Ash kinda hates Xandar. It's too clean, too polished, too uptight. Almost everything she considers fun is more or less outlawed. They don't even do their own fighting, they pilot remote drones for that. Fuckin' waste is what it is.

The one upside is that they're rich, and enough trade flows through the port that there are backdoors if you know where to look, to turn priceless artifacts into priced artifacts and then into cash. Starting with the most expensive, obviously, because the one thing she will give these pampered fucks credit for is that their banks keep her money safe. Not that she expects anyone to be able to pickpocket her here, but still.

When she reaches the Broker's pawn shop, he's alone behind his counter, working on some little fiddly thing. He looks up and says, "Ms Quill," with some wariness in his tone. "It's unusual to see you here alone. Do you have something for me - ?"

(He'd commissioned the Ravagers to find the orb, of course, but that's not the only item he has a bounty out on, and he'll buy many miscellaneous items the Ravagers come across, if they're valuable and rare enough.)

"You think I'd bother stopping over on this shithole if I didn't?" She pulls the silvery orb out and tosses it onto the counter.

"Xandar can hardly be called - " he starts, then startles when he sees the orb. "Ah, you Ravagers work exceptionally quickly, Miss Quill - though may I ask, where is Yondu?"

"He doesn't need to be here if I'm the one you're paying, now does he?"

"Well, it was Yondu I initially offered the job to..." 

"And now I'm the one with the goods. Are you really gonna fight me on this?"

He folds. "That was not my intent, Miss Quill." He starts his usual process of verification, placing the orb on an advanced scanner and taking out several tools. "Do you want the funds transferred to your usual account?"

"To my private one."

He hums as he works. "I will complete the transfer as soon as I finish verification." His fingers flick, and the queue'd transfer pulls up on a small screen - a staggering amount, far more than implied by what Yondu had promised to the Ravagers as their individual shares. Enough for Ash to retire and live the rest of her life in the sort of luxury that suffuses Xandar - 

And it implies an even more staggering amount being offered directly for this orb, given how small a share many in the Broker's trade tend to pass on to those directly acquiring the goods. (Far, far more than the kind of money spent on the ordinary sort of priceless artifacts.)

"Though... I must note, Miss Quill, I would prefer not to have Yondu asking me why the money isn't in your Ravagers account."

And that's why she swiped this job out from under Yondu's nose.

"Feel free to tell him to come to me with questions. I'm the one who almost got shot for this piece of shit, not them."

"You were shot at? By who?" he asks, in the tone of a man wondering if he needs to give his security team an updated briefing and also a raise (not that he would admit to having a security team; it's uncouth).

"Some mercs. Not very talented, considering the size of this payout."

That visibly relieves him. "Perhaps someone else was looking to keep a bigger cut for themselves... Did they give any indication of who hired them?" Always good to scope out the competition, after all. 

"One of them said something about some asshole named Ronan," she offers.

He freezes like a small animal caught by a predator's gaze. "Ro - Ronan! Are you sure?"

"...Pretty sure, yeah."

"I - I'm sorry, but if Ronan is involved, then I can't take part in this - "

"Man, just push the damn button and transfer the money."

"I would still need to transport the orb to my buyer - and if I had the money to hire enough security to could protect me from someone like that, I wouldn't be in this business, I'd be buying my own planet to retire to - "

"Then give me your buyer's name and I'll go direct, you pissant little bitch."

"I - "

He's protested before about protecting the identities of his clients.

He is, however, a coward at heart before anything else, and the threat in front of him is much more important than the threat that hasn't found him yet. 

"My buyer is the Collector Taneleer Tivan, leader of the Tivan Group." Even as... Removed from politics as the Ravagers tend to be, she's heard of the Tivan Group - they mostly run in circles far more refined than the Ravagers, but conflicts between a massive and prestigious criminal syndicate and a massive and disreputable pack of smugglers and bandits are bound to happen from time to time. The Ravagers have almost always come out the worse for those conflicts; the Tivan Group broadly isn't considered worth tangoing with. 

- And then, almost surprising himself, he tells her the price he was offered (it's ten times what he was offering her, of course). "Though... Unless that orb is just some sort of Kree religious artifact - it's possibly worth much more than that, even before hazard pay. Ronan does not care for the refined things in life; anything of interest to him is a matter of religious zealotry, vengeance, or military power."

"Real fuckin' pleasure doing business with you." She grabs the orb and stuffs it back in her bag, and leaves the shop.

There's someone standing outside, holding herself like she's waiting to go in to see the Broker once he's free. "Deal not go well?" she asks, her tone sympathetic and friendly. 

"The fuck you care?"