by Stuart Moore
“Good luck, ambulatory vegetable,” he said.
Drax stood for a moment, a calm eye in the center of the storm. Huge chunks of the planet flaked off, flying into the air. Pulse cannons, computers, entire houses rolled in the wind like half-ton tumbleweeds.
The remaining Kree stood staring up at the departing ship. With the last hope of rescue gone, all their fury and panic seemed to ebb away. A few of them milled around, kicking stones and struggling to talk over the wind. One latecomer screamed onto the scene on a rickety skycycle, tumbling off it as a chunk of the main dome grazed his front wheel.
Drax did not fear death. He’d already experienced it once, and it shadowed him every moment of his life, ever since his resurrection at the hands of the Titan Kronos. Would it be different this time, he wondered? Would it be sad, violent, painful? Would it be… funny, maybe?
“Hey dude?”
He turned. The young Kree with the Mohawk stood nervously before him, backed up by his crew.
“Just wanted to say,” Mohawk continued, “that was pretty cool. Giving up your space to the old folks.”
“Thank you.” Drax puffed out his sizable chest. “I endeavor in all things to provide a good example to others.”
One of the other young Kree, a clean-shaven man with a light blue complexion, stepped forward. “We’ve, uh, got a stash of gah’jar root tucked away in the hangar,” he said. “Thought you might want to come ingest it with us.”
“Since we’re all gonna die anyway,” Mohawk added.
The earth broke open, a dark mix of ash and superheated water sizzling out to cover the ground. The Kree backed away; Mohawk yelped as Drax yanked him off his feet and deposited him down, a safe distance away.
“Thanks!” Mohawk said, blinking nervously. “So, uh, what do you say?”
Drax glared at him. “I do not know what ‘gah’jar root’ is,” he rumbled, “but I suspect it to be both unhealthy and contrary to the laws of most civilized planets.”
“Well, yeah,” Mohawk said. The others shrugged in agreement.
Drax glanced across the spaceport at the large, utilitarian hangar. Amazingly, the building was still standing. For now.
“Oh, why not,” he said.
Chapter 6
The last of the tectonic plates shattered. The remaining atmosphere of Praeterus flailed in a final planetary-scale gasp before escaping into space, where it would freeze into hard tiny chunks. Heat, seismograph readings, gamma radiation levels – all of them were… well, they were…
“They’re useless,” Rocket muttered, “because they’re all off the flarkin’ scale!”
His tiny nimble hands swiped across the touchscreen, summoning another hologram. This one showed a flickering radar image of the settlement, with the shattered dome in its center. But the spaceport was a blur of pixels. He couldn’t tell whether or not the last ship had made it off the surface. Too much E/M interference to get a clean scan.
“Groot,” he said to the screen. “Buddy. Where are you?”
The ship lurched, flung upward by another rush of escaping atmosphere. Rocket scrambled up onto the dashboard, hopping from one foot to another to keep his balance. He peered out the front viewport, but all he could see was a swirl of ash and clouds.
A strangled noise made him whirl around. In the back of the cockpit, Quill lay flat out on the floor – with Gamora’s sword pressed to his neck.
“Seriously?” Quill croaked. “Again?”
Gamora’s eyes were like steel. “What. Did. You. Ask me?” she demanded.
“I asked if you wanted that bandage changed!”
“Oh.” She looked down at the wrapping on her leg. “That’s not a hostile act, then.”
“Uh, no!”
She sheathed her sword.
“You two are a riot,” Rocket snickered.
“Don’t you have something important to do?” Quill asked. “Like keeping us from being vaporized in the death-throes of a planet?”
“You should have heard yourself, down there,” Rocket continued. “‘Oh Gam, don’t die. Please, please don’t be dead.’ Get a room, why don’t you.”
“I knew it!” Quill cried. “I knew you had a camera on me!”
Gamora leaped to her feet and stalked to the pilot’s chair. Rocket gulped in panic, holding up his strangely humanlike hands in a gesture of surrender. “Easy, Gam. You wouldn’t stab the pilot, would you?”
