Star-Lord, page 23
part #1 of Marvel Wastelanders Series
“I was focused on what was in front of me, not what was behind me! Shut up while I…” Quill was grateful for the fact he’d made enough escape preparations to keep the engines warm, which mercifully responded to his controls. The Milano fired up and he wheeled her around to face whatever threat waited for them.
“I told you I had a bad feeling about this,” roared Rocket across the comms. Quill saw on the video feed that he was at the door of the cockpit, so Quill got the rage in stereo. “But no! You…”
“It’s him, Rocket,” said Quill. “Rucka.” He pushed forward on the throttle and the Milano gathered speed as he headed straight out of the hangar.
“Wait, what are you doing? Stop, Quill! Get back into the hangar right now!”
“He shot us, Rocket. We shoot him back. It’s simple math.” Quill was deeply offended by having been caught on the back foot and he was going to make this son of a camel dealer’s daughter pay.
“Quill! The team’s on the ground out there and our booster is shot.”
“He’s right here, Rocket! Let’s finish the job and shoot him out of the sky.”
“We have to abort this mission, you hear me?”
“Guardians,” said Quill, “close the hangar door and hang tight. We’ll be right back.”
Rocket slid into the co-pilot seat and put his paw on Quill’s arm. “If Groot gets hit by the flux and ends up as bleached driftwood, so help me I’ll cut your flarking throat!”
“They’ll be fine, Rocket.” Quill squeezed the triggers, firing several optimistic shots at the nimble speeder bike that had ambushed them. They streaked across the gulf of space, going wide of their mark. He cursed beneath his breath. “This would be better with music,” he muttered. “Hold on, guys. I’ll be right back.”
•••
“Only I wasn’t right back,” said Quill. The cave had remained quiet while Quill and Rocket had told the sorry tale and Cora had not interrupted. Now, though, she prompted for a continuation.
“What happened?”
“I was outmaneuvered,” said Quill, appearing, for the first time since they had found Cora on the Prosperity, like the old man he staunchly refused to accept that he was. There was infinite pain in his eyes, a grief he had borne since it happened. “Trying to track a dude on a cosmic bike is like… trying to catch a bee with your bare hands. Ran out of time.”
“We had to leave,” said Rocket. “Before the next flux. We were gone for an hour. Just… an hour.”
“An hour for us,” said Quill, then he went quiet. Finishing this story was tough and he struggled to get it out. When he did, his tone was leaden, the pain evident. “It was a century for them.”
“‘Them’?” Cora sought clarification.
“The Guardians, Cora.” Quill looked at her. “The real Guardians of the Galaxy.”
“The hangar door was damaged during the firefight,” said Rocket. “They couldn’t close it in time. They got hit by the next temporal flux.”
The reality of this revelation was shocking and for once Cora didn’t feel the need to fill the silence. She waited until Quill recovered enough to finish. “My friends died because of me.”
Rocket laid a paw on his arm. “It’s time to move on, man.”
Quill shook his head. “This isn’t something I can just forget…” he began, but Rocket kept going.
“I didn’t say ‘forget’. I said move on. Look, Quill, if I’ve managed to do it, you can as well. They were my friends, too.”
“It’s not just that day, though. It’s all the days before it. It’s about who I am, Rocket. My dad…”
“You are not your dad. You are not J’Son. You never were, you never will be.”
“I’m just like him, Rocket. He’s a criminal. A killer.” He put up his hands and made air quotes around his next words. “Mister Knife of the Slaughter Lords. I did everything in my power to make sure I didn’t turn out like him and how did I end up? Just like him.”
“Quill, again. You are nothing like him. Will you please get that through your thick skull? Sure, you screw up from time to time, but…” Rocket struggled to get the next words out, whether because he didn’t believe them or because it was just emotionally difficult was hard to tell. “But you’ve got a heart the size of a flarking planet. OK?”
“Spare me the…”
But Rocket was in full flow now.
