Peter wasn’t sure how many days it had been since he’d been kidnapped by space pirates. A couple of weeks? A month? It was hard to keep track on a spaceship.
After he’d first arrived, he bit Yondu, the big blue guy with Mr. T’s hair, and then they’d stuffed him in a tiny little room where he’d cried himself to sleep. Later, the blue alien had stuck something in his neck, and suddenly it was like everyone was speaking English. The human-looking older boy (Kraglin?) would come in with food from time to time, but aside from that, they pretty much ignored Peter.
Alien food was gross. Worse than creamed spinach.
Luckily, the room had an air vent. And, as Grandpa Quill would always say, Peter could climb like a freaking squirrel. (Well, "freaking" when he knew Peter was listening.)
(He was supposed to live with Grandpa, he knew, after his mother…Peter stopped the thoughts. Thinking about it would mean more crying, and he was really tired of crying.)
Peter had been out of his room five or six times, and only been caught once. Yondu, who was captain, had threatened to let the Ravagers eat him if Peter didn’t stay in his room. (The aliens were called Ravagers. Peter was pretty sure they were bad guys. They looked like bad guys.) Then he’d bared a mouthful of pointy teeth.
Peter had stayed in his room for the next four days. But now it was an emergency.
He’d been careful with his Walkman, trying not to listen to too many songs at once, but there’d been nothing else to do all day. He was all out of batteries, even the spares in his backpack.
He was not going to be stuck in space forever without any music.
—
“You sure, Captain?”, asked a voice up ahead. Two people were headed this way, including a big red guy.
Peter didn’t like him. He wiggled a little further behind the pipe.
“I need to confirm.” That was Yondu, the blue one. “Got a contact planetside.”
“You told the crew it was a supply stop.”
“We’ll get supplies,” said Yondu. “You manage that. I just need to ask some questions.”
“Five millions units a kid, we need to be sure if...”
“I know.”
“We land in about eight hours. If it’s true…”
They were too far away to hear. But Peter had learned everything he needed to know.
They were landing on a planet in about eight hours. A planet with different aliens. Maybe nicer aliens, who could help him get back to Earth. Maybe there was a whole team of space-heroes who saved lost kids, with like an awesome guy with space guns, a pretty green lady like on Star Trek, a big tough guy, and a funny talking animal like on Thundercats.
Maybe they even had spare batteries.
Anyway, it was better than staying here and being eaten.
Peter headed back to his room and packed up his backpack.
—
It was a long, straight crawl from Peter’s room to the big outer door. That was the easy bit.
The tricky bit was getting outside.
Peter dropped down behind some crates, and crept along. He was nearly at the door, but there were aliens everywhere. He couldn’t figure out a way to get out without being seen.
He would have to run for it. He got nearly to the door, checked his backpack, and then took off as fast as he could.
Some alien that looked like Rocksteady from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles yelled out, “Hey, it’s the kid!”
Peter kept running, not looking back. He’d run away from bigger kids a few times before, and the important thing was to keep going as fast as he could and not look back.
Something heavy was coming up behind him. From the sound of it, probably Rocksteady. Peter felt a hand on his backpack.
He tried to pull free, but the alien was too strong.
Peter wiggled out of his backpack straps and ran into the crowd until he couldn’t see anyone chasing him.
—
“Are you lost, boy?”, asked a shiny alien girl. She seemed to be about Peter’s age. She was a see-through white color, like a plastic toy Peter had once gotten from a gumball machine. Her skin sparkled like she was covered in glitter, and her hair was long strips that floated around on their own.
Peter looked up. It had been nearly two days since he’d lost Yondu and the other scary aliens, and he hadn’t found any helpful aliens at all. There were no space policemen (someone had mentioned something called Nova Corps, but they weren’t on this planet). There were no teams of heroes looking to rescue lost kids and train them to become awesome space adventurers.
Space was so unfair.
He’d tried talking to people about how to get back to Earth, but you needed these things called coordinates so people knew where to go, and something called units to pay for the ride.
Peter had none of that.
“You look like you could use some help,” the girl said.
Peter nodded, and tried not to cry in front of a girl. He’d slept under one of the market stalls, and been chased off by the owner in the morning. He’d tried begging for food, but everyone ignored him. He’d stolen a few pieces of something that looked like space fruit, but the outside had been really hard, and he didn’t have anything to cut it with, so he hadn’t been able to get it open.
Help sounded really good.
