Summary: The Guardians of the Galaxy are here to kick ass.

Notes: Change of POV here! Folks, I give you… Peter Quill.

Warnings: violence, blood

Chapter 25—To the Rescue

"We're catching up. Everyone is in position, Starlord. Let me know when I should turn off the towing stabilizers." The Kree pilot was the only person who actually had any flight experience among the rebels who'd volunteered to help with the rescue mission—and he had just enough experience to know that this plan was completely insane. It hadn't stopped him, however, from bowing gracefully to the wisdom of Starlord and his companions. It was very nice, Peter thought smugly, to be respected.

Peter grinned broadly at him on the communications display. "Watch for Rocket's signal, Jof. Kavada won't know what's up until we're biting her in the ass."

"Hey Groot! You're on seatbelt duty," called Rocket, from beside Peter in the copilot's seat. Rocket looked briefly away from his calculations on the control board and gestured at the team of armed rebels who were going to help them board Kavada's yacht. "Hold on folks, we're about to become the pebble in a sling-shot."

"I am Groot," ze said politely to the rebels, some of whom gasped as ze sprouted a half dozen new shoots and wrapped them all up tightly in zir grasp.

Peter drummed his fingers on his walkman. Despite his outer confidence, he was slightly nervous. Peter was about to pull off a stunt that he was fairly certain had never ever been attempted before—which would have been really cool if Rocket hadn't helpfully reassured Peter that if it didn't work, "we'll blow up instantly, so it's fine." It was on the same level of crazy as Saal's stupid trick in the asteroid belt, and Peter was the only pilot in their ragtag group with the skill to pull it off.

The captains of the other two retrofitted galleys reported in. They were managing better than expected, for first-time spacers—Peter had to admit, the rebels were a scrappy bunch. Peter did not fail to notice the flirting tone the shorter captain used. In any other circumstance Peter would definitely be trying to capitalize on such an attractive opportunity, but contrary to what Gamora always said, Peter didn't think about sex every second of the day. Just every second that he wasn't worried his friends were dead.

"They're gonna be alright. Right?" he murmured to Rocket.

Rocket did not look up from the controls. "If you ask that one more time, I'm gonna kill ya. Calm down and let me focus on not ripping the ship in half."

Peter deflated slightly. After a moment, Rocket muttered, more to himself than to Peter: "They're gonna be fine."

The proximity notification appeared on Peter's view screen at the same time Jof called to let them know they were in range of Kavada's yacht: "Ninety seconds until contact. We're directly behind Kavada."

"Time to dance, Quill." Rocket picked out one of his diagrams from the view screen and blew it up—a scan of Kavada's ship, with a square section marked in blue. "Ya gotta put the Admantine exactly in that box or the magnet fields won't sync up and we'll overshoot the ship entirely. There's only a half second window for me to latch onto it."

Peter nodded. "Got it."

"Jof, cut the stabilizers," Rocket said.

Since the rebels had no access to the fancy new parts the Admantine's broken fusion core needed, Jof's ship had been towing them all the way from Sertili Seven. At Rocket's signal, Jof shut down the safety stabilizers that forced the trailing Admantine to following his ship's path exactly. The difference was immediately tangible as Peter felt the Admantine jerk left and then list slowly down-right, like a kite caught tethered in the wind. Peter immediately seized the controls and corrected as best he could, struggling to keep the Admantine's path lined up with the box Rocket had outlined. Set behind the diagram on the view screen, the real image of Kavada's ship zoomed towards the Admantine at a speed that was much more frightening when Peter couldn't use the primary thrusters to control it. With the fusion core out of commission, Peter had to rely on auxiliary power and the weak secondary thrusters.

As planned, Jof swerved upwards and hit the breaks hard all the way to a full stop, getting out of the Admantine's way without knocking her off her near-collision course with Kavada's yacht. Peter held his breath as they rushed towards it, making sure to stay within the target box. The view screen's proximity monitor counted down the seconds to what would either be a brilliant stunt or a very nasty collision.

The Admantine zoomed right under the belly of Kavada's slightly-bigger yacht. Their hulls were only a hundred meters apart. Rocket burst into action next to Peter, hands dancing over the controls. Peter winced as a massive electric whine reverberated around the whole ship. Since neither the Admantine nor the galleys had any lock-beams with which to capture Kavada's ship, Rocket had decided to recycle their useless fusion core for the job. As far a Peter understood it, Rocket had somehow reversed the magnetic alignment of the fusion core, which apparently ruined it for any flight-related purpose whatsoever. [To be quite honest, Peter did not always understand or listen very closely to Rocket's engineering explanations, but this time he'd had to know what was going on in order to convince the rebels it would work.] However, the reversed core still created the same massive magnetic force as before—but now it would be the metaphorical south-pole magnet to the standard north-pole one on Kavada's ship. Judging from Rocket's smug grin, the plan had worked: they were stuck snugly to the underside of Kavada's ship.