“Shut up, Quill. Shut up. Do you think Cora would be here if you’d left it up to me? Hell, no. I’d have sent her straight to the recycling bin. You risked everything to save Sebastian Warn from Kraven even when you were told to stay put. You always do crap like that. You know.” He waved a paw. “Good deeds.” His snout wrinkled in disgust. “It drives me nuts. Look. I know I’m not the kind of guy who does this deep stuff, but what you’re doing right now is a full reversal of what you did that day on Mortem Novis.”
He paused for breath. He knew he had everyone’s attention now and while Rocket rarely had trouble speaking his mind, this was different. This was personal. This was difficult.
“That day, you missed that Rucka was behind us. You haven’t stopped looking back ever since. Look. Quill, the fact is, well, we aren’t the Guardians anymore, just like America’s not America. We’ve got to find some way to – heck, I don’t flarking know – honor their legacy, while at the same time chase something better.”
“Yeah?” There was such hope in Quill’s voice that it almost broke Rocket’s sturdy little heart.
“Hell yeah. We got folks right here who want to fight. So, let’s fight.”
“Rocket, what are you saying? You want to stay? I thought you wanted us to get the Black Vortex and bail out of here.” Quill was puzzled by this change of heart, but not displeased.
“The urgency to get out of here lessened since Forge got rid of the collars.” Rocket folded his arms across his chest. “Someone’s got to fix this wreck of a planet, right? You made it out of that cave-in alive. You’re still standing, Quill. You’ve had a sentimental moment, hooray, well done. Now it’s time to get off your butt and get back to work. Can you stand?”
Carefully, Quill achieved just that. He looked down at his friend. “What’s the plan?”
“Time to meet the crew that’s going to help us get our sweet backsides into Doom’s compound.”
•••
This far behind the waterfall, the distant roar of the water was little more than a muted rumble. Rocket guided Quill into a sandy-bottomed chamber, Cora trailing behind them. There was more space here and it evidently served as some sort of workshop. Forge stood over the recovered Doombot that had brought the tunnels down, systematically deconstructing it. The air was filled with the sound of power tools as she bored out rivet after rivet. Yet it wasn’t to this sight that Quill’s eyes were drawn, but to the man sitting on a workbench in the corner. A slow grin spread across his face as the unmistakable figure of Red Crotter raised a hand in greeting.
“There he is!” He waved at Quill, a smirk on his face.
“Holy hell, Red! How are you even still alive?”
Red laughed and dropped down off the workbench. “Same could be said about you, Old Man Quill. Don’t mind me saying this, I’m sure, but you look like hell.”
“You live through hell, you look like hell, I suppose.” Quill scratched at his beard. “It’s good to see you again, man. It really is.”
“We gonna hug?”
“Sure, Just… gently.”
The two old men came together in a brief, fierce embrace that they held for a couple of moments before covering up their emotion with burly back-thumps that made Quill wince in pain. Red released him and they dropped into silence punctuated with the sounds of Joanna Forge pulling the Doombot apart, slowly spreading the automaton’s anatomy out like a surgeon’s exploded diagram. Quill turned his attention away from the sight and focused on Red.
“What happened? Back at the farm?”
Red shrugged one shoulder. “They came for me. Just like I predicted. Nighttime raid. A posse of men with their sights set on a bounty. They were looking for blood.”
“What then? You kicked out their teeth and stole their lunch money?”
“I mean, that would be great, but no. Not quite. Did do my best though. I unloaded enough buckshot to make my hands go numb. But there were more of them than me. They made short work of stripping me and tying me down. Made me watch as they torched everything. The cabin, the barn, the stable, even the chicken coop.”
“How are you smiling after that?”
“Because it was how I’d always imagined going out,” replied Red. “I guess I was… ready, you know? To say goodbye to it all and move on.”
Move on. That phrase, coming again so soon after Rocket’s recent words, was hard to hear. “But you’re here,” he said, pushing through melancholy. “You’re here.”
“I’m here because my cabin wasn’t the only thing burning that night out in the Wastelands.”
Quill’s eyes widened as he instantly jumped to the only available conclusion. “The Ghost Riders?”
