson power armour whirring now the filter wasn't obscuring his true appearance, and the improvised Molotov caught one of the two Knights full in the face and he went down screaming. The Inquisitor glanced at this disinterestedly as the second Knight started firing off plasma-rounds, and as she dodged Gamora had just enough time to see the inquisitor shrug and raise his arm and point the Faith Generator mounted to his gauntlet at her. She had just enough time to recognise it as one of the Churches' attempts to turn the psionic energy of fanatical faith into useful power, before she flung the table at him, and it caught the bolt of raw mental energy and shattered mid-air, the force sending her flying across the room.

Hitting the armour-crys with a grunt, Gamora tried to twist her body away from the attacker as she slid down the arm-thick glass, but the Inquisitor was relentless, and dammed fast, and he delivered a perfectly executed kick to her side before she had slid half-way down, sending her sliding along the window with an embarrassing squeegee-esque noise before she bounced of the control, lectern and landed hard on her face, feeling a tooth crack and her mouth fill with blood.

As she lay on the floor panting and bleeding, behind her the inquisitor sighed.

"Another bloody daughter of Thanos…. When will he fight these battles himself? Uggg. Mediocre."

The inquisitor levelled a kick at her prone body that would have crushed her skull, at exactly the moment the frightened little teenager died, and Gamora daughter of Thanos stood up.

Screaming incoherently, Gamora grabbed the second gemstone on her bangle, pulled it a meter out from her wrist with her other had and jinked her head out of the way of the kick as she made sure the Inquisitors leg passed exactly between her two wrists, and then grabbed the man by the armoured waist, and wrapped one hand around him several times before pulling sharply, and running at the second Knight, running part up the wall dodging his shots and sticking an arm out to clothes-line him at head high on the way past, before dropping to her knees and sliding along the polished floor between the legs of the burning man, catching one of his knees with each wrist before standing up elegantly as she passed him, sliding one arm up along the side of his body as she flicked the other one past him, and then she slipped in a small pool of her own blood from the first kick and crashed into the last painted screen with a crunch.

Panting and wincing, feeling the gap the tooth had left in her upper jaw, Gamora groaned and swore and levered herself up onto one elbow.

The Inquisitor and two guards stood there in the same pose for a long moment, Gamora looking at them thought the gap between her wrists, the tiny droplets of blood clinging to the monofilament like red pearls for a moment, before the men came apart, the Inquisitor falling in two at the waist and losing a leg as one Knight lost his head, and the burning man came apart messily down the middle, crotch to scalp.

Trembling with reaction and fear and combat drugs and pain, Gamora let the gem and it's wire slide back into the bangle and wailed and shook and shivered to herself for a moment in the ruin of the elegant room. She wasn't Gamora Daughter of Thanos, she was daughter of Alphora and TṢādē, and she was frightened, and in pain, and utterly, utterly alone.

And in less than two minutes, Nebula will hit her objective. A tiny, pragmatic voice in her head said. So move your ass if you want to keep it Girl.

And with that Gamora daughter of Thanos stood up again, shaking. It had been elven seconds since the Inquisitor had poured his drink on the floor, and three people were dead and it was business as usual if she wanted to get out of there alive. You fell back of your training: feelings could wait, or you did.

Staggering across the room, one of her legs wasn't working properly and her right arm was still half numb, she made it to the control lectern. She glared blankly at the biometrics for a moment, before shrugging, and taking care not to look at his face, sliced the hand of the inquisitor with her monofilament, and slammed it down on the control lectern, hoping she still had some perception filter left.

"Inquisitor to fleet," she started. "I need two stealth assets in position, immediately."

She waited, for a horrified and gut-wrenching second until

"Silent Judgement here Eminence."

"Avenging Angel Eminence."

"Private channel… Brother-captains, I've just found an assassin in my quarters. I will try to fight them off, but we have been betrayed. The citadel has struck a deal with the infidel: Badoon of Spartori, it makes no difference, we are betrayed by non-believers." She said.

"Silent Judgement, move into the centre of the Spartori Fleet, and lock all forward batteries on the Badoon flagship, secondary weapons on the mercenaries around the citadel, prepare to fire on my mark, and act swiftly."

"… affirmative eminence. To live is to serve."

"Stealth ship Avenging Angel, move into the midst's of the Badoon fleet, and lock all forwards batteries onto the Spartori flagship, secondary systems onto the citadel itself. Fire on my mark."

"A just act is its own reward, eminence… moving to position… survivability of mission low, eminence."

