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The planet Morag was once home to a great civilization. For centuries, the citizens worked together to develop commerce, build monuments, and advance the arts. But at the height of its culture, Morag’s environment went through a terrible shift.

Violent storms of unimaginable power blasted the globe. Mega-earthquakes struck, sea levels rose and continents flooded, and the planet’s crust shifted and became so unstable that nothing could live there anymore. The inhabitants evacuated the planet, scattering across the galaxy to whatever new homes they could find. They left behind everything they had built. Over the centuries, cities fell into ruins, flooded and destroyed by surging oceans and catastrophic earthquakes. The only visitors were adventurers or archaeologists who could brave Morag’s turbulent oceans ... and the occasional unfortunate survivor of a spacefaring accident.

But over time, the planet’s upheaval lessened. Its seas receded again, exposing long submerged ruins. Those ruins brought a different kind of visitor. Anyone who came to Morag still had to be brave and tough, but the ability to breathe water was no longer required. Now the planet’s abandoned riches were there for the taking.

A ship curved down through Morag’s stormy atmosphere and braked into a landing at the edge of a canyon. It locked itself down with heavy pins shot into the rock, holding the ship steady against the howling winds. Its ramp lowered and the pilot emerged into the storm, walking down the remains of an ancient road. He wore a face mask, its red eyes gleaming through the storm. When he reached the edge of a ruined city, he pulled out a handheld device with a rectangular lens that glowed a bright blue.

He tried to activate it, but it sputtered and turned itself off. He shook it and tapped it, and it popped back to life, shooting out a bright field of blue light against the rain. The pilot swept the cone back and forth across the ruin, and dozens of blue pinpoints glowed along the devastated city’s edge. Then the holo mapping device fed those dots into its processor and created a hologram of what the city had looked like during its last days before the planet had destroyed it. Grainy projections of streets and buildings hung in the air, glowing red ghosts of a great city now centuries gone.

In front of the pilot snaked a road that led directly to a building near the edge of the hologram projection. On that building a tracking beacon lit up. It looked like a target, and that’s exactly what it was: the target of this expedition.

The pilot followed the road, passing through the hologram ghosts of Morag’s citizens. People went about their business. A little girl played with a dog. The pilot was a little surprised to learn that Morag’s inhabitants had been human.

He reached the ruined building and stepped inside, getting out of the rain. The wind still blew, but not nearly as hard in the enclosed space. Part of the roof had fallen in, and shafts of dim light shone down onto the rubble-strewn floor. The interior of the building was large, with thirty-foot ceilings and pillars supporting them. The pilot looked over the scene, and when he seemed satisfied that he was safe, he touched the side of his mask.

With a crackle, it disappeared, leaving only an earpiece, and Peter Quill got down to business.

The first thing he did was put on his headphones and crank up Awesome Mix Tape Vol. 1. He couldn’t do anything without his music. Then he started to tap one foot, and pretty soon he was dancing, grooving his way through the ruin and into an open plaza beyond. The rain had stopped, and he kept right on jamming, moving across the open plaza to the familiar rhythms of the songs that had kept him company for twenty-six years. He splashed through mud puddles, chased away a small pack of aggressive little lizard-like animals, and reached the edge of a huge crack in the ground. Still keeping the rhythm, he fired up the rockets in his boots and spanned the gap in a long, rocket-assisted step. On the other side, he came to a sealed door. He inserted a key into the lock, which spun with a squeal. The door opened, revealing a smaller chamber with a glowing blue containment tube sitting on a pedestal at its center.

He took a transparent globe out of his coat pocket. When he shook it, bright light glowed from within, illuminating the room. He was alone. Good. He set the globe down and unhooked a triangular metal device from his belt.

In the years since he was abducted from Earth, Peter had seen a lot. He’d seen a planet made of fire with a moon made of ice. He’d seen an army of shape-shifting aliens attack a space whale. He’d even watched as twin suns went supernova together. It had been a pretty amazing couple of decades.

He’d worked his way through the ranks on the Ravager outlaw ship that had picked him up. He had started as the space equivalent of a deckhand and risen all the way to being his captain’s second in command. It was a pretty good life. Lots of adventure, always something new to see and do ... but in all these years, there was one thing he’d never been. He’d never been rich.

If things worked out here in the ruins of this ancient Morag temple, though, that would change.

