“That’s not mine!” Rocket cries.
“Your disconcertingly human-like fingerprints are all over it,” I say.
“Man, I just read it for the articles.”
“I am Groot,” Groot laughs.
“Indeed. These playing cards,” I continue, “are a novelty set that features pictures of popular woodland forms. It was manufactured on Arborus. The Queen of Hearts, a particularly attractive-looking birch, is your favorite, though the nine of spades, the billowy ash, also has some appeal.”
“I am Groot!” Groot exclaims.
“Don’t dish it if you can’t take it, bud,” Rocket laughs. “You are drinking a bottle of Zero-Beero; it is your preferred drink, excepting a Timothy, which no one in his right mind would attempt to mix on a warp-transiting spaceship. Groot is drinking a jug of garglesap. It is his drink of choice when he is kicking back.”
“I am Groot.”
“Exactly. The afterburn and the mouth-feel. I get it.”
“You…you read us that fast?” Rocket asks.
“It is my program. I am a Recorder.”
“So…so you not knowing something…that’s a big deal?”
“It is.”
Rocket sighs. He looks at Groot.
“Okay, buddy, get up in the cockpit and set us a course for Kno-where.”
“I am Groot.”
“Yeah, I know what I’m doing. I’ll even smile while it’s happening and put up with that flarking Soviet Labrador. Our new buddy has a head fulla stuff, and I think it includes stuff he doesn’t know he has a headfulla. The freelance tech-gurus at Knowhere are the only people in the entire flarking Galaxy that I think might be able to rip his memory out.”
Groot gets up and heads for the cockpit.
Rocket looks at me.
“We’re jumping to Knowhere,” he tells me. “I have contacts there. Contacts that will sort out this mess. Contacts that will get to the bottom of this conundrum.”
“But you have reservations also?” I ask.
He nods.
“Yup, I do. We’re on the lam, and the cosmic cops are after us. We hafta get to the freestate station Knowhere before they find us.” Groot makes a course correction. The jump freighter White
• CHAPTER EIGHT •
CUT TO THE CHASE
Stripe snarls as it comes around, its light engines straining.
Twenty-seven seconds later, the cops pull into view.
Nova Corps. Lamps flashing. High-speed pursuit.
Trouble in anyone’s book, either side of the law.
“Flarkity flark flark flark,” says Rocket Raccoon.
IN the tight, G-adjusted cockpit of his X-Class Pursuit Ship, Nova Centurion Grekan Yaer frowned and made a subtle adjustment to the joystick. Obediently, the supple, ultra-high-tech, high-speed chase ship yawed and accelerated.
Centurion Yaer was an impressively big individual, a male Korbinite with a heavy muscular frame and orange skin. He had been recruited by the Worldmind to serve the Nova Corps of Xandar eighty Earth years earlier because of his determination, high moral standards, and devotion to equality and justice.
Since that day, he had obediently served the Law Code of Xandar—which was, in effect, the single most consistent criminal law system in the Galaxy.
He synched his comlink.
“This is Centurion Yaer. Subject vessel is coding red on my ident systems. Engage full pursuit.”
“Corpsman Starkross, aye!”
“Corpsman Valis, affirmed!”
“I hear that, Corpsmen,” Yaer replied. “Looks like this isn’t going to be a training flight, after all. Follow me in.”
The three Nova Corps chase ships banked in formation, Yaer’s in the lead, and rocketed after the lone jump freighter. As they accelerated to eighty-eight gravimetric, the three X-Class Pursuit ships opened their spiked starshields. This enabled them to achieve greater FTL speeds by widening the wake of their gravimetric engines; it also made them resemble the distinctive starburst insignia on the brow of every Centurion’s helmet, a universal symbol of law and order.
All three ships began to pulse their hazard lamps and broadcast subspace sirens.
Yaer frowned again. It was hard to see his frown entirely because he was wearing the golden, cheeked helm of a Nova Corpsman. Sleek and gleaming, it covered everything but his mouth and chin. His powerful body was sleeved in a dark blue armor suit, the uniform of the Corps, gauntleted in strips of radiant gold metal. On his chest, the three circles of his rank glowed with incandescent power.
