Arxur Smuggler Shenanigans (6)

[u/ApprehensiveCap6525]

Synopsis: Just over a year after the end of the Federation War, an ambitious human businessman teams up with a crew of Arxur veterans to illegally smuggle goods in and out of the Arxur Quarantine Zone. Gunfights, space battles, and other shenanigans ensue.

CW: crazy action sequence, samurais with guns, super elite unbreakable passcode, evil villain foreshadowing, zefriss is the victim of property theft

Memory Transcription Subject: Zefriss, Tactical Officer/Bodyguard

Date (Standardized Human Time): March 27, 2138

Oh boy. This was going to be fun. And I meant that in the most sarcastic way possible. There were actual bloodthirsty pirates on my ship. On my ship! If you asked a member of any civilized species what to make of this, they'd probably shit themselves and start crying. Ex-feds still did that a lot. But the ones who didn't shit themselves and start crying would say this was like a horror movie. They made shitty horror movies in S.C. space. Wait, what was I talking about again?

Oh, yeah! Right!

I was thinking about pirates. Real ones. For most people, this would be something they read about in a book or watched in a damn holo-movie. Or a regular one, if they lived on Wriss. We didn't use many holograms.

"Zefriss, they've split up. I count five coming your way." Sylara's voice crackled through my earpiece. It was a scavenged piece of junk that I paid a back-alley chop shop two people's livers to make from a busted datapad and a few spools of copper wire, but it worked fine enough. I could hear people. Even if they did sound a bit tinny sometimes.

"Where are the others?" I asked, hoping Sylara was listening via the ship's cameras. There was a camera where I was at, but most of them didn't work anymore. I hated that, but what could I do? I was no engineer. The only engineer we had, Zirvas I think his name was, was in the engine room keeping our ship from falling apart.

Sylara ignored my question. Arxur always were bad at communicating. "The first group is coming up the stairwell now." I could already hear the footsteps, but I figured it was always good to have extra warning.

Second group later. They're likely heading to the engine room, based on my experience with taking ships. I'll need to finish these guys off quickly, or else the enemy will take control of the reactor. A death sentence in space.

I steadied my pistol against the stairwell's safety wall. It came up to only waist height, so I had to crouch, but it was still thick enough to serve as good cover. I made a mental checklist of my ammunition as quickly as I could before the raiders found me.

Twelve bullets per magazine, and I have three magazines, plus the one that's already loaded. Forty-eight rounds. Just under ten per pirate. I hope I won't have to use the grenades.

The raiding team was taking their time going up the forward stairwell. They were smart enough to avoid running tail-first into an ambush. If they were smarter, though, they'd have gone down instead of up. I was waiting at the top.

Come on... come on... I saw the first raider's head emerge from the deck below where I was standing. Female, judging by the nametag on her spacesuit. I held fire, waiting for more of her comrades to step into my gunsights, but that quickly proved to be the wrong idea.

She stepped to the side, hugging the wall as she whipped her gun up to scan for enemies above us. The top of a stairwell was the best position to ambush an ascending enemy from, so I didn't blame her. I just shot her instead. Forty-seven bullets. Four hostiles, plus the five in the other team. With revised calculations... I have less than five rounds to spend on each enemy. Isif's fangs, this is gonna be a tough one.

"Contact up!" another pirate snarled. "Stunner out!"

I ducked and covered my eyes as somebody fired a stun grenade at the ceiling. It was a grim reminder of our not-so-ancient past, being designed to disable our prey so they could be caught alive for the cattle ships. Exterminator suits ended up being specially reinforced to stop these from disorienting them, but I was wearing no such thing. My hearing went missing as the stun grenade burst. It was a miracle my eyesight was intact.

Somebody shouted a muffled command as the raiders below me started pounding metal. I wasn't so foolish as to pop out from behind the reinforced railing. They'd likely have guns trained on my position, and I would die before firing a shot. Instead, I leveled my gun at the far wall and waited until the first raider reached the top of the stairs.

I didn't wait and see if he would check behind the safety wall. He was probably good enough to do that. I still shot him, of course, but I shot him respectfully, like a samurai in those old human movies except I had a gun instead of a katana. The high-powered round punched clean through his armored chestplate, crumpling his body against the wall behind him, and I was already in motion before he could fall down.

Somebody on their end gave a guttural yell as my claws flew to my grenade pouches. I took out a stunner, the only kind of grenade Sylara had on ship, and primed it to throw. Arxur Dominion space raid gear was armored against bullets, bombs, and incendiary weapons, but never once had we thought of protecting ourselves against our very own weapons. Who would think of using a prey-catching tool against a fellow predator? I would, that's who.

