Guardians of the Galaxy: Collect Them All

by Corinne Duyvis

  Rocket—standing in the doorway to the bar itself—was trying to hold off another group of bots. His blaster was working overtime.

  Past him, Gamora counted five active robots and another two on the ground, twitching. Apparently they’d entered from the front—but not through the door. The barroom was open to the outside, with the windows in shatters on the ground.

  “Rocket. Let me.” She strode past him, trusting that he’d pull back his blaster in time. “Block off the back entrance for real. I want the street side to be the only one way in and out.”

  She decapitated the first bot. The flat of her blade flung its head into a second bot.

  “I got just the thing.” Rocket was already bounding back toward the hall, rummaging through his utility belt.

  He would enjoy his part of Quill’s plan.

  Good.

  She was rather enjoying her part, too.

  GROOT?” Rocket called through his comms. “Gimme an update.”

  Rocket walked back into the intact—ish—part of the bar, shaking dust from his tail. The explosion he’d just set off had permanently closed off the hallway, finishing what Drax had started. In the main barroom, the blast had knocked a couple of chunks from the ceiling, torn a large crack into one wall, and sent several bottles crashing to the ground—aw, what a waste. The place was still standing, at least. He’d have plenty of time to work in peace.

  Rocket knew a thing or two about blowing up buildings. He could do it with surgeon-like precision.

  Having cleared the barroom for him, Gamora had moved outside, leaving behind a carpet of sparking, twitching metal body parts. He spotted her through the broken windows, a green blur on the street fighting off any bot that approached the bar. Quill hovered above, assisting her.

  “Groot? Hel-lo?” Still nothing. Rocket shifted channels as he walked around the bar studying the robot corpses.

  Nah, that one won’t work for my purposes, he thought. The next one: Wow, Gamora really did a number on you, didn’t she?

  “Drax?” he asked, crouching by one particularly promising robot body. “You have Groot with you, right?”

  Drax had checked in a couple minutes ago, reporting that he was on his way to the spaceport via a hidden tunnel. Maybe the tunnel was blocking his comms, or something—Yeah, that’s it—

  “Rocket. Groot is not with me.”

  “What?”

  “He stayed in the bar to hold off our assailants.”

  Rocket shot upright.

  Drax went on, “I knew you would be unable to reach him in time to assist. I…did not wish to distract you.”

  “We’re gonna have words, you and I,” Rocket growled. “Back room?”

  “Yes.”

  Gamora would’ve checked the back room for bots—unless the door was locked, which would suggest the robots had never made it in.

  He tried the door. Yup. Locked.

  Could be a good sign. Could be a bad sign. Time to find out.

  One explosion later, the door had a hole in it the size of Rocket himself. He crouched, peering through. Right away, he saw why the door hadn’t opened. It wasn’t because it had been locked. A heavy industrial rack from the narrow kitchen had been yanked away from the wall. It had crashed against the edge of the kitchen counter, a few feet across the room. The rack still leaned against the counter, positioned diagonally against the doorframe. The weight had held the door firmly shut.

  A vine was curled around one metal beam.

  Rocket climbed through the hole in the door, wiggled a path through the metal rack, and landed on the other side.

  The vine formed a trail through the kitchen, into a storage room that was packed with boxes, steel racks, unused chairs, and a messy desk. Rocket assumed the three robot bodies he counted inside the room were new additions.

  The vine ended abruptly. Another torn-off vine lay farther down. And strewn all around the room:

  Splinters.

  Rocket unleashed a string of curses.

  A voice came in over comms. Quill’s. “Any progress on the—”

  “Groot’s gone,” Rocket snapped. “He’s splinters in the back room. That d’ast idiot stayed here to hold of the bots and then—” And then, as his last act before falling to the bots’ explosions, he’d yanked down the metal rack in the kitchen to block the door and keep more bots from following the other Guardians down the tunnel.

  Rocket continued his string of curses.

  “Rocket—” Gamora said.

  “I know. We got a robot army to annihilate. I’m on it.”