“You got it. Thwack! A flaming arrow took one guy out – hit him right in the eye. Another got it in the chest. Another, in the guts. It was carnage. Then the Ghost Riders came pounding out of the darkness, horses screaming like banshees. I tell you this for nothing – if I’d been wearing britches, I’d have filled them at that point.” Quill was caught up in the story and even Rocket hadn’t commented. Red laughed. “Then they just out and asked me if I wanted to ride with them. I said yes. I said hell, yes.”
Cora spoke. “Now you are dressed all in black. You have a quiver on your back. The ultimate conclusion is that the Ghost Riders have joined the Second Dawn.”
The enormity of the recorder’s statement was shocking enough that Quill was speechless. Red nodded at Cora. “That’s exactly it. Everybody’s had enough. Everyone is coming together.”
Behind them, the sound of drilling and cutting continued and then there was a sudden loud metallic clank.
“I’m in,” said Joanna Forge. “Systems are all yours, Rocket.”
Rocket bared his fangs in a slow grin. “Well, it’s about time.”
Hacking the Doombot proved much tougher than Rocket said it would be. After a couple of hours of swearing and muttering, Forge quietly slipped him a pair of magnifying spectacles so that he could better see what he was doing. “It’s darker than usual in these caves,” Rocket claimed, daring anybody to suggest that the problem was his eyesight rather than the illumination.
Nobody suggested it and Rocket resumed his work. Another two hours passed before he breached the Doombot’s internal security, and he began the even more arduous task of reprogramming it so that they could enact their plan.
While Rocket worked, with occasional input from Forge, the others focused on drawing together the disparate strands of what could loosely be referred to as “the plan”. There was not going to be much time in which to get everything arranged but Peter Quill had never been the kind of man to give up at the first hurdle. Maybe the third hurdle – or once in a rare moment, when there was no other choice, the second – but never the first. No way.
He was still subdued following the experience in the mines, not to mention the emotional turmoil of voicing his guilt, so when Rocket finally confirmed that he had succeeded in reprogramming the Doombot, he felt a much-needed surge of elation.
“All right,” he said, punching the air enthusiastically. “Let’s do this.”
•••
“Is it working?”
“Oh yeah, it’s working.” The cave was filled with the noises of an active Doombot echoing from several salvaged speakers. Rocket was busy at a set of rudimentary controls that he and Forge had cobbled together and was concentrating on piloting the Doombot remotely. “Just a couple more moments until we get the visual feed online as well and this little baby will be perfect. A pretty good job if I say so myself.”
“Yeah. You did good, Rocket.” Quill shuffled impatiently, eager to see through the Doombot’s eyes. He reached for something to fill the conversational void. “I gotta say… Doom has the best bad-guy look in world history, right?” Rocket shrugged silently, so Quill continued. “Something like that doesn’t just occur naturally. It takes a whole lot of calculated effort.”
“You got a point, Quill?” Rocket glanced up from his work.
“Of course I do. My point is… that I bet Doom is compensating for something.”
“Excuse me, Star-Lord, but by that, are you implying that Doom is perhaps not as powerful as he seems?” Cora asked the question and Rocket snorted.
“He seems pretty powerful to me.”
Quill flapped his hand vaguely. “I mean, yeah, he seems powerful. The costume’s one thing. But look at the evidence. He’s got Doombots roaming the Wastelands. He’s got his whole face carved into mountains. There’s a hidden stronghold that he never leaves… blah, blah, et cetera, et cetera. That is a lot of armor, don’t you think? Wearing armor’s a thing you don’t do unless you’re afraid of something.”
“Joanna Forge?”
“Yeah, Cora?”
“When was the last time that Doom was actually seen?” The question came out of left field and Forge frowned as she pondered the answer. Then she shook her head.
“You know, I don’t even reckon I could tell you. Fifteen years, maybe? Twenty perhaps? Maybe more. To be honest, if I was a warlord dictator, I’d choose to stay holed up myself – especially with telepaths like Emma Frost out there. He’s only one psychic probe away from being a puppet like this Doombot. Speaking of which… visual link online.” Forge indicated the cave wall where the dusty path of the Dakota hills flickered into sight.