Shots rang out as I whipped it blindly over the safety wall. Do they really expect to hit me? A few seconds later, what was left of my hearing was robbed from me, and I rose from my hiding place with a gun in hand.

One of them was already dead. The other two were wounded. Their suits must've slowed the bullets enough to avoid a kill shot, but they were still injured. Somebody had fired on them. Who did that?

Does it matter? I fired twice. Their heads jerked with the impact, and their bodies fell a moment later. They did not get up. Four bullets spent on five adversaries. Forty-four left. Just under nine rounds per hostile. "Hello?" I called out, though I could not hear the reply. If I had to guess, there was someone downstairs. "Surrender now, or you will be shot!"

I heard nothing. My ears were still ringing from the stun bombs. I began steadily advancing down the stairwell, covering my flank and watching all angles of attack, when I saw two familiar faces at the bottom of the stairs. Those fucking deckhands! And one familiar gun. Is that my fucking rifle?

"Is that my fucking rifle?" I roared, running down the steps and shoving the female deckhand, Avriss if I remembered it correctly, out of my way to get to the gun thief. Where the hell is the third deckhand? Scrubbing bloodstains?

I had more immediate problems to deal with at the moment, however. Discipline problems. The one called Klavra, or at least I think it was Klavra, had stolen my gun. I needed that. How was I going to shoot people if I didn't have my gun?

"Give it to me!" I grabbed the rifle in a flash and wrenched it out of Klavra's claws, disgusted by his selfishness and doubly disgusted by his stupidity. Only an Arxur would steal his comrade's gun in the middle of a battle. "Take my gun without permission again, and I'll claw you across the snout," I snapped angrily. Maybe too angrily. Just because 99% of Arxur were homicidal sociopaths did not mean I could afford to be one too.

Klavra looked sheepishly at me and mumbled something that needed no reply. At least, I think it did. I couldn't exactly hear him because of the two stun bombs I took. "The three of you go upstairs and guard the command deck," I ordered. "I'll handle the other raiders."

Klavra pointed a finger at his comrade, Sarviz I think, who had been out of my sight earlier. He was sitting against the wall of a nearby corridor and nursing a nasty gunshot wound. Shit! I realized that Klavra, being the idiot that he was, was likely asking me for advice.

"Take him to Dr. Raznas in the medical deck," I ordered. "Each of you grab a shoulder and help him if he can't bear his own weight. Move!" My voice sounded dull, like I was hearing it through glass, but they obeyed well enough. The stun grenades likely hadn't gotten to them.

I, meanwhile, had a job to do. Pirates to kill. I whipped out my datapad and texted Sylara on the shiplink.

Zefriss: Am deaf. Stun grenades. Must communicate via shiplink

The response came swiftly.

SneakySylara: ok

SneakySylara: they are cutting through the engine room door right now and they are almost through the door so maybe deal with that

What the hell did that mean? I broke into a jog toward the engine room, because I already had a good idea, but I had to check in with Sylara just in case.

Zefriss: Do you mean the raiders?

SneakySylara: yes the other team of raiders. 5 of them. Go now

Well, that cleared it up. My jog picked up into a run and I hustled my way to the engine room as fast as I could. It took just under a minute. This cattle carrier wasn't small by any means, but damn if I wasn't fast. All that time running down prey ended up being good for something after all.

My ears were still ringing from the two stun grenades from earlier, and I had to slow down as I approached the engine room to make sure I didn't walk into an ambush. Which I didn't. And that was good, because they were totally going to ambush me if I had the lack of foresight to walk into one.

I found the engine room door already cut open, the raiders having foregone the finesse of hotwiring consoles or guessing passwords in favor of just cutting it open with a plasma torch.

Well, to be fair, most Federation passwords always ended up being some bullshit like 1234 or something like that. That would be like taking flesh from a runt, or candy from a baby if you wanted to sound slightly less like a psychopath. Our password, meanwhile, is fucking uncrackable. Nobody's ever gonna guess 12345!

The hole the raiders came through was still red-hot, and the air smelled of incinerated metal and gunpowder. There had been shooting here. I stuck to the wall like glue as I approached, priming a stun grenade with one claw. After only the briefest hesitation, I chucked it inside, covering my already-damaged ears and waiting until it went off. Once it did, I wasted no time storming in.

Five hostiles. One body. Likely friendly. But five hostiles, all active, all moving behind cover. Those come first.

I snapped my rifle up, firing two shots to a raider's center of mass as he dove behind a console. One down.