“Worldmind?” he said. “This is Yaer, operative 19944-56712. I am in pursuit of a suspect vessel. You have my coordinates. Sending you the details now.”
In front of him, the solemn face of the Xandarian Worldmind appeared in ghostly holographic form.
“Reading you, Yaer,” it said in an ageless voice. “Processing. Suspect vessel is identified as a Triplanet Metals Inc. jump freighter, compact class, the ‘Fast-Leap’ model, second generation, with custom-modified shift-drive. It is not capable of outrunning you. It was last seen departing without permission from Xarth Three. Outstanding warrants there issued now follow: absconding to FTL without permission, suspicion of smuggling, suspicion of violent acts, suspicion of extortion, suspicion of theft, possession of illegal firearms, murder, murder with intent, murder with unfeasibly large guns, breach of the peace, breach of the peace in a public arena, atmospheric disruption, unauthorized use of an FTL drive, refusal to comply, refusal to obey a direct order of the Nova Corps, malicious damage to a Corps officer or Corps vehicle, imbibing a Timothy—”
“I getcha, Worldmind,” Yaer replied. “They’re bad guys. Show me in pursuit at this time.”
“Centurion Yaer,” said the Worldmind. “Am I to understand that you are taking the novice Corpsmen Starkross and Valis into this action with you?”
“They gotta learn sometime, Worldmind.”
The Worldmind said nothing for a moment.
Then, “Centurion Yaer, desist. The Corpsmen are young, barely graduated, and not suitable for a mission of this jeopardy. I urge you to curtail engagement.”
“Yeah, well, we’re here now,” said Yaer, flicking the hologram away. “This, Worldmind, is real life.”
He opened his comlink channels on broad.
“Suspect vessel, suspect vessel, this is the Nova Corps. You are a vessel of interest following an incident on Xarth Three. Cut your drives and drop to sublight. We’re coming alongside. Prepare for boarding and inspection.”
He waited.
He repeated the order.
No response.
“Suspect vessel, suspect vessel, I’ll take that as a ‘no.’ Choice was yours. We are coming to get you, and we will take no flark from you. You are advised.”
Yaer switched to helm-to-helm.
“People, we’re taking this son-of-a-flark down. You know the drill. You were trained for this. Catch and keep. Expect exceptional bad-assery.”
“I hear that, Centurion,” replied Starkross over the link. She was a young Xandarian, steady but untried. She was eager for this chance to prove her worth and advance in the Corps.
“Affirmed, C-Centurion!” replied Valis. He was a young Kymellian, nervous and unpredictable. Yaer knew he had to watch him. Valis might fly off at any second.
Hell, he knew he had to watch them both. They were his responsibility.
On top of that, he had to catch and keep a ship full of very, very bad types. It might get messy. It might get stone-cold. It was going to be a busy night with lots of professional risks.
Then again, it was always night out here.
“Suspect vessel, suspect vessel, this is your last warning—”
He had barely started the comlink challenge when the jump vessel in his holo-cross-hairs began to accelerate. Then it executed an amazing turn-and-dive.
“The flark?” Yaer muttered, banking hard after it. G-force slammed him. “Who the d’ast is flying that thing? Flark, t
hey’re good…”
“Say again, Centurion?” Starkross commed.
“I said stay with them!” Yaer barked.
He kicked in higher, feeling the acceleration straps automatically tie him back into his seat. The stars were like stripes. Yaer loved speed. The gravimetric powers of the Nova Force with which he had been joined had taught him a love of speed.
But this was almost too much.
“Stay close!” he warned his cadets. They were still tight, remaining in pursuit formation, though Valis was having difficulty keeping with the pack.
“They’re not heeding me,” Yaer told his pupils. “Gonna fire a warning shot across their bow.”
“Understood.”
“Read that.”
Hand stiff on the bucking stick, Yaer took aim through the cockpit display and fired—one, two, three shots from his chase ship’s gravimetric battery.
He fired them wide, but no one in the Universe would risk getting hit by blasts of that strength. That kind of warning always brought suspects to a sudden, frightened halt.
