Ch13
Fighting chance
It was raining -again, as was common at this time of the year, though without access to calendar Nidnene had only vague idea of what month they were in anymore. Wake up, line-up, go out and eat, line up for work inspection and return to the pits, work at the pits until sundown, return to barracks. That was her routine now, hers and Danine's and everyone else's. Even though Danine was now obviously sick the Lizards didn't really care since she still looked hale enough to walk and work. Nidnene worried how long they could keep up appearances by using ad hoc pigments, broom bristles and hair donated by other prisoners to disguise her failing health and the widening bald patches in her coat. Even though Nidnene was trying to work for both to fool the lizards and give her time to bounce back, they both acknowledged that the gig would be up soon, and the Butcher's bill was due for collect.
"Drom vo-laaak usgra!" Come here she-work slave!" comes the dreaded guttural cry. Danine, shivering against the edge of the pit wall, looked up at Nidnene in terror. Nidnene looked back at her without stopping her shoveling of dirt into the automated mining cart and they both knew it was time to act or perish. The Guard, apparently annoyed that Danine wasn't responding, lowered down via ladders to the pit. He grabbed Danine by the chest furs, turning his back to Nidnene standing behind him with her shovel poised. The guard fixed his gaze on Danine shivering under his foot, and then examined the fistful of "hair" he had pulled out with suspicious ease.
Nidnene barely even hesitated when she jumped up on the cart to get higher and brought the sharp edge of the shovel against the Guard's neck in a wild horizontal arc. The blow nearly decapitated the Guard with one fell strike -shovel hitting just so into the thin seam between the neck plate and helmet. The guard crashed down to the earth behind the mining cart, giving out no more protest than a single low agonized gurgle.
"On my Makers word, Nidnene. I-I think you killed him. We're so dead now!" Danine squeaks both terrified and elated.
"Can it Danine. In case you haven't noticed the Makers have decided to sit this one out a long time ago. So, shut up and hide that gun away. We've a date with destiny." Nidnene pointed grimly. She hadn't planned it to go like this, in fact she had barely planned anything solid and yet was suddenly trusted with a chance to strike back and get even with their captors. She glanced around shiftily and let out a sigh of relief when it seemed that neither the guards at the rim or slaves laboring further down at the terraced pit slopes had yet noticed her deed. a faint thunder clapped in the distance- a herald for more rain.
"You can't hide that bigger gun inside your clothes, they would notice the bulk -even without the stuffing already inside to hide that skinny frame of yours." She sighs at Danine attempting to hide the riffle, almost as tall as she was, under her clothes. Danine complies with a short nod and hides the gun into cart.
"And help me push that asshole into this cart." Nidnene orders seizing the scant few moments they had before another guard would look at their way. She barely managed to fit the guard's smaller sidearm under her own clothes. Danine would need to settle for the guard's knife.
They waited a few tense minutes and when no one yelled or came to investigate, she became bold enough to try and push their luck further. She quickly shoveled more dirt into the cart to hide the body and whispered to Danine.
"Hit me in the foot with that shovel Danine."
"What? No! Are you completely nuts?" Danine protests in aghast.
"Just do it, Danine" Nidnene commands more forcibly and after a bit of hesitation Danine hits Nidnene on the foot hard enough to make a painful bruise and slow bleeding abrasion but luckily, it's not hard enough to really break anything. Nidnene stifles a loud yelp, massaging her bruised feet to get the pain ebb and the small gash to look more serious which now had trickles of blood matting the fur around it.
"You're already sick... now I'm injured -a cart rolled on my foot if anyone asks, and we'll both be taken to infirmary for checkup. Once we get there..." She explains quietly, making a sawing motion with her finger under her throat when she hobbles towards the ladders leading up from the pit and Danine nods in understanding, slowly following her lead.
