by Chris Wyatt
Gamora ran up a ramp onto a loading station where a miner was anchoring his pod to a dock. Gamora grabbed the miner. “Try to curl up as you land,” she advised him. He looked confused until she physically threw him off the ramp and down to the street below.
The mining pods were the kind Peter had seen from the Milano when they’d first docked at Knowhere. Small, single-person capsules with jets, they had robotic arms mounted to the front that were primarily used for operating mining equipment that drilled into the bone walls of the station.
Gamora quickly loaded herself into one pod, Peter into another, and Rocket into a third. “Sorry,” shouted Rocket to Groot as his pod took off. “Not enough room for two. We’ll be back for you, big guy.” Groot watched sadly as his friends zipped away.
By the time Yondu and the Ravagers reached the pod ramp, everyone was gone but Groot.
“Ronan the Accuser!” Drax shouted as he saw his sworn enemy exit one of the Necrocraft. The day of vengeance Drax had dreamed of was finally here! The battle, he was sure, would be glorious.
Ronan strode right up to Drax. “Who are you? Where is Gamora?”
“You destroyed my planet… my people,” shouted Drax, ignoring the question. “I challenge you to combat under Arisheim’s Law.”
“You’re joking,” sneered Ronan. “Those antiquated decrees mean nothing to me. I don’t even know who you are.”
Drax proudly proclaimed, “I am Drax… the Destroyer!”
But the conversation was interrupted when Nebula ran up to Ronan and shouted, “Gamora is escaping with the Orb!”
Without another thought for Drax, Ronan turned and followed Nebula as she ran back to her Necrocraft. Drax’s worst nightmare was unfolding. He had faced Ronan and had been ignored!
Several of Ronan’s Sakaaran soldiers flew their Necrocraft in pursuit of the much slower mining pods that Gamora, Rocket, and Peter were trying to escape in. But it quickly became clear that their main focus was Gamora. Since she was drawing their fire, Peter knew it was up to him and Rocket to try to deal with the ships.
“These pods are industrial grade,” Peter shouted to Rocket over the pod’s communicator. “They’re nearly indestructible.”
“Not against Necro-blasts they’re not!” warned Rocket.
“That’s not what I mean,” said Peter.
“Oh…” said Rocket. Seeing Peter’s meaning, Rocket turned his pod on a dime and smashed it right into one of the Necrocraft pursuing Gamora. The ship smoked and fell away as Rocket’s pod burst out through the roof. Rocket immediately turned his pod toward a second Necrocraft, bashing into it as well.
“That little guy sure can fly!” said Peter as he admired Rocket’s skills with the pod. Then he flew his own pod over the top of another of the Necrocraft. Inside, the Sakaaran pilot heard a ripping sound and looked up.
“Yo! How about I borrow your ride?” Peter said to the pilot as he used the arms on the front of his pod to pry the roof off the alien ship. The Sakaaran pilot was instantly blown into space.
Peter then dropped his pod down inside the ship. Peter used the pod’s arms to control the Necrocraft! He used the guns to blast at other Necrocraft! They were doing it! They were really striking back at Ronan’s fleet!
But that’s when Peter got a transmission from Gamora.
“Quill! I’m trapped! I have to go up!” she screamed. Cornered by too many Necrocraft, she flew her pod through a hole in Knowhere and out into deep space!
Back on the ground, Drax wasn’t about to let Ronan get away. With the villain’s back turned, Drax raised his sword and ran at him. But just before impact, Ronan spun, grabbed Drax’s sword, and cast it aside. Then he grabbed Drax by the throat and hurled him into a nearby food cart! Drax was down and Ronan had barely broken stride, as if he’d swatted at an insect.
Chasing after the Necrocraft, Peter and Rocket flew their pods out of the same chasm in the giant skull, but when they got outside, they saw Gamora’s ship pointed straight at a nearby black hole.
“I’ll never make it to the Milano,” Gamora transmitted to Peter. “I have no choice. I’m going into the black hole. It’s the only hope we have of destroying the Orb!”
“What…? Wait!” shouted the incredulous Peter.
Pulling himself up, Drax made another run at Ronan, but this time Ronan slammed him to the ground.
Ronan laughed in amusement at Drax’s pathetic attempts to escape his grasp. “I have destroyed so many planets that I don’t remember destroying yours,” sneered Ronan. “And I doubt I will remember destroying you.”
With that he hurled Drax into one of the nearby yellow pools of waste chemicals by the side of the road.
Nebula’s Necrocraft now arrived behind Gamora’s pod.
“You’re a disappointment, sister!” shouted Nebula over the communicator. “When you took the Orb, I thought you were massing a force, not hiding amongst rabble.”
“Nebula,” Gamora tried. “If Ronan and Thanos get this Orb, no one in the universe will be safe. They’ll get us all!”
“Not all, sister,” sneered Nebula. “You’ll already be dead.”