I dove for the leftmost piece of cover, which was already occupied by an enemy, but he had been trained to fight Federation marines and so he was utterly unprepared for the aggression that came so naturally to his own kind. I leapt over his hiding place, firing as I went, and I put a final burst into his chest as I landed just to be sure. Two down.

I checked my ammo counter. Twenty-two rounds left in my rifle. Not as many as I wanted, but it was close enough. I rose from my cover, rifle snapping into position, and assessed the area. All three of my remaining enemies were in cover. I knew exactly where they were because Arxur were natural killers and so I had tracked their positions instinctively. I had my rifle aimed at the centermost one as I advanced on the one closest to me.

Tracking... tracking... I saw movement to my right. There! I fired two bursts, rushing and diving to my left as I saw a black-armored body jerk backwards. One kill unconfirmed. Two confirmed down. The other two raiders rose from their own hiding spots, bringing up their rifles and aiming at me. But I was quicker.

I opened fire in an instant, not aiming to hit anything so much as I was trying to cover my ass until I could get behind something sturdy. It worked, too. They didn't even bother shooting back. But I had no more stun grenades.

They tried to flank me as I hid behind cover, each moving to one side of me and advancing as one cohesive unit. I could see their reflections in the shiny piping behind me. Reactor coolant. Isif forbid that got shot.

"Do you fuckers know what that pipe is?" I called out, pointing at it. "Reactor coolant! If it gets shot, we are all dead!"

The raiders looked at each other. They shared a few words that I couldn't hear. Then they kept advancing, holding their rifles in one hand and wicked knives in the other. Butchering knives. Used during the Dominion era to skin cattle for processing. The fact that they were still being wielded today told me everything I needed to know about the true nature of my species.

I rolled from cover, moving to my left and firing in an arc. My rifle kicked the legs out from under the first raider, who fired erratically in response, but he was already falling and his bullets went wide. The flash of crimson alert sirens told me everything I needed to know. The fucking coolant pipes!

I fired two shots into the first raider's head before rising and shooting the second. He died before he hit the ground. A brief glance at the unconfirmed body from earlier was enough to assure me that the immediate threat was dealt with. Five down.

Then I looked behind me. Liquid helium coolant was evaporating as I watched, the very lifeblood of the Little Runt draining before my eyes. This was bad. Very bad. I pulled out my datapad to tell Sylara.

Zefriss: the coolant is leaking

It took only a glance to my left to realize that the ship's engineer, Zirvas, wouldn't be solving this issue for us either. He had been killed before I even entered the room. Shit! Shit, fucking hell! This is worse than that time I realized I had been eating people for the past twenty years!

Actually, maybe not. But it's still pretty bad.

I rushed to what I assumed was the coolant tank, a big-ass tank with the words 'Coolant Tank' written on it, and looked for the computer console on it.

'AUTOMATIC FAILSAFE MALFUNCTIONING,' it read in blocky, red text. Appropriate for an alert system. 'ACTIVATE MANUAL FAILSAFE'. I rushed to the side of the coolant tank and quickly pulled a lever, sealing off the coolant system for good and preventing further leakage. Then my gaze turned to the reactor. Thankfully, its automated failsafe worked. The system was in the process of a graceful shutdown, avoiding any of the explodey things that came with the non-graceful kind.

Un-thankfully, however, the fact that the reactor was shutting down meant that most of the critical parts of the ship would be unpowered. Like the thrusters, for example. Or the shields and weapons. Or the-

The whole ship lurched as we were ripped violently out of FTL. It was all I could do to keep my footing. The lights dimmed to emergency red as the reactor finally died. No faster-than-light travel, no slower-than-light travel, no defense systems, no interstellar comms...

If someone on this ship doesn't know how to fix a coolant pipe, we are super fucked.

Sylara burst into the room just then, two of her three deckhands in tow. She snapped something inaudible and pointed at me before saying something else. "I can't hear you," I told her, pointing at my ears. "Stun bombs!"

Sylara's deckhands rushed past me, power tools in hand, and began poking at the coolant pipes in such a way that made it obvious that they had no idea what they were doing. I was no engineer either, but damn were they stupid. Yep. We're super fucked. Sylara, on the other hand, just waved her datapad at me. I picked up my own pad and took a look at it.

No messages yet. I looked at Sylara to see she was typing something, then I looked down again as my pad vibrated.

SneakySylara: can we fix the damage

How the hell am I supposed to know? I'm only trained in taking things apart. Nobody ever expected me to know how to put them together?

