by Stuart Moore
An explosion rocked the building. Tony Stark grabbed for a chair to brace himself.
Jennifer Walters – She Hulk – moved to assume a defensive position, back-to-back with him. “What’s going on?” she asked.
“Something on the roof, from the sound of it.” Tony touched his earpiece. “F.R.I.D.A.Y.?”
Ms Marvel ran to the window and looked outside. “I can see energy flashing, down on the pier,” she said. “And people. Maybe three or four…”
“F.R.I.D.A.Y., talk to me.” Another explosion. “What are we facing? Galactus, the Wrecker? Black Order, maybe?”
“No, boss. I’m afraid it’s…”
A shadow fell over the building. Suddenly, Tony knew. His heart sank in his chest plate. No, he thought, anything but that. Don’t let it be them. Don’t let it be…
“…the Guardians of the Galaxy.”
FOR MARVEL PUBLISHING
VP Production & Special Projects: Jeff Youngquist
Associate Editor, Special Projects: Caitlin O’Connell
Manager, Licensed Publishing: Jeremy West
VP, Licensed Publishing: Sven Larsen
SVP Print, Sales & Marketing: David Gabriel
Editor in Chief: C B Cebulski
Special Thanks to Tom Brevoort
© 2021 MARVEL
First published by Aconyte Books in 2021
ISBN 978 1 83908 070 8
Ebook ISBN 978 1 83908 071 5
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.
This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
Cover art by Xteve Abanto
Distributed in North America by Simon & Schuster Inc, New York, USA
ACONYTE BOOKS
An imprint of Asmodee Entertainment Ltd
Mercury House, Shipstones Business Centre
North Gate, Nottingham NG7 7FN, UK
aconytebooks.com // twitter.com/aconytebooks
Part One
Mission Creep
Chapter 1
The ground shook beneath Gamora’s feet. Kree people screamed and scrambled, rushing past her in a massive wave, dodging the falling mining equipment and collapsing structures of the poverty-stricken settlement. Wind whipped through the swirling sky, a slate-gray vortex that swept across the land, threatening to wipe away all life.
The world is ending, Gamora thought. Again.
A fissure opened up, a great crack in the ground that spread from the edge of the spaceport all the way back to the main dome of the Kree settlement. A tall plasteel-jointed oil derrick quivered, toppled, and fell – straight toward a small girl, no more than four years old, who stood frozen in fright.
Gamora, the deadliest woman in the galaxy, felt her heart skip. She lunged for the girl and whipped her out of the way before the derrick crashed to the ground. The girl screamed as Gamora held her close, tumbling and rolling while the earth convulsed in a new series of tremors.
The girl struggled in her arms. “It’s OK,” Gamora said. “I know. I know how it feels.” She thought of her father’s face, the last time she’d seen him – her real father, just before the Badoon invaders blasted his head open. With each passing year, she had a little more trouble remembering that face.
“I won’t let this happen,” she said, releasing the girl. “Not to you. Not to your world, too.”
But a tiny voice inside told her: you can’t stop this.
“Go,” she said. “Run to the ships. There’s still time!”
The girl stared at Gamora in shock. Then she turned toward the spaceport, the only point of departure from the planet Praeterus: a vast open field with a warehouse-style hangar building in the center. A horde of Kree were converging on the port – most of them on foot, a few riding broken-down, sputtering skycycles. They’d already ripped down the fence surrounding the port.
Still the girl didn’t move. Gamora was about to yell at her when a thick brown vine came snaking through the air, wrapped itself around the girl’s waist, and lifted her up off the ground. The vine deposited her back down a few feet closer to the spaceport and tapped her lightly on the back. “I am Groot!”
The girl’s head whipped around, her eyes widening at the sight of the fifteen-foot-tall sentient tree urging her forward. Then she turned and ran for the spaceport.
Despite the grim situation, Gamora laughed. “That’s one way to motivate her,” she said.
Groot nodded, scattering a few leaves into the air.
Gamora turned to survey the situation. This settlement was the largest on Praeterus with three barracks buildings surrounding a huge central dome. The dome had originally been built of plasteel and stone, and reinforced over the years as extra rooms and equipment were added to it. It towered over the settlement, an ugly monument to half-measures and neglect.
The outer chambers of the dome, Gamora knew, housed assembly lines for guns, bombs, and any other munitions the Kree Empire desired. But at the center of the structure, a massive power tap reached down to the core of the planet. Ever since the Kree had settled here, that tap had provided energy for all of Praeterus. Now it might spell the planet’s doom.
A group of Kree rushed by, jostling Gamora and Groot. Most of them, she noticed, were pink-skinned, with a few blue faces mixed in. They carried patched-up kit bags and wore faded olive and off-white uniforms or solid green jumpsuits. A far cry from the gleaming battle-suits of the proud Kree army.
