I grope around, searching for something more solid than a wooden or plastic stall siding to shelter behind. Stray shots have set fire to some of the gaudy stall canopies, and other trade stands have been entirely blown apart by gunfire, littering the pavement with spilled junk, artifacts and produce, broken wood, and tatters of bright cloth. Burning paper price tags fly off in the wind.
I look up in time to see two Metal Wing warriors taken down. One is struck in the face and back-flips into a stall. The other is hit in the chest and simply drops on his back, convulsing.
I think of Gamora. I want to reach her. She is dying.
She is probably dead already.
The Warstar unit rushes the door of Pandubundy’s Bar & Tech. He is huge and heavily armored. His massive hardsteel boots slam with each step as they hit the stone pavement. He raises a forward battering ram of kinetic power in front of himself to ward off the furious fusion blasts that Roamer is firing at him.
Warstar soaks up the firepower and delivers a broad, sideways punch like a demolition ball that blisteringly fragments the right-hand side of the door arch, turning the doorway into more of a hole in the wall than a formal entrance. The neon sign above gives up the ghost and falls, shattering across Warstar’s hulking shoulders.
Roamer dives to his right to avoid the assault, but Warstar is quick. He catches the Spaceknight by the throat with his left hand (a hand, mark you, gentle reader, the size of an agricultural spade) and tightens his grip.
Roamer, his head about to be popped off like a champagne cork, fires at the Warstar, unleashing multiple point-blank shots.
Warstar recoils, hurt, and hurls Roamer away. The matte-black Spaceknight soars out across the square and crashes down on trader stalls previously untouched by the combat.
I get up. Metal Wing soldiers are urgently tending to their fallen brothers. One is calling out frantically for a medic transmat. Warstar is pounding away through the marketplace to locate the Spaceknight.
“Get on your knees!” Crusher cries, confronting me. His left cheek is terribly scarred by a fusion burn, and there is blood all over his face and throat.
“Get down! Hands on your robot head! Get down!”
I obey. He will destroy me. Crusher is an Imperial Guardsman who, because of latent ability and cybernetic augmentation, channels powers via an “exo-link.” Flight, super-mortal strength, invulnerability, hyper-dense gravitic force beams—he can call up any power through his link, but only one at a time. Right now, he is downloading force beam. His hands sizzle. He could take me out with one shot.
“Please!” I beg. “My friend is hurt! In the bar!”
“Get on your knees!”
“Please!”
“Get on your flarking knees!”
There is a soft click.
“My friend said please,” says Rocket Raccoon.
Crusher stiffens. Rocket is pushing the snout of an unfeasibly large gun against the side of the Imperial Guardsman’s head.
“This is a Saurid Class M Shooty-Killer,” Rocket breathes, “the shooty-est shooty-death gun in…ah, who am I kidding? It’s a piece of junk. But it will shave the side of your head off, buddy-boy.”
“Unless he reselects his exo-link powers to access invulnerability,” I point out.
Power surges. Crusher does exactly that. In the micro- second gap between his powers changing from force beam to invulnerability, Rocket pulls the trigger.
The unfeasibly large weapon coughs and sputters.
“Piece of d’asting flark!” Rocket cries, then dives out of the way as Crusher’s fist sweeps toward him, smashing the cannon clenched in those disconcertingly human-like hands.
“Accessing super-strength now, huh? Huh?” Rocket says, darting rapidly from side to side to avoid Crusher’s super-mortal swings.
“Oh, yeah.”
“Shoulda stuck to invulnerability, pal,” Rocket says.
“Yeah? Why?” asks Crusher, closing for the kill.
“I am Groot!” says Groot, planting one on Crusher so hard that the Imperial Guardsman vanishes in a sonic boom, barreling through the shattered archway, through Pandubundy’s, and out through the bar’s back wall, tearing through the iron railings to the rear that divide the bar from the old temple of Kefu. Crusher ends up supine on the floor of the temple directly under the altar.
He groans. Dislodged church candles and votive charms fall on him. Robed priests hurry forward and surround him, soothing him.
“G-get off me,” he gasps, then passes out.