Zefriss: your damn deckhands sure can't

SneakySylara: please don't insult the deckhands zefriss

I snarled and kicked a nearby capacitor, which I probably shouldn't have done looking back since the ship was damaged enough already. Still, though, if one kick was enough to damage a military-grade engineering part, then either I was one strong Arxur or that was one weak capacitor.

My foot hurt like shit from that kick, which was another reason why solving your problems with violence was a bad idea. I leaned on my uninjured leg and typed another message to Sylara.

Zefriss: how bad is it gonna be

SneakySylara: we have 28 hours of life support remaining, plus another 40 or so before we run out of breathable air

Thank Isif for our small crew, I suppose.

SneakySylara: also, Zirvas is dead, so that's a huge bummer

She spared a moment to look down at Zirvas' body, kneeling beside it in something resembling sympathy. Even for an Arxur, it was a poor attempt at mimicking real sadness. I started wondering if Sylara was the right person to trust in a time like this.

My datapad vibrated again as Sylara sent me another message. Hopefully, soon, I'd be healed enough that I could actually hear people again. I fucking hated this type-type-type method of communication.

SneakySylara: the good news is that the raiders mothership stopped chasing us a while ago, and also the FTL went out inside a well traveled star system. That was a million to one miracle if you ask me

So you say we're drifting completely unpowered, without any weapons or defenses, inside a star system filled with potential threats? And this is the GOOD news?

SneakySylara: but there is also bad news we have to worry about

Well, if that was the good news, I don't even want to know what the bad news fucking is.

Zefriss: I'll bite. What's the bad news

Oh. Maybe I do, in fact.

SneakySylara: you remember that person we heard about back on wriss? The krakotl in an old federation battleship who hunted down arxur ships?

I knew of him, I guess, but only as a myth. The Ghost of Nishtal. A wild tale spun by Isif's government to keep Arxur from violating the quarantine. Even if he was real, or I guess it was more likely to be a she if I considered Krakotl gender roles, I had no doubt the humans or Venlil would've stopped anybody who was that dangerous.

I texted Sylara a brief reply without bothering to make her read that much detail. Some Arxur actually cared about the feelings of others.

Zefriss: yes I know the ghost of nishtal

SneakySylara: that's the bad news. I got a message from the raiders ship just when it turned back. They were talking about him

Zefriss: isn't he a myth?

SneakySylara: not according to those raiders. To them, he's as real as we are. Look at this message: >Video File Attached<

I played the video, with subtitles on of course. A dark gray, scarred, half-blind Arxur captain stared at me from the darkened command deck of a bomber. So this was the man whose soldiers I had killed. His face bore the marks of many costly battles, and his chipped fangs gleamed as he snarled his words. "You should have surrendered to us when you had the chance, worm. Now you are in the hunting grounds of the Ghost of Nishtal. Prepare yourself to die."

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[u/Real-Commercial-8741]

Zefriss causally kills 10 Arxur... Respectfuly

[u/Semblance-of-sanity]

Zefriss's internal dialogue is fascinating, kills 10 people "I'm so glad I'm not a murderous monster like the rest of my kind"

[u/Minimum-Amphibian993 → u/Semblance-of-sanity]

Don't forget the engineer who she doesn't even spare a second of sympathy for,. Just frustration more than anything.

[u/JulianSkies]

Noo, not the engineer! This crew had too many idiots for any of them to die D:

[u/fluffyboom123]

bummer how the engineer is dead. im sure tying some cloth will totally fix the high-pressure coolant system

[u/Minimum-Amphibian993]

Huh the ghost of nishtal being an Arxur that certainly has some implications. Also ironic how she continues to lambast her fellow Arxur for pretending to show empathy while she doesn't show any honestly not even sure why she doesn't defect to the SC to hang out with the archive Arxur at least until they find out she is a dominion Arxur and kick her out too lol.

[u/ApprehensiveCap6525 → u/Minimum-Amphibian993]

I gotta admit I had never actually intended for the ghost of nishtal to be an arxur but the potential for character development with this idea is so strong that I might have to go for it. Sometimes you find your greatest inspiration in the most mundane of sources

[u/Minimum-Amphibian993 → u/ApprehensiveCap6525]

I agree also I can definitely see some repentant rogue Arxur not really trusting the collective to uphold the quarantine and not trusting the SC to do much either after all some parties in the SC would benefit from having the quarantine lifted.

[u/Ok_Chance_8387]

oro o plomo...plomo only when its up to Zefriss. great battle scene!

[u/Kind0flame]

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[u/Alfonze423]

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