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  It was very cold on Peter Quill’s last day on planet Earth. It was so cold that the nine-year-old could almost see his breath indoors.

  Sitting on a hard plastic bench listening to his Awesome Mix Tape #1, Peter saw into the hospital room where family members buzzed around Momma’s bed. She had been sick for a long time—sometimes she’d call her son by the wrong name—but now things were so much worse.

  “Peter, your mom wants to talk to you.”

  Peter looked over to see Gramps. How long had he been standing there?

  “Get these fool things off,” Gramps said, removing Peter’s headphones. His voice was firm, but warm.

  “Come on, son. She needs to see you. But be patient with her. She’s even more confused than usual.”

  Gramps shuffled Peter into the room, where his normally beautiful mother looked pale and weak. She stared at him with sunken eyes that didn’t seem to focus. She smiled and brushed back his hair with her fingertips, brushing a bruise near his eye.

  She frowned at the welt, and asked, “Have you been fighting with the other boys again?”

  Peter shrugged.

  “Peter?” she asked, sternly looking at him for a reply.

  “They hurt a little frog that ain’t done nothing.” Peter explained about the bullies in his neighborhood. “They smushed it with a stick.”

  “You’re just like your father,” Momma whispered. Her eyes drifted up toward the skies, a dreamy expression crossing her face. “He was an angel of light.”

  Peter saw Gramps exchange a quick look with Momma’s doctor, a look that said, She’s getting “confused” again. Gramps reached out and touched Momma, shaking her shoulder a little, like he was trying to wake her up.

  “Meredith, have you got a present there for Peter?” asked Gramps.

  Momma looked down into her lap as if seeing the present that sat there for the first time. But then she seemed to recognize it and handed it to her son. Peter took it in his hands and looked at the sloppy packaging and crooked bow.

  “Sorry I didn’t wrap it better,” she apologized. “My hands have been like mittens.” She held up her hands, showing him, as if he could actually see mittens there. But he couldn’t—he just saw the hands that had hugged him so many times, and soon never would again.

  Peter held the present, not entirely sure what to do with it.

  “I got you covered, Pete,” Gramps said as he picked up the present and stuck it in Peter’s open backpack.

  Momma nodded at the present. “That’s for you to open after”—she choked up for a moment—“after I’m gone, okay? Your granddad’s gonna take good care of you, at least until your daddy comes back to get you.”

  She swallowed deeply and then held out her hand to Peter. “Take my hand, baby.”

  Peter looked again at his momma’s hands, but he froze. He couldn’t move.

  “Take my hand, baby,” Momma said once again.

  A tear rolled down Peter’s cheek. He wanted to take his mother’s hand. He really did. But somehow he just couldn’t. All he could do was stand there, letting the hot tears fill his eyes.

  “Peter, take my—” his mother started again, but then, abruptly, the beeping of her monitors halted, and she fell back against the bed.

  The doctor and some nurses rushed for the bed, pushing Peter back away from his mother.

  Quickly, Gramps covered Peter’s eyes and pulled him into the hallway. “You’ve got to harden yourself, Pete,” said Gramps. “Stay here,” he added as he ran back into the room. From outside, Peter could hear the rest of his family begin to weep.

  That’s when Peter ran.

  He didn’t think about running. He just did. No one stopped him.

  He ran out of the hospital and across the parking lot.

  He ran up the far embankment and out past the weeds and grass.

  He ran through a stand of pines and out into a field.

  And when he finally ran out of breath, Peter dropped to his knees and broke into a deep sob.

  Peter was still crying when a giant spotlight from the sky shone down on him.

  He looked up to see a large spaceship, bigger than a tanker truck, hovering above him. The ship flashed bright lights and crackled with electricity. It hung in the air as if watching the boy, and then started to lower slowly until Peter vanished into the light.

  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.

  Suddenly, violent storms of unimaginable power blasted the globe. Mega earthquakes struck, sea levels rose, and continents flooded. The mass destruction led to a planetary evacuation. Over the centuries, Morag fell to ruins and was visited only by adventurous water-breathing archeologists and horribly unlucky spaceship-wreck survivors.

  But when Morag’s lesser sea began to recede, a different kind of visitor came.

  His ship landed on the rain-soaked, windswept outskirts of a city, and anchored itself into the stone. The pilot descended his ship’s ramp, his face covered in a protective mask, and walked through the torrent of rain into the ruins of Morag Prime. Once he reached the location of its main thoroughfare, he pulled out his holo-mapping device.

  The gadget shot out tracking dots that scanned its surroundings and projected a grainy hologram of the way the streets of Morag Prime had looked in their heyday. Then: “BA-BEEP!” The holo-map calculated a way through the ruins, marking the route with a red holo-line.

  The visitor looked around, popped on a pair of headphones, and began listening to his favorite songs on Awesome Mix Tape #1 for what seemed like the millionth time. As he pulled off his mask, Peter Quill smiled.