  “I’m sorry, Rocket,” Quill said.

  Rocket tuned them out.

  The first thing Rocket did was stick five decent-size chunks of Groot into a pouch on his belt. Not the charred pieces—he only took the good, healthy wood, the ones that could grow a brand-new Groot without any problems.

  Maybe some problems, he thought. Given how slowly the Grootlings grew nowadays, Rocket couldn’t tell whether there was enough energy to grow another Groot from scratch.

  The string of curses got a third installment.

  The next thing he did was check the robot bodies. None of them suited his purposes—too banged up. As much as he hated to think it, the damage was probably more from the bots’ own explosives than from the weakened Groot.

  Rocket did a final scan of the room. Earlier, he’d asked Groot to do something for him. Just maybe, Groot had pulled it off…there!

  He bolted across the room, crouched to sift through charred bot pieces and splinters, and picked up Annay’s communicator. A little busted, but it seemed to work.

  Groot might not have been able to put up much of a fight against the bots, but he’d still picked Annay’s pocket like a pro.

  “Owe you one.”

  Rocket picked up an extra splinter, just to be on the safe side, and wiggled his way back through the broken door into the main barroom.

  He had a job to do, and a guinea pig robot corpse to find.

  27

  THE COLLECTOR’S shuttle had slowly risen into the sky. Now it hung above the building housing the bar, giving him a view of both the street before the bar and the alley at its back. Whether Tivan had taken his distance to stay clear of the fighting or to scan the streets for Kiya, Peter couldn’t tell—and he didn’t have an awful lot of time to wonder about it.

  He soared past the shuttle to chase down a stubborn bot. “Hope you’re taking notes for your d’ast tribute band!” he yelled.

  With so many airborne bots out here, all Peter could do to the Collector was yell. He would do as much of it as he could—in between picking off robots from above or engaging them in fights up in the air. Sometimes, Peter had to dive to the street and stop bots before they came too close to curious onlookers and civilians trying to evacuate nearby buildings. At least the bots weren’t actively going after the civilians.

  The street below Peter looked like a flarking battlefield. The back of Annay’s bar had partially collapsed, damaging neighboring buildings in the process. Robots crept over the rubble like overeager ants.

  Rocket, still inside the bar, was out of the fray for now. It was up to Peter and Gamora to take care of the remaining bots.

  Gamora did the bulk of the work. She was a sword-wielding whirlwind guarding the bar’s blown-open windows against encroaching bots, sometimes playing offense out on the street, sometimes leaping inside the bar when a bot sneaked past her.

  When Peter asked Gamora to cover someone’s back, she took it seriously.

  “How far are you now?” he yelled at Rocket over comms.

  “Oi! This stuff takes delicacy. You try hacking a robot that might explode at any moment.”

  “That’s what I have you for.” Peter shut one eye to help his aim, dousing an approaching robot in flame. “Now how far are you?”

  “Close,” he said. “Ish.”

  “Location?”

  “Behind the counter. Aw, come on—the mirror just got shot up. I think there�
��s glass in my beer. Gamora, do you mind?”

  Peter wondered whether there was any point in asking Rocket not to drink mid-robot-attack or while working with high-tech, explosive machinery, but discarded the notion. Between sifting through his friend’s remains and sticking his nose into a bomb just ’cause his boss asked nicely, Rocket deserved a beer.

  “Glass in your beer or your blood splattered on the ceiling,” Gamora said, her voice cool through the communicator. Noises followed—unidentifiable, but Peter suspected they involved a robot meeting its untimely end at Gamora’s hands. “It’s your choice.”

  A pattern on the ground caught Peter’s eye. “Guys, something’s up.”

  The robots were fanning out.

  Instead of focusing their efforts on the bar—the last place they had seen Kiya—several robots moved onto the street. They passed the last few terrified DiMavi still on the street, ignoring them in favor of zeroing in on the windows of neighboring buildings. Each robot took a different building. In unison, they smashed the windows and climbed inside with quick, efficient movements.