Not these idiots, apparently.
They were going for it—full burn.
Yaer cursed.
“I don’t want to kill them, but they’re giving me no choice…”
The jump freighter zagged again, executing a perfect port-side turn.
“How’s he doing that?” Yaer wondered.
“He’s diving—” Valis replied.
“Asteroid field! Asteroid field!” Starkross yelled in alarm.
Yaer’s pupils widened very slightly, but he reacted with impeccable speed and dexterity. He’d been so intent on the suspect vehicle, he’d taken his eyes off the navigation projection and thus any notification of shipping hazards ahead.
It was an asteroid field, a big one, filled with lazy, tumbling rocks—some the size of boulders, some the size of small moons. It was a dense field, too. A flier would have to be crazy to take a ship of any size into a rock-swarm that close-packed.
And a flier would have to be certifiably flarkazoidal to do it at FTL speeds.
But the suspect ship was going for it. It was going to try to lose them in the asteroid field.
“Sublight! Sublight!” Yaer yelled into the link. All three chase ships cut their FTL drives hard, their gravimetric engines protesting, and decelerated to what felt, by comparison, like a standstill—though they were still moving at many thousands of distance units per time period.
Yaer kept his eyes on the forward screen, expecting at any second to see the flash-and-flare of the suspect vehicle’s inevitable impact. Typical end for a typical overzealous joywarper. Yaer had been in the Corps long enough to see his fair share of speed-freaks trying to outrun a high-speed pursuit, and ending up losing control and leaving the road, so to speak.
But this lunatic was good.
“D’ast, this lunatic is good,” Yaer murmured.
“He’s cut his FTL!” Starkross yelled over the link.
He d’ast well had. At the very last microsecond, the fleeing jump freighter—executing an almost suicidal, corkscrew nosedive into the edge of the field—had killed its jump-drive so abruptly it would probably never work again. But the ship dropped instantly to very low sublight speeds and slipped almost elegantly between two rocks the size of mountains.
“Starkross! Valis! Hold your positions! I’m going in after him!” Yaer barked.
“We’re coming with you, sir!” Starkross linked back eagerly.
“That’s an absolute negatory, Corpsman. Stay the flark here and hold position. This is way too risky for you kids. Understood?”
“Corpsman Starkross…aye.”
She sounded disappointed. Yaer smiled. He admired her pluck.
“Corpsman Valis, affirmed!”
Valis sounded relieved. Yaer kept his smile. He admired the kid’s healthy attitude toward risk taking.
“Get on the link,” he ordered, yanking on the stick. “Contact the nearest Corps Heavy and tell it to route our way at max. If I nail this lunatic, I want to be able to cart him all the way to Xandar!”
“Affirmative, sir,” linked Valis.
“Good luck,” linked Starkross.
“Luck, Corpsman, has nothing to do with it,” Yaer replied. “But thanks.”
He had begun his approach, nursing his sublight speed. He had a partial lock on the suspect’s tail. Glory, but those asteroids were looming fast. Some of them were spinning irregularly. This was going to be tight.
Foolishly, though it made him feel better, he breathed in.
He closed his ship’s starshield, reducing its lateral profile, then turned on his side as he passed between the first two rocks. It was tight. He could have reached up out of his cockpit and taken a surface sample.
Almost immediately, he was climbing hard to avoid a rock tumbling right at him, then jinking left and right to dodge between smaller rocks that were spinning toward him from different directions.
Where was the suspect? Where was the d’ast suspect?
His protection screen was really busy. It was tracking and marking more than nine thousand asteroid masses at once, and that was just the immediate part of the field he was cutting through. He had to roll hard, then duck under a rock, then bank at high G to miss another. The asteroids around him—the small ones, especially—were beginning to move even more unpredictably. The powerful backwash of his gravimetric drive was causing a ripple; rocks were starting to spin, pushed by the wake. Some collided with each other, splintering and sending out showers of deadly debris.
Two large rocks bashed into each other so hard there was a bright flash as matter annihilated.
“Too close,” Yaer murmured.