“I live with this scientist. He does research, and makes new treatments for diseases. Sometimes he lets other kids come and stay. I bet he’d at least give you some food.”
There had been a lot of talk about research and treatments when Peter’s mom was in the hospital. Grandpa said if there’d been more research, she might still be alive. Researchers were good guys, then.
Peter got up and brushed the dirt off himself. “Thank you. My name’s Peter.”
“Ee-dur?”
“Peter.”
“Ah, Bee-dur.” The girl smiled. “My name is Aooo.”
She had a nice smile. Like Alyssa Milano on Who’s the Boss. “Nice to meet you, Aooo.”
Aooo laughed. “It’s Aooo,” she said. “Not Aooo.”
The two sounded the same to Peter. “Aooo?”
“Never mind. You’ll get it.”
—
The researcher was a big orange alien that looked kind of like a mix between a person and a bug. “Hello, Aooo. Who’s your new friend?”
“This is Bee-dur.”
“You can also call me Star Lord.”
The alien turned to Peter. “Xandarian?”
“What?”
“You’re from Xandar, correct?"
“What’s Xandar? I’m from Missouri,” Peter said.
“Missouri. Never heard of it.” The alien went sort of yellow-orange. “That makes you very interesting.”
“Can he stay?” Aooo asked.
“I believe so. Bee-dur wouldn’t mind submitting to a few basic medical tests, would you Bee-dur?”
“Would they hurt?” Peter asked.
The alien smiled. “I don’t think so,” he said. “Very little, at the most. And you seem like a brave child.”
“Will it help people? Cure people?” The alien smiled wider.
“Oh yes.”
—
“Oh my,” said the orange alien. “This is interesting. This is tremendously interesting. What did you say your planet was called again?”
“Missouri,” said Peter. The tests so far didn’t hurt at all. They were a little boring, but he just had to stand in one spot while the orange alien used the big machine. Different colors of light came out, and some made Peter feel a little itchy, but nothing hurt.
“And are there many of your kind?”
“Millions,” said Peter. He didn’t actually know how many people lived on earth, but it was probably millions.
“Millions?” The alien’s eyes widened. “All on one planet, or scattered over several?”
“Just one. Some astronauts went to the moon, but they came back.” No astronauts had been to other planets yet. Peter had been further than the furthest astronaut.
When he got back home, they’d probably throw him a parade.
“Fascinating. You are a juvenile of your kind? Not yet in your full abilities?” He looked at Peter’s confused face. “A child?”
“Yeah, I’m a kid,” said Peter.
“I suspect that I’m lucky on that front. It would be complicated working with an adult.” He shut down the machine. “Now I will need to take a small sample of your blood.”
—
The blood sample hurt a little bit, like getting a shot at the doctor’s office. And there weren’t any cool bandaids with spaceships on them, or lollipops for being brave.
Peter wondered if outer space had any candy at all.
Afterward, he got sent to Aooo’s bedroom. It was white, with a bed and a rack of white dresses. A second bed had been put in on the other side, for Peter, with more of the big dresses.
“I’m not wearing these!”, said Peter. “These are for girls.”
“Girls wear different clothes from boys on your world?” Aooo asked.
“Yes! Don’t they do that on your planet?”
Aooo shrugged. “I don’t think so? I don't remember. We moved here when I was a baby, and then my parents died. I didn’t have anyone here. I would have died if Zilnor hadn’t taken me in.”
“I’m sorry,” said Peter. “My mom died. Then I was stolen by some scary aliens. I think they were going to eat me. I had to escape.”
“You escaped? How?”
“Climbing. I’m super-good at climbing.” He looked around the room. “You see that air vent over my bed? I bet I can make my way all of the way inside it.”
“Wow!” Aooo looked at it. “It’s so tall!”
Peter stood on the bed. The air vent grate wasn’t screwed down, so he could slide it out by stretching his fingers out wide and pulling.
He yanked it off and staggered backwards, nearly falling off the bed. He steadied himself and set the grate down. He boosted himself up, wiggled, and climbed in. “See? Easy!” He looked down. “I bet we could explore it and have lots of fun.”
“Nice!” Aooo rushed over. She boosted herself up even better than Peter did. “This is fun!”
“Don't tell anyone, it can be our secret tunnel.”
Aooo turned to Peter. “I’m glad you’re here. We’re going to have way more fun!”
—
The next morning, Zilnor the bug guy brought them breakfast. “You’re wearing the same clothes.” Zilnor gave Peter a look.
