Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy

by David McDonald

  The other nobles nodded.

  “So, Lord Quill, is there any boon that I can grant you?

  “Sire, I don’t think so. I’m just happy to be alive,” Quill said. “All I really need is a way home, and I hope that we’ll find that in these Forbidden Lands.”

  “I can’t send you off without reward after the loyal service you have rendered, so I hope you will accept this small token.”

  At that signal, a servant rushed over, holding a long, thin bundle. The Duke took it and handed it to Quill, who unwrapped it.

  “It’s beautiful, sire.”

  It was a beautiful cavalry saber, with a hilt chased with silver and sapphires. When Quill pulled it from its sheath he whistled in admiration—it was perfectly balanced and razor sharp, made of some strange alloy.

  “There have been many civilizations that have risen and fallen in our history. They get to a certain point and then some catastrophe brings them down. It is a recurring pattern that has puzzled us and inspired fear—will it happen to us? This is a relic from one of the kingdoms that rose higher than all the rest before it came crashing down.”

  “Thank you, sire,” Quill said sincerely. “It is a truly noble gift.”

  “Are you sure that you won’t stay?” the Duke asked, eyes twinkling with amusement. “You could rise even further. I believe that my daughter would be happy if you stayed, too.”

  Quill coughed. “Thank you, sire, but my friends and I need to pursue a way to return to our home. I am honored by the suggestion, though.”

  The Duke reached out and clasped Quill’s hand in his, squeezing hard enough that bones creaked.

  “Thank you, Quill,” the Duke said. “We will never forget what you have done for us.”

  With that, the travelers took their leave and headed for the stables, where Gamora and Karyn were waiting for them.

  “Where’s Ansari?” Quill asked.

  “She has already left for the monastery,” Gamora answered. “We’d said our goodbyes, and I don’t think she wanted to draw them out.”

  “How did she take it?” he asked.

  “Not well—she wanted to come with us. But I convinced her to stay at the monastery, that that was where she belonged,” Gamora said. “I told her that she was ready to take my place, and that I knew she would be worthy.”

  “She did prove herself, didn’t she?” Quill said.

  “She gave me a message for you, too,” Gamora said, smiling.

  “What was that?”

  “That the next time you see her she will be bigger and stronger—and that she will beat you easily.”

  “The young people of today . . . just no respect for their elders,” Quill said, laughing. He was touched, though, and it showed in his face as he turned to Karyn.

  “Karyn, I’m glad to see you made it through safely,” he said warily. He wasn’t sure where they stood after the scene at his original departure, but he got his answer when she slapped his face, hard, before wrapping her arms around him and burying her head in his chest.

  “Quill, I’ll miss you.” She looked up at him with tear-streaked eyes. “Don’t forget me. Promise?”

  Before he could do more than nod, she reached up and grabbed his hair, pulling his mouth down to hers. It was more than a few minutes before he could catch his breath and murmur in her ear.

  “Never. I promise.”

  Quill was uncharacteristically quiet as they winged their way east. There were a lot of people he would miss from the Duchy, not only Karyn. He had been there only a few months, but they had gotten surprisingly deep under his skin. He looked around at his companions—at least he had them. Drax was now flying on what had been Ansari’s beast, while the others had reclaimed their own. Quill patted the velvety softness of his mount’s thorax with real affection. The beast was healing nicely after taking a number of arrows during his rescue of the Duke. It had proved a brave and loyal steed.

  “Are you okay, Quill?” Gamora yelled across the gap between them.

  “I’m fine, Gamora, just thinking about friendships and goodbyes, and how hard they are.”

  “I will miss my sisters at the monastery,” she replied. “It’s bittersweet saying goodbye. I am happy knowing that I have made a difference in their lives, though—and they in mine. I guess that’s all you can do when you have to say goodbye—keep the memory burning brightly in your heart against the day that you meet again.”

  “Do you think we’ll ever return here?” he asked.