Inside the glowing blue containment field was a metallic Orb, its surface carved in a complex pattern. Peter had done a little research—well, more than a little—on this item, and although he didn’t know exactly what it was, he knew a couple of things about it.

One, the Broker would pay him a lot of money for it.

Two, it was well protected. The containment field would pretty much disintegrate anything that touched it from the outside, and he didn’t know how to turn it off. So he’d flipped the problem on its head and decided that if he couldn’t reach in and get it, he’d just have to convince the Orb to come out on its own.

That was where the triangular device came into play. It was designed to electromagnetically attract certain kinds of metal alloys, and the Orb was made of just such an alloy. Beyond that, Peter had no idea what it was for. He didn’t care, either. He just knew the Orb would make him rich, so he had come to Morag to get it.

He turned on the attractor. It snapped into an open position, with three sides of the pyramid turning into legs that braced it on the floor. The fourth side was the electromagnetic field generator. It started to hum.

Inside the containment field, the Orb moved. It pressed slowly through the containment field, shedding tendrils of plasma as it pushed through each layer. Peter watched, ready to make a break for a good hiding place if there was another layer of security he hadn’t noticed. You saw all kinds of weird things in these old ruins. His time with the Ravagers had taught him that, along with a lot of other things.

Nothing went wrong, though. The Orb slowly emerged through the outer layer of the containment field, then popped free and floated down to clink into place on the attractor. Behind it, the containment field went dark.

“Ha-ha!” Peter shouted happily as he turned off the attractor and picked up the Orb. He was so happy to have his hands on the artifact that he wanted to kiss it, and he might have done just that ... except that was when he heard an all too familiar voice growl, “Drop it!”

Oops. He wasn’t alone after all.

Peter spun to see the Sakaaran mercenary known as Korath, flanked by several of his favorite goons. All of them held weapons leveled at him. They were big and bad—especially Korath, who had some kind of machine grafted into his skull that amped up his strength and reflexes. They had him at a real disadvantage. The solution? Play it cool.

“Uh, hey,” he said, trying to keep his voice even.

“Drop it now!” Korath shouted. The other Sakaarans were shouting, too, but they didn’t speak English and Peter didn’t know any Sakaaran, so he didn’t worry about what they were saying.

“Hey, cool, man, no problem.” Peter let the Orb fall to the floor and roll until it clinked up against a stone block fallen from the roof. “No problem at all.”

Korath picked up the Orb and brandished it at Peter. “How did you know about this?”

“I don’t even know what that is! I’m just a junker, man,” explained Peter. “I was just checking stuff out.”

Korath took a moment to look Peter over from top to bottom. Peter had a bad feeling about what he was going to say next.

“You don’t look like a junker,” Korath grunted. “You’re wearing Ravager gear.”

That was the problem with uniforms. The Ravagers were a gang of criminals that pulled off jobs in this sector, and if you crossed them, you usually weren’t heard from again. Peter was, in fact, a Ravager, wearing Ravager gear. He’d been hoping Korath and the Sakaarans wouldn’t recognize it.

“You better stop poking me,” Peter growled at one of the mercenaries who kept prodding him with a gun every time Korath spoke.

“What is your name?” Korath demanded.

“My name is Peter Quill, okay? Dude, chill out.”

“Move!” Korath commanded. His soldiers echoed the command in Sakaaran, shoving at Peter.

“Why?”

“Ronan might have some questions for you.”

Ronan. That was bad news. Peter didn’t know a lot about Ronan, but what he did know made him want to steer way clear. Like light years away. Ronan was Kree, and angry, and had a tendency to kill a lot of people. Peter did not want to be in a position where Ronan was asking him questions.

What the heck, he thought. They know about the Ravagers. No point in keeping any other secrets. “Hey, you know what?” Peter asked. “There is another name you might know me by ...”

Korath paused in the temple doorway. “What is that?”

Peter looked him right in the eyes and prepared to enjoy the impact his revelation would make. “Star-Lord,” he said. Korath looked confused. “Who?” “Star-Lord, man!” Peter couldn’t believe Korath hadn’t heard of him. Didn’t he have any kind of reputation? “The legendary outlaw!” he added, hoping to prod Korath’s memory ... and also he was already starting to formulate the outlines of a plan.

Korath spread his arms, looking confused. His soldiers muttered among themselves. Peter turned to them. “Guys?”

They just stared at him.