"But it is needful, I fear."

"As the magus wills."

"Indeed. Computer, kill channel, contact main fleet… fleet command, I have intel that the Citadel may be about to betray both us and either the Badoon or the Spartori. Lock main weapons systems onto the Citadel and the mercenaries, and prepare to fire on both the Spartori and Badoon if they show any aggression towards each-other."

"Affirmative Grand Inquisitor. The hand of the traitor lies closer than you think."

"Indeed… kill transmission… private channel to both the "Silent Judgement and Avenging Angel."

"Eminence?"

Gamora took a deep breath. "We are betrayed. The assassin is closing on my position. Fire at will. Magus be with you."

"And with you." Said the voice over the come, sadly, a second before the first light stared to streak across the stars, and the Coravinius Incident started in Ernest.

"Jesus." Muttered Quill. "The battle of Coravinius, this killed, what, two hundred thousand people? And you and Nebula were..?"

"Thirteen." Said Gamora, without emotion. "Our first combat mission. We were thirteen. "

The Badoon responded to the shots first, mistakenly deciding they had come from the Spartori flagship and opening up on both the Spartori and the Citadel itself. The Faith Fleet, unaware that their stealth ships had fired the first, shots fired next, wildly, hitting both Badoon and Citadel forces. The Spartori didn't fire at first, moving into proper attack vectors with discipline and precision even as the Badoon started using then for target practice. They lost four frigates and a heavy cruiser before they could bring their main weapons to bear, but when they did their capitol ships and cruisers lashed out as one, overlapping lanes of fire supporting each other, as they cleaved into the Badoon and Faith Fleet like a blade, as efficiently as if they had rehearsed this.

The mercs turned on each other with gratifying suddenness, the Solarwindblown and Bridgebreakers instantly deciding that this was the other's fault and laying close-range broadsides into each other a mere few hundred kilometres, and typical for their luck, the Grey company got pretty badly chewed up before they could extract themselves. Their starboard weapons disabled, they could only fire back at the Solarwindblown, and between them the Bridgebreakers and the Spartori, Solarwindblown war-junk took a volley amidships, and it's main reactor core overloaded and it begun to brew up, falling agonizingly slowly down towards the citadel where it would land an hour later, gorging a ten kilometre crater in the side of the structure.

.. and Gamora stood, and Gamora watched, as the Citadels' main shield failed when Nebula's bombs from the other kitbag took out the power relays and all sides started using it as a punch bag, and Gamora daughter of Thanos stood there waiting for extraction and felt… nothing.

Which was just as well, as deep down inside, Gamora Zen Whoberi, was daughter of Alphora and TṢādē was screaming, over and over again.

Behind her, she heard a very bubbly, wracking snort, almost a laugh, and turned.

"I told you." Muttered the Inquisitor, still somehow alive despite being bisected at the waist, "It gets easier, child, it gets easer. Trust me."

It was then the she noticed the tears rolling down her cheeks, and wiped them away furiously, and stamped hard on the inquisitors chest, jarring her foot on the armour as she leaned in and stared in his face.

"Easer? Did it get easier when you killed my planet? When you killed my parents, attacked Zen Whoberi?"

"Did I?" the man muttered, smiling. "I attacked a lot of places, but Zen Whoberi? I think you are mistaken, child.

She stamped down again, catching him in the jaw, and drew a length of monofilament and held it to his throat.

"Your fleet! The church destroyed me homeworld! Killed my people, a Grand inquisitor murdered my parents in front of me!"

He made a nose between a cough and a laugh. "Yes, we destroyed your homeworld, and yes, we killed your people. But a Grand Inquisitor? My dear, why do you think we started using perception filters when they are so costly and in-effective against inorganic methods of detection? It's so we would never again be fooled by your father's use of them after that Zen Whoberi debacle. "

He nodded outside the window at the battle raging in the stars beyond.

"Do you honestly think this is the first false-flag operation Thanos's has run, child?"

And then he reached up with his remaining hand, and touched Gamora at the neural implant behind the ear, and used his perception filter and the last of his willpower to burn out her filter, and finally the scales fell from her eyes, and all her memories of what Thanos had done came back. Right after she had killed for him, right after she had done a mission, as she finally become the person Thanos had been trying to make her into, he showed her who he really was, and what that meant she was.

And that was the cruellest thing he could have done to her, right as he died.