“I haven’t lost my mind, Rocket.” She glared at Quill, who followed her cautiously. “Just tell this one to stop sneaking up on me.”
“Tell him yourself! Next time you’re…” Rocket closed his eyes and made an exaggerated smooching noise.
Before she could react, Quill placed himself, rather deliberately, between the two of them. He raised both his hands in two-fingered peace signs, a gesture that invariably made Rocket want to throttle him.
Then Quill turned to stare out the front port. He squinted in that irritating way humans had of squinting, when they wanted you to think they were smart.
“I tried that, genius,” Rocket said, gesturing at the sky. “Visibility is effectively zero.”
He pushed the stick, causing the ship to nose downward. Quill half-fell against the console, then slumped back into his chair.
Gamora grabbed Rocket’s shoulder. Her fingers were badly burned, but that didn’t seem to have affected her grip. “What are you doing?” she asked.
“Are you…” Quill strapped himself in, checked the altitude gauge. “Are you actually bringing us closer to the exploding planet?”
“Yes,” Rocket said.
“Oh. Just checking.”
Gamora tightened her grip. “And exactly why have you initiated this utterly suicidal course of–”
A deafening crunch cut her off. Rocket braced himself as the little ship made a full 360-degree flip in the thinning air. He and Quill were strapped in; Gamora wasn’t so lucky. She flew up into the air and landed on her bad leg, grunting in pain.
“Sorry.” Outside the front port, Rocket caught a glimpse of a huge mass of dirt hurtling off into space. “I think a chunk of exploding planet just hit us.”
“Compensators are kicking in,” Quill reported. “But hey, Gam’s right. Seems like flying away from exploding planet chunks might be a better plan than driving into them. Besides–”
“I can’t pick up the last escape ship,” Rocket said. “I don’t know if they made it off the surface or not.”
“So you’re worried about Groot and Drax,” Gamora said, climbing to her feet again.
“Drax! Yeah, him too. I keep forgetting about that guy.”
“OK,” Quill said, “but what about–”
“What about all this debris? What about the gamma radiation? What about the flarking volcanoes tearing the planet apart? I know, I know. Whoa! There goes a small mountain. That was close.”
“Yeah, but what about–”
“I know! I’m endangering all our lives.” Sweat dripped into Rocket’s eyes as he gripped the control stick, steering into the storm. “But we can’t just leave ’em behind. They’d do the same for us. If there’s a chance they’re out in this somewhere, we gotta try an’ oh wait you’re smirking. I can see you out the corner of my eye, with that big dumb human smirk plastered all over your pasty hairless face. This isn’t what you’re concerned about at all, is it. Is it?”
Quill just kept smirking.
“Oh, flark,” Rocket spat. “Oh, just say it.”
“What about…”
“Come on, spit it out. You look like you’re gonna pop.”
“What about the KÁRMÁN LINE?!”
Quill doubled over with laughter, clapping his hands together in delight. Rocket freed one tiny hand from the controls just long enough to punch him on the shoulder.
Gamora stared at the
m as if they were insane.
“He…” Quill turned to Gamora, pointing at Rocket with uncontrolled laughter. “He wouldn’t stop talking about the Kár… the KÁRMÁN…” He dissolved into hysterics again.
Rocket ignored him. The screen was bright with static. He ran his fingers over each sensor control in sequence, then pounded the panel in frustration. This close to the radiation source, the ship’s instruments were useless.
A thick cloud of ash closed in over the front viewport, then cleared all at once. Quill placed both hands on the dash and leaned forward. “I can almost see the ground!” he exclaimed. “Well, what’s left of it. That big hangar building is the only thing standing.”
“Forget the building!” Rocket said. “Any sign of the ship?”
“It’s not on the ground… oh wait…”
Rocket glanced up just as a spray of superheated water hissed onto the front viewport. The hull’s sealing held firm, keeping the water outside – but Quill and Rocket both flinched anyway.
Gamora rolled her eyes. “My brave space pilots.”
