by Dan Abnett
But the man is dead.
Rocket looks up at Groot.
“You know what that is, pal?” he asks.
“I am Groot.”
“Precisely. Irony.”
IT takes a further fifteen minutes to climb the stairwell to the landing pylons. We do so cautiously. Smoke and the sounds of chaos still thread the air, and many alarms are blaring. From outside, we hear the distinctive klaxons of Nova Corps pursuit vehicles and emergency fliers. We pass a few other people, but they pay us no attention. They are merely interested in getting the flark out of Leery’s. Possibly the flark out of Xarth itself.
Rocket tries to pop the landing-deck shutter, but security has locked it down. He pulls out a small sonic jimmy set and uses a couple of the delicate steel probes to pick the lock. The picks seem like surgical instruments in his disconcertingly human-like hands.
The shutter opens. Cold night air rushes in. The landing deck is one of several large platforms supported by the pylon that extends above the rooftops of Leery’s. Parking for patrons only. Stepping out, we see the vast sweep of the city at night, a dirty haze of neon and the lit windows of skytowers. Thick smoke billows from the building beneath us. The busy air traffic of the high-rise city is being held back by the hovering pursuit vehicles of the Nova Corps: Xandar’s finest, peace officers, the Galaxy’s boys in blue. The night sky is filled with pulsing, flashing lights—blue, red, and bright yellow. There is a constant whine of lift engines.
“Come on,” says Rocket. “Time to grab our wings and go.”
He leads the way over to a little subcompact jump freighter, parked on its landing skids at the edge of the platform. It is not the most reliable or well-maintained spacecraft I have ever seen. I do not believe it is entirely necessary for it to have flame-effect nose art scrolling back from the exhaust vents, or a bumper sticker that reads, “Honk if you want to go faster-than-light.”
“Excuse me,” says War Brotherhood Commander Droook from behind us. “I think you have something that belongs to me.”
We turn slowly.
“Hi there,” says Rocket. Droook has several of his men with him. They are dirty and bloodstained, their War Brotherhood battle pants have brand-new War Brotherhood tears in them, and none of them look like they’ve seen the funny side of anything recently.
“I said I think you have something that belongs to me,” hisses Droook.
“I belong to no one except the Rigellian Colonial Collective—” I start to say, but Rocket cuts me off. He looks Droook in the eye.
“Something that belongs to you, huh?” he asks. “I guess I do.”
The landing platform is not covered by jamming fields like the arena level. Rocket’s brace of pistols is out, and he is firing them faster than it is possible to believe. I think this is, in terms of Human Culture thematic reference, known colloquially as “gun-fu.”
The Badoon scatter for cover—those that do not simply drop dead on the spot, that is. Droook is protected by his automatic bodyshield and stands his ground, screaming in rage as he fires back.
Groot opens the side hatch of the jump freighter, energy bolts smacking off the bodywork around him, and drags me aboard. Rocket follows, firing and running backward.
“Go! Go! Flarking go!” he yells.
The interior of the jump freighter is cramped, dark, and rather shabby. Groot drops me onto an acceleration couch littered with old take-out cartons and half-read holo-mags, and hauls himself into one of the cockpit seats. He hits launch mode/engine start before he’s even strapped in.
Rocket leaps aboard. With a strangled whine of complaining, cold-started engines, the freighter lifts off. The side hatch is still open. Shots smack into the hull outside and the freighter yaws to the left, unsteady. Rocket backs across the sloping deck and almost falls out of the open door.
“Higher! Higher!” he yells, clinging on. “Straighten up and fly right!”
The freighter levels and begins to climb. It swings away from the platform edge, nose down, its landing gear still deployed. Badoon gunfire chases it.
“I am Groot!” Groot yells.
Clinging to the frame of the open hatch, Rocket peers out. He can see Droook and the Badoon hastening to their own craft, a sleek and very well-armed War Brotherhood Assault Ship.
“Flark!” he murmurs. He slams the hatch and dashes into the cockpit, sliding in beside his pal.
“Take us up and out!” he orders. “Full burn!”
“I am Groot!”
“Yeah, yeah, I can hear it!” Rocket replies. So can I. The comlinks are suddenly blasting out loud challenges.