She didn't remember much after that, but she must have remembered to lower the ships shields as planned because there was a moment of vertigo and light, and she was on the teleport pad of the Void Flayer as it headed out of there as fast as it could.

"Gammy, are you okay?" yelled Rhia', glancing over from the pilots station.

"He killed them!" she yelled, the memory clear and sharp as a shard of glass in her mind, her mother and sister flashing into vapour, the soft crunch as Thanos crushed her true father's skull. "He killed them!"

Rhia' glanced over, and swore.

"Nebula, take the helm, she's in shock."

Nebula sneered. "Her mods and training should have prepared her for post-traumatic combat fatigue, I'm needed at the weapons station in case-"

"Dammit Nebula, the weapons on this ship wouldn't make a dent in anyone out there, get away from that and fly the damn ship before you attract someone's attention shooting at them! Gammy… Gammy it's okay. I'm here for you"

Gamora felt Rhia's arms wrap around her, and burred her face into her hair and cried.

"He killed them! he killed them!"

"Shush, shush it's okay… it's okay… it's not training Gammy, people die."

"People did die in training." Muttered Nebula. "Just not often." Rhia' shot her an evil glance.

"no, no you don't understand Rhia', father killed them, he killed my parents he… he…" Rhia' and Nebula shared a glance, and Gamora caught the meaning and froze in horror.

"Yes." Said Rhia', after a while.

"You Knew?" said Gamora, trying to wiggle out of her grip with horror and disgust. "You both knew?"

Rhia' sighed. "Okay, time for the talk. I most families this is about sex. In this family…" "death. Yes, we both knew. Father does take in orphans, some of who he legitimately finds, but most… most are orphans he's made to ensure he has daughters with no other family links, no rival loyalties. No one to love other than him." She nodded to Nebula. "He found Nebula after her mother killed her father in self-defence and then bled out. Luphomoid honour killing. Or so he said… it's hard to tell how much of what he says to take at face value.

"Me… my parents were Inhuman scientists, trying to find a cure for Gral's disease, when their scout ship was shot down, or crashed. I was very young, I don't remember exactly. I do remember my father carrying me out of the wreckage, and Thanos cutting him down." She slicked back her hair with a hand, as usual not not-quite touching it and moving it psionically.

"But why, why didn't you tell me! Why didn't you tell me this is what he does?"

Rhia snorted, sadly. "We did, sis, we did. Perception filters. Dad's very, very good with them. Until you have experience at resisting them, you just mentally flitter out any evidence of his evil deeds. I believed his edited version of what happed to me, where my parents both died in the crash and he saved me, right up until I hit puberty and my psionic power began to manifest. Only then did I start seeing thought the filters, getting memories back, bit by bit." She glanced to Nebula. "Nebula has no memories to repress, she was too young when Father took her, so he never invested much time in her filters, and she started to see thought them early on. We started comparing notes on what dad was up to a couple of years ago."

"So… it's all fake?" asked Gamora, horrified ."It's all fake. Father doesn't love us, he doesn't have a great plan for us, he's just… just some warlord?"

"No, sister, it's much worse than that.: it's all real. Father doses love us, deeply, and he does have a plan for us all, never doubt that. And as for warlord, he is so much more dangerous than that. He's named himself the anti-life: deaths champion in the universe, and we are his weapons."

"But why? What does he want?"

Rhia' shrugged. "We don't know, and, frankly, I'm not planning on sticking around to find out." She glanced to Nebula, who nodded slowly.

"We can't take the Void flayer, it's way to conspicuous and father knows how to track the damage it's engines do to the fabric of the universe, and frankly, we thought you were still under father's control, so we never planned to bring you along, but for a long time nebular and I have thought about… leaving. Fleeing. Finding some way to escape from father…" she leaded back from Gamora, gently holding her by each shoulder. "If you want Gammy, we can try to get you away from this too. Are you in?"

Gamora hesitated, the two conflicting versions of her father still in her mind, and then she remembered how she'd felt watching the war she'd started, and decided that even if Thanos's hadn't killed her true father, she still didn't want to do this.

"I'm in."

Rhia smiled. "No sis… soon as we get a chance, we're out."

Awesome Mix Tape Vol 2: Rhiannon, Fleetwood Mac


Gamora frowned at the taste of that particular memory, but shook her head and, before Peter or Rocket could speak to her, took another big step: she knew what memory was coming, and wanted to get it over with.


It was two years since the Coravinius Incident, and despite the fact they were a good team, Gamora Nebula and Rhia' hadn't been on a mission with just the tree of them since, doing either group work with bigger teams, or paired off with other sisters or on solo jobs.

