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Rocketing Around the Galaxy

Part 9

for GlynWolf

by Draconicon

They were lucky enough to spot the mercs on the stairs before the mercs spotted them. The raccoon and the timber wolf laid down as much blaster-fire as they could, forcing the mercs back up and around the bend in the stairs. Rocket shouted at the top of his lungs as he emptied a clip around the corner, burning holes in the floor and all but setting the metal to glowing before ejecting the spent clip.

"Keep moving, kid!"

Glyn was more than happy to take that order. The hot floor would keep the mercs back for a bit, if only to keep from damaging their boots on the burnt ground, but that wouldn't last long. They pushed forward, running past one mysterious machine after another.

Every single piece of equipment on the station would doubtlessly command a high price in the galaxy at large. This place had been hidden for so long that the station itself would be worth more than several galaxies' full economies put together, but that was hardly something that they could steal. More to the point, who the fuck would they ever be able to sell it to? Nobody would have the cash for that kind of thing.

Hey, might want to remember that you're still dealing with several different kinds of assholes that want you dead, too. Can't forget that.

The pair of them ducked behind one of the machines, taking a few seconds to catch their breath. Glyn peered over the top of their protective barrier, panning his eyes left and right. No more shooters yet, and Groot seemed to be holding his barrier further back at the other stairwell, so far. Glancing further down the station ring, he judged that they were probably a hundred-fifty meters off from the assembler.

"You still have the weapon chunks?" Glyn muttered.

"Heh, you know it."

"Give them to me."

"Fat chance, kid."

"I can make it there."

"Maybe, but so could I." Rocket shook his head. "Either we do it together, or we ain't doing it at all."

"What, don't you trust me?"

"Not as far as I can kick ya, kid."

The feeling was mutual, and annoying as ever that they were still on the same page about that. He would have run for the assembler, got the weapon put together, and blasted a hole through the mercs to get down to the bottom level of the station to get the hell out. That would have been the smarter thing, rather than trying to keep a good relation with the raccoon.

Much as he would have liked a little more there...

Nah, nah, that was stupid. He looked back at the upper levels, seeing flashes of metal and plastic armors on the exposed parts of the stairwell. Never enough to get a good shot, never long enough to get a line of sight on them. They were professional, alright, more the pity.

Ventman...

No, he couldn't think of or rely on that, either. That merc was keeping the spaceways free and preventing any further mercenary reinforcements from landing on the station. For now, that was all that he could ask for, and more than he could hope for. If he was going to get something done, he was going to have to do it himself, and hope that it was enough.

How do we get from here to...

The timber wolf ran his hand over the forge, then blinked. There was heat in there. Not much, but some, which meant that it wasn't entirely shut down. There was some activity there, something to work with.

"Out of the way," Glyn said, getting down on his hands and knees.

"What - this ain't the time for that."

"Shut up. This thing's online."

"What - oh, oh. Oh. Oh, I like what you're thinking."

The pair of them managed to rig up their trap just before the mercs surrounded them. No sooner had the raccoon and the timber wolf exchanged a grin before the clicking and whirring of weapons started up all around them. Glyn lifted his head, seeing no less than ten different mercs in black armor pointing gun barrels down at them.

"On your feet," the leader - someone with yellow stripes along his shoulders - commanded.

Sharing a look, both of them did what they were told. The forge was definitely warmer along the back of the timber wolf's thighs now, and he couldn't quite hide a smile as he felt the heat climbing. The large steel block was humming away now, and there were slots on the side of it to his left and right that were slowly vibrating. Something that the mercs either didn't notice or chose to ignore, and either way, that played into what he wanted.

"Hand over the chunks," the commander said.

"How about no?" Rocket responded.

"Hand them over or die."

"I think that I'd like to see you try."

Click. Whir. The guns mostly shifted to point at Rocket, but the raccoon's smugness refused to fade. If anything, he turned to face Glyn and winked. Wrong eye, of course, the eye facing them rather than the one that they couldn't see.

"Heh. Looks like they got us surrounded."

"What are you planning, rodent?"

Rocket whipped his head back around, and it was only a lucky snatch that kept him from leaping at the armored figure and ripping his helmet - and possibly his head - clean off. Glyn gripped Rocket's tail tight, pulling him back from lunging at the soldier.

"What the hell did you just call me?!"

"You might want to take that back," Glyn said, struggling to restrain the smaller male. "I mean, he's a little sensitive about that."

"You want some of this, too, kid?! I'll take you both down. I'll rip you both apart!"

The mercenaries hesitated, their weapons shifting ever so slightly. They were no longer so completely laser-focused on the situation before them...