“I was distracted,” Rocket offered. “Quill, did you see it? Before the, you know, steam bath hit. Did you see the ship?”
“I’m not sure.” Quill studied the viewport, which had been badly fogged over by the water. “I saw something, flying up toward us.”
“Like what?” Gamora asked.
“Yeah,” Rocket said. “Was it a taco-restaurant-severed-from-its-foundations sort of something, or a rescue-ship-with-our-pals-in-it sort of something?”
“I didn’t get a good look.” Quill frowned. “I think it was covered with vines.”
“Vines?” Rocket turned as a shrill beeping rose from the console. “Huh, looks like proximity sensors are online. I thought they’d been knocked out.”
“Proximity sensors?” Gamora said. “That means something’s about to–”
The ship lurched hard, jarring sideways in the thin air. Something sliced up past them in the viewport and vanished quickly from view. Then a loud thump shook the upper hull, forcing the ship downward. Rocket struggled with the controls, managing to arrest their plunge just as an uprooted Kree barracks building tumbled up past them.
“What…” Quill looked upward in dread. “What was that?”
Several smaller thumps, from above. “Is it me,” Rocket said, “or is something, uh…”
“Crawling on top of the hull?” Gamora pulled out her sword. “Sure sounds that way.”
All three of them went silent, listening as the thumps continued. Their eyes followed the path of the sound as it moved across the top of the ship, heading toward the front.
Rocket watched in alarm as Quill pulled out his blaster. “I hope,” Rocket began, “that you are not planning to blast through our hull to take out an invading enemy.”
“I’m with the rodent, Peter.” Another hunk of the planet’s surface flew past. “I’ve grown fond of breathing.”
The ship hit an unexpected pocket of calm air, an eye in the storm of the dying planet. As the thumps approached the front of the ship, Rocket locked the controls to stationkeeping and leaned forward, watching the viewport along with Quill and Gamora.
A tree branch flapped over the top of the ship, coming into view at the edge of the viewport. As the three Guardians watched, it shaped itself into a fist and rapped gently on the outside window. NOK NOK NOK.
Rocket’s heart leapt. “Groot?”
NOK NOK NOK!
The tree-man’s face lurched into view. He looked like he’d been through a hurricane. His branches were mostly bare, his few remaining leaves ruffled by the rising winds. He grimaced, gesturing frantically.
Quill laughed. “He jumped. He jumped from the rescue ship!”
Rocket felt tears of relief rising to his eyes. He wiped them away savagely and turned back to the controls.
“Get him!” he barked. “Get him in here.”
As Quill and Gamora rushed to the airlock, Rocket crept back up on the dash, staring out the viewport. On the planet below, a mile-wide fissure gaped across the surface of the main settlement. The munitions dome collapsed and tumbled down into the hole, glowing with a radiance that would soon consume this world.
Rocket scrambled back to his chair, flipping switches. “Is he inside?” he asked.
He felt a familiar leafy touch on his shoulder. “I am Gr– “
“Got it! Good to have you back, buddy.” The ship lurched again. “Now strap in, folks. The planet’s crust is breakin’ up – which means the last of Praeterus’s atmosphere is about to wheeze out into space, like a ham actor givin’ his final performance. And like it or not, we’re goin’ with it.”
Chapter 7
Once they cleared the atmosphere, the ship stopped shaking. They retreated to a safe distance, observing in eerie calm as the planet cracked, shuddered, and split into a thousand pieces.
Gamora forced herself to watch every second of it. The tremors, the fierce eruption of gamma radiation. The chunks of dirt, ice, and quick-frozen lava spewing out from the planet’s core. The first few rescue ships, flitting into view at quick intervals before flashing away into hyperspace.
Once again, she remembered the vow she’d made to the little Kree girl: I won’t let this happen. She clenched her fists, wincing in pain. The burns on her hands were already healing, but still they chafed and itched. That only made her squeeze harder. She wanted to feel that pain. She wanted to hurt.
I deserve it, she thought. I failed.