Like everything at the camp, the medical procedures had been designed first and foremost with only cost efficiency in mind. Both her and Danine had quickly been whisked away by the guards and escorted to a wire mesh fence enclosed section of the camp, housing the infirmary barracks. After the guards had reported the two slaves in they'd been dumped to wait in line at the yard with the other sick and injured slaves. Again, males and females segregated. If you fainted while waiting... No point wasting the medics time. Nidnene noted with a tired sigh how more than one slave at the sun baked or alternatively; mud caked yard, depending on the day's weather, had resorted to keeping in clumps of two or three or standing over a sharp pebble or sticking a splinter under fingernails to keep awake and alert like.
After what seemed like an eternity, Nidnene and Danine were ushered in. Nidnene, despite having been at the infirmary before, had no true recollection of it but Danine did have and despite saying nothing her wide fearful eyes were everything Nidnene needed to know about the dubious 'medical practices' the Badoon probably did here. She'd somehow expected the place to be dim, shabby and cramped instead of this rather spacious and well-lit interior with all the white and shiny easy clean-surfaces reeking of disinfectant, but she wasn't born yesterday and knew perfectly well that all that shone wasn't gold. In fact, all the cleanliness spoke to her of order and efficiency and it wasn't the pleasant kind of discipline she thought about.
Soon a pair of guards ushered her in to examining room with three people waiting, separating her from Danine. Two of them were Badoon in professional medic outfits. Nidnede knew nor cared about the genders of the two lizards. The third was a Procyonian male Kapo.
She recognized his presence as a normal thing. It was a standard practice to have a Kapo present to translate because at least nine hundred and ninety-nine out of ten hundred Procyonids had been proven to be incapable of being fitted with a standard Badoon version of translation implant. To those who could be implanted was the chance to be made a Kapo offered -few resisted the offer, Nidnene had learned. Which meant that she was going to have to tolerate the presence of this disgusting turncoat for the time being.
The 'nurses' bark something to the Kapo and leave the room for a short moment, shutting the ominously soundproofed door behind them. The Kapo looks at her expectantly yet passively.
"Well, hop on the examination table and take your clothes off -all of them." He issues at her and Nidnede does as told. With one small exception, she doesn't take of her clothes once she's standing at the table. Instead she reveals the gun she'd been hiding and the Kapo gasps loudly, taking some steps back until his back hits the wall and at that moment the nurses return slamming the door shut. The foremost of them drops the tray holding the medical supplies after seeing the gun at Nidnene's paws and leaps to grab the gun while the other one turns to run and alert the guards. Nidnene instinctively jerks back a step, pulling the trigger in surprise...
Rocket stops the patrol ship under a heavy tree canopy, next to a narrow but rapidly moving river, to hide it from any orbiting enemy satellites.
"Alright, this should be far enough for us to take a break." He tells Trey whose sitting behind Rocket at one of the passenger seats arranged in double rows to face their each other on both sides of the fuselage.
Rocket glances behind his shoulder when there's no reply and smiles fatherly at his first born, whose fallen asleep in his suit, and walks up to his son. Shaking him gently to wake him up.
"C'mon kit. Let's get you cleaned up. He announces scooping his son up to his arms when Trey slowly stirs, and they head out of the bullet shaped patrol dropship.
"No, no. We need to keep the suits on while I scrub them clean, don't want your skin to touch the nasty on the outside of our suits." Rocket instructs while dunking his son repeatedly into the river by holding him from the arm pits when confused Trey asks why he's being bathed in his suit.
Rocket allows Trey to remove his helmet and gloved sleeves once his reasonably certain that no traces from his homemade chemical weapons are no longer present in Trey's suit and lifts the kit up to sit at the steep bank. You could never be too sure with that stuff. Rocket thought frowning at the yellowish brown chemical trails from their suits quickly disappearing downstream with a few dead fish carried by the current. After a bit of deliberation, he removes his own helmet as well and leaves it to the bank with Trey. He stretches, craning his neck, feeling the relief of no longer having its weight pressing his neck and shoulders despite having been highly accustomed to its weight. They'd need to dump the Patrol cruiser though, it was also contaminated with traces from the chemicals. Rocket mused sliding down fully into the river to wash in turn. A nice river, Nidnene would have really liked it, especially because it had those picturesque, short rapids some 200 yards away. It was a feature she'd always liked about in streams.