  It took a second to dawn on Peter: The Collector must’ve given them new orders, in case Kiya had sneaked into a nearby home or business and was lying low.

  Then Peter spotted shuttles gliding toward the street from opposite directions.

  “We have law enforcement, guys,” Peter said. The shuttles’ markings were ubiquitous across planets. “And the bots are doing house-to-house searches now. Rocket, you’d better hurry. Gamora, if there’s no more bots coming into the bar and Rocket’s safe, we need to evacuate those buildings—get the civilians out. Now let me try and make some friends.”

  He jetted down to the ground just as a shuttle landed, raising his hands in a gesture of peace. “Star-Lord, Guardians of the Galaxy,” he called out. “Uh, first time on DiMave. Hi. Sorry about this. We’re trying to fix this mess. Here’s the situation…”

  HE SHOULDN’T have done that,” Kiya said after several minutes of silence.

  Drax looked up, expecting her to elaborate.

  A dim orange glow lit the tunnels. Although the chute leading down from the bar had been brand new, the walls down here were old and crumbling, with the occasional rusted-through pipe running along them.

  Kiya walked at the front of the group. She looked sideways, a muscle in her face twitching. “He really shouldn’t…”

  “Well, if those were actually exploding robots back there, I’m grateful,” Annay said from a couple feet behind Kiya. “But I’m sorry about your friend.”

  “He will regrow,” Drax said. He brought up the rear.

  Kiya shook her head. “Forget it.”

  She looked small. It was not simply her frame—most people looked small to Drax, and Kiya was larger than most teenagers Drax had met. It was the way she held herself: Kiya seemed to have all of Gamora’s reflexes, all her efficient, tightly wrapped violence, yet none of Gamora’s confidence or elegance. So she walked stiffly, her movements alert, looking like she would rather have been anywhere but here. Both hands were jammed into the pockets of her jacket.

  Drax had not spoken to Kiya much since her arrival. He saw no point. She was not a threat, and she kept to herself on the ship. Even now, she walked apart, her eyes on the goal ahead.

  This was not a problem to Drax. He did the same.

  “Annay,” Kiya asked, “what are these tunnels for? Why does your bar connect to them?”

  They had told Annay the truth about Kiya being a target of the Collector’s, but Annay had kept quiet rather than return the honesty. She also had not answered any of Drax’s repeated questions about Baran.

  “Your bar attracts unusual clientele,” Drax said. “Political activists? Terrorists? Organized crime?”

  Annay looked at him over her shoulder. “I just provide the drinks. What people choose to discuss over those drinks isn’t my business.”

  “That sounds like a yes,” Kiya said.

  Drax slowed, putting distance between himself and the other two, and looked over the hallway behind them. There was no sign of the robots. If Drax was correct about the kind of clientele Annay’s bar attracted—as he appeared to be—they might escape unseen. The tunnel would be lined to block basic scans.

  “Would someone mind telling me why this ‘Collector’ is so eager to kidnap a DiMavi girl that he sends an exploding robot army and she requires intergalactic heroes as her babysitters?” Annay asked. “There must be a story there.”

  “We are not babysitters.” Drax shot a flat look at her back. “Babysitters get paid.”

  “Do you know DiKirrin?” Kiya asked.

  “Yeah.” Annay made a thoughtful sound, as if trying to recall something. “Few years ago, it was one of the occupied towns in the Maraud. Last year, it was attacked again. A small group, in and out. Some of my customers looked into it in case they were Kree. Two people died, and a girl was taken. That was you?”

  “The Collector was behind it. The people who died were my mother and neighbor, who came to help.”

  “Hm.” She considered that information. “Sorry for what happened.”

  “Yeah.” Kiya looked stubbornly ahead.

  “The village spent a lot of time looking for you. I know that much.”

  “Did they?” She slowed slightly.

  “Of course. They lost enough people in the Maraud. They were torn up over losing more.”

  Kiya looked aside, skeptical.

  “If they knew you were alive…”

  “Don’t tell them.”