And that was their downfall.

When one started up a forge, it would take a fair length of time to properly come up to heat, no matter how strong its maximum flames actually were. Most around the galaxy would take hours to reach that proper warmth that would caress the materials inside and slowly bring them to that state where they could be molded, shaped, and put to use by those that used the machines.

While Nidavellir was faster than the other forges, warming up in minutes, there was something else to it that made it far more useful. It had a series of vents around the outside, vents that could be used to allow the heat to rise and fall. Or, in this case, vents that could be opened to allow the explosive force of a grenade reaching explosive heat to come rushing out in a specific direction.

BOOM!

The shockwave nearly took the timber wolf off his feet, and the vent just behind his back - held tightly closed by his back against it - rattled hard. The heat almost burned through his fur, nearly setting it on fire, but it was worth it to keep the flames everywhere else shooting out in the right direction. Rocket yelped as some of the fire went right over his head.

The mercs didn't do anything. Mostly because they were dead.

As the two anthros stood over their flaming bodies, Rocket huffed and shook his head. The raccoon pushed his singed fur down again, grumbling.

"Rodent...hmmph."

"You could have been a little less angry there," Glyn muttered.

"Hey, they deserved it."

"Do you know how close you came to getting your tail torched?"

"Eh, the fur grows back."

"Not that fast."

"...Point."

They looked at each other. It had been another good moment of teamwork; neither of them would have been able to get that to work if it hadn't been for the other. Glyn had noticed the fire and gotten the forge running, while Rocket had rigged up the grenade cradle inside it and made sure that it would stay stable until the mercs were in position. If either of them had tried to pull that on their own, they probably would have been blown to smithereens or burnt to a crisp far too early.

Their teamwork was that good...but neither of them was willing to trust the other.

Dammit...

"How much further?" Rocket asked.

"Uh...hundred-fifty meters."

"Think we can make it at a run?"

"...Maybe."

"Let's try."

They both darted out from behind the forge. The expected barrage of blaster bolts didn't come, which implied that the rest of the mercs were holding out on the upper level, waiting for them to come into view for potshots galore. He imagined that they were going to have a clear run for about a hundred meters, but from what he could see of the upper galleries, after that, they'd be running through a shooting gallery.

And as creative as he was, he had no plans for how they were going to get through that. If only Ventman wasn't so busy dealing with -

Glyn's eyes went wide as someone came down the stairway in front of them. The timber wolf stuttered to a stop, staring at the armored figure that slowly strutted in front of them, turning to face them with a grin on his face and a pair of knives in hand.

"...Shit..."

"Well...well...well," Knives said, slowly spinning the blades between his fingers. "So, the pup and the trash-eater actually got this far. It's almost impressive, isn't it?"

"What'd you call me?" Rocket hissed, not in the angry explosion that he'd shown for the other mercs, but in a much lower, quieter rage.

"Mmm, did I stutter? Or is your little brain too small to handle complex words?"

Rocket's fur lifted on the back of his neck, his hands shaking, and Glyn's was doing the same. Not entirely out of anger, but out of every memory of their previous encounters with this man. They'd barely won the last time, back when they had been able to fake him out and get a clear shot on him. They'd hoped that he had been blown to smithereens back on the other station. This...

This didn't bode well for them. Not in the slightest.

Rocket reached for his gun, only for Knives's hand to flick out. The glimmer of the blade was barely seen before the pistol got smacked to the side, knocked out of reach. As Rocket gripped his wrist, wincing, Glyn was already on the move, grabbing his partner around the waist and lifting him off his feet. The next knife in their direction still nicked his tail, but it would have taken him right in the gut if he hadn't started running right then and there.

Another followed, and another. One streaked across his back, cutting a red line along his upper left shoulder, while the other snicked right over the back of his calf. That one sent him tumbling, falling down behind another of the machines and spilling Rocket to the floor.

"NNNGH!"

He screamed as he dragged himself back against the machine, keeping the steel against his back as Rocket rolled back to his feet. The raccoon grabbed one of his other weapons, pulling it free and unhinging it, making it bounce from pistol size to rifle size.

"Son of a crap, he's fast," Rocket muttered.

"You think?"

"You okay?"

"Mmmph...fucking hurts, but I'll get better."

"..."

"You think you can get him if I act like bait?"

"Heh...just watch me," Rocket said.

The timber wolf didn't like the idea of putting himself on the line again, but it was their only real chance. Knives was too fast for them to rush, and the only real chance that they had was to take him down while he was focused on either him or Rocket. There was no chance if the asshole was able to take them on together.

