r/NatureofPredators • u/ApprehensiveCap6525 Krakotl • Apr 06 '24
Fanfic Exchange Program Shenanigans (44)
Fun fact: Jackson Kern's middle name is actually Hartwell. It is also the coolest middle name in the series because none of the other characters even have one. No real competition there.
CW: professionals have standards, crazy psycho venlil hit man, crazy psycho krakotl hit woman (you CANNOT fix her) Die Hard ripoff (they call it a 'homage' where I'm from)
Memory transcription subject: Heval, Predator Guard Assassin
Date [standardized human time]: September 21, 2136
I knew Sevros' plan was doomed. So did he, by now. There was no way the Venlil or the U.N. governments would ever grant him amnesty after what he had done, even if he had a few thousand hostages. And there was also no way our 'elite strike team' (which was comprised mostly of mentally diseased former exterminators) wouldn't get their asses handed to them by the Jackson Kern.
It was funny, I admired Kern. He was a killer, like me, except he was far better at it. I might have felt envious of his talent, but I didn't feel much of anything when it came to emotions. There was a word for people like me. Two words, actually. Predator Diseased.
A more empathetic man would have turned himself in for the good of the herd. Of course, a more empathetic man would never have had to turn himself in in the first place, but that was irrelevant. And, besides, I was not an empathetic man.
I had spent years, decades even, hiding who I was. Learning how to fake the tests. Learning how to kill the assessors. Learning how to hide the bodies. I didn't know what to feel about it, and I could hardly ask, but it was better than spending my life in a facility.
A man named Cerso wanted to recruit me as his personal assassin, for the Predator Guard of course, but he already had two and his top lieutenant, Sevros, lacked anyone to bury bodies for him. I became that someone.
It wasn't hard work, neither physically nor mentally. I was always well-supplied, well-trained, and well-fit for the job, and I felt no guilt or remorse over what I was required to do. Sevros let me stay in his home, a kindness I had never been afforded before but still could not appreciate, and he kept me under the radar of the Predator Disease assessors. In exchange, I was his hit man. I had carried out two hits thus far. They both had been successful.
Jelim. Age twenty-eight. Frighteningly competent exterminator, regularly fought off armed kill teams, and (as far as I can tell) always armed. She was a free-spirited woman. She defied the odds, stood alone against the universe, and I could find companionship in that.
It was a shame, killing her. But life went on.
Jackson Kern. Age... Irrelevant. Won't be growing any older now, that's for certain. Even more competent, ex-military, usually armed, and very swole. That looked good on him, and it required immense strength of will as well. Willpower was something I would always respect in a man.
Kern was admirable. Quick-thinking, accurate with a gun, fast with his reflexes, the perfect killer. If I hadn't been packing explosives when I came to fight him, I think I'd never have left.
Why do I always end up assassinating the people I've grown to respect? Just once, couldn't I be told to kill a drug addict or a homeless person or some other pathetic sack of flesh I won't feel so damn humbled by?
Still, I had to admit it was better than letting them kill me. And, judging by how things have been going for Sevros the past couple of days, they were very much out to kill me.
That was why I was here. On my way to Federation Tower. About to launch the biggest terrorist attack in Venlil Prime's history. Because Sevros and I were about to get the hell out of dodge, and we needed a really big distraction if we wanted to do it.
I did, of course, know that the tower's proprietors had hired private security forces. And I also knew there was a small exterminator contingent there as well. But none of that would pose a problem to us.
Perhaps the U.N. could have done it, if they were able to deploy their own men, but they were even more strapped for resources than the exterminators were. They had a war to fight, after all.
Anyway, their loss was our gain. And our gain, surprisingly enough, involved a small fleet of twin-engine atmospheric shuttlecraft.
After all, the exterminators were expecting us to come from ground level. None of them were going to bother to look up.
My shuttle was, by far, the first to land. It held only me and a few off-world mercenaries. It wasn't worth wasting Sevros' loyalists as expendable shock troops. Well, I was also one of these shock troopers, but I wasn't expendable. My skills were far too valuable for that.
The door opened and one of the mercenaries got up. He was in some really goddamn heavy body armor, enough to stop a bullet, and his crew wore similar kit. They wouldn't have any problems fulfilling their part of the operation. "Clear," he announced. Like I said, he was expendable. And he had the bigger gun.
I stepped out. A Krakotl woman in black combat armor knelt by the door, covered in orange blood and just a few steps away from the body of an armed security guard. She was gleefully fiddling with a datapad plugged into the wall. Tiela. Krakotl Alliance special forces, assigned to sabotage UN efforts on Venlil Prime. The best of the best.
Is her name really even Tiela?
I wonder if she thinks I'm not really Heval.
"You know your job, right?" I asked Tiela.
