Guardians of the Galaxy: Rocket Raccoon and Groot - Steal the Galaxy! Read online

Apart from her and Hanxchamp, there were only six execs left at the meeting: Rarnak; Pama Harnon; Gruntgrill; Wivvers; Xorb Xorbux, a fierce Z’Nox in charge of Corporate Security (Special Projects); and Allandra Meramati, a dignified Shi’ar noblewoman who headed up the Executive Executization Department.

  “Clandestine fields on, please,” said Hanxchamp. Mrs. Mantlestreek obliged. Her wanded command surrounded the Executive Boardroom with a subtle cone of silence generated by the miniature black hole in the basement of Timely Inc.’s headquarters. Nothing and no one outside the room could see them, listen in, or be privy to any exchange that now took place.

  Hanxchamp got out of his seat and regarded the view of the Temporal Mausoleums of Calofxus.

  “Six-one-six,” he said. “The biggie. The big one-a-roonie. 616. Nothing else matters. This is the mother lode, people. This is the one that secures Timely’s economic power. It will secure it for a million years. Total market stability. Total Timely dominance. We stand at the threshold of a new era. The great empires and cultures will fail and fade. Only the megacorporations will exist. They will dominate. This is the megacorp future, my friends. Corporations more powerful, stable, and resilient than any individual flarking species. And Timely will lead the way with the greatest market share of all.”

  He turned and looked back at them.

  “It’s going to be a beautiful, beautiful thing,” he said sadly. A cloud crossed his face. “But flark me. It’s taking longer than a Kree-Skrull war. No offense.”

  “None taken,” said Rarnak.

  “I literally hear that,” said Pama Harnon.

  “Datacore,” said Hanxchamp. “Where are we at?”

  “Percentile stands at eighty-seven,” replied Meramati smoothly. “The datamap is eighty-seven percent complete, which is to say we have eighty-seven percent of all existential truth.”

  “Less of the ‘truth’ stuff, lady,” snapped Hanxchamp. “You sound too much like one of those happy-clappy, killy-silly freaks from the Universal Church of Truth.”

  “My apologies, sir,” Meramati replied, her elegant feathered crest ruffling slightly.

  “Is eighty-seven enough?” asked Hanxchamp.

  Gruntgrill shook his head.

  “One hundred percent seems unlikely to be achievable,” he said, “but we think we can go live at ninety-six percent-plus.”

  “Why is this taking so long?” asked Hanxchamp. “I thought the Rigellian Solution was supposed to speed things up?”

  “It was, and it has,” said Meramati. “Project 616 was originally scheduled to take three millennia to accomplish. By opting for the Rigellian Solution, we have brought it down to just six years. That’s a serious result, I think.”

  Hanxchamp nodded.

  “But we’re still not there?” he asked.

  “The basic problem remains,” replied Xorb Xorbux. “One Recorder unit is unaccounted for. It contains the percentile data balance we need.”

  “It’s missing?”

  “It’s on the run, sir.”

  Hanxchamp frowned.

  “So find another one to do the job.”

  “Not so simple, sir,” said Xorb Xorbux. “The missing Recorder viewed the entire datacore while it was being reprogrammed. It knows everything. It knows more than it realizes. It is too valuable to be allowed to remain at large. It is essentially a greater and more complete version of our datacore. We need it back to obtain the data unique to it and complete Project 616. We also can’t allow it to fall into anyone else’s hands.”

  “We can’t destroy it?” Hanxchamp sighed.

  “It’s too valuable,” replied Meramati.

  “Solutionize this for me, please!” demanded Hanxchamp.

  Xorb Xorbux coughed gently.

  “We need to go off book for this, sir,” he said, his voice dropping to a growl. “In my opinion. Time is short, and there’s too much at risk. I request permission to bring in a private security provider. He’s unorthodox, but reliable. Talented. He’ll get the job done and retrieve the missing Recorder. But this has to remain budget-concealed. We need to bury it in the back-budget, or the shareholders will go flarkazoidal.”

  “Literally, not a problem,” Pama Harnon stated.

  “Okay, approved. Who are we talking about?” asked Hanxchamp.