“This is what the Doombot is seeing?” Quill turned his attention to the grainy visual. The quality wasn’t perfect, but they’d been working to a tight schedule. It was certainly more than enough for their purposes. Quill had come, over the years, to expect nothing less from Rocket’s handiwork.
“Yes,” said Forge. “What you’re seeing here is exactly what the Doombot sees. This array…” She indicated the controls and holographic display in front of Rocket, “is the remote pilot’s control. It’s pretty good. We work well together, Rocket. If you get bored of this loser…”
It was good-natured, but Quill felt a sudden chill. What if Rocket did like the idea of staying here and working with her? He put the thought aside and concentrated on the view as the Doombot stamped up the hill towards the stronghold. The path was studded at frequent intervals by torches and at more irregular intervals by corpses fully impaled on spikes. It was a gruesome sight, even secondhand, and Quill shuddered involuntarily. He looked over at Rocket. “We hike him up this gruesome hill, weave him through this avenue of corpses to the stronghold – then what happens?”
“We get him inside and we find the rest of the map. In and out as quick as we can because someone is going to notice,” replied Rocket, deftly piloting the Doombot.
“A smash-and-grab operation,” said Quill and Rocket nodded, glancing briefly over his shoulder. “How do we get inside? Some sort of secret knock? A password at the door?” He was being facetious and so was surprised by the initial reply.
“A password is more or less right. There’s a transmitter in the thing’s breastplate. Low power, limited range, rolling code. We get this tin can within twenty yards and the doors should recognize one of their own and open. So yeah. A password at the door. You see, Quill? You can be smart when you try.”
“Uh, yeah. Thanks.”
“OK, the compound is in sight. Here we go. Cora, are you picking up any reports?”
“Yes, Rocket. It appears that Red and the Ghost Riders are right on time and right on target,” reported the recorder. “There is a transmission coming in now.” She opened her speakers and played it so that they could all hear it.
“All Doombots in the Doomwood vicinity are to report immediately to the oil refinery. A terrorist attack is underway. Message repeats: all Doombots in the Doomwood vicinity are to report immediately to the oil refinery…”
“Good job, Red,” said Rocket, turning his attention back to the Doombot’s view. “All eyes are now looking in another direction.” He watched as the vast fortress doors drew closer. There was a brief pause. “OK, this is it. Here we go. Yes. Yes!” There was a loud scrape as the doors received the Doombot’s electronic ident and swung open. “Let’s see if anybody’s home!”
The Doombot headed inside, guided by Rocket with expert care, its heavy mechanical footsteps echoing around the huge hall as it proceeded into the compound. Rocket looked up at Quill. “So… this is where you come in, Quill.”
“Yeah, right. Agatha – the librarian – she said that there was a high-ceilinged corridor, but I can’t remember if she told me whether the war room was to the left or the right. Maybe being hit on the head by a mountain knocked it out of me. Left me a bit fuzzy.”
“Huh,” said Rocket. “That’s not the mountain’s fault.”
“It was the first door on the left,” supplied Cora, helpfully. Rocket nodded and steered the Doombot in the direction indicated.
“Knock, knock,” he said and chuckled. The Doombot’s hand swung into view on the visual feed as it pushed the huge double doors open. The view tilted as the bot stepped into the room beyond, the echo of its footsteps fading. Torches lined the walls, their flames filling the chamber with an orange glow and weirdly dancing shadows.
“There,” Quill said, pointing. “There. There’s the throne Agatha described. The tables.”
Rocket moved the Doombot closer. “Maps,” he confirmed. “Maps, blueprints and survey reports.”
“The War Room. But no Doom,” said Quill.
“The torches are lit,” pointed out Forge. “So, while he might not be here, I’d be prepared to wager that there’s someone in earshot.”
Quill nodded, agreeing with and appreciating her comment. “Can we make that thing go any faster, Rocket?”
“Enough with the backseat driving,” Rocket snarled, clearly ruffled by the sudden urgency that had come with Forge’s words.