Glyn fumbled for his blaster pistol, shaking his head as the burning red marks on his shoulder and leg pulled at his attention. He could already feel that his left arm was going to be fucking useless for a while. That blade must have nicked him right across the muscle, which meant that he could barely pull his arm up. Even then, it was shaky as hell, wobbling from side to side, barely able to point in one direction.

"Fuck..." Rocket shook his head. "He got you good."

"Yeah, well...that happened. Let's just get him back, huh?"

"With you on that one..."

"Get ready to run," Glyn muttered.

With a deep breath, the timber wolf threw himself up. He rolled his arm over the top of the machine, pulling the trigger as hard and fast as he could, pumping blaster shots where Knives had been, or at least in his general direction. He could feel the blaster bouncing, jerking left and right from the recoil, but he hoped that it would be enough to keep Knives from getting any closer.

The problem was, Knives wasn't where he remembered.

He was closer.

Glyn managed to pull a half-dozen shots in the wrong direction before a knife slammed down through the ammo clip for the blaster, another coming down at the timber wolf's neck. As Glyn was yanked backwards, Rocket pulled his rifle up, but not before Knives threw another blade to knock it back.

In less than two seconds, the situation had been reversed. He was a hostage, Rocket was all but disarmed, and Knives had the upper hand. The mercenary commander chuckled.

"Well...this should restore my reputation quite nicely..."

"You...bastard."

"Yes, yes, that is accurate enough. Now, the weapon fragments."

Glyn gritted his teeth, trying to stay on his tiptoes as the mercenary held him tight. He half-hoped that Rocket would reach for his belt, go for the drugs that made him grow so that they had a chance to make this work, but the raccoon didn't show any signs of putting up a fight. The timber wolf hissed as the knife at his neck pushed a little deeper through his fur, almost cutting against his flesh.

"I have no reason to keep this pup alive, trash-eater. You might want to consider whether you want to make me angry. If I have to fight you, I will make it painful."

"Heh...you probably would," Rocket said.

Oh, you're not...you're not going to just give it up...

There was no chance in HELL that Rocket would just give up the chunks, was there? There was no way that he'd just hand them over to save Glyn...

And yet, the raccoon was doing just that. He was pulling the container off his belt, shaking his head as he held it. In that little case were the four chunks to the most valuable weapon that this universe had probably ever seen, and Glyn could not blame Rocket for having some regrets for even thinking about handing it over. The idea was awful. The very possibility of losing the score that they had earned...

Fuck...fuck...

The raccoon held out the case. Knives walked Glyn over, made him take it, and pass it back. The timber wolf didn't have much of an option, though he was quite a bit more careful with the case than he had been in the past. The mercenary commander took it, smiled at the heft, and nodded.

"Yes...this will do nicely."

"So, let the fucker go," Rocket said.

"Oh, I shall..."

Flick.

The knife at Glyn's throat disappeared, only to appear again with blooming blood in Rocket's thigh. The raccoon slumped down against the machine just as Glyn had a moment ago, screaming in pain, while Glyn was allowed to slump down from the continued agony across the back of his leg.

"Enjoy the show. I'll be back shortly to take care of you properly..."

As the mercenary walked off, Glyn shook his head. He leaned over the machine, watching the armored asshole make his way to the assembler. Fifty meters, more or less. Fifty meters from here to there.

That should be enough.

Rocket was already crawling away from the edge of the machine, tucking himself against it. Glyn leaned his head back, panting for breath as he gritted his teeth. The pair of them looked up at the heavens.

"Fucking asshole," Glyn muttered.

"He'll get what's coming to him, heh..."

"I'm not patient enough to wait for karma to take its chance."

"Hehehe, that son of a bitch ain't gonna be waiting on karma..."

Glyn blinked, slowly turning to look down at Rocket. It took a second for the raccoon's meaning to penetrate his brain, but when it did, he slowly smirked.

"Oh, you didn't..."

"Heh, you didn't think that I trusted you on this, did ya?"

"I'm surprised you thought I trusted you."

"Wait...you mean..." Rocket's eyes went wide. "Don't tell me I was -"

"Oh, you were."

"Then he is -"

"Yep."

"From both of us?" Rocket whispered.

"...Fifty meters might not be enough."

"Fuck no. Can you move?"

"Fuck, I think I can run."

Gritting his teeth against the pain, Glyn forced himself to his feet and dragged Rocket up with him. The pair of them stumbled along, Rocket pressing down against the knife in his leg to keep it from getting any deeper or falling out, while Glyn stumbled and lunged from one piece of machinery to another. Anyone watching them would have laughed at the pathetic display, their slow progress away from Knives little more than the pathetic dance of the damned. But with each lunge, each awkward step, they were putting a little more distance between them and the asshole that had wrecked them.