  “You don’t want to go back?”

  “I can’t.”

  “Once this Collector guy is—”

  “I can’t,” Kiya said without turning.

  The three of them fell silent. The only sound in the tunnels was their footsteps, out of sync and bouncing off the walls, all the louder without speech to mask it. Drax used the moment to listen for noises behind them. Nothing.

  “You have said you wanted to return home,” he said.

  “I do.”

  He raised an eyebrow. Kiya seemed inconsistent.

  “It’s not safe,” she finally said. “My parents were always honest about where my dad came from, and that I couldn’t tell anyone. So I didn’t. We weren’t sure what might happen—Zen-Whoberians weren’t being actively pursued, but maybe no one thought there were any left to go after.” She snorted. “Except for Gamora. And Gamora is a bedtime horror story. No one would go after her.”

  “People have tried,” Drax said. “They are now dead.”

  “Wait, wait, Zen-Whoberian? You’re half Zen-Whoberian?” Annay caught up to Kiya and studied her from the side, as though the traits would suddenly leap out at her.

  “Stop that.” Kiya looked away. “Gamora stares at me that way, too. It’s creepy.”

  “I never realized Zen-Whoberians and DiMavi could mix.”

  “Neither did my parents, until I showed up. Apparently Zen-Whoberians have a hard time procreating outside their own species. Our species?” Drax could not see her face from his position, but he could practically hear her tight smile. “So my dad and I dyed our hair. He hid his marks with makeup and gained weight. We blended in. No one suspected anything—why would they? Then, when the Kree came, he tried to defend our home. They killed him. My mom and I couldn’t even follow the Zen-Whoberian death customs he would’ve wanted, or people would’ve found out about me. So he died a DiMavi.

  “I ended up… A year and a half ago, I got a girlfriend. I talked to her. I told her.” Kiya went quiet. She cleared her throat. “She was the only person I ever told. And after that—after being safe my whole life—suddenly the Collector showed up, killed my mom, and took me. I don’t know how else he could’ve known. So my parents shouldn’t have trusted me, I shouldn’t have trusted my girlfriend, and because of that, my mom is dead and I spent a year in Tivan’s hands.

  “And just now, he knew where we were so fast, within the hour…either someone saw the reward, or he had pe
ople on lookout at the ports. People know how much he wants me, now. DiKirrin doesn’t have any money; it won’t take much for them to sell me out.

  “So, no. I can’t go home.”

  Drax was still watching the tunnel behind them, but had listened to Kiya’s story equally carefully. She seemed to be finished. He rolled her words over in his mind and came to one conclusion.

  “That seems reasonable,” he said.

  Annay looked aghast. “That’s an awful thing to say—how can you—”

  Kiya laughed a sharp, sudden laugh. “No. It is reasonable, isn’t it? I gave it a lot of thought.”

  “It’s not your fault,” Annay said. “What happened to you or your mother. Okay? It’s not your fault.”

  Kiya shrugged. She had finally slowed down—maybe to talk, maybe because she was lost in thought. “It is, though.”

  “It’s that Collector’s fault.”

  “We can share the blame. There’s plenty.”

  “Do you want revenge?” Drax asked. “He took your family. I know what that is like.”

  “You do?” She looked away thoughtfully. “Do you want revenge?”

  “Yes,” he said.

  She considered that for a moment.

  “Strongly,” he added.

  “Heh.”

  “Very strongly.”

  “I don’t know if I want revenge,” she said. “Mostly, I just want her back.”

  Drax nodded.

  He understood that, too.

  “We’re here,” Annay said. “I don’t know where your ship is parked, but this hatch opens on a loading area behind the main spaceport.”

  She walked past them to open it, leaving Drax and Kiya behind her. The girl glanced up at him. She offered a slight, wary smile.

  Drax found he did not mind the girl. Kiya was a fierce fighter who had known loss. He could understand those qualities, both in himself and in his friends.

  He rested a hand on her shoulder. “If you decide to avenge your family, you should let me know. We will have much to discuss.”

  28