"Alright, Jof! Pull back!" Rocket ordered.

The Admantine jerked violently as Jof's galley, still tethered to the Admantine, reversed direction. Despite the lack of adequate weapons, armor or maneuverability, the galleys did have the advantage of size. Within a minute the Admantine—and the yacht—shuddered to a stop, although the towing tether creaked dramatically. The two other galleys, Peter knew, would be pulling around in front of Kavada, their outdated plasma cannons buffed up to look much stronger that they were and very prominently displayed.

After a moment of tentative silence in which nothing disastrous happened, Peter let out the breath he'd been holding. They'd done it! He caught Rocket's eye and grinned. "That was a good plan."

Rocket preened. "Yeah, I know."

Behind them, Drax unlooped himself from Groot's 'seatbelt' and clapped the backs of their chairs proudly. "Well done, friends. Half the battle is won. Our companions will be proud. Now let us go forth and rescue them."

Peter sat back from the pilot's controls and hailed Jof and the other captains with the good news, adding: "Get ready for part two." As Peter spoke, Drax was already directing the team of rebels to the Admantine's airlock for the next phase of the plan and Rocket was hailing Kavada.

She answered almost immediately. "What do you fools think you are doing!"

Peter grinned sweetly at her. "Kavada, babe, how's it hanging? Miss me?"

Kavada's glare could have melted steel. "Remove your vile craft from my hull and I will consider not blowing you all to pieces."

Peter kept smiling as he shot her threat right back at her. "Hand over Saal and Gamora and I'll consider not dragging you all the way back to Xandar."

She scoffed, and leaned closer to her view screen. "You don't understand who you're dealing with, do you? I am one of Lord Onchi's inner circle. I rule an entire planet with his blessing." Her voice dripped with entitlement. "If you think that a handful of antique galleys and a defective destroyer will scare me into releasing my prisoners, then you are sorely mistaken."

"Well that sucks for you, because my ship is stuck to yours like an STD until you do. Oh and that planet of yours?"—Peter smirked—"Hate to break it to you, but it had a small change of leadership while you were gone. Remember all those pink Kree you were enslaving? They're in charge now." It was deliciously true, and the look on Kavada's face almost made up for the fact that Groot's idea of stopping to help the rebels overthrow Kavada's little monarchy had cost Gamora and Saal over twenty hours in her clutches. It had been a distressing but unavoidable delay. He gave her a moment to glower, then added, just to rub salt in the wound: "So I wouldn't expect any help from home if I were you."

Kavada looked furious, but apparently that made her no less calculating. Peter could see her expression shift back from enraged to smug as she rolled out a chilling threat: "You're awfully brash for someone whose companions are completely at my mercy. I could kill them both before you could so much as lift a finger to stop me."

Peter's fake smile disappeared. He looked Kavada in the eye, glaring at her with eyes that had seen infinity, and said, "If you touch them, I will end you."

Kavada blinked several times, and seemed about to say something, but then abruptly turned to someone offscreen, like someone else had called her. When she turned back a moment later, she was all anger again. "You're trying to board!" she said incredulously.

Peter let his tone grow flippant again but he didn't smile. "It's called a distraction, turdface. See you soon." He cut the video connection and then tapped through the controls to connect the audio to the ship's tape player. Time for some fight music. Peter regretted not being able to stay and see Kavada's face when she realized that Rocket had hacked both her communications array and her intercom, so that the songs played throughout the whole damn ship. Peter turned to the young rebel who had taken Rocket's place in the copilot's seat; they were tasked with watching the Admantine and coordinating communications with the galleys. "Mahswera, right? If the music stops, take this out, turn it around, put it back in. Press play. Cool?"

They nodded vigorously. Peter gave them a thumbs up, grabbed his blasters, and went to meet Rocket and the others at the airlock, where they drilling a door through the hull of Kavada's ship with a modified laser cannon. Drax was shouldering the heavy machine when he arrived; a blood-red trail of burnt-through metal showed that he was nearly done.

"About thirty seconds," Rocket told him.

"Alright everybody, prepare to be shot at," Peter said. "Groot, give us some cover."

The rebels readied their arms and Groot lumbered to the front of the group with Rocket poised on his shoulder. Drax completed the circular door, set aside the laser cannon, and then kicked in the door.

Peter grinned as Cherry Bomb greeted them at full volume over the yacht's intercom. Almost instantly following it was the sound of blaster-fire—but not as much of it as there would have been had Kavada had enough warning to plant an ambush. Groot threw out both arms and grew them into a tangled shield of living wood. Ze pushed forward, and the rebels poured into Kavada's ship behind zir. Peter only got one shot in before the dozen Kree soldiers were all dead.