“This is the Nova Corps! Jump freighter, cut your engines and land! Repeat, cut your engines and land! You do not have permission for orbital exit!”
We hear klaxons. Flashing hazard lights fill the sky, underlighting the clouds.
But we are not stopping. We are still climbing. Groot is dragging the sublight throttle levers all the way back.
The War Brotherhood Assault Ship screams into the air after us. It also ignores the frantic demands of the Nova Corps, and several of the Corps’ pursuit craft are forced to veer wildly to avoid collision with the accelerating Badoon ship. It opens its forward battery covers and extends its gun turrets, which pop like ugly blisters from its sleek hull.
In the cockpit of our little jump freighter, hazard alerts start to scream. Multiple target lock. Multiple target lock. Multiple target lock.
Rocket glances at his pal.
“Only one thing for it,” he says. “We need extra lift—and a little distraction.”
“I am Groot!”
“You said it!”
Rocket leans over and hauls on a large lever. It is the lever that opens the freighter’s rear cargo hatches.
The freighter zooms forward, suddenly lighter by almost exactly forty-eight tons.
“Not such a lousy investment, after all,” says Rocket Raccoon.
It is, perhaps, the first and only time in the history of the Universe that a Badoon War Brotherhood Assault Ship is taken out by forty-eight tons of almost overripe zunks. The payload—tumbling, scattering, and bursting—hits the ship like a mass birdstrike, clogging intakes, jamming gunports, and pulping through thermal exchangers.
The War Brotherhood Assault Ship falters, wobbles, flutters, and then peels away in a vast and spectacular crash dive, trailing flames, mangled engine parts, and ingested debris. It arcs away and down across the outskirts of Dive-town in a trajectory that no amount of fighting with the helm controls, hitting the braking jets, or screaming futile, outraged orders can arrest. A brief, bright star-burst of light and a shock wave mark the spot where it impacts—almost, but not quite, missing a municipal sewage treatment plant.
The Nova Corps ships maintain high-speed pursuit of the jump freighter, and their orders to desist become quite shrill and indignant, but Rocket and Groot are not stopping. Not even for The Law.
“Hit it!” Rocket yells.
“I am Groot!”
“Yeah, I know we’re still inside the atmosphere! Hit it!”
Groot mashes a huge, gnarly hand down on the big red switch that lights the freighter’s FTL drive. A significant and instantaneously generated storm explodes through the upper atmosphere as the ship goes to plus-light speed inside the atmospheric envelope. The traumatized weather pattern will continue to bring unseasonal rain, high winds, lightning, and snow to the streets of Dive-town for another week.
Aboard the jump freighter, we are suddenly encased in the blessed silence and ethereal starlight of FTL travel. There is a gentle, frosty glow outside the window ports, a silvery sheen. Inside, our faces are lit by the multicolored displays of the instrument panels. Xarth, and the Xarthian system, is already a memory far behind us. There is a little throbbing hum from the jump drives. There is an aftersmell of ripe zunk.
Rocket looks over at me from his pilot seat.
“I think it’s about time we found out more about you,” he says.
“I think that would be a good idea,” I agree. “I, for one, am anxious to know.”
Rocket Raccoon lets out a deep sigh and sinks back into his seat. “I need a Timothy,” he declares.
Meanwhile, forty-three minutes earlier on Alpha Centauri…
• CHAPTER SIX •
MEANWHILE
[FORTY-THREE MINUTES EARLIER ON ALPHA CENTAURI...]
EACH window of the Executive Boardroom of Timely Inc. Corporate Headquarters was a kilometer square that looked out on to a stunning vista of the dynastic ritual palaces carved by expert icesmiths into the Gon-Ket Glacier. The view was a stunning, peerless blue-white.
The view was also unusual because Timely Inc. Corporate Headquarters was situated on the principal continental landmass of Alpha Centauri, and the Gon-Ket Glacier was at the southern pole of the Kree homeworld, Hala.
“Could we change the vista settings?” asked Senior Vice Executive President (Special Projects) Odus Hanxchamp from the head of the Executive Boardroom table. “We’ve a couple more items on today’s agenda, and the view is making me chilly.”