  “I hope so,” Gamora said. “But we have to get off the planet first. If we do, then it won’t be hard to come back, as we have the coordinates now.”

  “That’s true,” Quill said. “And isn’t there a finder’s fee for discovering a new planet? Maybe we’ll recoup our losses after all!”

  “One can only hope,” Gamora laughed. “That will go a long way to improving everyone’s opinion of you after that last escapade.”

  “It seems so long ago now,” Quill said. “I’d almost forgotten our argument.”

  “I guess we’ve been reminded of what is really important over the last few weeks,” Gamora said. “Friendship is too precious to just throw away.”

  “Are you two being mushy again?” The voice was right in his ear, and Quill nearly screamed. He looked up to see Rocket’s grin only feet from his own. The raccoonoid had his beast flying inverted right above Quill, and he was hanging upside down. “But, yeah, this is much more fun than when we’re yelling at each other, isn’t it? Besides, check your saddlebags.”

  Quill stuck his hand in his bag and found it full of gold coins.

  “A little present from the Duke,” Rocket said. “I didn’t tell you until now because I didn’t want you doing something stupid—like trying to turn it down.”

  “Well, if we can just get our ship fixed, this little adventure might turn out to be rather profitable,” Quill said.

  “That’s the way I like my adventures,” Rocket said. “But we’ll find out soon enough whether it’s possible.” He pointed down to where the ground had changed color from the dull tan of the steppes to a melancholy grey. “There’s the beginning of the Forbidden Lands.”

  Chapter 18

  The Forbidden Lands made the land around the Broken Hills look positively welcoming. The soil was grey and lifeless, and there were no trees to provide shade from the unforgiving sun. On a planet that had impressed them with its sheer pleasantness, this place was an anomaly. The only thing that broke the monotony of the horizon was a towering shape in the distance—and that was where they were headed, one step at a time. They had seen if from the air—a huge ovoid shape that looked like nothing more than a giant, matte-steel egg standing upright on its base. It was perhaps three hundred feet tall, with the same general proportions of a chicken’s egg. It stood out from the nothingness of the land around it like a sore thumb, and seemed the natural place to start exploring. Rocket had suggested that just flying straight towards it might not be the best option in case it possessed unpleasant defensive measures—and remembering the battle with the invaders, the rest had agreed—but after hours of walking, Quill was starting to regret that decision.

  By the time they were close enough to be in the egg’s shadow, it was late afternoon. They stopped for a brief drink and then checked their weapons. Gamora and Rocket had each liberated one of the nomads’ repeating bows. They were well designed—a crossbow rather than a longbow, with a hollow stock that held a magazine containing twenty bolts. The weapons, using a cunning counterweight system to recock the action, could fire almost as fast as gun. Rocket and Gamora both carried extra magazines, and they each also had a close-in weapon—Gamora her ubiquitous knives, and Rocket the cudgel he had used to good effect in the forest. Drax had claimed one of the fallen woodcutters’ axes, and like any weapon, it seemed designed to fit in his han
d. Quill was content with the beautiful blade the Duke had given him. He wondered how it would look with the gear he had back at the ship. Dashing, unless he was mistaken.

  It was eerily quiet, and nothing stirred at their approach. As the egg grew closer, they could make out a flight of stairs leading up to an open hatchway. Strangely, the stairs seemed to be a newer addition, constructed from wood rather than the same metal as the egg.

  “You know what this is, right?” Rocket asked.

  “It’s a spaceship, isn’t it?” Quill replied.

  “Yes, and if play our cards right, then not only do we get salvage rights, it might be our way home,” Rocket said.

  “Well, the latter is much more important than the former,” Gamora said. “And let’s not take anything for granted.”