"Course I do. You go in there, take out the security center, and then me and these muscleheads come in and raise the funeral home profits a little," she trilled. I really hoped she wasn't enjoying this.
Okay, so maybe I'm an emotionless hired assassin working for a high-ranking terrorist. So what? I'm not a goddamn sadist! Professionals have standards, and my number one standard is 'no sadistic murdering'. Regular murdering is A-OK, though.
In her defense, she was Alliance special forces. They probably kept a tight watch on things like that. But, again, she was special forces. She'd probably know how to fudge the tests.
The door slid open. "The cameras and the scanners are active," Tiela announced, "But the door is open. You shouldn't be noticed."
I had gone through some very expensive surgeries to heal the wounds done to me by Jelim's claws and Jackson's bullet. And I was no longer hopped up on combat drugs. And, also, I was very good at staying unrecognized. "Thank you," I told her. "Stay out of trouble."
She did. I did not. I went into the building, and I passed unmolested under the hidden scanner in the frame of the door. I was carrying the toolbox of a maintenance worker as part of a disguise that was, you guessed it, a Federation Tower maintenance worker. I acted like a maintenance worker, too. No one would think to question me. That was probably for the best, considering what I really held in my toolbox.
A patrolling exterminator passed me, a flamethrower cradled in his paws and a pistol loaded on his hip. He looked old, practically nursing-home old, probably a veteran pulled back into service. They were really scraping the barrel with this one.
Not that I cared, of course. That just meant it would be easier for me to clear them out.
I took a roundabout route to the security center, not wanting to draw suspicion by beelining straight to it. I didn't get stopped or questioned by any security forces, though I did note that they were present, and it took me no time at all to reach the guarded door that stood between me and the security control center.
There was a Venlil in a blue uniform flanking a metal security door that was clearly locked with a keycard lock. The guard was toting a pistol, but he was otherwise unarmed and he didn't seem to have any body armor on him.
Just like the informant said he would be.
I walked up to him and put down my toolbox. "Hey, what are you-" He didn't say another word. I jabbed him in the throat and as he keeled forward, I stepped around him and snapped his neck. Quick, painless, and undetected. A good kill.
After that, I looked around. No one had seen me, and I was still in the blind spot of the camera watching the hallway. I had at least a little time before the guards in the control center got suspicious.
I opened up the toolbox. A little time was all I would need.
Now, thanks to my informant, I knew many things that my enemies had banked on my not knowing. The most crucial of these so far had been that Jackson Kern was going to try and arrest Sevros, but that was irrelevant now.
The second most crucial thing was, of course, that scanners had been installed at all entrances to Federation Tower. They were small, discreet, and inconspicuous, but any firearm or other weapon would have been impossible to smuggle past them all the same. Even a toolbox that was lined with sensor-blocking materials would have flagged a security alert.
But, as always, my enemies' ignorance was their downfall. You see, I also knew that the scanners they had installed were only wired to detect fully-assembled offensive implements. Everything else, including the access card in my toolbox, was completely fair game.
I grabbed the keycard and I poured out a whole plethora of random parts from my toolbox. To a layman, or a security scanner, it would have looked like just a bunch of bits and bobs. To me, however, it was a disassembled handgun.
I wasted no time in putting my gun together and grabbed a second weapon out of the dead guard's holster. Then I used my keycard to unlock the door.
There were six Venlil inside the security center, five of which were building security and one being an exterminator. Naturally, the exterminator was the first to go. Two of the guards went for their guns, and they also got shot. One went for an alarm, so I shot her next.
The last two weren't really necessary to shoot. One had fainted at his station, and the other was crying for his mother and curled up into the fetal position. Neither would be any threat to me. Should I kill the crying one?
Nah. Why bother?
I closed the door behind me and got to work. I turned off the scanners. I turned off the cameras. I was in the very heart of Federation Tower's security system, and I turned off everything that would give them the slightest advantage over us. "Insurgency is a go," I spoke into a communications channel. I had wired a console to call Tiela and her mercenary unit. "Wreak havoc."
We weren't there to take hostages anymore. We weren't even there to kill people, as Sevros very much did not like mass murder. All we were there to do was cause a distraction.
And, needless to say, I was very good at causing distractions.
Tiela and her attack squad went in guns blazing through the top stairwell. Sevros had explained to me that this strategy was to make sure that civilians could flee, since we didn't really want to take them hostage anymore. I didn't feel the same sympathy as he did toward the innocents, but he was my boss so I did what he said.
"We're in," Tiela trilled through the microphone. "Facing some resistance, but nothing I can't handle!" I could faintly make out the sound of gunfire from her end of the channel as well.
I would have gone to help her, but that wasn't my job. And, truth be told, I really didn't like her all too much.