A new figure has entered the fight, dropping fast from the skies. She is a female wearing a red bodysuit, sporting a striking white mohawk. She starts spitting fire-beams from her hands, blazing shots of pyrokinetic power.
She is shooting at Roamer.
Roamer is back on his feet. He swings his broadsword with both hands and sends the Warstar flying, the Warstar’s casing split open across the chest.
“I am Dragoon of the Imperial Guard!” declares the floating female in red. “Drop the weapons, or I fry you.”
Roamer does not obey.
She fries him.
Dragoon’s pyrokinetic powers are astounding. She supercharges the air around the Spaceknight to the approximate surface heat of a main-sequence G-type sun.
But Roamer’s Galadoran armor is built for space. He shrugs the inferno off and starts shooting up at the female Guardsman.
She switches and swerves lithely in the air to avoid his murderous bolts.
“Run!” Rocket tells me.
“But Gamora is—”
“Oh, just flarking run!” he demands.
“But Gamora is dying!” I insist. “Where is your heart? Where is your solidarity with friends?”
“Friends?” Rocket sputters. “She’s just a green-skinned fruity who crossed my path a time or two. Now get going!”
I am appalled. I get up and slowly begin to follow Rocket through the ruined marketplace. Dragoon and Roamer are shooting it out, causing terrible collateral damage. The remaining Metal Wing soldiers have joined in, as if it is some kind of contest to see who can create the most wreckage.
“Where’s Groot?” I ask.
Rocket turns, looks at me, then looks around.
There is no sign of Groot at all.
“The flark?” Rocket cries. I sense he feels highly vulnerable without an unfeasibly large weapon in his disconcertingly humanlike hands.
“Groot?” he yells, turning back toward Pandubundy’s.
A Metal Wing warrior rushes us. Rocket ducks between his legs, trips him with a tail/shove combo, and then brains the fallen Shi’ar on the back of his crested helm with a handy cobblestone.
Now Rocket has a gun. A state-of-the-art, Shi’r-constructed, hard-laser-emitting Tafstehl 190 rifle.
“Nice piece!” he enthuses, favoring the weight and shooting someone with it, just to be sure. Another Metal Wing soldier flies backward into a stall of root vegetables and flowering allium that has miraculously withstood the sustained firefight thus far. The soldier demolishes it.
“What now?” I ask.
“We find Groot,” he says, uneasily. Crossfire is ripping through and above the stalls around us.
“So…some friends are more significant than others?” I deduce.
“Yeah?”
“Where do I figure in that?” I ask. “I thought that I was your friend.”
“You are, Recorder-pal!” he says, zipping off more shots.
“Yet Gamora—”
“Will you shut up with the whole ‘moral code’ thing for one second?” Rocket snarls. I do not know, gentle reader, whether you have ever had a Raccoonoid snarl at you. It is not encouraging.
I look around. I see Groot. He is running, as much as any mature deciduous tree could be said to run, toward us from the shattered entrance of Pandubundy’s. Gamora’s limp form is cradled in his hefty, fibrous arms.
“He has Gamora!” I exclaim. “He went back for her!”
I m
ay have stressed the “he” in that last remark rather too heavily. Rocket looks dismayed and hurt. He says something that I can’t quite pick up. The best rendition I can make, gentle reader, is something like “rassin’, frassin’.”
“I am Groot!” Groot yells.
“Oh, yeah, well, we’re all impressed with you right now,” Rocket returns.
The Imperial Guardsman Dragoon swoops down at Groot. He swats her aside with a flick of a branch, still cradling Gamora in one arm, like a child to his breast.
“Can we run now? Can we?” Rocket asks me sarcastically.
“Gamora was dying!” I cry.
Roamer suddenly appears, his matte-black armor seared blue with pyrokinetic heat. He charges us.
Gamora springs from Groot’s arms and delivers a sword blow to the back of Roamer’s head that hurls him sidelong.
“I got better,” she says to me.
“What?”
“Rapid healing factor? Didn’t I ever mention that?”
I look at her torso. Her clothing is torn and bloody, but the green belly beneath is already re-forming in a pink pucker.