  They slowly ascended the steps, testing each one before putting their feet down fully. They needn’t have worried, as the staircase was well put together and seemed in very good repair. In this dry and desiccated climate, that indicated regular maintenance. However, despite the stairs’ indication otherwise, the interior of the egg had the desolate feel of a place that had been empty for far too long. It was nothing quantifiable, just the aura a place gets when nothing living had walked its halls for decades or more. It gave Quill the creeps.

  Despite that, everything inside still ran smoothly. The first time an air extractor kicked in, Quill jumped about a foot in the air, but the breeze that wafted through corridors was perfect—clean and fresh. Lights came to life as they walked down empty corridors, all the bulbs shining brightly, none flickering or dead.

  “This is like a haunted house,” Quill said to Gamora. “I keep waiting for someone to jump out and scream ‘Boo!’”

  “What’s a haunted house?” she asked, confused.

  “Never mind,” he muttered, and kept walking. Sometimes, he forgot that he was among aliens, and that the things he took for granted were mysteries to them—and vice versa. It reminded him of how far he was from home, even before they had passed through the anomaly.

  They came to a bank of elevators and stopped.

  “Should we risk it?” Rocket asked.

  “Everything else seems to be running perfectly well,” Gamora said. “This ship is in better shape than Quill’s ever was, and it is certainly much cleaner.”

  “Hey!” Quill said, but without any real heat. He couldn’t really argue with her on that.

  The buttons in the elevator were inscribed with an unfamiliar alien script that was all hooks and lines. Even Gamora, whose esoteric knowledge constantly amazed Quill, couldn’t identify it. But that didn’t faze them. Quill simply hit the uppermost floor, assuming that was where they would find the control room. If not, they weren’t in any huge hurry. There was a faint sensation of weightlessness as the elevator began to move, and the display over the door began to glimmer. Each of the floor buttons lit up in turn, blinking faster and faster. When they stopped, though, it wasn’t on the top floor but the one below it. No matter how many times Quill pressed the button, the elevator wouldn’t go any farther. He shrugged and pressed the button that had a universally recognizable symbol for open, and they stepped out.

  They found themselves in an open chamber that stretched from hull to hull with no internal walls or partitions. It was dotted with what looked like space-age coffins standing upright. As the travelers approached, a low-pitched humming began to emanate from the coffins.

  “I really don’t like this,” Rocket muttered.

  Around him, the other travelers tensed, hands clenched around their weapons.

  “You’re not the only one, buddy,” Quill said. “I’ve got a bad feeling about this.”

  The humming built to a crescendo, the high-pitched whining causing the companions to clamp their hands over their ears. There was a final electronic shriek, and then red lights started to flash on the tops of a number of the coffins. With a sound of hydraulics, the coffins hissed open, revealing their contents.

  “Oh, crap,” Rocket said.

  Once their robes had been removed, the nature of the dark riders had become apparent—but seeing them unveiled and still moving was something else again. Slowly, rows of dark figures rose from their metal wombs, their silence serving to add to the feeling of menace that oozed from them in almost tangible waves. The figures were robots built along bipedal lines, but their limbs and torsos seemed more elongated than a normal human’s, as if they had been melted slightly and stretched out by a giant pair of hands. They were made from a silvery metal polished to a high sheen, and ribbed. Their heads were egg-shaped—the ship on a much smaller scale—and red, glowing eyes gave them a sinister aspect. One or two of them were oddly incomplete—one missing a hand, another a big section of paneling on its torso, revealing its inner workings.

  Quill realized that this must be where the dark figures were fabricated, and that these were the replacements for the machines that had been destroyed in the battle for the castle. It seemed that they had arrived just in time. If the robots could be built this quickly, there could be another army standing before the castle walls within weeks. Quill counted four dozen pods, almost half of which were still closed, pregnant with the menace of their contents. He wondered how close they were to bearing their deadly offspring.

  There was the thrum of the bows, and arrows started flying past Quill as Gamora and Rocket fired at the robots. Bolts ricocheted off their armor with a trail of sparks, or clattered to the ground at their feet, leaving the robots unmarked as they continued to move towards the companions. Then one robot staggered back as smoke poured from its eyes.