Korath lost interest and ran out of patience at the same time. “Move!” he commanded again, with a gesture toward the door. “Ahh, forget this,” Peter said. What did a guy have to do to get a little galactic notoriety? Right at the moment when the Sakaarans had completely fallen for his wounded pride act, Peter kicked the glowing globe into the soldiers’ midst. It shattered, splashing hot white plasma over them.

They screamed and thrashed as Peter drew his blasters and dropped Korath just as he was turning around in the doorway. The Orb bounced out of Korath’s hand and Peter picked it up. He took a moment to savor the success of his ruse. The Sakaarans had been completely fooled!

Although, he admitted to himself, he was a little irritated that they hadn’t known who he was.

He heard a moan from the doorway and looked up just as Korath staggered to his feet and leveled his rifle at Peter.

The energy bolt from the rifle would have disintegrated most of Peter’s torso ... if he hadn’t thrown himself straight down onto the floor, landing hard enough to knock the wind out of him. Instead it blew a five-foot hole in the wall behind Peter.

Hey, he thought. An emergency exit!

He triggered his boots’ rocket thrusters and blasted out through the hole as a second shot from Korath hit the edge of the hole. That got him a head start, but Peter’s problems weren’t over yet. The boot thrusters were designed to fire against the ground. When they shot him out at a shallow angle through the hole in the temple wall, he completely lost his equilibrium and ended up crashing hard on the wet, rocky ground outside.

Peter scrambled to his feet and ran for his ship. Korath had gotten to the hole in the wall, screaming at the top of his lungs. Peter glanced back and saw the Sakaaran commander leap an incredible distance after him. Yikes, he thought, and ran faster. If he could get to the ship before Korath ...

Uh-oh. Peter skidded to a halt, seeing five more Sakaarans standing guard between him and his ship, the good old Milano , built along the lines of a bird of prey, with a sharp nose and hooked wings that gave it maneuverability in atmospheres but also kept its engines mounted far apart for nimble piloting in space. She was a beauty, and clearly Korath had spotted her on the way in. He was no dummy. He’d made sure he had a backup plan.

But hey, so had Peter. Sort of. In fact, he’d just thought of it! He saw that the Sakaaran mercenaries wore metallic armor, and he started running again. Toward them.

They shouted and raised their rifles, but before they could draw a bead on him Peter threw the attractor into their midst. It glowed and powered up, and in a split second they crashed together over it, held fast by the immense power of its electromagnetic field.

A geyser erupted in the shattered landscape as Peter jumped past the magnetically stuck Sakaarans. Another blast from Korath’s rifle sizzled through the rain, which was falling harder again. While he was in the air, Peter hit the control that opened the Milano ’s cockpit. He landed at the base of one wing and skidded through the open hatch, landing a lot harder than he’d meant to.

With a groan he sat up and started closing the hatch. While he got the engines fired up, Korath’s pals finally broke the hold of the attractor and stood up. With Korath shouting over them, they started to set up some kind of heavy mounted gun. Peter knew he did not want to be around when it was ready.

He got off the ground and rolled the ship hard to the right as Korath’s crew fired the first shot from their cannon. It crackled under the wing and destroyed a rocky spire. Peter hauled the Milano around in a tight turn and wound its main thrusters all the way up. More blasts from Korath’s cannon tore through the storm as Peter accelerated out of range, laughing like he’d just won the lottery. Which he sort of had! Escaping from a dozen Sakaaran soldiers with a lost treasure he’d dug out of a Moragian tomb—man, if that didn’t add to the legend of “Star-Lord the Outlaw,” nothing would.

But he’d started congratulating himself a little too soon. A huge geyser, maybe ten thousand times the size of the one that he’d run past a minute before, erupted straight under the Milano and snuffed out the ship’s engines. Ah, geez, Peter thought. In atmospheres he had to use air intakes, and the geyser had turned them into water intakes.

The Milano tumbled and spun back toward the surface. Peter bounced and rolled around its spacious cockpit, wishing he’d had a chance to buckle his seat belt. Everything he’d had in his backpack, way back when, was flying around. Peter strained to reach the lever that would vent the intakes and restart the engines. Escaping Sakaarans wouldn’t do him any good if he smashed himself to pieces on the rocks.