After a two-month training mission with a Kree sister whose snores could break glass, Gamora was standing in the hanger-bay of sanctuary, waiting for Nebula and Rhia' to get back from their missions. They were both out on solo work, but she'd spoken to the proctor, and they had a opening for a three person job a few weeks down the line, and she'd got them assigned to it because it needed two wetwork operatives and a Psion.

Adjusting her sword slightly, she glanced at the incoming ship, and smiled and ran down to it. That was Nebula's vessel; shew couldn't wait to tell her the good news…

"Nebula, you'll never guess what…" she paused. "Oh wow, you look terrible, what happed?" she asked Nebula was bleeding from a cut to her head, and looked in a worse mood than usual.

"That bitch bailed on her solo mission and I had to cover for her."

"What? Who?"

Nebula turned to her, snarling. "Rhia'! She ditched us, went and ran! Broke free from father right enough, but on her own! She left us!"

Gamora recoiled, as if struck.

"No… she wouldn't…"

Nebula exploded. "Oh, she wouldn't' would she? Wake up sis! She did, and I know, I might not be the high and mighty Gamora, but I' know what I was. I was called in at the last minute to clear up the mess she left of it! Face it, sister, there is no escape, not for us! Just an endless lifetime of jockeying for position amongst ourselves, something I'm sure you'd know nothing about!" she said, throwing down her weapons, and storing off.

Gamora froze up, wanting to run after her and comfort her, but too angry and too disbelieving. Surely it couldn't' be true.

The proctor. He'd know if she did go rogue…

Gamora sprinted off in the direction of the proctors chambers, trying to ignore the increasingly weird surroundings the farther into Sanctuary you progressed.

The proctor. He'd know. He'd know. He'd know. He'd know…

Rounding the corner, she ran thought the portal to the proctors chambers and froze.

There was the back of that dammed throne, the proctor facing it speaking to father, and then the creak of armour as he heard her arrive, and turned to meet her.

"Ah Gamora. By now you've no doubt heard the news about Rhia'" he rumbled without pre-amble, gesturing her over.

She froze up, hand on the hilt of her sword, and then slowly and calmly forced herself to walk over to him. He ruffled her hair lovingly, just as he always did.

"Yes father… nebula sad she'd gone rogue." Never lie unless you have too.

Thanos sighed, and steepled a set of huge fingers against his forehead. "Yes." He rumbled hugging her briefly with one arm and then placing the other hand on her shoulder as he massaged his temples.

"Yes, or at least, she was planning too. I found considerable evidence she was planning an escape in her sleeping cell when she graduated to the senior dormitory. A pity, I was very fond of her, as I know you were, and I would have preferred she had lived. But we can't have people betraying us like this, however much it hurts…"

He doesn't 'know you've lost your filter, nothing Gamora. Not even a gesture.

"No." said Gamora, pushing it all don like he trained her to, becoming what he wanted to make her, because it was that or scream. "No we can't Father."

Thanos smiled and drew her close. "That's my girl." He said, grinning.


Gamora landed lightly, dropping into a crouch not two paces from the exit as she landed that jump.

"Nearly there." She said calmly, eyes closed . "And that was the wort of it, the guiltiest and most helpless and wretched I ever felt, the hardest I had to hide who I was, and I managed it." she blew out a long breath, opening up her eyes and looking at the doorway.

"I have this."

"Hummm? Was that really the guiltiest and most helpless you ever felt?" asked the Robotic voice. "Lady Gamora, I think we both know you can go one better than that…"


Gamora slammed her hand down on the stone plinth.

"Father, I am ready for a solo mission!"

Thanos scowled, and glared back at here. "Gamora, you are sixteen, as capable and as deadly as any sixteen year old could ever be, but still sixteen . You lack patience and restraint. For the last time, the answer is no."

"I've run solo jobs before…"

"Reconnaissance, espionage, delivering messages. Not combat. Not wetwork. Not on a planet that dangerous, a hive of low-level , Gamora, no. "

She flushed, genuinely angry "are you frightened that this will end up like Rhia' sit that it? don't you trust me?"

Thanos sighed. "I trust you as far as I trust any sixteen year old. No, gammy. That is final." He said, truing his throne away from her. "Dismissed." He said.

Gamora snorted, and turned away from him angry and trying to fight back tears.