“He says the clothing you left is only for females,” said Aooo.
“I wouldn’t expect such advanced beings to have gender taboos. Aooo, you’ve been very helpful. When you go to the market today, here’s an extra unit to buy some sweet.” He looked at Peter. “Do you like sweet?”
Peter nodded enthusiastically. Was he going to get space-candy?
“Here’s another, Aooo. Have them wrap a portion for Bee-Dur.”
“Can he come to the market with me?” Aooo asked.
“I’m afraid I need him in the lab. That blood sample proved very interesting.”
—
There was a needle stuck to a long tube. Peter didn’t like that. They’d stuck those in his mom at the hospital.
They’d put all the tubes and needles in her, and she’d still died.
This tube went to a big empty jar. “I’m afraid I’m going to need more blood this time,” said Zilnor. “Yours has a quality that will prove invaluable, but it needs to be distilled, which means starting from a larger quantity.”
Peter looked at the jar nervously. “That’s a lot of blood. It won’t hurt me to lose that much?”
Zilnor laughed. “Oh no. Not your kind. There’s nothing for you to worry about. You really are quite young, aren’t you?”
“I’m eight,” said Peter. Probably. He’d had a birthday coming up. Grandpa had promised him a bicycle.
He'd probably spent his birthday as prisoner of the Ravagers, eating that icky space food, with no bicycle, and no presents at all.
Space was so unfair.
“Eight…years? As young as that? I promise, no harm will come to you.” He led Peter to a chair.
—
It was boring, at first, sitting in the chair while the jar took his blood. Peter sat and rubbed at the skin patch from yesterday, where their totally wasn’t an interesting dinosaur bandaid, because space was unfair.
Then Peter started to feel dizzy. “I don’t feel so good,” he said. “Maybe we should stop.”
“Nonsense,” said Zilnor. “We’ve only extracted sixty percent. There is still a great deal of blood left to remove.”
Peter felt like he was going to fall, even though he was already sitting down. He gripped the chair tighter. Then everything went black.
—
Peter woke up in the bedroom. He started to sit up.
“Slowly,” said Zilnor. “This form is more fragile than I thought.”
Peter sat up slowly. He still felt dizzy.
“Drink this,” said Zilnor, handing Peter a cup of something black. “It should replenish the blood. You didn’t react like I expect to the strain on your physical form. Can you summon an adult of your kind?”
Peter took a sip of the drink. It didn’t taste nice, kind of salty and warm and weird, but he was very thirsty. “I can’t summon an adult,” he said. “They’re all on Earth.”
“Your home world, yes.” Zilnor sighed. “I do wish I could have found someone who was not a juvenile. I think I should confine myself to taking no more than fifty percent per day until you’ve grown. Finish your drink. I’ll need more blood tomorrow.” He got up and left.
Peter took more of the drink.
Aooo came into the room, holding a paper bag. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah. I just got dizzy.”
Aooo kept looking at him nervously. “I brought you the sweet.” She unwrapped the bag to show some dark green foamy thing.
“Great!”, said Peter. The drink tasted yucky.
—
It turned out that space candy tasted like sugared broccoli. Space was the worst!
—
“Do you like Aooo?” Zilnor asked when he had Peter in the chair.
“Yeah, she’s pretty cool for a girl”, said Peter.
“Would you prefer a boy for the next one?”
“Next one?”
“Aooo is due for replacement. It’s unfortunate, as she’s hard-working, but the neighbors are coming to recognize her. If she continues, they may inquire too closely into my work. I will need a new child for errands and bringing in subjects, and I thought you might want to pick out your new companion.”
“Where will Aooo go?”
“Oh, several places. When she’s dissected, I can get maximum value selling her for parts. If I sell her to a single buyer, I won’t get a fraction of the value."
“Dissected?”
“Yes, of course.” Zilnor looked at Peter. “Don’t worry, I’ll be quite humane. She won’t suffer.”
“You can’t do that!”
“Of course I can. She’s quite small, and her species is fairly soft, so there shouldn’t be any mechanical difficulties in a solo dissection.”
“But it’s wrong!”
Zilnor gave Peter a look. “I must say, it’s disappointing. I would have thought a being on your level would have higher things to worry about than the fate of a mere mortal.”
Zilnor was a bad guy, Peter decided. He even talked like a bad guy. “Mere mortals” is what bad guys said right before the good guys beat them. But Peter couldn’t find any of the good guys.