With a shot she blasted the pod to pieces, sending Gamora’s body out into the void of space, and leaving the Orb up for grabs.
As Ronan walked away from Drax, he got a call from Nebula on his communicator. “Brother, it is done,” said Nebula. “I’m bringing the Orb to you now.” Ronan smiled.
Peter, from inside his pod, stared helplessly at Gamora’s floating body. She wouldn’t be able to last out there for long!
“Quill! Come on, we have to go,” urged Rocket from his pod. “These mining pods aren’t meant to be out here. There’s hardly any atmosphere. There’s nothing we can do for her.”
Peter knew that Rocket’s words were true. “Yeah, I’m coming,” he said.
But Peter couldn’t bear to pilot to his pod away from her body. Instead, he tried something else.
“Yondu, are you there? This is Quill!” said Peter, tuning his communicator to a frequency often used by the Ravagers. “I’m at coordinates 227-k32-8524, right outside Knowhere,” continued Peter. “If you’re here, come and get me. I’m all yours!”
“Quill! What are you doing?” shouted Rocket to Peter over the radio. “Whatever you do, don’t—” But, cutting the radio, Peter didn’t hear the end of Rocket’s sentence. He was too busy doing the exact thing that Rocket was telling him not to do.
He nervously put on his helmet and hooked himself up to life support. He popped open the door to his mining pod, letting the air inside rush out into the void of space. Then he leaped from the pod, shooting off his boot rockets, and headed straight for Gamora.
Gamora’s alien race was tough, their bodies strong. But even Gamora couldn’t withstand the vacuum of space for very long. When Peter reached her, he could see that her skin was starting to crack. There was no question… she was almost gone.
“No,” Peter shouted inside of his mask. “Hold on!” But the sound of his encouragement could never reach Gamora’s ears, surrounded as they were by the absence of matter. In a desperate move, Peter reached behind his head where the air tube flowed into his mask and pulled it out. He yanked the tube around and put it into Gamora’s mouth, trying to buy her a few extra precious breaths of oxygen.
Seeing all this, Rocket was horrified. “Quill, no! Quill! You’re going to die! You’ll die in seconds! Quill! Quill!!!” But all he could do was watch Peter’s actions unfold… watch Peter throw his life away for a lost cause!
Peter could already feel himself going numb. He looked into Gamora’s face. There were so many things that Peter had wanted to do in this universe and so many things he had wanted to see. He regretted those undone things, but he was a little surprised to realize that he didn’t regret trying to save Gamora. Somehow, putting someone else first, even if it meant dying, felt good to him in a way that he never expected it would. After thinking this, he let out his last breath.…
And t
hen, Peter’s whole world exploded into a bright white light.
As Peter and Gamora were bathed in white light, he thought, “I’m supposed to walk into the light, aren’t I?” But he couldn’t walk; he couldn’t even move. He lost consciousness.
When he woke up, he was still next to Gamora, but now on the floor of Yondu’s craft. The white light had been its headlights as it approached to get them. They were saved! His last-minute gamble on Yondu’s need for revenge had worked!
Gamora coughed to wakefulness next to him. “How… how are we here?” she asked.
“I’ve gone and done something incredibly noble.” Peter smiled, pleased with himself.
Back on the surface of Knowhere, Drax’s limp body sank to the bottom of the fetid yellow pool—until suddenly two leafy tendrils reached down and wrapped themselves around him. Groot pulled Drax to the surface, sliding his body onto dry land.
Drax sputtered awake! Stepping in front of Groot, Rocket leaned down to examine Drax.
“Blasted idiot!” Rocket shouted at Drax as he came to. “I’m surrounded by idiots! Quill just got himself captured! And none of this would have happened if you didn’t try to single-handedly take on a whole army!”
Still recovering, Drax nodded at this. “You’re right. I was a fool. All my puffery was just to distract me from the emotions of my loss.”
“Oh, boo-hoo. I’m Drax and my planet is dead.…” ranted Rocket.
Groot covered his mouth in shock at Rocket’s insensitive comments. Rocket looked at him. “I don’t care if it’s mean. Everybody’s lost something. Everybody’s seen tragedy. That’s no reason to get the rest of us hurt!”
Drax thought about this as Rocket stood up straight and turned to walk away. “Come on, Groot. Ronan has the Orb now. The only chance we have is to get to the other side of the universe as fast as we can, and maybe, just maybe, we’ll be able to live full lives before that whack job ever gets there.”
But Groot didn’t follow Rocket. He just called after him, “I am Groot!”
“I know Peter and Gamora are the only friends we’ve ever had,” responded Rocket. “But there’s an army of Ravagers around them and only two of us!”
“Three,” said Drax. “There’s three of us.”
On board the Ravager ship, Peter took another brutal hit to his stomach. “Oof,” he groaned.