Around the immense Executive Boardroom table, the one hundred-plus executive officers, department heads, vice presidents, and senior vice department officers nodded and made a show of shivering and turning up the collars of their immaculate pinstripe suits to indicate they felt the same. They did not feel the same, but everyone liked to be seen to be in agreement with Senior Vice Executive President (Special Projects) Odus Hanxchamp.
“Would you, Mrs. Mantlestreek?” Hanxchamp asked.
“Of course, sir,” replied Mrs. Mantlestreek, Hanxchamp’s prim, elderly personal assistant. She rearranged her horn-rimmed spectacles to better see the controls of her actuator wand, then waved it in the direction of the windows. The Gon-Ket Glacier glimmered for a second more, then vanished in a swirl of pixels. For another second, they were treated to the drab and uninspired landscape of Alpha Centauri outside. Then they were bathed in a warm, golden glow as the windows revealed a breathtaking view of the dusty Temporal Mausoleums of Calofxus in the deserts of the fifth moon of Spartax—moldering edifices twice as old as time, washed by the baleful red light of an ancient sun.
“Much better,” said Hanxchamp. “Right, moving on…item one sixty-two, ‘product development update, beverage containers.’ Gruntgrill, where are we on this?”
“R&D has done a lot of work on this, sir,” said the Kaliklaki-born Senior Vice Development Executive Arnok Gruntgrill, leaning forward and using his actuator wand to punch up a hologram suspension over the table. “As you know, Timely Inc. leads the way in innovationized development to make all of its products optimated for maximum market-agreementabilization. It’s our core philosophy. We want to resolutionate the lives of all our purchase benefactors and redactify the problemistic areas of their day-to-day existence experience with synergetic solutionoids.”
“Hear hear,” said several vice executives.
“As you can see from this graph,” said Gruntgrill, “market research has confirmed a key difficultized issue regarding beverage containers.”
“Summarize, Gruntgrill,” Hanxchamp said testily. “We’ve been here three hours already.”
“Of course, sir,” laughed Gruntgrill. It was a nervous, synthetic laugh. A boss-soothing laugh. His antennae quivered anxiously, and he adjusted the knot of his tie. He fought back the urge to vocalize the characteristic “tik” noise distinct to the Kaliklaki. He knew that it annoyed people, so he had spent a lot of money on speech therapy to lose the habit. But it welled up every time he felt stressed.
“Exhaustive market research has revealed that beverages are, in general, thermally awkward,” he said.
“Thermally awkward?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Meaning?”
“They tend to be hot.”
“Are we sure about this?” asked Hanxchamp.
Gruntgrill smiled confidently.
“Nineteen years of audience studies across twelve quadrants, canvassing eighty-two trillion consumers, sir,” he said proudly. “We’re pretty d’ast sure.”
Hanxchamp nodded.
“Okay, I’m seeing it now,” Hanxchamp said. “Beverages are hot. So the beverage containers also get hot?”
“Exactly, sir.”
“And thus become thermally awkward?”
“Spot on, sir.”
“Leading to?”
“Uncomfortable hand experiences,” said Gruntgrill solemnly. “Also instances of scalding, cuff damage, and—in some cases—actual spillage.”
Around the table, many execs tutted and shook their heads. Someone in the Beverage Containment Division was for the chop, and they were all very glad it wasn’t them.
“Okay, Gruntgrill,” said Hanxchamp, “you paint a very ugly picture. I presume you’ve got good news? Solutionize me. Go!”
Gruntgrill allowed himself a quietly triumphant smile.
“R&D has been working on this little baby for a decade, sir,” he said proudly, “and we think it’s a doozy. See for yourself.”
He wanded up a fresh hologram. It was a design schematic.
“What the flark is that?” asked Hanxchamp.
“Marketing is still blue-skying a name, sir,” said Gruntgrill, beaming. “For now, we’re calling it the Manual Easification Curve.”
“Talk me through it, Gruntgrill.”
“As you can see, sir, the Curve is built directly into the side of the beverage container. Digits, fingers, or pseudopods can slip around the Curve easily, thus allowing the beverage container to be raised, lowered, or otherwise manipulated with zero loss of comfortable hand experience, and no scalding issues.”
There was a long pause.
“It’s a work of flarking genius,” said Hanxchamp. “Sheer flarking genius.”
Gruntgrill blushed a deeper shade of green. “Kudos to the guys in R&D, Gruntgrill. Take that to them from me personally.”