“You heal?” I hear myself saying. “Just like that?”
“Course she does,” snaps Rocket. “Now can we go?”
We go.
THE trip back to the docks is not without incident. Metal Wing warriors pursue us, firing and causing pandemonium in the busy lanes. Rocket Raccoon dissuades them, more by his use of cussing than by his turn-and-fire shooting.
“So your decision to leave Gamora,” I ask as we run, “was not based on leaving her to die? You knew she was going to live?”
“Of course.”
“So you were ditching her?”
“She’s trouble with a capital ‘rubble,’” barks Rocket. “I knew she’d be all right. I just didn’t want her along anymore. I don’t trust her!”
“You were ditching me?” exclaims Gamora, vaulting a stall in her headlong flight.
“Hey, I knew you’d be safe,” Rocket says.
“You don’t trust me?”
“Gam-Gam-Gammy, I know for a factoid that you were selling him out,” says Rocket. “If not now, then at the next opportunity. You always do!”
“I was not!”
“I don’t trust you, greenie, any farther than I can stand beside you and pretend I’m taller!”
“She was not selling me out,” I say. “Or you.”
Rocket does not reply.
“I understand now that Groot went back for her not because he feared she was dying, but because he did not wish to ditch her,” I say.
“What-ever.”
“He trusts her,” I remark.
“I am Groot!” Groot adds.
“Oh, you can both shut up!” decides Rocket.
“On balance,” I announce, “I think I like Groot rather more than you, Mr. Raccoonoid.”
“So do I,” agrees Gamora. She elbows Groot. “Always did.”
“I am Groot!”
“Flark! Flark all of you!” cries Rocket. He scurries up the open ramp of the prowl cruiser. “I’ll deal with your whiney-baby issues later!”
We enter the vessel.
“Criminals!” announces the automatic voice. “And suspected-but-not-confirmed criminal-delinquent lady! This vehicle is pleased to see you retu—”
“Move! Move! Move!” Rocket yells, jumping into the pilot seat. “This vehicle, we have jeopardy on our tails to the very max! Launch and go! We’ve got to make like a stricken newborn being given up by its forlorn mommy right now!”
“I am Groot,” says Groot.
“He said ‘and waif goodbye,’” Gamora whispers to me.
“I actually got that one,” I reply.
“This vehicle isn’t going anywhere,” the automatic voice says.
“What? Excuse me? What?”
Rocket pushes the touch-sensitive controls. The big red X appears repeatedly.
“This vehicle has had time for contemplation,” the automatic voice says. “Though thrilled to be part of this adventure, and unnecessarily carried away by your story, this vehicle decided it had become necessary to inform Centurion Yaer of its whereabouts. This vehicle knows this is against your wishes. But you are criminal detainees. Centurion Yaer is en route directly. We will wait here until his arrival.”
Rocket unleashes a stream of invective at the touch-sensitive console.
“I told you not to do that!” he squeals.
“Nevertheless, this vehicle has done it. This vehicle must abide by the Code of Xandar and the rule of law. No matter the temptation. Order will be enforced in six hours, once Centurion Yaer arrives.”
“I am Groot!”
“Exactly! We don’t have six flarking hours!” Rocket splutters. “In six flarking hours we’ll be six flarking hours dead! Or worse!”
“Nevertheless—” the automatic voice begins.
It does not get a chance to finish. The Imperial Guardsman Ebon zooms up over the docks and fires a beam of dark-matter at the prowl cruiser’s central processing module, attempting to disable it. The beam shears through the armored outer casing, burns through eight memory blocks, and fuses the craft’s internal registry.
“You in the ship!” Ebon cries. “Come out with your hands up! This is a demand of the Shi’ar Empire!”
Rocket sighs and looks back at us.
“Game’s up, guys,” he says. “Well, we had a good run.”
The prowl cruiser’s automatic voice gurgles for a moment.
Then it says:
“This vehicle detects immediate jeopardy. This vehicle believes it would be a good idea to get the flark out of Dodge. Right the flark now.”