"Alright, two of you with Drax, two of you with me and the last two with Rocket and—"

"What are you doing here? You're supposed to be on the galley with Jof!"

Peter peered through the group at the rebel who had interrupted him and had to repressed a sigh. It was Kaufi, one of the only battle-experienced rebels in the group and also one of the few who had initially voted against the rescue, convinced it was too risky. She had a death grip on the arm of another rebel and was scolding her furiously. Actually, now that Peter thought about it, the second rebel was hardly old enough to qualify as one, younger even than the one watching the cockpit. He'd met her before and she'd blushed and stammered while introducing herself. [Was Peter enjoying fame? Yes, yes he was.] Her name was… Charli? Charni?

"What's the use of coming if I'm stuck in the ship the whole time? Mahswera was happy to trade. I want to see Kavada dead as much as you do."

"No! It is enough that you came on this fool's errand without my permission. You are going to get yourself killed looking for revenge. Now—"

"Ladies, we don't have time for a cat fight," Peter interrupted. Kaufi looked ready to turn her wrath on him; he cut in quickly before she could. "Look, you're a fighter too, you know we only have the advantage of surprise for so long."

Kaufi scowled at him and Peter wondered if high-tempers were a Kree trait he'd been unaware of or just one specific to this region. "Fine," she growled. "Charni, you're staying with me, and we're both going with Starlord, since I know you'll actually listen to him."

Peter glanced from Charni wide-eyed admiration to Kaufi's grim disapproval. "That's… great. If we could get moving?"

The other rebels paired up with either Rocket and Groot or Drax and they set off in different directions, taking down Kavada's soldiers as they went. Peter kept his group with Drax's until they hit a fork. Before they split up, Peter pulled Drax aside.

"Hey man, remember to stay cool, okay? Focus, chill. No going crazy on us." Drax had a tendency, during stressful missions, to slip back into 'Destroyer' mode and fall prey to some serious overkill—and with Gamora and Saal in danger, this mission was nothing if not stressful. Peter had meant to give Drax a pep talk before, but there'd been no time.

Drax frowned. "I will endeavor to keep my temper under control, my friend, but I still fail to see what temperature has to do with it."

Peter shook his head with a grin. He'd been teaching Drax, slowly, to understand slang. "I'll explain later. After everyone is safe and…" Peter's grin faded as his chest tightened with sudden worry. How much damage had Kavada managed to do to Gamora and Saal in twenty-six hours?

Drax put a hand on Peter's shoulder. "Do not fear for our companions. They are strong, and we will find them soon."

"Thanks, Drax."

Peter took off down the left corridor with Kaufi and Charni, checking around each corner for Kavada's thugs and in each room for Saal and Gamora. Charni stayed nearly in step with Peter, almost getting underfoot with her eagerness, while Kaufi watched their backs and shot Peter the occasional eye-roll.

"Starlord, can I ask you a question?" Charni said tentatively.

Peter didn't pause as he stepped cautiously into the chamber whose door Charni had just forced with a handy gadget for the door-lock. "Sure, shoot. I mean, yes."

"You really did do all those things they say? You and the Guardians? It's not just propaganda like Lady Kavad—I mean, Kavada says?"

Peter considered whether the word 'all' included the good and bad shenanigans he and the others had gotten or were rumored to have gotten up to (the rumors amounted to considerably more than the actual deeds), and then said: "Yeah, all the heroic things, yeah. All of it's definitely true. Except the illegal stuff. That's exaggerated."

A glance around the dim cargo room showed it was empty. Peter was turning to leave when a blaster bolt ripped terrifying close by his face and into the door frame behind him. Half a second later, before Peter could even react to the first one, a second whizzed by.

A weedy-looking Kree lay dead on the floor with a blaster gun beside him. Peter squinted through the shadows and realized he'd been hiding in a niche Peter had missed when checking the room.

"It is so cool to be able to fight with you!" Charni still had her gun up; she was looking at Peter with bright eyes and a smile far too innocent for someone who had just killed someone and saved Peter's life.

Peter reassessed his estimate of the young Kree woman. A girl with lightning fast reflexes who also thought he'd put the stars in the sky? Now that was a tempting catch. One look at Kaufi's raised eyebrow and pursed lips, however, disabused Peter of any ambitions he had towards her protege. Peter was still trying to send nonverbal don't-kill-me-I-won't-hit-on-her-I-promise signals to Kaufi when he realized Charni had asked him another question.

"What?"

"So how did you defeat Ronan the Accuser?"