  Xorb Xorbux rose and wanded open the side door to an annex. A tall figure walked out and stood before them. They all recognized the sleek and complex armor of a Galadoran Spaceknight at once.

  But this being was markedly different from the chrome-and-shiny Spaceknights of legend. His armor was matte black and scarred from many battles. On his belt, he wore a heavy blaster, a cyclic broadsword, and a nullifier. He was menacing, almost evil. They felt a chill that no amount of virtual desert radiance could dispel.

  “This is Roamer,” said Xorb Xorbux. “Once of Galador.”

  “No longer of Galador?” asked Hanxchamp.

  “I fought for the light most of my life,” said the Spaceknight, his voice dull and heavy through the speaker of his cowled helm. “For Galador. For what is right. I fought the Wraiths, and all evils.”

  “And?”

  “I suffered. I lost things that mattered to me. I lost my faith.”

  “In what way?” asked Hanxchamp

  “I will not speak of it,” replied the dark Spaceknight.

  “Hey, buddy,” said Hanxchamp, gesturing around himself with both tentacles. “Clandestine field? State of the art? No one can hear you?”

  “You can hear me,” said the Spaceknight.

  “Roamer has excellent credentials,” said Xorb Xorbux. “His work is immaculate. His past is his own affair. We need not pry. Consider him a h’jel, a ronin, a gonaktofaj, a masterless warrior. He wanders the spaceways, selling his extraordinary military craft to the highest bidder. I propose we retain him to find and recover the missing Recorder.”

  “And how will he literally do that?” inquired Pama Harnon.

  “I have my ways,” replied Roamer gruffly.

  “And they will be supplemented,” said Xorb Xorbux. “Show them.”

  Roamer turned slowly to reveal a small device bolted to the back of his matte-black armor. The casing of the device bore the Timely Inc. logo.

  “Hey!” said Gruntgrill. “How did you get hold of that? That’s an Interpolation Inserter! That’s still in testing! It hasn’t even been tried!”

  “Needs must,” replied Xorb Xorbux humorlessly.

  “What does that thing do?” asked Wivvers.

  “It’s essentially a teleport device,” replied Gruntgrill, “but it operates off tachyon-state temporal energies. It contains a multi-phase destiny generator, totally experimental, that, once triggered, calibrates the causal nature of reality, recognizes the pathways of the Universe in terms of satisfying dramatic progressions, and deposits the user at…”

  “At what?” asked Hanxchamp.

  “Well, sir,” said Gruntgrill, “in theory, exactly the right place in time and space to effect the greatest dramatic consequence. It assesses universal life as a story, and places the user in precisely the right moment to influence that story. That’s the idea, anyway. The Entertainment Division was developing it, but they found it ended movies and vid-plays before they even began, so it was shelved. It’s never been adequately field-tested. It could potentially disrupt and collapse the causal tension of reality. It’s-tik!-dangerous.”

  “I’m not afraid,” said Roamer, turning back to face them.

  “This doohickey will take the dude to wherever the Recorder is because it makes dramatic sense?” asked Hanxchamp.

  “Possibly, sir,” replied Gruntgrill. “In theory, it harnesses narrative energies, reads the Universe as an ongoing continuity, and interpolates the user directly to the most dramatically satisfying moment. In practice -tik!- it could shred the entire Universe on a cause-and-effect level.”

  Hanxchamp thought about this.

  “Do it,” he said.

  The Spaceknight no
dded slightly.

  “Approve his fees, whatever they are,” Hanxchamp told Harnon. “Let’s get on with this. Bring that Recorder back to us.”

  The Spaceknight nodded again. He activated the device. There was a halo of crackling light. The Executive Boardroom momentarily smelled of plot twist and shock reveal, with an aftertaste of page-turn splash.

  And the Spaceknight vanished.

  “Good, good. Great work, people,” said Hanxchamp, sitting down again. He turned his chair and looked at the view. He smiled.

  “Is it me, or is it suddenly getting hot in here?” he asked.

  • CHAPTER SEVEN •

  RESUME NARRATIVE MODE

  I LIKE space. Deep-field space. I have spent much of my life in it, voyaging between destinations on behalf of the Rigellian Colonizers who made me and programmed me. Of course, loyal reader, I have also spent much of my life in situ, observing and recording the data of my destinations, but it has been the time between those experiences that has given me the greatest satisfaction.