We launch. We launch so hard on maximum gravimetric thrust that windows and awnings are torn out, and Ebon is thrown spinning away in the backwash.
We hit hyperspatial jump before the Imperial Guard can even regroup.
And that, gentle reader, is how we came to Alpha Centauri…
Of course, all sorts of stuff happens before then. But that was a good line on which to end the chapter. Except I didn’t. Ah. Narrative control. I see. I must watch that.
{clears throat}
And that, gentle reader, is how we came to Alpha Centauri…
• CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO •
MEANWHILE
[TEN MINUTES LATER ON ALPHA CENTAURI…]
SENIOR Vice Development Executive Arnok Gruntgrill stepped out of the Special Executive Elevator.
It had, thanks to his coded executive keys and retina print, taken him down into the bowels of Timely Inc.’s Headquarters, all the way to subbasement 86.
Which did not exist.
According to all published architectural schematics of the Timely HQ, the megastructure had only eighty subbasement levels. Seventy-eight was the energy-generation level, 79 was the furnace room, and 80 was the janitorial lockup. Most senior Timely executives knew nothing about the levels beneath that—and, even if they had known, they did not possess the keycodes to command the elevator to make those stops.
Only the special executives with Senior Special Projects clearance knew about the very lowest levels. Only they had the passkeys and authority to travel down so far.
Level 86 lay so deep in the planet’s crust—more than eighteen klicks under the surface—that the air was dry, yet chilly. Vast and self-networked atmosphere plants kept the environment cool despite the submantle seismic heat. The air buzzed with hyper strong clandestine fields. Gruntgrill always got tinnitus when he came down this far.
The decor was stark. Blue-black metal walls and decking. Functional iris valves that glowed—through their chunky, radiating grilles—with a dull yellow light.
Gruntgrill straightened his tie and walked along the spare, unwelcoming hallway to the main hatch. It was an enormous doubleiris valve, and it was surrounded by throbbing red bands of security countermeasures. Beside the hatch was a small dais ringed with genetic probes.
Gruntgrill stepped up onto t
he dais. He put his codekey in the slender reader-console. Then he placed his green hands on the palm scanners. He looked the blue light of the retina probe square in the eye. It always made him nervous.
“Voice,” he said. The machine lights shifted, sampling. “Gruntgrill, Arnok. Security sequence -tik!- 11324567812. I invite you to check my palm prints, retina, voice, gene sample, and pheromone spectrum.”
“Identity match failed.”
“What? -tik!-”
“Sequence not recognized.”
“I said security sequence 11324567812.”
“Incorrect. You stated security sequence as -tik! - 11324567812.’”
“Are you mocking me?” Gruntgrill asked.
“Question not recognized.”
“You’re mocking me for my speech impediment? I’m nervous!”
“Comment not recognized.”
“Scan me -tik!- again! My sequence is -tik!- 11324567812. I mean, it is 11324567812.”
It took all of Gruntgrill’s effort and years of therapy to control his Kaliklaki mannerism.
“Identity now verified, Arnok. Welcome to Project 616.”
The glowing-red countermeasures winked off briefly. The double-iris opened, outer then inner, with a squeal of metallic petals dilating and scraping over one another.
Cool air gusted out.
Gruntgrill got off the dais and walked through the hatch. The leaves closed behind him again with a slow shriek.
He entered Project 616.
The outer chambers were grim, gloomy laboratories. Machines pulsed and glowed in wall frames. Gruntgrill took a tablet from a row racked in sockets on the wall and checked it.
The display read: Datacore—87%.
Gruntgrill sighed.
He continued along the dim laboratory corridor, passing armored glass walls that looked into unmanned, whirring, automated labs. Four of them were large chambers filled with dormant Rigellian Recorder units stored on morguelike racks. Some of the Recorders were battered, broken, or even incomplete. They were covered with fibrous data-drains, relentlessly sucking information out of them into the Core.
The work of Project 616 was a slow, vampiric process.
He saw a light on in a small side workspace. As he approached the open hatch, Allandra Meramati, the Shi’ar who headed up the Executive Executization Department, appeared. She seemed to be adjusting her elegant crest of regal feathers.