"What's that daddy?" Trey suddenly pipes up bringing Rocket's thoughts back to present.
"What is, where?" Rocket asks looking at the direction Trey was pointing at.
"Looks like an old school water reservoir tower." He confirms to his son and scans the metal structure with his eyes. It would have been barely visible without it's top gleaming in the sun just above the treetops in the distance.
"There's probably a town nearby." He adds, climbing all the way back up the bank to stand next to his son to get a better view of the tower. Town and people meant either safety or trouble but most of all supplies which they were sorely lacking as it were.
"Think, there's food in there, daddy?" Trey sighs longingly.
"Yep, and I'm going to reserve a whole restaurant just for the two of us once we get there." Rocket promises putting his helmet back on. Trey sighs, ears drooping at seeing it. He really didn't like to wear his suit all that much anymore. It smelt stuffy and the helmet's weight made his shoulders ache from just thinking about it.
"C'mon kit, let's put your suit on -just in case." Rocket couches his reluctant son to reattach his suit parts and lifts him up to his shoulders for carry. Rocket wasn't really worried about Trey needing protection from the environment, but he'd be damned if he'd let his son get hit by stray ammunition from a possible ambush gunfight and in that situation protection -even as flimsy as that suit, trumped over nothing at all.
The Patrol ship held little value for Rocket anymore even though he locked it from out of habit. The fuel cells were almost depleted, there was nothing worth salvaging for later as parts, he'd stripped the tracking transponders off three quarters of hours and five hundred clicks ago and the interior was contaminated with poisonous chemicals on top of it. Better to abandon that hunk of junk to rust than lug it around for the few more miles of sustained flight it's cells could give, and risk being seen from a Badoon satellite.
Nidnene marveled the weapon that was still smoking a little from the barrel after being discharged. The weight and ergonomics felt uncomfortable to her tiny paws. Still she was glad it was also so 'basic' that probably even the stupidest of 'Coolies' would've known how to use it right. She had a suspicion that this was the exacting intention behind it's outwardly hyper-simplistic design. No recoil, little noise and apparently some sort of autonomous targeting to balance jerking when wielded by an inexperienced user.
She gave a little smirk at the pale green robed Badoon "nurses" now dead on the floor a few feet away from her and hopped down from the examining station's table. The only shred of sympathy she had left was for the hapless Kapo cowering at the corner, probably waiting for his turn to be shot. A possibility which wasn't much of a stretch to imagine considering the hair-trigger in-built to the weapon and the black clawed right index of agitated Nidnene hugging the said trigger.
"Now, you with me or against me?" She asks coldly from the male Raccoonoid, training her weapon at his direction.
"I- I'm with you. Please don't shoot me." The Kapo nods eagerly, clearly not wanting to get shot. Though she was obviously rattled by the sudden change of fortunes, Nidnene suppressed her suspicion about his sincerity, opting to trust the Kapo's will to be free to outdo his fear and self-preservation instincts when it came to Badoon.
"Good, here's how you can prove it; Tell those two lizards outside to come in and don't fuck it if you want to keep breathing after the next two minutes." She reminds him while dragging the dead to be out of sight behind a privacy screen, absently wondering why they had the thing at all -Badoon had no real concept of privacy when it came to slaves.
Nidnene knew her threats to be mostly empty -she was hard pressed enough as it was to shoot even an unarmed Badoon, but the Kapo wouldn't know this and gulped nervously before nodding. She briefly wondered if she'd made a lapse in judgment with this Kapo -a mistake here could mean death -hers and Danine's. No turning back now. She gently but nervously hugged the trigger of the over-sized weapon. Caressing its grips reassuringly at her palms, feeling the pull, and set to wait for the Kapo to leave and lead the guards in and took a small solace in her belief that Rocket & kits would have been proud of her right now.