  The time spent traveling. The time spent in the dark, starlit void of great, tumbling galaxies. I have voyaged, alone, sometimes for decades, always silently, hearing nothing but the whine of neutrinos as they stream past my moving form. During those periods of transit, I have had little to do—apart from recording starmaps and navigational markers, and observing the changing color of young stars and old stars alike, obviously—but think. For myself. These have been periods of meditative reflection and self-discovery.

  And now I am in space again. I’m aboard the little jump freighter belonging to Rocket Raccoon and Groot, and we are traveling at high FTL passage away from the complex and downright troublesome situations of Xarth Three. My problems, perhaps temporarily, slide away behind me at faster than light speed.

  It is quiet, apart from the sub-deck throb of the engines. Outside the hull ports, the view is a frosty one of chilled stars and distant light. There is a calm and a solitude. There is a respite.

  I take the moment to search my memory records and experiential data-logs for some clue as to why any of this is happening. I have, I can see, many blanks. Many lacunae. I am loaded to approximately eighty-three percent of data capacity, and I have no difficulty recovering most of it. I can, for example, explain in detail the underworld hierarchies of the planet Krul. I can tell you what the manufacturer Triplanet Metals Inc. has constructed throughout its history (a list, incidentally, that would include the very jump freighter that now conveys us). I can tell you why the oath “Trigon’s Bones” is common in one Galaxy and not another. I can describe, in extensive detail, the sunrise on Chandilar and the weather forms that accompany it at different times of the year. I can relate the specific observable nature of sunset on Adrinax. I can recite and compare the legal systems of eighteen hundred cultures, including the inevitably complex Code of Law practiced and prosecuted by the Nova Corps of Xandar. I can tell you how to feed and care for a Kymellian hopping shrew. I can remind you of the best psionic defense against Kt’kn. I can tell you how to say “Cheers!” in Kodabak.

  I have, on balance, a very great amount of data in my brain case. It is the equivalent of many encyclopedias. It covers all subjects, and it is both specific and general. You are, I believe, especially proud of your “Wikipedia.” You consult it for homework shortcuts and easy stump-speech research. You rely upon it. It is, for a primitive prestellar species, remarkably thorough.

  Imagine, if you can…and you can’t…but imagine having access to the Wikipedias of ninety-six thousand cultures—including data that they don’t even know about themselves, but that I have patiently observed. Imagine having that in your head, instantly accessible (no network problems, no…what is it you call it again? Ah, no “broadband issues”). Imagine that being your head. Imagine knowing so much detail about so very, very much.

  Are you doing that? Are you?

  Okay, good try.

  Now imagine that in the middle of that there are blanks. Things you don’t know. Things you know that you know, but that you can’t understand. Imagine knowing everything about almost everything, except the reasons that you know them.

  Imagine gaps.

  I am scared of the gaps. I am scared of the not knowing. I am scared of the confusion, of the lapses, of the breaks in my mechanically thorough memory that mean I don’t know connective things that I should know.

  I know that I know things I cannot access or account for. I know I know things that I cannot remember. It feels, my dear gentle reader, my new friend, like a terrible weight. A burden.

  I do not know why people are hunting me. I do not know why the Badoon were chasing me. I do not know where the Spaceknight came from. I do not know, apart from my obvious intrinsic worth as a source of data, why I should be valuable to anyone.

  And I do not know why a genetically engineered Halfworld Raccoonoid and an arboreal life-form from the closeted Planet X should be acting so kindly toward me. They saved me from doom.

  I suspect, though I have nothing to back this up, that the motive may be less than altruistic.

  I think they see money in me.

  “We have to get to the bottom of you,” says Rocket. The ship is on auto-nav and flying itself, so he has popped what he calls a “cold one” and retired to the bench booth behind the cockpit space where I am sitting. He leans back, regarding me with curious, beady eyes. His disconcertingly human-like hand grips the frosty beer bottle.

  “The Badoon wanted you real bad,” he says. “Why was that?”