At the pilot’s console, Quill and Rocket were grilling Groot about events on the ground. Rocket had set the ship on autopilot, maintaining a fixed position several thousand klicks from the planetary reaction.
“He wasn’t on the last ship?” Peter asked.
Groot shook his head sadly.
“Are you absolutely sure?” Rocket gestured dramatically. “I mean, you know Drax. Maybe he slipped aboard, unnoticed, all stealthy-like without anybody seeing… YEEEAAAAAAAH, you’re right. He’s toast.”
“I am Groot,” Groot agreed.
“Drax. Ahhh, Drax.” Quill leaned his hands on the dash, watching as another of the evac ships loomed into view. “How many did we save?”
Groot lifted a leafy hand and began to count on his fingers. “I. Am. Groot. I am Groot? Groot.”
“Three hundred and seven,” Quill repeated. “Out of eighty thousand.”
Outside the viewport, the last evac ship flashed bright as it vanished into hyperspace.
“And we still don’t even know why this happened,” Rocket grumbled. “Was it some weapon? A terrorist attack? A stupid, pointless accident?”
“It was no accident,” Gamora said.
They all turned in surprise as she approached. “Inside the dome,” she said, “There was… something. Someone.”
Quill blinked. “Really?”
“Didja get an ID?” Rocket asked. “Was it male, female? Human, or something more pleasing to the eye?”
“Human,” she said, ignoring the insult. “Or humanoid, at least. I don’t remember much – the radiation was just too much – but I felt something. An ancient hatred, a… a hunger for conquest. A need so overwhelming, it couldn’t be contained within the bounds of one universe.”
She looked up. They were all staring at her.
“Whoa,” Quill said.
“That’s your reaction? ‘Whoa’?” She placed her hands on her hips. “Faced with possibly the greatest evil in all of known space, you say ‘Whoa’?”
“Um,” Quill replied. “‘Yikes’?”
“Well, whoever it was, they’re prob’ly dead.” Rocket gestured outside at a severed continental shelf drifting by. “Nobody could have survived that.”
“You’re wrong. They survived.”
Again, the stares. “I am Groot?” Groot asked.
<
br /> “I don’t know how I know,” she replied. “I just do. I felt that malevolent presence, up close and personal. And somehow I know: it’s still out there.”
“If that’s the case,” Quill said, “it might already be looking for more planets to suck dry. We gotta find it.”
“I dunno.” Rocket turned away. “Isn’t this more of a job for somebody like the Nova Corps? Or Supremor’s goons? Or the Shi’ar, maybe! I feel like the Imperial Guard hasn’t had a win lately.”
“Right, yeah,” Quill agreed. “When I said we gotta stop it, I meant the big universal we. Not, you know–”
“–you and me, we. Yeah, agreed.”
“So we’re on the same page.”
“Absolutely–”
“Aren’t you forgetting something?” Gamora’s voice chilled the air in the room.
“P- Probably,” Quill acknowledged.
“That thing killed eighty thousand people,” she hissed. “Including our friend.”
“I am Groot,” Groot agreed.
“Drax,” Gamora continued. “He must be avenged.”
Groot nodded. Rocket let out a long sigh, and finally Quill smiled a grim smile. “So we’re Avengers now.”
“I don’t think it works that way, dude,” Rocket said.
A high-pitched beeping rose up from the control panel. Rocket studied the console and let out a short curse. “It’s one of the evac ships,” he said. “A distress call… well, sort of. They’re saying they’ve managed to engage hyperspace engines, but they got no place to go.”
“I’m not surprised,” Gamora said. “The Kree don’t care what happens to these people.”
“Yeah, but what are we supposed to do about it? Haven’t we done enough for them? Except for the part where we let all their friends and neighbors get killed, I mean.”
“Actually,” Quill said, “I might have an idea. Let me make a call.”
“And then,” Gamora said firmly, “we get on the trail of our planet-killer.” She pulled out a jagged metal object and tossed it to Rocket. “This might help.”