She put a hand on his shoulder. “You might have seconds, not minutes,” she said. Before she could continue, an entirely unexpected voice cut in from behind the Doombot.
“I told you I had a bad feeling about this,” roared Rocket across the comms. Quill saw on the video feed that he was at the door of the cockpit, so Quill got the rage in stereo. “But no! You…”
“It’s him, Rocket,” said Quill. “Rucka.” He pushed forward on the throttle and the Milano gathered speed as he headed straight out of the hangar.
“Wait, what are you doing? Stop, Quill! Get back into the hangar right now!”
“He shot us, Rocket. We shoot him back. It’s simple math.” Quill was deeply offended by having been caught on the back foot and he was going to make this son of a camel dealer’s daughter pay.
“Quill! The team’s on the ground out there and our booster is shot.”
“He’s right here, Rocket! Let’s finish the job and shoot him out of the sky.”
“We have to abort this mission, you hear me?”
“Guardians,” said Quill, “close the hangar door and hang tight. We’ll be right back.”
Rocket slid into the co-pilot seat and put his paw on Quill’s arm. “If Groot gets hit by the flux and ends up as bleached driftwood, so help me I’ll cut your flarking throat!”
“They’ll be fine, Rocket.” Quill squeezed the triggers, firing several optimistic shots at the nimble speeder bike that had ambushed them. They streaked across the gulf of space, going wide of their mark. He cursed beneath his breath. “This would be better with music,” he muttered. “Hold on, guys. I’ll be right back.”
•••
“Only I wasn’t right back,” said Quill. The cave had remained quiet while Quill and Rocket had told the sorry tale and Cora had not interrupted. Now, though, she prompted for a continuation.
“What happened?”
“I was outmaneuvered,” said Quill, appearing, for the first time since they had found Cora on the Prosperity, like the old man he staunchly refused to accept that he was. There was infinite pain in his eyes, a grief he had borne since it happened. “Trying to track a dude on a cosmic bike is like… trying to catch a bee with your bare hands. Ran out of time.”
“We had to leave,” said Rocket. “Before the next flux. We were gone for an hour. Just… an hour.”
“An hour for us,” said Quill, then he went quiet. Finishing this story was tough and he struggled to get it out. When he did, his tone was leaden, the pain evident. “It was a century for them.”
“‘Them’?” Cora sought clarification.
“The Guardians, Cora.” Quill looked at her. “The real Guardians of the Galaxy.”
“The hangar door was damaged during the firefight,” said Rocket. “They couldn’t close it in time. They got hit by the next temporal flux.”
The reality of this revelation was shocking and for once Cora didn’t feel the need to fill the silence. She waited until Quill recovered enough to finish. “My friends died because of me.”
Rocket laid a paw on his arm. “It’s time to move on, man.”
Quill shook his head. “This isn’t something I can just forget…” he began, but Rocket kept going.
“I didn’t say ‘forget’. I said move on. Look, Quill, if I’ve managed to do it, you can as well. They were my friends, too.”
“It’s not just that day, though. It’s all the days before it. It’s about who I am, Rocket. My dad…”
“You are not your dad. You are not J’Son. You never were, you never will be.”
“I’m just like him, Rocket. He’s a criminal. A killer.” He put up his hands and made air quotes around his next words. “Mister Knife of the Slaughter Lords. I did everything in my power to make sure I didn’t turn out like him and how did I end up? Just like him.”
“Quill, again. You are nothing like him. Will you please get that through your thick skull? Sure, you screw up from time to time, but…” Rocket struggled to get the next words out, whether because he didn’t believe them or because it was just emotionally difficult was hard to tell. “But you’ve got a heart the size of a flarking planet. OK?”
“Spare me the…”
But Rocket was in full flow now.
“Shut up, Quill. Shut up. Do you think Cora would be here if you’d left it up to me? Hell, no. I’d have sent her straight to the recycling bin. You risked everything to save Sebastian Warn from Kraven even when you were told to stay put. You always do crap like that. You know.” He waved a paw. “Good deeds.” His snout wrinkled in disgust. “It drives me nuts. Look. I know I’m not the kind of guy who does this deep stuff, but what you’re doing right now is a full reversal of what you did that day on Mortem Novis.”