Peter blanched, just like he did whenever anybody brought up the subject. He didn't like to think about the end of the battle, about grabbing the infinity orb, about the unbearable lonely immensity it had poured into him or the way his vision had zoomed past the borders of the universe and into a place he couldn't describe but couldn't stop seeing in his nightmares. He didn't like to think about how that one simple act had thrust him from his comfortable role as a dashing desperado with no expectations to live up to—into one as somebody people expected to do good things and save people and get things right on a regular basis. He didn't like to think about how bright purple objects like the cords braided into Charni's hair made his heart seize up when he saw them out of the corner of his eye.

"Umm… we don't really have time to get into that right now."

Charni nodded, unperturbed. "Right. To the rescue!" She bounded out of the chamber.

Peter thought he saw Kaufi expression change briefly from distaste to calculation, so be busied himself with striding after Charni and trying to look as peppy as she did. He was almost sure he'd managed it when they abruptly happened upon a large knot of soldiers guarding a single door. Peter shared a glance with Kaufi and knew she'd come to the same conclusion he had: either Kavada had abandoned the bridge and holed up here, or her hostages were behind this door. Peter commed Rocket and Drax to warn them, and then he, Kaufi and Charni descended on the soldiers like vengeful meteors. The soldiers didn't have a chance. Kaufi got the door before Peter could; he saw her eyes widen and knew with sinking feeling in his stomach that they had found the right door. He pushed past her, barely registering her order to Charni to keep watch outside.

Seeing Gamora and Saal again was a relief so intense it felt like a zero-gee sauna, but it didn't last longer than the second it took to realize they were in bad shape. Gamora's hair, spilling across her face as her head hung limp, was an intense splash of color in the stark chrome and white cell—and so was the blood covering Saal. Yeesh, he looked like a paint splatter. Peter felt his breath hitch but forced himself to stay calm. He couldn't afford to freak out or fuck up right now.

"Rocket, we got them," Peter told his comm. "Get here ASAP." He glanced at Kaufi, who had already gotten out their medpac and was gingerly brushing Gamora's hair away from her face to reveal large purple bruises.

"She's breathing fine, these bruises are everywhere though, and… yeah I don't like the angle on that arm. She's dislocated it—trying to escape if the condition of the chair is anything to go by. She's got a cybernetic kit, you said? I don't know first aid for that."

"Rocket will take care of it," Peter said, already inspecting Saal. He was unconscious like Gamora, but seemed unnaturally tense, fitful, like he had during the little fiasco on Volta Six. Rocket had said they'd be cutting it close with his meds… That was another thing they would have to leave to Rocket. Peter's gaze leapt from the large bloodstain across one shoulder to the IV line leading back to Gamora, putting the pieces together. So Saal was not the one potentially bleeding out, then. "Get that needle off of her, and then see if there's anything about these chairs to stop us letting them out."

Oh man, oh man, oh man... Peter's finger tapped rapidly on the empty tape player strapped to his hip. Right now the cassette was on the Admantine, blaring away Spirit in the Sky as a fuck-you to Kavada, but having even just the player with him always made it easier to concentrate. Peter wished there was something he could do; he felt so helpless seeing two of his crew so broken and still. Rocket was on his way, Peter told himself. Rocket, who whistled cheerfully while he built bombs but swore steadily anytime he had to work with cybernetics—but who did it anyway, pretending it didn't bother him, anytime Gamora (or recently Saal) needed a medic.

Peter's comm suddenly chirped and Drax reported in: Kavada was holed up on the bridge, refusing to negotiate. "Should I persuade her?" Drax inquired.

Peter cringed and regretted, and not for the first time, ever teaching Drax the …alternate… definition of persuade. "No, Drax, I'll be right there. You head to my position and give Rocket any help he needs, okay?"

"Understood."

Peter hesitated before leaving. He was partly glad to be needed somewhere he could actually do some good, but he was torn about leaving Gamora and Saal alone. What if they woke up? The two of them would freak out, probably attack someone. Or what if something else went wrong?

No—Rocket was just a minute away. The rebels had control of the ship; there would be no surprises. Kavada, however, could still do damage, so he needed to deal with her now. Deciding, he turned to Kaufi. "If Gamora wakes up before Rocket gets here, back the hell up because she'll probably try and kill you. If Saal does, kill the lights and be as quiet as you can. And don't touch him."

Kaufi blinked at the odd instructions but nodded firmly. Peter gave her and Charni a quite salute before stepping back out into the corridor. A growl found its way to the base of his throat as he stalked towards the bridge. "Kavada, you have got a lot to answer for."

Notes: Sorry for the looooong delay. The PTSD is strong lately, folks, so I have had trouble writing. But you know what? The new movie has revitalized the fandom so I am getting more lovely reviews to inspire me! Thank you so much!

So this chapter is long af but the narration is pretty brisk, right? This is due to the POV change: Saal and Peter differ greatly in levels of broodiness, depression and introspection.

I made Drax a berserker because I thought it fit his character and why not? Thoughts?