The Kapo, however doesn't move, studying Nidnene instead.
"They're not here. You'll never find them. I'm sorry. I'll still help you look, little use as it may be." The Kapo says turning his back to Nidnene while grabbing the door handle. Nidnene blinks momentarily and takes a jump forward, blocking the Kapo from opening the door.
"What do you mean by 'they're not here'?" She questions sternly.
"Kits they held here. The Mast- Ehm, lizards. They-" The Kapo says licking his lips a bit nervously there.
"They started shipping the underaged away along with the 'housebroken'. Started taking them into another location almost a week ago but I know nothing, I'm just a slave like you, I know only what I see and hear here."
"Well then, what do you know for sure?" Nidnene asks recalling the sporadic but persistent camp rumors about people being shipped out.
"That's all, apart from a bit I overheard from the guards that apparently they'd start with the most promising ones. Whatever that might mean. Herded them to spaceships even, taken off world or so I heard but I doubt it. We're not that good as slave material... Really, why even bother?"
"What do you mean not that good?" Nidnene asks frowning at the words he'd used.
"I mean, just look at us and then compare us to them...We're small, not that strong. Hell, most of us aren't even capable of being fitted with their weird implants and shit." The Kapo counters. Nidnene sees what it is though, the man is scared witless of what they'll do to him and Nidnene if they're caught here and the longer he keeps her talking, the less culpable he can make himself to look if things turn ugly.
"Just send those two guards in here." She finally replies, just wanting to get this crap done. One way or the other.
Stone river
The name of the town -Stone river, doesn't mean much to Rocket when his son (slowly & awkwardly) reads the roadside sign out loud, written in Procyon-6's squiggly native alphabet. The town beyond the sign seem sleepy -no, abandoned, dead even. It's a small but densely built town of two to three storied brown stucco buildings nestled between rocky hills and the river continues its run through the center, narrowing into a steep ravine upon reaching the city proper. A single beautifully arching stone bridge spans across it. In short, the town looks like it could have been snatched from a travel agency pamphlet advertising rustic urban holidays at central Italy. The water tower he'd spotted earlier, it's style clashing with the older urban architecture despite being situated at the edge of the town, was clearly a recent addition to improve the town water supply.
'It's dead -as dead as a Dodo, Star-lord would have said'. Rocket thought walking along the deserted main market street with his son in carry. The streets should have bustled with life at midday like this. Rocket readjusts Trey a little and jiggles his gun to his free arm. Trey yawns looking lazily around him, and Rocket feels his son slowly tensing the more his looking around.
"I don't like this place daddy. It's scary." He whines quietly, tightening his grip on his father.
"Hush... I know son. Let's see if there's anything left to eat at the shops." Rocket calms his kit, walking across the square into a small alley next to a foundation level grocery store. After a bit of searching Rocket locates the service entrance and almost stumbles on their first bodies near the small loading area.
"Don't be scared son. They can't harm you." He mutters trailing his gun at the dead in case they start twitching and promptly lowers it, realizing that headless desiccated corpses weren't going to turn into Zoms and shifts his attention on the shelves inside the shop, scanning for anything edible of which there was quite a lot. Even the refrigeration units were still running which was odd to say the least.
"I'm not a baby." Trey huffs, his act of bravery being foiled by his slight shiver. Rocket just pats his son encouragingly in response.
Seeing nobody emerging from hiding or nothing, despite waiting a bit in case they do, he deposits Trey to sit at the end of the grocery conveyer and retrieves a shopping cart before lifting his son to sit on it while they go for 'five finger discount' shopping tour. Rocket then proceeds to fill the cart full of canned preservatives and other such goodies. The fact that there was anything left to take at all and no signs of widespread looting besides theirs only reinforced his suspicion towards this little town.