Man, those rocks were getting closer fast. Peter strained a little harder ... and got a hand on the lever. He blew the vents and also used the lever to pull himself back into the pilot’s chair. With maybe fifty yards to spare, he got the engines fired up again and the Milano stabilized and hovered, rocking in the storm but well away from Korath and his goons.

He got his breath, got his bearings, and got away from Morag as fast as he could.

Hours later, with the ship set on course for the planet Xandar, where he would meet the Broker, Peter sat in his pilot chair idly tossing the Orb into the air and catching it, the way he once had with a baseball when he was a kid. He was rocking out to Awesome Mix Tape Vol. 1, which played in a stereo tape deck he’d had custom-made on Xandar a few years before. He’d shown the guy the tape, explained how it worked—at least as far as he knew—and now the Milano was a spacefaring concert hall. Peter was daydreaming of all the things he would do when the Orb had made him rich and watching the holo news. The Kree Empire was in an uproar over a peace treaty the emperor had signed with Xandar—and by extension, Nova Prime, the leader of the Nova Corps. They were the law in this part of the galaxy, a cadre of take-no-prisoners tough guys who also were about the only thing keeping the Kree in check.

Peter was considering the situation, hoping things would stay calm on Xandar long enough for him to make the deal for the Orb, when a video call interrupted the holo-feed.

It was Yondu, the leader of the Ravagers and the person responsible for kidnapping Peter from Earth ... and, he had to admit, for more or less raising him afterward. He was a humanoid, with blue skin, a Mohawk-shaped steel ridge on his skull, and anger management issues.

“Quill!” Yondu yelled. He was almost always yelling.

“Hey, Yondu,” Peter said casually.

“I’m here on Morag. Ain’t no Orb, ain’t no you.”

“Yeah, I was in the neighborhood. I thought I’d save you the hassle,” Peter said. He had to keep Yondu talking for a minute while he figured out how to handle the situation. The thing was, Peter wasn’t supposed to have gone to Morag. The Ravagers—meaning Yondu—had cut the original deal with the Broker, and Peter had decided it seemed like a good opportunity to strike out on his own.

Problem was, Yondu wasn’t going to see it that way.

Yondu’s eyes narrowed. “Well, where you at now, boy?” he demanded.

“I feel really bad about this, but I’m not going to tell you that.”

Yondu’s face twisted in anger. “I slaved making this deal!”

“‘Slaved’?” Peter echoed.

Yondu kept right on talking—well, shouting—over him. “And now you’re going to rip me off?”

“Making a few calls is ‘slaved’? I mean, really?”

Yondu’s eyes looked like they were about to pop out of his blue face. “We do not do that to each other. We’re Ravagers. We got a code!”

“Yeah, and that code is: Steal from everybody,” Peter reminded him. It’s exactly what Yondu had told him when Peter was being initiated into the Ravagers.

“When I picked you up from Terra, these boys of mine wanted to eat you!”

Picked me up, Peter thought. Funny way of saying “kidnapped.”

“Yeah?”

“They never tasted any Terran before. I stopped them! You’re alive because of me! I will find you!”

Peter made a slashing gesture with his hand to cut off the call. As he did, he heard Yondu turning to the other Ravagers and growling, “Put a bounty on him!”

A bounty. Whatever. It probably wasn’t the only one. Peter relaxed in his ship, regarding the Orb and once again dreaming up ways to spend his money. It wouldn’t be long before he got to Xandar.

Furious, Yondu turned to his Ravagers. “Forty K!” he said, meaning a bounty of forty thousand units. “But I want him alive!”

“Alive?” repeated Horuz, his lieutenant and old friend. “That’s what I said.” Yondu stomped back toward the Ravager ship.

“I told you when we picked that kid up you should have delivered him like we were hired to do!” Horuz raged as he followed Yondu. “He was cargo! You have always been soft on him!”

Yondu turned to face Horuz. “You’re the only one I’m being soft on!” he yelled, flipping open his coat to reveal the foot long arrow attached to his belt. Horuz froze. The arrow glowed red hot, and Yondu could telepathically control it. A thought from him would send it flying to strike any target ... including Horuz’s head.

“Now don’t you worry about Mr. Quill,” Yondu said in a lower tone of voice. “Soon as we get him back here, I’m gonna kill him myself. What we do need to worry about is who else out there wants that Orb.” lWyxIRIaiu4bd/PTcjMhJy0w6HGf87+doYqxSMiVqOHJS7UcmazNUKQZOeYQzYdz