He paused for breath. He knew he had everyone’s attention now and while Rocket rarely had trouble speaking his mind, this was different. This was personal. This was difficult.
“That day, you missed that Rucka was behind us. You haven’t stopped looking back ever since. Look. Quill, the fact is, well, we aren’t the Guardians anymore, just like America’s not America. We’ve got to find some way to – heck, I don’t flarking know – honor their legacy, while at the same time chase something better.”
“Yeah?” There was such hope in Quill’s voice that it almost broke Rocket’s sturdy little heart.
“Hell yeah. We got folks right here who want to fight. So, let’s fight.”
“Rocket, what are you saying? You want to stay? I thought you wanted us to get the Black Vortex and bail out of here.” Quill was puzzled by this change of heart, but not displeased.
“The urgency to get out of here lessened since Forge got rid of the collars.” Rocket folded his arms across his chest. “Someone’s got to fix this wreck of a planet, right? You made it out of that cave-in alive. You’re still standing, Quill. You’ve had a sentimental moment, hooray, well done. Now it’s time to get off your butt and get back to work. Can you stand?”
Carefully, Quill achieved just that. He looked down at his friend. “What’s the plan?”
“Time to meet the crew that’s going to help us get our sweet backsides into Doom’s compound.”
•••
This far behind the waterfall, the distant roar of the water was little more than a muted rumble. Rocket guided Quill into a sandy-bottomed chamber, Cora trailing behind them. There was more space here and it evidently served as some sort of workshop. Forge stood over the recovered Doombot that had brought the tunnels down, systematically deconstructing it. The air was filled with the sound of power tools as she bored out rivet after rivet. Yet it wasn’t to this sight that Quill’s eyes were drawn, but to the man sitting on a workbench in the corner. A slow grin spread across his face as the unmistakable figure of Red Crotter raised a hand in greeting.
“There he is!” He waved at Quill, a smirk on his face.
“Holy hell, Red! How are you even still alive?”
Red laughed and dropped down off the workbench. “Same could be said about you, Old Man Quill. Don’t mind me saying this, I’m sure, but you look like hell.”
“You live through hell, you look like hell, I suppose.” Quill scratched at his beard. “It’s good to see you again, man. It really is.”
“We gonna hug?”
“Sure, Just… gently.”
The two old men came together in a brief, fierce embrace that they held for a couple of moments before covering up their emotion with burly back-thumps that made Quill wince in pain. Red released him and they dropped into silence punctuated with the sounds of Joanna Forge pulling the Doombot apart, slowly spreading the automaton’s anatomy out like a surgeon’s exploded diagram. Quill turned his attention away from the sight and focused on Red.
“What happened? Back at the farm?”
Red shrugged one shoulder. “They came for me. Just like I predicted. Nighttime raid. A posse of men with their sights set on a bounty. They were looking for blood.”
“What then? You kicked out their teeth and stole their lunch money?”
“I mean, that would be great, but no. Not quite. Did do my best though. I unloaded enough buckshot to make my hands go numb. But there were more of them than me. They made short work of stripping me and tying me down. Made me watch as they torched everything. The cabin, the barn, the stable, even the chicken coop.”
“How are you smiling after that?”
“Because it was how I’d always imagined going out,” replied Red. “I guess I was… ready, you know? To say goodbye to it all and move on.”
Move on. That phrase, coming again so soon after Rocket’s recent words, was hard to hear. “But you’re here,” he said, pushing through melancholy. “You’re here.”
“I’m here because my cabin wasn’t the only thing burning that night out in the Wastelands.”
Quill’s eyes widened as he instantly jumped to the only available conclusion. “The Ghost Riders?”