Nidnene cursed. This really wasn't their day it seemed. She'd killed the two guards almost as easily as she had the nurses but now faced a different dilemma. Where to go next and where the frakk was Danine?
The kapo -Gerd wasn't much use in the end, reluctantly sneaking behind her as if expecting to die at any moment until she finally snapped at the man's spinelessness.
"Stop it already. That damn sniveling is getting on my nerves." Nidnene growls pushing the man into a cleaning closet for pep talk, closing the door behind her.
"You don't know what it's like." Gerd whines as Nidnene manhandles him by the collar.
"What, being a slave?"
"No, this!" Gerd cries removing his canvas skull cap and pointing at the bare, scarred, irregular lump in his crown just above his left ear.
"Is that the translator implant? My Rocket's is so much smaller..." Nidnene asks apprehensively, seeing the Badoon version up close for the first time (or what was there to been seen at any rate).
"I know nothing of that... Look you've got to understand. I can't be seen with you! They'll kill me remotely and find you even faster if I'm with you." Gerd explains even more worried now.
"Explain. How can they kill you 'remotely?"
Gerd wrings his palms together nervously before replying.
"The Camp Commandants. They have this little box and it has these buttons... They showed it to us, to keep us in line. You see, there was this one guy who was always sort of unruly, so they showed what happens to unruly slaves... The Butcher did something with the box and this poor chap just, -just grabbed his head and started screaming -it went on and on and then it suddenly stopped because he was- ya know, dead with blood trickling out of his ears and muzzle. They also said that escaping and hiding was meaningless -all prisoners are tracked with both the tattoos and this implant and if you leave your designated work area without permission you get zapped unconscious."
"You mean... like a, a combined cattle prod and homing device?" Nidnene feels a shiver run through her spine, realizing how their escape plan had been doomed from the start.
"What, -what if-, what if we'd put something like a-a bucket over your head or tin foil or-" She proposes waving at Gerd with her arms in near panicked frustration.
"I'm not running around with a tin bucket over my head. That's just stup-." Gerd protests freezing in mid-sentence when a throaty male voice interrupts them in heavily accented Procyonian.
"Zat ist alzo pointlez. Ze zignal iz omni-direczional capable of penezrazing any material."
Nidnene lifts her gun, turning around in a flash to see who had opened the closet door, and almost drops the gun from her suddenly numbed fingers at the sight of the Butcher himself standing at the door. Gerd whimpers, curling into a ball at the corner.
"Coward" Nidnene scolds without real heat.
Nidnene knows when to fold it and lowers her gun on the ground at the sight of the commandant and his guards. The Butcher nods his approval, holding an ugly little fake smile at his perfect lizard's lips.
"Gott, now ze will-" The Butcher orders but stops with what his about to say when a loud boom shakes the building, then another and another, in quick succession. The butcher blinks his nictitating membranes in quick surprised succession before saying something to his guards in Badoon. One of them grabs Nidnene's gun away before following the Butcher out and locking the door behind them.
"Well, that went better than expected." Nidnene growls much deflated from her earlier spunk.
"You think, -Really?" Gerd asks, slowly straightening from his 'scared ball of fur'-position at the corner now that the guards had left them to wait in the broom closet, now suddenly turned into a detention unit.
"We're both still breathing, aren't we?" Nidnene grunts upturning a bucket to be used as a seat while waiting.
"Yeah, but for how long?" Gerd mumbles hopelessly and Nidnene had to agree there. The walls were made of metal-like stuff into which the metal shelves were firmly attached. The tiny room was otherwise pretty much bare excepting the generic mops, brooms and few cleaning agents and the only vent was the slit under the metal door.
They're not sure how long they've waited in the closet. The loud booming noises outside have largely faded when Nidnene and Gerd perk up. Someone was fiddling with the lock. Gerd gives Nidnene a scared look.
"Badoon would use a keycard" Nidnene comments and jumps back with a yelp when the lock is blown off and the door gets kicked in for good dramatic effect. There's a tense second hanging in the air when the heavily armed Raccoonoid who kicked the door in looks around before settling his eyes on Nidnene and Gerd.