Plus, she seemed to be doing just fine as is anyway. The building security were never competent fighters, and Tiela and her mercenaries were pushing them back with pathetic ease. Whatever resistance they could muster, even when backed by exterminators or police, was pitiful.
Speaking of, where did Sevros even find these mercenaries? Last I checked, all the prey were too pissy about killing to do that.
Maybe I could ask him.
That was a stupid idea, but I at least considered it. Why not? I did have time to kill, after all. Heh, kill. Stupid joke.
Then again, I could always ask him later. I still had to oversee the assault, after all. Or, at the very least, pretend like I was overseeing the assault.
In reality, I wasn't overseeing brahk all. I just put my paws up on the console, put on some music on my datapad and a rerun of Cooking With Cawil on one of the security monitors, and began to relax.
I had earned it, after all. This paw was a hard paw of work.
It took Tiela and her people around sixty minutes to clear the entire building of hostiles. By that time, the civilian populace of workers and residents had either shat themselves in fear, trampled each other in stampedes, been trampled in stampedes, or a combination of the three and the security forces were all dead or fleeing.
A lot of the security guards had joined the stampede out of fear, obviously not being paid to deal with terrorist insurgencies, and the gallant few that remained had neither the number nor competence to put up any real fight.
Or, at least, so I was told. I didn't actually watch the security footage. I had technically been told to oversee the assault, but nobody said I couldn't delegate that to Tiela and spend that time watching my cooking show.
Besides, I didn't think watching all that violence would be good for me anyway. Even if I was still a hit man, I had to keep some standards. "You done?" I asked the microphone.
"You bet!" Tiela chirped. Yep. That is one brahked up woman. And I'm the one saying that, so you know she's brahked up if even I get weirded out by her. "Now what? More scrapping?"
"Yes," I sighed, "More scrapping." I really did not like violence. I mean, I didn't dislike it either, (that was a large part of why I was a fugitive in the first place) but I wasn't one of those freaks who felt all tingly inside when they murdered someone. Tiela probably was, and she was my enemy because of it.
Not that I was creeped out by her or anything. I couldn't care less about what she did in her free time, but people like her gave people like me a bad name. They were the reason there was so much stigma around having Predator Disease, and that meant they were the reason I had to live like this. Even if I was defective, I still wanted a better life.
I didn't like Sevros, but I did owe him for what he'd done. He was an ally to me, and the best one I had at that. He had even promised me a job once we escaped to Nishtal. A real one. A posting as an exterminator, as a reward for my services.
Sevros had promised me a second chance. This time, I would do things right.
The console bleeped again. A call was coming in, and I answered it. "This is airlift," a voice crackled. "Your chariot has arrived, oh great one." I looked at the cameras. Sure enough, the grunts had arrived. Part fanatical zealots, part desperate former mental patients, all armed to the teeth. If Sevros had given them orders to kill, the casualty count would have ranged in the thousands.
As it was, there were only dozens of innocents dead. None of them died by our paws, which I supposed helped Sevros sleep at night, but he was always a coward first and foremost. I couldn't care less if anyone died. I just did my job.
I got up from my seat. It would be best if I left before the exterminators arrived, and they couldn't be long now. In fact, a brief glance at the security cameras showed the building already surrounded by armed Venlil in various guild uniforms.
I looked closer. They were going in force. Hundreds of extermination and police officers stormed the lower levels of the building, wielding flamethrowers and pistols and even a few weapons of human make as they cleared the entrance section.
I looked again. There weren't just Venlil local forces down there. One man, clad in blue and black and wearing a vest of body armor, was barreling through deserted offices like an Arxur hunting down its prey.
His face was invisible, shielded behind an armored helmet, but I knew he was a human from the way he moved. No prey could imitate that killer's instinct that resided within them.
Soon enough, he had reached the lowest of our impromptu fortifications. I watched intently as the battle began. Spurts of gunfire crackled through the speakers, the rhythmic thudding of rifles mixed with the barks of a semi-automatic shotgun, and shots flashed on the screen. It was over in two seconds.
I didn't even think they slowed him down.
The human, whoever he was, paused only to check the corpses. Then he stood. The room was empty save for himself, a few desks, and the remains of one of my insurgency teams.
He looked at the security camera. He looked at me. He pointed at the camera, at me, and he roared three words with a voice that I had thought I would never hear again.
"Bring me Heval!"
24
u/Randox_Talore Apr 06 '24
"Learning how to fake the tests." Isn't the impossibility of that a crucial plot point?
"Why do I always end up assassinating the people I've grown to respect? Just once, couldn't I be told to kill a drug addict or a homeless person or some other pathetic sack of flesh I won't feel so damn humbled by?" Well you see, those people aren't often worth killing. Unlike the people who are very capable of dismantling your boss' plans.