“You got it. Thwack! A flaming arrow took one guy out – hit him right in the eye. Another got it in the chest. Another, in the guts. It was carnage. Then the Ghost Riders came pounding out of the darkness, horses screaming like banshees. I tell you this for nothing – if I’d been wearing britches, I’d have filled them at that point.” Quill was caught up in the story and even Rocket hadn’t commented. Red laughed. “Then they just out and asked me if I wanted to ride with them. I said yes. I said hell, yes.”
Cora spoke. “Now you are dressed all in black. You have a quiver on your back. The ultimate conclusion is that the Ghost Riders have joined the Second Dawn.”
The enormity of the recorder’s statement was shocking enough that Quill was speechless. Red nodded at Cora. “That’s exactly it. Everybody’s had enough. Everyone is coming together.”
Behind them, the sound of drilling and cutting continued and then there was a sudden loud metallic clank.
“I’m in,” said Joanna Forge. “Systems are all yours, Rocket.”
Rocket bared his fangs in a slow grin. “Well, it’s about time.”
Hacking the Doombot proved much tougher than Rocket said it would be. After a couple of hours of swearing and muttering, Forge quietly slipped him a pair of magnifying spectacles so that he could better see what he was doing. “It’s darker than usual in these caves,” Rocket claimed, daring anybody to suggest that the problem was his eyesight rather than the illumination.
Nobody suggested it and Rocket resumed his work. Another two hours passed before he breached the Doombot’s internal security, and he began the even more arduous task of reprogramming it so that they could enact their plan.
While Rocket worked, with occasional input from Forge, the others focused on drawing together the disparate strands of what could loosely be referred to as “the plan”. There was not going to be much time in which to get everything arranged but Peter Quill had never been the kind of man to give up at the first hurdle. Maybe the third hurdle – or once in a rare moment, when there was no other choice, the second – but never the first. No way.
He was still subdued following the experience in the mines, not to mention the emotional turmoil of voicing his guilt, so when Rocket finally confirmed that he had succeeded in reprogramming the Doombot, he felt a much-needed surge of elation.
“All right,” he said, punching the air enthusiastically. “Let’s do this.”
•••
“Is it working?”
“Oh yeah, it’s working.” The cave was filled with the noises of an active Doombot echoing from several salvaged speakers. Rocket was busy at a set of rudimentary controls that he and Forge had cobbled together and was concentrating on piloting the Doombot remotely. “Just a couple more moments until we get the visual feed online as well and this little baby will be perfect. A pretty good job if I say so myself.”
“Yeah. You did good, Rocket.” Quill shuffled impatiently, eager to see through the Doombot’s eyes. He reached for something to fill the conversational void. “I gotta say… Doom has the best bad-guy look in world history, right?” Rocket shrugged silently, so Quill continued. “Something like that doesn’t just occur naturally. It takes a whole lot of calculated effort.”
“You got a point, Quill?” Rocket glanced up from his work.
“Of course I do. My point is… that I bet Doom is compensating for something.”
“Excuse me, Star-Lord, but by that, are you implying that Doom is perhaps not as powerful as he seems?” Cora asked the question and Rocket snorted.
“He seems pretty powerful to me.”
Quill flapped his hand vaguely. “I mean, yeah, he seems powerful. The costume’s one thing. But look at the evidence. He’s got Doombots roaming the Wastelands. He’s got his whole face carved into mountains. There’s a hidden stronghold that he never leaves… blah, blah, et cetera, et cetera. That is a lot of armor, don’t you think? Wearing armor’s a thing you don’t do unless you’re afraid of something.”
“Joanna Forge?”
“Yeah, Cora?”
“When was the last time that Doom was actually seen?” The question came out of left field and Forge frowned as she pondered the answer. Then she shook her head.
“You know, I don’t even reckon I could tell you. Fifteen years, maybe? Twenty perhaps? Maybe more. To be honest, if I was a warlord dictator, I’d choose to stay holed up myself – especially with telepaths like Emma Frost out there. He’s only one psychic probe away from being a puppet like this Doombot. Speaking of which… visual link online.” Forge indicated the cave wall where the dusty path of the Dakota hills flickered into sight.