—
That afternoon, sipping his drink, Peter decided something.
If he couldn’t find the good guys, he was going to be the good guy. Like Michael Knight, except he didn’t get a talking robot car, because space was totally not fair. But he’d be the good guy, even without a robot car, and save the girl.
Michael Knight had been captured by bad guys, and he’d escaped and saved the girl. Then there’d been kissing.
Peter would escape, and he’d save Aooo.
He hoped there wouldn’t be any kissing.
—
“Shhh,” said Peter. Aooo sat up in bed.
“What is it?”
“We’re escaping.”
“Escaping? Why? Do you want him to stop taking your blood? Did you ask him to stop?”
“He said he was going to kill you.” He put a hand over Aooo’s mouth as she opened it to yell. “Shhh! We need to be quiet. We don’t want to wake him up.”
Aooo looked at Peter. “Is this a game, or is this real?”
“It’s real,” said Peter. “Cross my heart and hope to die” He drew a cross over his heart. “We have to escape now.”
—
The air vent over Peter’s bed was a lot spookier at night. It made all kinds of weird noises.
“This way,” said Peter. “That should lead us out.”
“You said that last time,” whispered Aooo.
“Yeah, but we got the wrong vent last time, so we have the right one this time.” Peter grabbed Aooo’s hand and gave it a squeeze. “Come on.”
—
Two wrong turns later, Aooo found the vent to outside.
Peter, who still had his sneakers on, kicked it loose.
An alarm sounded.
“Oh no!” Aooo started to turn back.
Peter jumped down. “Don't give up now! Come on! Run!”
—
“Come out, come out, where ever you are,” called Zilnor.
Peter crawled between the market stalls. The owners wouldn’t be in until morning, which meant there was a lot of space under tables. It would take Zilnor forever to search.
They could probably hide until morning, and Zilnor would go away.
“Has Bee-dur been a naughty boy, Aooo?” Zilnor asked. “Filling your head with scary stories? If you come back, I promise, nothing bad will happen. You won’t be in trouble. Even you, Bee-dur, if you come out right now, all is forgiven.”
Peter put a finger to Aooo’s lips. Aooo pulled her head back, confused. Her hair started flapping and bumped the table cloth over the boot.
The cloth was really crinkly and made a lot of noise.
Peter heard Zilnor stop, then move straight for them. He crawled out from under the table. “You promise you won’t hurt her?”
Zilnor smiled. “I promise. Now be a good boy, and tell me where she’s hiding.”
Peter pointed to the far end of the market. “That way. The blue stall with the white ones around it.”
Zilnor put a hand on Peter’s shoulder. “Excellent. Now let’s go find her.”
Run away, Aooo, Peter thought. Just run.
—
They were in front of the stall, when he heard footsteps coming up behind him. Light ones, like a kid.
He talked extra-loud, so Zilnor wouldn’t hear. “She’s in there. Aooo?” He knocked on the stall. “Come out. It’s okay.” He turned to Zilnor. “Maybe she needs to see you’re not mad. You should bend over and look inside so she can see you're smiling and not mad.”
Zilnor sighed, then bent over the stall.
Aooo came up behind Zilnor, and gave him a big shove, until he fell into the stall.
Then she grabbed Peter’s hand and they ran.
—
“Stop!” Zilnor called out. They were on the long road near where the spaceships landed. “You children are in so much trouble!”
Peter ran as fast as he could, but he’d been running all night, and he was tired. He could feel himself slowing down.
Before he knew it, Zilnor had him by the collar of his shirt. “Got you!”
“What’s that you got there?” asked a voice in the dark. Yondu stepped out from around a corner.
“The boy is my ward,” said Zilnor. “He and the girl decided to run off in the middle of the night. Pale girl, sparkly skin? I want to find her before either one of them gets hurt.”
“Is that so?”, asked Yondu. He let out a low whistle.
An arrow came out from under the coat. It wasn’t shooting out like a regular arrow, just hovering, like magic.
Peter hadn’t know Yondu had a magic arrow.
“See, I know that boy,” said Yondu. “I’m the one who picked him off his home planet. And if I know one thing, it’s that he doesn’t belong to you. You want to try again?”
Zilnor paled, as the arrow approached his head.
“I can make it go fast or slow,” said Yondu. “Real slow. Let you really appreciate the feeling as it goes through your head.”
Just then, Aooo ran out, and tried to shove Zilnor again.