  In the twenty-something years since he was abducted from Earth, he’d 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 deck hand and risen all the way to being his captain’s second in command.

  But in all these years, there was one thing he’d never been. He’d never been rich. And, as he walked into the remnants of a massive temple, he was ready to give it a try.

  The chamber was dark inside, but Peter took out a plasma light sphere and shook it, igniting a brightness that illuminated the whole room.

  “There it is,” he mumbled as he looked up at the high ceiling to see a silver metallic Orb hovering far above his head. The Orb floated inside a protective laser fence that still functioned after all these hundreds of years.

  This was it. This is what he’d come for. He’d give it to the Broker, and the Broker would make him rich.

  What was the Orb for? What was in it? What did it do? Peter didn’t know, and he didn’t care. When he looked at that Orb, all he saw was his future.

  “Let’s get you down here, big boy,” Peter said, pulling a tool out
of his pack.

  As soon as he turned on his electromagnet, the silver Orb shuttered and moved toward it. For a moment the Orb strained at the edge of the laser fence, but then it popped out and dropped to the ground, sticking to the magnet.

  “Ha-ha!” Peter shouted happily as he turned off the gadget 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 he’d noticed he was not alone.

  “Drop it!” said the dangerous commander Korath as his Sakaaran soldiers leveled their weapons.

  “Cool, no problem!” Peter said. He let the Orb go and put his hands in the air.

  “Who are you?” Korath demanded.

  Peter tried to act casual, like he didn’t understand how valuable the Orb might be. “Hey, I’m just exploring, man!”

  “How did you know about this?” asked Korath, pointing to the Orb.

  “I don’t even know what that is! I’m just a junker,” explained Peter. “I search for salvage, anything that can be recovered and resold.”

  Korath took a moment to look Peter over from top to bottom.

  “We don’t believe you,” Korath grunted. “You’re wearing Ravager gear.”

  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… but he didn’t want Korath to know that.

  Korath spoke to his soldiers in the Sakaaran language. The soldiers moved forward, grabbing Peter by the arms.

  “We’re taking you back to our ship,” Korath said.

  “What?” shouted Peter. This was not going well. “Why?”

  “My master, Ronan, might have some questions for you.”

  “Oh, hey…” said Peter. “There is another name you might know me by…”

  “What is that?”

  Peter looked him right in the eyes and prepared to enjoy the impact his revelation would make.

  “I am…” The aliens leaned in closer, waiting. “Star-Lord!”

  Korath looked confused. “Who?”

  Not the impact Peter was looking for.

  “Star-Lord! Come on, man… the Star-Lord! The legendary outlaw!”

  Korath turned back to his soldiers. “Any idea what he’s talking about?”

  The soldiers just shook their heads.

  “Oh, man! Just forget it!” Peter was disappointed.… What did a guy have to do to get a little notoriety around the galaxy? At least the aliens had dropped their guard for a moment. Peter seized the opportunity and moved into action.

  He kicked his Plasma Light Sphere into the soldiers and it burst, spraying them with hot plasma. As they screamed in surprise and pain, Peter grabbed the Orb and dashed away!

  Quickly, Korath pulled out his rifle and fired. Peter ducked and the shot blew a hole in the temple wall!

  “Thanks for the quick exit,” Peter shouted as he hit the button that made his boots shoot out a quick rocket thrust, pushing him up and out the hole Korath had made.

  Outside, Peter landed a fair distance from the temple. He looked back over his shoulder to see Korath looking out through the hole in the wall. “He’ll never catch up,” thought Peter as he ran with the Orb.

  “Get him!” screamed Korath. Peter turned to see five more Sakaaran soldiers now between him and his ship. They shouted and raised their rifles.

  “You’ve got to be kidding me,” Peter muttered. He was still running at the soldiers, racking his brain for how to get out of this situation, when he realized the soldiers’ armor was metal.

  “Worth a try,” he said, reaching backward into his pack to pull out the electromagnet. He switched it on and threw it ahead of him.

  Immediately, the five soldiers were jerked forward toward the magnet! They dropped their weapons as they stuck to the device.

  I can’t believe that worked! Peter thought to himself. He jumped over the pile of soldiers as they struggled to pull themselves back up.

  Finally past them, Peter ran up the loading dock into his ship, the Milano. Once in the cockpit, he immediately fired up the engines and took off.

  But he wasn’t in the clear just yet. Peter peered through the cockpit window and saw that the soldiers weren’t out of options. One of them had managed to turn off the electromagnet, and now, under Korath’s supervision, they were loading a massive rocket launcher.

  A rocket roared straight toward the Milano, with Peter barely banking the ship in time to avoid it. He pushed the engines forward, escaping the ruins just as a second rocket blasted past him!

  “Later, losers!” shouted Peter as thrusters engaged and he escaped into the planet’s atmosphere. Escaping from an army of Sakaaran soldiers with invaluable treasure—if that didn’t add to the legend of “Star-Lord the Outlaw,” nothing would!