Ten more meters.

Twenty more meters.

Thirty more meters.

They had just reached forty when the most epic 'kaboom' of Glyn's life went off, and the shockwave sent him tumbling to the ground. Rocket screamed as he went flying, barely managing to roll to keep from landing knife-side down, and the heat of the explosion barely ninety meters off was still enough to leave them gasping from the heat rolling over them.

Fuck...fuck...

Glyn had wanted to have some insurance against Rocket just taking the goods and running off with them, so he'd planted multiple explosives around some of the weapon fragments, just in case. He'd set them up so that they would go off after enough time had passed - several days - or if Rocket tried to put the parts into the assembler or forge without him there to disarm them.

It had been a simple little thing, but he hadn't thought that Rocket would pull the same sort of 'security measure' against him. The fact that they had both placed something so volatile into one case, that they had been running around with it so carelessly...

Fuck.

Fucking fuck.

Glyn groaned, lifting his head to look back at the assembler. The explosion had torn a hole in the floor, and the smoke and fire still burned away. There was no getting their pieces back, even if the pieces had survived that explosion. Glyn shook his head, turning to look at Rocket.

The raccoon had managed to sit up, at least, huffing and puffing, looking more than slightly pale. If there was a fight now, the timber wolf didn't know who would win. At the very least, it was no longer in Rocket's favor.

Could just...

Yet, even as he thought about burning that bridge and putting this whole thing behind him, he couldn't bring himself to do it. Even if, practically, it would have been the best decision, there was too much history between him and Rocket now. They'd been through too much shit to actually kill each other, and the fact that their bombs had blown Knives up rather than each other actually felt like a relief. He didn't have to worry about any guilt if the bombs had gone off and taken Rocket with them.

Before he could push himself past the moral quandary, Groot appeared. The walking tree knelt down, picking Rocket up and cradling him against his side. Groot didn't say anything, nor did the raccoon. They just shared a look with him, and Glyn nodded.

They rushed off, and he dragged himself up against one of the various crafting tables nearby, gritting his teeth from the pain in his leg. The communicator he'd stashed in his belt beeped, and he picked it up, holding it against the side of his head.

"Mmph...Glyn here."

"Ventman here. What the hell was that? We could see the fires from outside the station."

"Knives."

"Fuck. He still there?"

Glyn looked at the fires and smoke. If anyone could have lived through that, the mercenary could, but there was no sign of him. No silhouette, no sudden shadow moving across the ground. And considering that he had put in enough high-explosives and flammables to put Rocket out of commission even if Groot was around, he was pretty sure that there was nothing left. Hell, with Rocket's stuff on top of that, he was surprised that this chunk of the station was still standing.

"Don't think so."

"Kid, you sure?"

"Pretty damn...Sadly, he took the fragments with him."

"God - fucking - ugh. That's not what we want to hear, kid. That's really not what we want to hear."

"Hey, hey. Look on the bright side."

"Yeah? What's the bright side?"

"We got a whole station to ransack..."

"...Heh. You hang tight. We've just about cleared all the fighters out, and we'll be landing soon."

"Yeah, you do that...and one more thing. There's a - mmmph - there's a...a non-merc ship that'll be taking off. The raccoon's."

"Yeah?"

"...Let it go."

"...You sure?"

"Yeah, I'm sure."

"Alright. We'll see you in a few minutes, kid. Hold tight."

There wasn't much more he could do. He leaned back, groaning under his breath as he felt the heat along the back of his leg get a little hotter. Looking down, he could see some blood pooling under him. Probably explained why he felt as lightheaded as he did, come to think of it.

He doubted that he would die from the mercs, now. Knives's guys would be heading for the hangar, he was pretty sure. That explosion would have rattled their confidence, and he doubted that they'd want to come down without their leader keeping things in line. Whatever they'd grabbed would have to be good enough. After all, they still had to get off-station against a space cruiser that could shoot them out of the sky, and every second wasted fighting on the station was a second that they didn't spend getting their asses as far away from that ship as possible.

His vision swirled, and he knew that he was slipping towards unconsciousness. Glyn rolled his head back, closed his eyes, and decided that he could trust Ventman. With all this shit...with all their history...yeah, he could trust him.

Just like he could trust Rocket to leave it at this rather than coming back to take him out.

Six months later...