The ground cracked and shook, toppling the smaller oil and geothermal derricks surrounding the main dome. Even the rushing air felt stale and humid – Praeterus lacked the weather control machinery of the core Kree worlds. Everything on this planet was ugly, utilitarian, designed for one purpose only: to serve the greater Kree Empire.
“I am Groot,” Groot said, pointing a long finger-branch toward the spaceport. In the middle of the field, Drax the Destroyer stood halfway up the steps of a starship gantry, ushering the locals up the walkway into the first of the evacuation ships.
“Yeah,” Gamora said, and took off at a sprint, following Groot toward the spaceport. But her heart sank as she surveyed the scene ahead. Three ships – no, four – stood pointed toward the stars, clustered together in the vast empty field. Light transports, she realized, and one bashed-up luxury liner well past its active-duty date. No heavy cruisers, no Plenum-class longships. Not even an ore miner with a large cargo bay.
That, above all else, told Gamora how little the Kree Empire valued the people of Praeterus.
As they reached the first ship, Drax unsheathed one of his deadly knives and swung it in the air. “This vessel is full!” he cried.
The Kree let out a collective cry of fear. They pressed forward, swarming the gantry stairwell, as the ship’s hatch slid shut. Gamora could see more Kree pressed tight inside the viewports, looking out with fear and regret at the people they were leaving behind.
“I said this vessel is at capacity!�
�� In a single motion, Drax kicked the gantry free of the ship and leaped gracefully to the ground. The ship began to rumble as its engines coughed to life. Thick smoke billowed from its base.
The horde on the ground rippled back, startled. They looked around frantically, then scattered in different directions. Gamora ran up to join Drax, watching with Groot as the Kree converged in groups on each of the remaining three ships.
Drax sheathed his knives. “These people,” he said, “are not behaving rationally.”
“I can see why,” Gamora replied. “Those ships can each carry, what? Sixty people? Seventy, max?”
“You underestimate my abilities,” Drax said stiffly. “I was able to load seventy-four into that vessel. I could have fit more, had they been smaller in size. Or more easily stackable.”
Gamora shook her head. More and more Kree were swarming past the munitions plant into the spaceport. Some of them rode single-tread tractorcars, the kind used in the more remote, rural regions of this world.
“There must be eighty thousand people on this planet,” she whispered.
Groot said nothing. At length, Drax let out a low rumble. “I sense the vile hand of Thanos in this,” he muttered.
“Thanos is dead,” Gamora snapped, tapping a comm-button on her shoulder. “Peter? How’s it going up there?”
There was a burst of static.
“Peter!” she repeated. “Any good news for us?”
More static, and then the filtered voice of Peter Quill, Star-Lord, came over the comm. “Hey Gam,” he said. “I assume you’re asking whether we’ve figured out a way to stop this planet from, uh…”
“Exploding, Quill.” That was Rocket’s voice. “The word is exploding.”
“Yes!” Gamora yelled. “That is exactly what I’m asking. Are you getting anywhere? Is there any chance we can save these people?”
“We’re working on it,” Quill said.
The tone of his voice was not encouraging.
“Gam? Groot, Drax?” Quill said. “You know we’re monitoring you from orbit–”
“We are aware of this,” Drax said.
“Yeah, well. You might want to step away from the space vessel that is preparing to lift off.”
The ground shook again as the fully loaded Kree ship flared to full power. A blast of smoke hit Gamora. She coughed, blinked, and dropped to the ground. Groot’s branch-arm reached for her, but she slapped it away.
“I’m fine,” she said, then dissolved into another coughing fit.
The roar of engines filled the air. When the smoke cleared, she saw the Kree vessel climbing toward the unnaturally gray sky. The ship wobbled, moving a bit slowly for a light transport. Seventy-four people was a heavy load for a vessel that size.
“I expect they will reach escape velocity,” Drax said, shading his eyes against the rocket-glare. “I am reasonably sure of it. Somewhat sure.”
“I am Groot!” Groot called.
They turned to see him pointing at the next vessel, which stood parked on the field near the hangar building. The Kree swarmed over it, up and down the gantry, pouring in through the open hatch. This transport had seen better days. Its hull was pocked with battle-scars and old meteor impacts.
“We had better attend to this,” Drax said. “Gamora, will you assist me?”
She started to reply, then a flash of light caught her eye, and she turned back toward the center of the settlement. Something odd was happening to the central dome. A strange glow seemed to emanate from its upper half, an almost fiery luminescence.
“Your frighteningly manic demeanor,” Drax continued, “would be of assistance in ensuring an orderly evacuation.”
She ignored him. Kree ran past her, dodging fallen geothermal taps and piles of discarded equipment. But now an actual flame burned atop the dome, rising up from it without actually seeming to touch or damage its patched, uneven surface. The overall effect was of a candle being burned – but not, obviously, a normal candle.
“Gamora?”
She whirled around again, eyeing the spaceport. Groot was already on his way toward the grounded ship. More Kree poured onto the field, lugging their packs, desperately seeking refuge aboard the remaining ships. Gamora counted at least a dozen ragged and frightened children among them, clutching their parents’ hands.