"Rocket? I thought you were dead!" Nidnene squeaks in surprise and Rocket blinks in equal surprise.
"Ahh -Hi honey, sorry I'm late." Rocket stammers lowering his gun down just as Nidnene practically jumps on his neck to strangle him with her relieved hug to which Rocket enthusiastically responds.
Rocket surveyed the townscape from a hotel room balcony with the binoculars he'd liberated from another shop earlier along with more food and other useful gear such as decent new clothes for Trey and himself to wear. He'd chosen this one room in particular because it held an almost perfect view over town. Comfy beds, nice shower and clean sheets were just an afterthought though still a welcome bonus. The signs of hidden tragedy were there if you knew where to look, inconspicuous plasma scorches at the walls, position of remains, state of the buildings... Something had happened here, but it wasn't the Zom hordes. Even Trey was picking it up. Sharp kit, Rocked notes to himself when the boy comments.
"Why've the curtains been drawn on so many windows?" The kit asks dreamily, his elbows propped against the window sill, muzzle leaving ring marks from his nose on the glass.
"Not our business son... They've made their choice and did what they wanted to accordingly." Rocket replies grimly, having noticed some 'suspiciously' swaying shadows at one of the opposite house's windows. Some of the panes in the opposite window were broken making the closed curtains undulate eerily in the draft.
"And we don't need to go there." He grumbles in stern no-argument tone while setting the camping stove kit on the hotel room table. Something about the cadavers and the town bothered him, bothered him greatly but not enough to deter him from having a nice shower, putting on a new clean and less conspicuous outfit and creating a warm meal for him and his son from the food they'd just looted. The first decent meal they'd had in days. As far as Rocket could discern there was no reason for them to not stay and rest here at the safety and comfort of indoors for the night
He pushed his own emptied plate way, feeling tired but content. Trey had barely gotten through half the food on his plate before he was already drooping heavily. Rocket suppressed a wide yawn of his own, trying to clear his head a little so he could have the energy to get up from the chair and carry his son to bed. He stood up with a tired grunt and suddenly his legs gave out. He narrowly stopped himself from knocking the table over in his attempts to stay upright. Trey had already passed out, snoring gently, cheek resting against the table top without a care as if his father hadn't just nearly face-planted on the floor almost taking the said table with him. Rocket stood there dazed for a moment, vertigo making the room spin. Keeping himself steady with both hands spread in wide A-arch against the table was an effort in itself.
A familiar heat was radiating throughout his lower body. His chemical warfare mods were coming online. They'd been poisoned!
"The flark was in those Krutackin' preservatives?" He grunts weakly, feeling his eyelids getting heavier by the second despite his cybernetics fighting back like a champ to counter it. His knees wobbled, and he had to fight to keep his bladder under control. 'Please, don't let me shit my pants, don't let me shit my pants'. He cringed in his mind while his body felt like being made of jello. He pushed himself off the table and wobbled a few steps forward to reach his medical kit at the side table before the floor came rushing towards his face, yet he never even felt himself connect.
Vren Underhill said nothing, watching the near enough hundred men he'd handpicked with Roork Shadewater, toiling at the forest clearing turned to impromptu sports & training track. It was hard for him to concentrate on the task at hand and not even Roork's yelling could keep his focus on the cadets-in-training for long.
"Move it you maggots! Even though my grandma wasn't faster, but her excuse was being old!" Roork yelled again holding aloft a stopwatch. This was directed to a knot of three that was lagging behind the main body. They spooked visibly before sprinting to catch the rest at the lap the trainees were doing around the clearing.
Another vision -It was vivid, so bright and 'real' that it genuinely terrified him with its clarity. He stumbled slightly, trying to clear it -to banish the sight. He barely registered how everyone at the track, including Roork stopped to stare at his golden eyes glowing under the deep cowl of his hood.