Glyn recovered quickly, and Ventman and the other members of the team managed to strike it rich. There weren't any other weapons up for grabs at Nidavellir, but the tools that the dwarves had used were more than good enough to pay off all the debts that the mercs had, and then some. Ventman gained a reputation for being a hell of a leader, and anyone that had been questioning whether he could live up to his predecessor quickly fell in line when the new paychecks came down. The fact that they had managed to take down all of Knives's fleeing friends, as well as the Meat Man's cronies, meant that Glyn, Ventman, and a certain raccoon were the only ones that had the coordinates to the station, as well, which meant that anyone that wanted to get a chance to work on that forge - or get something from it - had to go through them. They would be financially set for life.

Despite getting an offer to join up with the merc crew, Glyn had declined. He'd taken a payout, hush money, more or less, and gone his own way. Not by any means turning his back on the crew, of course; Ventman was a useful contact, after all, and he still wanted to be kept abreast of the things that they were doing, but he didn't want to be working as a mercenary. He worked better on his own.

Or in small teams, he supposed.

The timber wolf chuckled as he looked down at his drink. He had more than enough money to keep himself in leisure for the rest of his life, but there was something missing. Something fun, something exciting. Something that made him feel like he was doing something. As far as the government was concerned, there was still that ever so small bounty on his head, but he had the money to bribe off pretty much anyone that could track him down. Double the bounty reward to just turn around and leave him alone was usually good enough, and throwing in the occasional blowjob or something made it all the sweeter for most of the asshats that came looking for him.

But it wasn't enough.

Glyn picked up his drink, staring through the amber color of the glass to the green liquid inside. As he did, he imagined what it would have been like if things had gone better between him and Rocket. If they had been in a crew together, rather than just blackmailing each other, fighting each other...

Heh, or was that part of the fun? Glyn wondered.

It probably was. There had always been a spice to the naughtiness between him and Rocket that had been lacking in the last six months with anyone else that he had been with. Dancers were great, and whores were experienced, but there was something to someone that had 'leverage' and was willing to use it. Sometimes, he got a bit of that from the bounty hunters, but...

Well, it was becoming increasingly clear that retired life wasn't for him. He needed something to bring some spice back into his life, something that would make him feel excited again. Glyn put his drink back down on the counter, sighed -

And then froze as a gun barrel pressed right into the base of his spine...but not from someone holding it at waist level. The gunner in question here was someone that was quite a bit shorter, and when he spoke, Glyn actually broke out in a grin.

"Heh, you move, and I'll make sure you never feel it up the ass again, bitch."

"Heh, so, you got better?" the timber wolf asked. "I was hoping you would, Rocket."

"I hear that you still got a bounty on you."

"I was getting around to paying it off."

"Yeah, right."

"Hmm, you're right. I wasn't. Drink?"

"Best thing they got. You can afford it."

"You know, I think I can."

As the timber wolf gestured at the bartender, putting in the order, the raccoon hopped onto the barstool beside him. He was wearing his usual dark-gray jumpsuit, and he chuckled as he swung his legs back and forth under the stool. As soon as the shot glass was poured and put in front of him, he downed it. Glyn waited patiently, cocking his head to the side.

"So, what brings you here?" he asked. "I would have thought that you'd want nothing more to do with me, after you fucked up our plans."

"Hey, hey. You were the one that fucked up."

"Says the raccoon that put bombs in the weapon."

"Says the foot slut that did the same."

"Says the guy that couldn't hit Knives without help."

"Says the guy that couldn't hit anything. Ever."

"..."

"..."

They both broke down laughing, shaking their heads and looking down at their drinks. The stress of six months disappeared almost instantly, but Glyn was all but sure that Rocket was doing the same thing that he was doing. Measuring the other, imagining what would happen next, trying to figure out what buttons they could push and when. He broke the silence first.

"So, what brings you back here?"

"See, I'm going after someone."

"Uh-huh."

"And I could use...a little help."

"I'm retired."

"I don't recall asking if you were."

"I don't do that anymore."

"You will...if you don't want to be turned in for the bounty."

Glyn's muzzle slowly broke into a grin. He looked away from his drink, hesitated for a moment, then let out the most fake 'oh no' that anyone had ever heard. Rocket barely kept a straight face.

"That's right. So...gimme a hand...and that ass...and nobody needs to get turned in, you got it?"

"Heh...why does that sound familiar?"

It looked like he had his way out of retirement...and maybe, just maybe, he'd be able to turn this one to a proper profit, this time.

The End

Summary: Glyn and Rocket deal with the mercs as best they can, but Knives is on their trail, and that is something that they're not sure that they're ready for.

Tags: No Sex, Adult Themes, Sci-Fi, Rocket Raccoon, Fighting, Injury, Blood, Series, Wolf, Timber Wolf, Alien, Raccoon, Blackmail, Explosive, Banter, Finale,