If I don't get a sol mission, how will I prove myself to him? If I don't prove myself she thought How will I get more solo missions and the freedom to build up what I need to break away from him? Contacts, hiding places he don't know about. money. Things I'll need to make a break. She thought, striding away don the corridors of the ship, wondering who he would send in her place. Nebula? No he mistrusts her more than he does me. Perhaps Jia'Jisa, or one of the twins…

Pausing in the corridor Gamora looked around.

The teleport room door was ajar.

Hesitating only a second, she snuck in. The room was empty.

She paused a long time. She couldn't make a run for it now, she had nowhere to go… but if she took the initiative… did the job, proved herself… it would be risky, but father had always approved of risk-taking, so long as it paid off.

Moving into the centre of the pad, she used the ships sensors to get a lock on the target, and teleported.

Thanos was right about one thing, she thought, this planet was a dive.

Moving past the side streets of the bazaar, and trying to keep to the shade where she couldn't be seen, something that wasn't that suspicious in this heat , she watched as her target made contact with his gang, a set of old-shoot pirates of the sort that would two baths each to make it into the Ravengers. Waiting for him to finish talking to them, she loitered by a stall, watching them as she pretended to study the wares. After an age, her target peeled off from the group, heading to meet his contact, and that father could not tolerate: he was carrying information for the magus, and it could not get through. Pausing to check that his gang were walking the other way, back to their ship, she followed him, he as cautious, she gave him that, doubling back a few times, but she was well trained, following from a safe distance and not fooled by these tricks.

After a time, he took a short-cut thought an alleyway, out of sight of police and crowds, and she followed, gripping her sword, ready for the kill.

Time to prove myself to Thanos. she thought slipping into the alleyway being careful to hug the sides and not get silhouetted.

The first stunner round hit her almost directly from above, the pirate of a fire escape finding his mark as she passed directly beneath him trying to hug the wall. Not something you did to a daughter of Thanos and got away with, her thrown dagger catching him even as the stunner made her stagger. It was the second and third shooters, following her at a even safer distance that she'd followed her mark that really hit home. Hit from behind, she staggered forwards into the alleyway, and saw the target raising his stunner round, she knew then and there she wouldn't get to him in time, and so she threw her sword, catching him a glancing blow that took of an ear, before he cursed and shot her in the chest with a stun round.

Her bod-mods fired, and she surged forwards on a sea of adrenaline, grabbing him as she swore, and trying to wrest the gun from him as the two following her and a dozen others piled in, and someone kicked her in the spine, hard. She dropped her target and went down, and then something hit her in the head making her vison swing. She found a pistol in her hand, whose' she didn't know, and turned and fired once, twice, three times, before that too was wrested from her, and someone pinned her against the wall with her own sword. It was her target.

"Bitch!" He snared in her face, clutching at the blood streaming down where his ear had been. "Bitch! You think I'm gonna meet with my boys, and then go meet my contact all alone, huh? You got a lot to lern, and I don't know you you are, or who you work with, but when you tangle with my crew an me, I can tell you, we are going to make you regret it!" he yelled, grabbing at her breasts.

She head-butted him in the face, hard, cutting herself on her own sword, but only superficially, and when he dropped the bade, she kicked it up into his crotch and he fell back, screaming like a castrati

"Gahh! Fuck the bitch up! Fuck her up!" he screamed, before she punched him in the throat , managing to get someone who grabbed her from behind in the classic stomach-instep-nose-groin combo, and then someone shot her thought the collarbone, not on stun this time.

She fell back against the wall, and realised her bionics had been fused by the bolt, her body almost immobile, as someone reached down and grabbed her, she screamed in pain as he dragged her up by her wounded shoulder. "oh baby, we are going to have some fun with you, he yelled, his breath washing over her as he fumbled with his belt, and then a giant purple had reached over and grabbed him by the shoulder, and forced the top half of his torso down into his chest cavity with no apparent effort.

The pirate captain, chocking to death on his own crushed Larynx had just enough time to look surprised, before Thanos grabbed him by the head and pulled his skill of, leaving he lower jaw still in place. He then threw the head and one of the gun-wielding mooks, hitting them with their captain's rotting teeth first and ripping their face clean off.

One came at him with Gamora's sword, and he side-stepped it, roaring all the time as he ripped the man's arm of and beat him with it.

"THAT. IS. MY. DAUGHTER!"

Teen Gamora slumped down, insensible but still just about conscious, while Quill and rocket winced at the meaty noses and occasional glimpse of violence as Thanos vented his fury on the hapless pirates

"Oh, Jesus it's worse than watching you eat seafood!" Quill said to Rocket.