  Hours later, 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 over and over again. He was daydreaming of things to do with his coming fortune when a video call came in over the main console.

  “Quill,” grumbled Yondu, the blue-skinned alien who served as captain of the Ravagers.

  “Hey, Yondu,” Peter said casually.

  “I’m here on Morag. The artifact I’m looking for ain’t here, but I do see some of your handiwork: a couple of deep-fried Sakaaran soldiers.”

  “Yeah, I was in the neighborhood. Thought I’d save you the hassle,” Peter said simply.

  Yondu shifted his eyes. “Where are you?”

  “You know, boss, I feel bad about this… but I’m not going to tell you that.”

  Yondu’s face twisted in anger. “I slaved this putting together a deal with the Broker for the Orb!”

  “ ‘Slaved’ is pushing it,” chuckled Peter.

  “And now you’re going to rip me off?” Yondu demanded.

  “Making a few calls is ‘slaved’? I mean, come on—” continued Peter.

  Yondu’s blue face got redder and redder. “We don’t do this to each other. We’re Ravagers. We got a code!”

  “Yeah, the code is: ‘Steal from everybody,’ ” Peter reminded him.

  “Everybody… not me!” Yondu yelled back.

  “That’s a particularly self-serving definition of ‘everybody.’ ”

  “When we picked you up from Earth, my boys wanted to eat you. I stopped them! You’re alive because of me!”

  “And now I’m rich because of you. You’re the one who taught me that the universe belongs to the heartless,” Peter pointed out.

  “I’ll put a bounty on you, boy! I’ll find you!”

  “Yeah, yeah. Later, Yondu,” Peter said, cutting the call. Yondu’s face disappeared from the screen.

  Peter wasn’t going to let anyone bring him down after the day he’d had. He went back to dreaming about what to do with all his money.

  Hanging in the blackness of space, the Dark Aster looked like a cross between a battle cruiser and a fortress. Wherever the warship appeared, it brought fear. Whole planets had been evacuated based only on rumors the Dark Aster was approaching.

  It wasn’t so feared because it was one of the most heavily armed warships ever created—which it was—but because it was the flagship of none other than Ronan. Some knew him as “Ronan the Murderer”; others as “Ronan the Butcher”; and still others as “Ronan the Warlord.” All these names were meant to slur Ronan for his cruelty and heartlessness—but they pleased him, and there was one name he preferred above all the others: “Ronan the Accuser.” Ronan looked upon the people of this galaxy and accused them of the greatest crime he could imagine—weakness.

  Ronan was a member of a species of aliens that had once dominated huge sections of the galaxy. He was tall and incredibly strong and dwarfed those around him. He was the perfect specimen, strong in body and in mind.

  Inside the warship, as Ronan rose from a giant pod full of oozing black fluid, one of his minions
dragged in a prisoner. It was a captive officer of the Nova Corps, the law enforcement agency that policed the sector.

  Ronan hated the Nova Corps because they stood in the way of his goal for total intergalactic conquest. And the Novas protected the weak, something that Ronan found disgusting.

  The Nova officer, although clearly under Ronan’s total power, looked up defiantly at the warlord looming over him.

  “You’re under arrest,” croaked the battered officer bravely as he looked into Ronan’s eyes, “for violations of sovereign space, unlawful seizure… and genocide.”

  Ronan smiled at the officer’s nerve.

  “You’re in my court now,” Ronan said to the officer. “I make the accusations here. The Nova Corps’s pathetic protection of the weak at the expense of the strong has denigrated this galaxy and brought shame to any creature strong enough to call themselves a warrior.”

  Ronan brought his face close to the man. “Compassion is a disease,” he finished.

  “You will never rule the galaxy,” shouted the officer, trying to cover his fear with boldness.

  “Rule it? No,” Ronan admitted as he raised his mallet-shaped Cosmi-Rod, a blunt weapon. “I will cure it!”

  With a swing of his rod, Ronan silenced the officer.

  As Ronan cleaned his weapon, another of his underlings entered.

  “Korath has returned, my master,” said the servant, “but he doesn’t have the Orb.”

  Ronan frowned.

  Ronan sat in the Dark Aster’s magnificent throne room and listened as Korath reported his failure to obtain the Orb from a petty thief.

  “He is an outlaw,” Korath explained. “He calls himself Star-Lord.”

  “Star-Lord?” Ronan asked, raising an eyebrow.

  “Merely his own vain delusion,” Korath said dismissively. “We have discovered he has an agreement to retrieve the Orb for an intermediary known as the Broker. I am unspeakably pleased to report that we will be able to intercept him at the Broker’s shop on the planet Xandar.”

  Ronan looked down from his throne at Korath for what seemed like an eternity before asking, “You know the Orb is essential for our holy mission, yes, Korath?”