“This is what the Doombot is seeing?” Quill turned his attention to the grainy visual. The quality wasn’t perfect, but they’d been working to a tight schedule. It was certainly more than enough for their purposes. Quill had come, over the years, to expect nothing less from Rocket’s handiwork.
“Yes,” said Forge. “What you’re seeing here is exactly what the Doombot sees. This array…” She indicated the controls and holographic display in front of Rocket, “is the remote pilot’s control. It’s pretty good. We work well together, Rocket. If you get bored of this loser…”
It was good-natured, but Quill felt a sudden chill. What if Rocket did like the idea of staying here and working with her? He put the thought aside and concentrated on the view as the Doombot stamped up the hill towards the stronghold. The path was studded at frequent intervals by torches and at more irregular intervals by corpses fully impaled on spikes. It was a gruesome sight, even secondhand, and Quill shuddered involuntarily. He looked over at Rocket. “We hike him up this gruesome hill, weave him through this avenue of corpses to the stronghold – then what happens?”
“We get him inside and we find the rest of the map. In and out as quick as we can because someone is going to notice,” replied Rocket, deftly piloting the Doombot.
“A smash-and-grab operation,” said Quill and Rocket nodded, glancing briefly over his shoulder. “How do we get inside? Some sort of secret knock? A password at the door?” He was being facetious and so was surprised by the initial reply.
“A password is more or less right. There’s a transmitter in the thing’s breastplate. Low power, limited range, rolling code. We get this tin can within twenty yards and the doors should recognize one of their own and open. So yeah. A password at the door. You see, Quill? You can be smart when you try.”
“Uh, yeah. Thanks.”
“OK, the compound is in sight. Here we go. Cora, are you picking up any reports?”
“Yes, Rocket. It appears that Red and the Ghost Riders are right on time and right on target,” reported the recorder. “There is a transmission coming in now.” She opened her speakers and played it so that they could all hear it.
“All Doombots in the Doomwood vicinity are to report immediately to the oil refinery. A terrorist attack is underway. Message repeats: all Doombots in the Doomwood vicinity are to report immediately to the oil refinery…”
“Good job, Red,” said Rocket, turning his attention back to the Doombot’s view. “All eyes are now looking in another direction.” He watched as the vast fortress doors drew closer. There was a brief pause. “OK, this is it. Here we go. Yes. Yes!” There was a loud scrape as the doors received the Doombot’s electronic ident and swung open. “Let’s see if anybody’s home!”
The Doombot headed inside, guided by Rocket with expert care, its heavy mechanical footsteps echoing around the huge hall as it proceeded into the compound. Rocket looked up at Quill. “So… this is where you come in, Quill.”
“Yeah, right. Agatha – the librarian – she said that there was a high-ceilinged corridor, but I can’t remember if she told me whether the war room was to the left or the right. Maybe being hit on the head by a mountain knocked it out of me. Left me a bit fuzzy.”
“Huh,” said Rocket. “That’s not the mountain’s fault.”
“It was the first door on the left,” supplied Cora, helpfully. Rocket nodded and steered the Doombot in the direction indicated.
“Knock, knock,” he said and chuckled. The Doombot’s hand swung into view on the visual feed as it pushed the huge double doors open. The view tilted as the bot stepped into the room beyond, the echo of its footsteps fading. Torches lined the walls, their flames filling the chamber with an orange glow and weirdly dancing shadows.
“There,” Quill said, pointing. “There. There’s the throne Agatha described. The tables.”
Rocket moved the Doombot closer. “Maps,” he confirmed. “Maps, blueprints and survey reports.”
“The War Room. But no Doom,” said Quill.
“The torches are lit,” pointed out Forge. “So, while he might not be here, I’d be prepared to wager that there’s someone in earshot.”
Quill nodded, agreeing with and appreciating her comment. “Can we make that thing go any faster, Rocket?”
“Enough with the backseat driving,” Rocket snarled, clearly ruffled by the sudden urgency that had come with Forge’s words.
She put a hand on his shoulder. “You might have seconds, not minutes,” she said. Before she could continue, an entirely unexpected voice cut in from behind the Doombot.