“Be with you in a minute, Drax,” she said, and took off at a sprint toward the dome.
As she charged into the oncoming Kree mob, she remembered the words she’d said to the little girl: I won’t let this happen. Keeping that vow looked more and more unlikely, as the planet literally crumbled beneath her feet.
But if there was any chance at all, she had to try.
Chapter 2
“What do you know?” Peter Quill said. “They achieved escape velocity.”
The small screen set into the dashboard showed a blurry, flickering image of the Kree evacuation ship climbing up out of the atmosphere. Above the screen, a pair of fuzzy dice dangled in front of the ship’s main viewport, which opened onto star-flecked space. Quill smiled at the dice, as he always did, and reached up to give them a little nudge.
Behind him, in the rear of the cockpit, Rocket stood grumbling, his little raccoon hands scrabbling and scratching around a hologram that stood taller than him. The only word Quill could make out was “flark” – Rocket’s favorite curse – muttered several times in succession.
A shower of sparks from the dashboard made Quill jump. He let out a saltier, Terran equivalent of “flark” and frantically tamped out a few flames. Then he noticed the screen had gone dark. He thumped it hard – most of the instruments on the Guardians’ ship responded only to hard thumps – and it came to life again.
But now the screen showed an aerial view of the Kree planet. Thick emerald-burgundy forest surrounded the settlement, with small towns and individual farms scattered beyond. Quill could just barely make out a flow of Kree bodies, like ants, converging on the dome and the spaceport beyond. Even from this distance, it was obvious the Kree would never all fit into the remaining ships.
“Man,” he said aloud, “the Empire does not care about this planet.”
He twisted a control, zooming in on the dome. Its plasteel surface was pockmarked, weather-beaten and glowing. Whatever was going on, whatever chain reaction threatened the integrity of the planet Praeterus, it was definitely centered in that structure.
Quill straightened in his chair. Time to be the commander, he told himself. The Guardians were a good crew, but sometimes they needed discipline. They needed a good kick in the butt.
They needed Star-Lord.
“We’re running out of time, people!” he said, thumbing the commlink open. “Give me options!”
Silence. Even Rocket, still studying that hologram, ignored him.
“There are no bad ideas!” Quill added.
The sound of a deep throat-clearing came over the comm. “In that case,” Drax said, “I have a suggestion.”
“Go! Yes!” Quill replied.
“If these people were not alive,” Drax said, “I could more easily pack and transport them off the planet.”
Quill sat for a moment, stunned. “You want to kill the people before you save them?” he asked.
“It would allow the ships to carry more.”
He looked over at Rocket, who just shrugged.
“As you know,” Drax continued, “I possess two extremely sharp knives. They are ideally designed for–”
“OK!” Quill said. “There’s one bad idea!”
“Oh,” Drax said. He sounded vaguely hurt.
A low, snarling chuckle made Quill turn in his chair. “That’s what you get for askin’,” Rocket said, smirking.
“I didn’t hear you make any useful suggestions.” Quill jumped out of his seat and stalked toward the anthropomorphic raccoon. “Man,
I hate these pro bono jobs. ‘Help, help, my planet’s exploding!’ The Kree Empire better cough up some kind of reward for us saving their people’s lives.”
“Yeah, that’ll happen,” Rocket replied. “’Cause they’re the giving kind.”
Quill moved to look over the raccoonoid’s shoulder. The hologram showed overlapping wavefronts of energy, rising in a waterspout formation from a schematic of Praeterus’s central dome. Strands of light flickered and wove in and out, growing thicker and stronger with every second.
“You figure this out yet?” Quill asked.
Rocket reached out with a metal pointer, touching a schematic of machinery at the center of the dome. “This is the main power tap,” he said, “which the Kree use, in less catastrophic times, to pull as much power as possible from the core of the planet.”
“Uh-huh…”
“And this…” Rocket swept his pointer up to indicate the pulsing energy lines, “…is an exponentially multiplying gamma curve. Whatever’s causin’ this chain reaction, it’s centered right there.”
Quill peered at the image. “So the tap is what’s making the planet go…” He pulled back and mimed an explosion with his hands.
“I ain’t a geological engineer. But I don’t see how.” Rocket’s eyes followed the energy as it flowed up from the tap. “That tap powers the Kree settlement, but it’s not nearly strong enough to destabilize the planet’s core. There’s gotta be something else at work here, something that’s messing with the laws of thermodynamics pretty badly.”
Quill frowned. “Is the Kree government doing this deliberately? Maybe as a test of some weapon or something?”
“Dude, the Kree are homicidal warmongers who’d slit your cat’s throat as soon as look at you. But even they don’t go around blowin’ up their own planets.” Rocket shrugged. “Usually.”
“Don’t you have…” Quill gestured in the air. “I dunno, maybe, a big gun that could stop it?”