“I will, sir.”
Hanxchamp thought for a moment.
“Hang on…hit me with the downside. What’s this going to cost, implementation-wise?”
“That’s the beauty part, sir,” said Gruntgrill. “Market research was less than six trillion. R&D came in under eight. We calculate another sixteen trill to upgrade beverage-containment manufacturing, and only one hundred and eighty trill on top of that for the market-awareness campaign. Frankly, it’s so extremiatedly well under budget, it’s scary.”
Hanxchamp sat back in his chair.
“I love it,” he said. “I want to marry it and have offspring with it. It’s a true synergetic solutionoid. It’s exactly the thing that makes Timely Inc. a Galaxy leader.”
He looked around the Executive Boardroom table. Everyone present realized it was time to ooohh and aaahh.
“Come on, people,” Hanxchamp said. “Idea-shower me. Comments? Brain-ideas? What do we think?”
“Work of genius like you said, sir,” said Blint Wivvers, the M’Ndavian head of Legal.
“It’s the simplicity I love,” said Sledly Rarnak, the Skrull in charge of Corporate Pamphlets. “I look at it and I think, why has no one thought of this before?”
“I’m literally speechless,” said Pama Harnon. She was a sultry blue-skinned Kree and the Chief Finance Officer of Special Projects. “I mean, the budget underage gives me literal goosebumps, but it’s the idea. We identified an oblique user needage, and we flarked that sucker.”
“I’m just thinking out loud here, boss,” said Homus Staplebunt, Vice Senior Junior Executive in charge of Responsibilities, “but what if…what if…”
“You’re not a Watcher, Staplebunt,” said Hanxchamp. “Spit it out.”
“Well, what if our target purchase benefactor wanted to manipulate the beverage container from the other side?”
“What are you saying?” asked Hanxchamp, leaning forward again.
“Uhm, okay,” said Staplebunt, “check my thinking here, people, but from that display it’s
clear the Manual Easification Curve is situalized on the right-hand side of the beverage container?”
“This is just a mock-up,” said Gruntgrill.
“Right, right,” said Staplebunt, warming to his theme. “But think. What if you wanted a left-hand-side hand experience? I mean, how would that work? The Curve would be on the wrong side.”
“Flark,” said Hanxchamp, noticing the truth of it with a sigh.
“Way ahead of you, kid,” said Gruntgrill, glancing at Staplebunt. He waved his actuator wand and the displayed image began to rotate slowly. “This was the hard nut to crack, actually, but we’ve anticipated this feedback. You see? You turn the beverage container around.”
“Flark, that’s brilliant!” exclaimed Rarnak.
“Turn it around?” asked Staplebunt. The Zundamite sagged slightly and tilted his oversized head on one side, gazing at the hologram display. “I guess you could. Wouldn’t it…I’m just thinking with my voice here…wouldn’t it be better to have a curve on both sides?”
“Well, that would -tik!- double the costs,” said Gruntgrill in a thin, fretful voice.
“No way are we doing that,” said Hanxchamp. “One curve. And maybe we include an illustrated instruction manual with each beverage container explaining how ‘container turning’ works.”
Everyone around the table nodded.
“Okay, good,” said Hanxchamp. “That’s covered. Mrs. Mantlestreek, did you get all that down?”
The elderly P.A. reviewed her minutes.
“I think so, sir,” she said. “Let me check…invented the handle… yes, I got it.”
“Excellent,” said Hanxchamp. “Right, let’s move on. Last item. Ah yes, Project 616. Right, people, this is Senior Special Projects clearance only, so that lets most of you off the hook. Good meeting, thank you all.”
The vast majority of the hundred-plus executives around the table mumbled their appreciation, shuffled away their papers, and headed for the exits. Some, who had only been attending the meeting telepresently, vanished in wafts of light. Several others teleported away.
“We have the room, sir,” said Mrs. Mantlestreek.
Apart from her and Hanxchamp, there were only six execs left at the meeting: Rarnak; Pama Harnon; Gruntgrill; Wivvers; Xorb Xorbux, a fierce Z’Nox in charge of Corporate Security (Special Projects); and Allandra Meramati, a dignified Shi’ar noblewoman who headed up the Executive Executization Department.