"yea well… whoa did he just rip of that Dudes… on and now he's choked him to death with it, man, that's nasty. At least with stabbing someone with their own baculum you can get a clean-ish kill and … oh wow, that's just wrong."

And then young Gamora passed out, and everything went blank

Gamora screamed, after a while, when another hand touched her wounded shoulder, waking her, screamed and lashed out, until a huge hand griped hers, huge and sticky with blood and scarred and calloused, but still gentle to her.

"Gammy… Gammy its okay." The voice rumbled." You're safe here…"

"Dad?" She muttered, trying to focus. A gleaming set of over white teeth were all he could make pout, and an arm shook her roughly.

"I told you you were not ready for this! " the voice snared, and she sobbed in pain, before Thanos seemed to register just how badly hurt she was, and cradling her in his arms like a child, picked her up and waked away.

"Father… I I…w anted…"

"I know what you wanted." The voice rumbled. "And I'm sorry. I know Rhia' was dear to you, but she would have moved against me. Maybe I was wrong to assume that you too wanted a solo mission to get away from me… forgive me, Gamora… I know now that you would never betray your father I… I have not been an ideal parent. But I want you to know, that my love for you has never been less than real… come on, time you got some better combat bionics, anyway. Something truly special."

Gamora sobbed, guilt and fear welling up inside her and just as she was about to come clean to him, sure that he would kill her for it, he cradled her to his chest, the hard golden armour warm in the sun

"I love you, Gammy. Know this."

"I love you too dad. She sobbed, and more than anything else about what had just happened, all the things about today she would hate herself for, she hated herself most for those five words, for she realised then that they were true.

She loved Thanos.


Present Gamora fell to her knees, and was physically sick.

"ahh… the special love between a father and daughter…" said the Collector bot, as he played a montage of all the killing after that, all, the assassinations, as the deaths up to and including the point where Gamora was about to kill Quill for the orb on Xandar, all intercut with family scenes. Her and Thanos and Nebula opening Yule presents on Life day, Thanos cursing her real father's head like a grape, Thanos teaching her how to swing and how to Pilot, a spaceship, patient and gentle, Thanos's' offhand remarks about killing Rhia', all rolled into one. she hated him, feared him, wanted to get away from him, yes, but even after he killed Rhia, even after his perception filter's hold on her was broken, she still loved him. He was her father, he raised her.

"Hey!" yelled Quill, low blow! He just saved her from almost getting raped and murdered! Even I'd be grateful to him after that!"

"yeah!" yelled Rocket. "Gammy, fuck this guy, don't be ashamed of your feelings I love a frickin' tree, for fuck's sakes!"

"Gratitude, yes, perhaps, but love? Deep, parental love? It's like your songs say Quill, love, love will tear us apart again." Said the collector bot.

"you see lady Gamora, after you came clean about wanting to make a clean break from Thanos on the Kyln, after you opened up to all the awful things you did in his name to Drax and how you weren't his daughter any more, I knew just forcing you to re-live the memories of the awful things he did to you wouldn't break you: that was more for Quill and Rocket's benefit, to weaken their resolve. I aways knew that you weren't ashamed for working for Thanos, because he brain-washed you very young. You had no chose… but still loving him? After all he did to you? How could you? What sort of monster could love the person who killed their real parents? Admit it, his love of death, his closeness to it, you feel that yourself. You want a clean break, you, you will never get one so long as you have feelings for him, he is the mad titan, the monster, that Anti-life: and more so that Nebula or any of the other daughters, you ARE his one true heir and daughter. Gamora, the deadliest woman in the galaxy, on a mission to collect infinity stones before anyone one else can, and hurting people along the way: Thanos two point zero."

"No!" screamed Quill, as Gamora slumped over holding her face, ashamed to let it be seen, ashamed of who she was. Ashamed of loving an evil person. "No, Gammy, come on... Gamora! Gamora! Don't fall for it, you're a great person, the best of us, and you're one leap away from the door, Gammy! Gammy!"

"Quill… Quill forget it." muttered Rocket, swallowing nervously. "She's gone, trapped in the memory. It… it's just you and me now."

"yes." said the Collector bot, playing Quills tape again to mess with him. "Yes."

"You're not getting out of here, my friends."

Awesome Mix tape vol 2: Marvin Gaye and Kim Weston- It Takes Two.