  “The eyes!” Quill yelled. “Aim for the eyes.”

  Another robot went down, a bolt in each eye, and then the robots were in among them. They didn’t carry swords, but they didn’t need them—they were living weapons. The robots used their arms like clubs, raining down blows on Drax, Groot, and Quill as they sought to give Gamora and Rocket time to use their bows to their best advantage. Drax was willing to go toe to toe with them, swinging his axe in terrible arcs that sheered through metal as if it were flesh, but Quill didn’t have that option. He feinted and ducked under blows that would have shattered bone, and lashed out with his sword. He nearly dropped it when it hit its first target and began to vibrate in his hand, sliding through the steel like a hot knife through butter.

  “What a sword!” he yelled gleefully to Drax. “It must have been designed to fight these things.”

  “Their kingdom may have fallen before these creatures,” Drax replied, “but be the instrument of their revenge as you wield their legacy.”

  It was a bit flowery, but Drax had a point. Quill silently thanked the Duke and whoever had forged this blade, and waded into the melee. It was hard to keep an eye on how his companions were faring—the robots were too dangerous to not get his full attention—but out of the corner of his eye he saw Groot halt the charge of one of the robots with a hand to its chest that stopped it in its tracks. The robot shuddered, and then roots and tendrils grew out of its mouth and eyes and it screamed with a terrible electronic shriek.

  “I am Groot!”

  Gamora had stopped shooting and had now drawn her knives. She was too quick for even the hyper reflexes of the machines, and she knew exactly how to use their strength against them. As one threw a punch, she caught the inside of its arm, pivoted, and sent it flying into one of the other robots, leaving them on the ground in a writhing tangle of limbs. Before they could extricate themselves, she had sunk a dagger up to the hilt in an eye each, and they went limp. Beside her, Drax swung his axe as if he were the machine, and was surrounded by a pile of metallic limbs. Unlike human foes, an amputation didn’t put the robots out of the fight though, so every few blows would see Drax splitting a skull down the middle like it was a log he was getting ready for the fire.

  Any time one of the off-worlders loo
ked like they might be overwhelmed, there would be the hiss of a bolt, and their attacker would stagger back clutching an eye. The bolts weren’t always enough to destroy whatever passed for a brain, but they would disorient the robot enough that it was easy pickings. Rocket’s pinpoint accuracy and ice-cold nerves cost the robots dearly, and Quill could feel the battle turning against their foes. His sword seemed to sing with exultation as it vibrated through metal, every blow doing as much damage as Drax’s powerful axe strokes. But just as Quill thought they were on the brink of victory, lights began to flash on the tops of the unopened coffins, and there was an ominous hiss as the doors began to open.

  There was something odd about the robots that emerged, and it took Quill a moment to figure it out. These ones were incomplete, unfinished, the last desperate roll of the dice of whatever was controlling them. One was blind, with empty sockets where the red glow of eyes should have been, and it shuffled towards them with arms extended, terrible and pitiful at the same time. Another had no legs, and dragged itself along the floor by clawing into the metal and pulling itself one agonizing yard at a time. Another should have been funny to watch, hopping on one leg towards them, but its implacable sense of purpose drained all humor from the sight. These robots were dealt with easily enough, but there was no sense of celebration in it.

  Finally, the last of the robots collapsed to the deck, nearly split in two by a terrible blow from Drax’s axe. Bits and pieces of robot were scattered everywhere, some still trying to move. A severed arm clutched at Quill with blind urgency, clawed hand opening and closing with malevolent greed. Quill shuddered as he kicked it away from him, and stepped around a head that stared at him and mouthed silent threats.

  “Is this what the haunted houses you spoke of are like on your planet, Quill?” Gamora asked.

  “Slightly fewer homicidal robots,” he replied. “But more vomiting children.”