“Sir? Sir? Are you okay?” Starkross linked. She sounded scared. “Sir, we saw a flash from out here. Are you—”
“I’m fine as flark. Hold position. Any word from the Heavy?”
“—skkzzk—inbound now and skkzzk—within twenty skkzzk—”
Great. Yaer knew that he was far enough into the dense field for the high heavy-metal composition of the space rocks to start blocking his link. The mineral-ore interference was also messing with his tracking and projection systems. He couldn’t read anything except inert, hyper-density rock. How the flark was he going to detect the jump freighter? It was like hunting for a single ember in a blizzard.
Yaer was calm. His heart rate was super-mortally low. Years of training had cut in, and his mind was clear.
He didn’t have to detect the suspect vessel. He could see where it had been.
Just as with his own gravimetric drive, the backwash of the jump freighter’s sublight engines was causing a cascade tumble pattern in the rock field.
Yaer killed his projection screen and went eyes-only. His enhanced mind and vision read the intense, ever-moving complexity of the asteroid field ahead of him and watched for tell-tale signs of—
There!
A tumble of rocks, spinning erratically against the field’s overall tidal ebb. A backwash.
He steered hard. The cunning flarker had tried to double back. Rocks rushed at him as he course-corrected, pushing his velocity as high as he dared. Rocks flew past: over him, under him, to the left, to the right, some so close they almost scraped his golden hull finish. With super-normal speed, his hand was operating the joystick—jerking, twisting, pulling, yawing. Only a Nova Centurion possessed this level of mental speed and hand-eye coordination.
Well, only a Nova Centurion and a flarkazoidal nutzooki in a jump freighter, obviously.
He was in the suspect’s backwash now, and the asteroids were perturbed to such a degree they were no longer predictable. A big spinning rock came right the flark at him, and he barrel-rolled frantically to duck it. Immediately, there was another one behind it, right in his face.
No way to miss it. No way…
Yaer gritted his teeth and thumbed the fire stud on his joystick, atomizing the rock with a thunder-punch from his gravimetric cannons.
The rock flew apart. Yaer’s chase ship powered through the heart of the dissipating debris. Small chunks, some the size of fists, exploded off his forward shields. Some got through and smacked the hull, leaving dents. Even the dust-size particles were potentially lethal at this speed. Yaer knew his chase ship’s beautiful golden hull was going to look like it had been sandblasted.
A series of red lights flicked on across his control board. Damage sensors. It was all minor stuff—though one of his vector-thrusters had been misaligned, and that was going to reduce maneuverability.
Never mind. He had, in more than the obvious way, dodged the big one.
He plowed on, gunning the jets, slaloming through the unstable swirl of the field.
“Where are you, you son of a—”
Just for a second, he glimpsed the hot yellow glow of sublight afterburners between the rocks ahead of him. He hard-rolled to chase it.
The move was hasty. He had turned too tight. An asteroid the size of Xandar’s Hall of Justice clipped his starboard side and ripped off one finial of his closed starshield. The chase ship bucked hard, and Yaer fought to retain control. The stick shook. The engines wailed. Vibrations juddered through the mainframe.
He stabilized just in time to avoid smashing nose-first into a space rock ninety times as big as his ship.
He saw the glow again. He locked on.
“You’re mine, flarker,” he breathed. It was the first time he’d exhaled in a long while.
The suspect vehicle saw him and began to accelerate. Dumb move. Yaer could see that, in its haste to escape, it had already taken several dents and scrapes of its own. Accelerating was the last thing it should be doing.
The suspect was desperate. Really desperate.
Dodging the pelt and rush of the swirling asteroid shoal, Yaer got closer. He was almost in range to activate the chase ship’s gravimetric tractor-beam and snare the flarker. Just a little closer. Just a little closer…
The jump freighter tried to dart away. It had to bank hard to avoid collision, then came out the other side of the roll and clipped a small rock. There was a flash, a spray of sparks, and chunks of torn hull plating scattered back at Yaer.
The jump freighter pulled out and stabilized, but it was hurt. It seemed to be bleeding propellant from a ruptured tank. The liquid propellant trail spattered off Yaer’s shields like rain on a windshield.