  “I don’t know,” I reply.

  “Aw, come on, Recorder 127 of the Rigellian Intergalactic Survey,” he replies with a grin. “You must. I mean, you’re an impressive piece of kit. Ultra-tech. A walking, talking multipedia. But the Badoon sicced an entire War Brotherhood War Cadre on your heels—knowing they were on an advanced civilized world, knowing that they would tangle with the Nova Corps and the Luminals and worse.”

  “I assure you,” I tell the Raccoon, “I do not know. I know I do not know, with some certainty. There is a marked and alarming gap in my understanding where a piece of knowledge should exist. It is blank.”

  “Hmmmm,” says the Raccoon.

  Groot, having run a situation test on the auto-nav, joins us. He has popped a cold one of his own and produced a pack of playing cards. He starts to deal them out onto the table.

  “Not the time for Skrull Hold 'Em,” Rocket observes, but Groot continues dealing. His dendrite fingers are astonishingly dextrous. And in no way disconcertingly human-like.

  I immediately understand that this is how they unwind during long FTL trips. They sit back in the bench booth, play cards around the little table, and sink a few beers. I say beers. Neither of them are actually drinking beers.

  “I am Groot,” Groot says as he finishes dealing.

  “Yes,” I say, “the gaps are most troubling.”

  Groot nods his huge wooden face. Rocket leans forward.

  “Wait a sec,” he says, wiping his muzzle on the back of his disconcertingly human-like wrist. “Wait a sec here. I just realized the flark out of something here. You…you understand what he’s saying.”

  “Of course,” I reply.

  “You have all along,” Rocket muses.

  “Of course,” I reply.

  He frowns. Frowning does not suit Raccoonoids.

  “But…and here’s the meat of what I’m saying,” he says, “most people assume that my old buddy Groot just says the same thing, all the time.”

  “I am Groot,” Groot nods.

  “Exactly that,” says Rocket.

  “Well, of course they do,” I reply. “Acoustically speaking, that is all he ever says. That is the sound he makes. But beneath the repeated sound, there is a wealth of breath nuance. The breeze whispers through the branches of a tree, and it seems to make the same sound, but there is much variety in it if you listen closely.”

  “Well…” Rocket ponders.

  “You understand him,” I ven
ture.

  He nods. “But no one else ever claims to, except…”

  “Except?”

  “Last time someone did, it was Maximus the Mad,” he replies.

  “Troubling indeed,” I agree.

  “I am Groot,” says Groot.

  “Really, don’t worry about it,” Rocket and I say at the same time.

  We look at each other.

  “You’re smart, Recorder,” he says. “Or crazy. Either of which, I’m down with. Okay, Recorder, ol’ buddy, let’s sort this pickle out. What do you know?”

  “You’d be amazed,” I reply.

  “So amaze me.”

  “Where would you like me to start? Issue a data command to me.”

  “Uh-huh…okey-doke…where are we?”

  “Aboard a Triplanet Metals Inc. jump freighter, compact class—the 'Fast-Leap' model, second generation, with custom modified shift-drive.”

  He nods. He sinks some beer.

  “Go on…?”

  “It is nineteen weeks past its last service. There is a knocking in the generator flux that you think should be looked at. Groot has made some peripheral adjustments, which is why there is a trace of bark residue around the engine-inspection panels over there. The shine on the screw heads shows that they have been taken off and replaced recently.”

  “He’s good,” Rocket says to Groot.

  “I am Groot,” Groot replies.

  “We are traveling comfortably at sub-thirty over FTL,” I continue. “The ambient cabin temp is 19 Celsius, Earth gauge. There are thirty-eight spent disposable beverage containers rolling around under the deck grilles.”

  “I ditch them. I keep getting scalded,” Rocket says.

  “You have informally named this ship the White Stripe, because it plays upon your characteristics—i.e., your bushy tail—but is also a cheeky reference to the appearance of stars at high light speed.”

  “How did you know that?” he demands.

  “The name is written in biro on the left-hand side of the main navigation console in the cockpit.”

  “Okay, okay, what else..?”

  “There is a frankly alarming copy of Playbeing scrolled up under the locker opposite us.”