“Stop it!” shouted Gamora. Several strong Ravagers held her back. “Leave him alone!”
“After all I’ve done for you, this is how you repay me?” Yondu said.
“When I picked you up, these boys wanted to eat you! They’d never eaten a human being before. I stopped them. I saved your life!”
Peter straightened up and looked Yondu in the eyes. “Oh, will you shut up? You’ve been throwing that in my face for twenty years. Like that’s some big thing, not eating me! Normal people don’t even think about eating someone else, much less expect that person to be thankful for it!”
Yondu thought about this for a moment, and then responded by punching Peter again. “Ouch! Look, Yondu, Ronan has the Orb. It’s so powerful that—”
“I know what he’s got,” said Yondu. “I’ve been to see the Broker.”
“Then you know that if he uses it, it’ll wipe out the Nova Corps. Billions all over the galaxy will die.”
“Who cares? Not my business,” said Yondu, before turning to the other Ravagers in the room. “Let’s teach Quill what happens when you betray us!”
As the Ravagers closed in, Peter shouted, “Hurt me and you’ll miss the biggest score of your life.”
That comment stopped all of the outlaws in their tracks.
“What score?” asked Yondu.
“The Orb, of course,” explained Peter.
“No way…” Yondu said. “It’s with Ronan on the Dark Aster, the most defended ship in the galaxy. How would you—?”
“I’ve got an inside man,” said Peter, pointing to Gamora.
Gamora took her cue. “I lived on the Dark Aster for seven years. It does have weaknesses—and I am one of the few people in the universe who knows what they are.”
Yondu considered this. There would be a certain satisfaction in hurting Peter Quill, it was true… but stealing from Ronan, right out from under his very nose, and becoming rich in the process? Yondu decided that kind of satisfaction would be even better.
“You’ve got a deal,” Yondu said, shaking hands with Peter, then throwing his arm around him as if he hadn’t been, less than a minute ago, beating him silly. “How do we get started?”
But before Peter could answer, a communication screen burst to life. “Attention, idiots!” said Rocket on the screen. “The lunatic on top of this ship has a Hadron Enforcer, a weapon of my own design. If you don’t hand over our companions now, he’s going to tear your ship apart!”
Everyone on the Ravager ship ran to the window to see that, sure enough, Rocket was flying the Milano, and Drax was sitting on top of it wearing a space suit and pointing a massive weapon at them.
“I’ll give you until the count of five,” said Rocket.
“Five?” asked Gamora in alarm.
Rocket immediately started counting down. “Five… four…”
Peter ran to the communicator screen. “No, wait!” he screamed. “Rocket, it’s me! We’re fine. We’ve worked it out!”
Rocket’s whole demeanor changed. “Oh, hey! What’s up, Quill!”
“What were you doing?” asked Peter.
“Saving you, of course,” said Rocket. “That’s what friends do.”
“I am Groot,” Peter heard Groot say from just offscreen.
“Fine! Yes, it was Groot’s idea.…” admitted Rocket, sullen.
“But five seconds?” asked Peter. “How would they have turned us over that quickly? You would have blasted us, too!”
“Look,” said Rocket, “you can pick apart the plan if you want, but it worked, didn’t it?”
“No, we were already… Oh, fine.… Yes, it worked,” sighed Peter. “Just get over here. We’ve got some planning to do.”
Years later, they would all look back to that moment on the Ravager ship as one of the most important days of their lives. It was the day that a kidnapped child of Earth, a warrior daughter of Thanos, a broken man bent on revenge, a mutated fur-covered genius, and a living tree first banded together to defend the galaxy.
Rogues, criminals, slackers, outlaws, escaped convicts… they were all of these things. But when the greatest threats the galaxy had ever faced, Ronan and Thanos, got their hands on a power source capable of destroying the universe, these five defenders answered the call.
None of them expected to become heroes. Nor did they expect to even be friends. But when the circumstances forced them to, they rose to the occasion. They became—guardians.
They had first joined forces with the goal of getting rich, which they never did. But over years of journeys together, they found much, much more. Rocket and Groot found companionship and belonging. Drax found a way to honor his lost planet. Gamora discovered how to escape the poisonous family that raised her. And Peter went on to connect with the tenderness he had lost as a child after his mother’s death.
They also learned the unbelievable secret of that mysterious energy source that resonated within the Orb.
But that—that’s another story.…
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Contents
COVER
TITLE PAGE
WELCOME
PROLOGUE
CHAPTER 1
CHAPTER 2
CHAPTER 3
CHAPTER 4
CHAPTER 5
CHAPTER 6
CHAPTER 7
CHAPTER 8
CHAPTER 9
CHAPTER 10
EPILOGUE
PHOTOS
COPYRIGHT
Copyright
Copyright © 2014 by Marvel
All rights reserved.
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First ebook edition: October 2014
ISBN 978-0-316-38365-3
E3