"Right, okay that's enough. Go fresh up group! Weapon training at seven as scheduled." Roork calls out, dismissing the trainees before turning his full attention to Vren. The cadets shuffle away muttering quietly amongst themselves and Roork knew there would be rumors at the camp tonight.
"You Alright Vren. Was it another vision?" He asks, quietly helping his friend to lay down.
"Alftand-." Vren whispers still dazed.
"Yeah, I know the place. What about it?"
"It's going to be ...gone."
"Shit man... you want to talk about it?" Roork asks carefully. Vren had had these 'episodes' more and more frequently and the only thing Roork had been able to do for help was to offer a sympathetic ear and it galled him that it was all he realistically could do.
"They're getting stronger Roork, more vivid too and I can't figure out the reason why... other than that the more vivid a vision the more probable it is to happen." Vren hitches trying to collect his thoughts.
"It used to be just sensations, but I saw this, saw it like with my own true eyes. The last stand at the bridge over Alft. Last hours of Alftand... It is about to be overrun by a massive horde of Zoms. The male citizens will make their last stand at the bridge to buy more time for their families. The women and old would have been there with them if the presence of children and sick hadn't forced them to reconsider... They're buying them time, buying it with their lives, for weak and children to get out. Only It won't be enough."
Roork just nods solemnly before asking. "Is there anything else?"
"Yes, when you take the cadets to Alftand... and then to Stone river -this must happen for us to have a chance, and once you're there; Kill them, kill them all. The ones holding the water tower. They've betrayed their kin." Vren orders coldly, looking Roork in the eyes and Roork has the strangest of sensations of wanting to argue against the harsh orders but feels as if his tongue has rooted itself into his mouth and finds his will simply melting under that golden blaze.
"I will." seems prudent enough as a reply. He rises, dusts his clothes from dry leaves and debris before hurrying to relay the orders without another word.
Vren closed his eyes uttering a tired sigh. He hadn't told everything to Roork about what was new. The aliens were in his visions now -other aliens even more strange than the Badoon. He hopes they're -if not friendly, then at least indifferent in this conflict. That they'd be here to fight off the Badoon like the Guardian ranger said and would then leave.
He groans softly and stands up, knowing what he'd need to do next. Talk to the so called supreme command, residing at their base camp, about the visions he'd had. Sure, he had been given the power to make them do what he wanted to but that was just tyranny and he preferred reasoning over force in any case. Now if only those people would actually listen to reason the way Roork always did... A stray thought for possible alternative solutions made him shiver.
He left the command tent an hour later. They had politely listened what he had to say -they always did, but once he was gone they'd do what they felt like regardless. He could only ask the Great maker to let them see reason and prepare for the assault to free the camps as simultaneously as possible, starting from the one that was in Rokuten. It wasn't the largest of the myriad slave camps that had sprung up following the invasion, but it had been the first and many high ranking Badoon still held it as their base.
The guardians M-ship, the Milano, is quietly making its progress to leave Nova corps flagship's hangar with several other vessels coming and going. It also seemed like the Nova corps had already snatched a few Badoon slave transport ships and were regrouping to snatch some more emerging through the ominous looking jump gate which Rocket had described in his message. Peter eyes the telemetry data for the unusual jump gate calculatingly and then assesses friendly traffic outside near the carrier group before switching the autopilot on to be free to address the team.
"Okay, Guardians, don't forget, this might get dangerous soon. So, let's put on our mean faces. " Star-lord reminds his team turning in his pilot's chair to face them.
"Trust me Quill. This won't be our first space battle." Gamora sighs relaxed.
"No, Drax it's just an expression you don't have to look meaner than you already are." She says to Drax who only shrugs.
"I was just practicing." but he stops making 'mean faces' just the same.
"Anyway, we're engaging for jump in five." Peter announces, turning his chair around to glance at the screens after hearing a soft ping-sound from the console.
In T-minus three hours they would have crossed the dark matter gate and vanguard the assault on Procyon-6.