Yondu grabbed her. “We got a little spitfire. This your new girlfriend, boy? I like her.”
“Let me go!” Aooo kicked and swung her fists, trying to hit Yondu.
Yondu laughed. “I think maybe you bit off more than you can chew with this girl, boy.”
“You found her!” Zilnor put on a relieved expression. “I’ve been looking everywhere for her! Aooo, time to go home.”
Yondu looked at Peter. “This her daddy, boy?”
“No!” Peter yelled. “He was going to kill her and cut her to bits!”
“That so? He was going to kill this little girl?” Yondu gave a low whistle. The arrow flew up to Zilnor’s head. It started to dig in, leaving a thin trickle of blood.
“Please,” said Zilnor. “You can take the girl. Just leave the boy with me.”
“I don’t it’s gonna go down like that,” said Yondu. “See, here’s how I think it’s gonna go down. I take both kids, you slink off with your worthless life, and I don’t ever hear about you cutting children to pieces again. Sounds like a fair deal to you? Because I think I may be letting you off too easy.”
Zilnor whimpered.
“Is that a yes? I don’t hear a yes.”
“Do you know what the boy is?” Zilnor asked.
“I got some idea. And what he ain’t, is he ain’t gonna be yours.”
Zilnor set Peter down.
“Good.” Yondu set Aooo down. “Now girl, if Peter’s been telling me stories, you can go with him.” He gestured towards Zilnor.
“Or you can take your chances out there. Or you can come with me, and we’ll try to find you somewhere nice.”
Peter looked at Aooo. “Come with me.”
Aooo took his hand.
—
She ended up staying on the ship a few weeks. It was way better than things had been before. They ran around the ship playing hide-and-seek. Kraglin got put in charge of babysitting, but he wasn’t very good at it, so they were always disappearing and sneaking into the ship’s storage to play with things.
Peter found non-icky space food. There were long purple strips that tasted like chicken nuggets, and this lumpy black stuff that actually tasted like lollipops. No space pizza, but at least some of it wasn’t gross.
Peter wished Aooo would stay forever.
But she had an uncle on her own planet who was so happy to hear his niece was alive he played Yondu twenty thousand units as a reward.
Twenty thousand units was apparently a lot of money.
“Can Bee-dur come too?”, she asked, as she got ready to leave the ship. “My uncle wouldn’t mind. He has lots of space."
“Naw, I got a different place in mind for him,” said Yondu. “Get on, girl. You got family waiting. Not everyone is that lucky.”
Aooo turned to Peter. “Thank you for saving me.” She gave him a quick kiss on the cheek.
Yondu started laughing.
Peter ducked his head and tried to rub the kiss off.
—
“Now boy,” said Yondu. “I’ve been thinking on what to do with you.”
“Can I go back to my grandpa?” Peter asked. “He could probably pay you.” Grandpa wasn’t rich, but he had a house, and that had to be worth at lot of money. Like probably more than a thousand dollars.
“He couldn’t even pay for the cost of running you back to Terra. No, I was thinking, you could be useful here. From what I hear, you’re real good at sneaking around in tiny spaces, getting in and out of things without anyone knowing. Kraglin’s been running his legs off trying to keep track of you, and we still had some Askavarian ration bars go missing. Makes me think you could be real useful for stealing. And if we train you up, you could be a real Ravager one day. What do you think?”
Peter wasn’t sure what to think. The Ravagers seemed kind of scary, but also kind of cool. And he didn’t really have a home to go to anymore. Not without his mom around.
“Before you make up your mind, boy, I got this for you.” Yondu pulled out Peter’s backpack. “Now this is Ravager pickings, but crew don’t steal from crew. So if you’re crew, you get it back.” He handed Peter the backpack.
Peter opened it. It was all here, his Alf stickers, his troll doll, his Walkman, everything.
“And I got Telnor to rig up power for that music box of yours. Old power source seems to have run out.”
Peter picked up the Walkman, carefully. The battery casing looked a little cracked, and had tape over it. He put on his headphones, took a deep breath, and pressed play.
“I’m a space invader, I’ll be a rock-and-roll bitch for you.”
David Bowie. Moonage Daydream. 1972, Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars.
It worked.
“We got a deal?” Yondu asked.
“You’re not gonna let the crew eat me?” Peter asked.
Yondu bared his teeth in what Peter was starting to think of as a smile. “Not if you behave.” He held out a hand. “Deal?”
Peter took it. “Deal.”