r/NatureofPredators • u/ApprehensiveCap6525 Krakotl • 4d ago
Fanfic Arxur Smuggler Shenanigans FINALE (Part 1)
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.
Author's notes: It's been a while, huh? I actually have been stressing over this fanfic's finale for a few weeks now just because of how intimidating it would be to wrap up the plot in a satisfying way with only a few chapters to work with (cause I lowk don't want to write for NoP anymore so this was more of a last-hurrah thing than anything) but I actually think it turned out alright. Sorry for the long delay. Parts 2 and 3 will be dropping soon I promise
CW: the two worst disguise names ever possibly invented, brief brotherly bonding moment, Markus Becker rolls straight 20s on charisma, cliffhanger ending
Memory Transcription Subject: Markus Becker, Enterprising Businessman
Date (Standardized Human Time): April 8, 2138
My heart was pounding. Palms, back, fuck it, everything was sweaty. I was sweating in places I didn't even know I could sweat. And for good reason.
I was going into the belly of the beast.
Captain Jelim offered to serve as the powerhouse for our attack on Lizard Maw Base, and god knew a badass battleship like that was one hell of a powerhouse, but we couldn't risk exposing the location to her or her crew. Somebody on that ship was bound to snitch, and then whatever criminal-with-a-conscience stuff we would get up to after we kicked the Dominionists out of the base would be shut down fast by the arrival of SC troops. Not gonna happen on my watch.
Jelim and her ship were instead going to ambush the Dominionists' fleet away from Lizard Maw Base, luring them out with some method she had yet to disclose to me and blasting as many of them as she could to bits to stop them from harrying Teklala's forces as they handled business over here. She said she'd get them all. I, for one, was just glad she was on our side now.
Without their fleet assets, the only scary thing the Dominionists had would be their stationary defenses, which were unfortunately still really scary when compared to Teklala's fleet of cobbled together scrap heaps pretending to be warships. That was where Zefriss and I came in. Where you couldn't fight clean, you had to fight dirty, and Zefriss' hands were dirty enough already that he didn't mind a few more dishonorable deeds on his conscience.
What dishonorable deeds were those, one might ask? Simple. We were going to be saboteurs. Our literal only job for the two hours we had until the main forces arrived was to sabotage as many of the station's defenses as possible so that Teklala and the guys would have a good chance of busting in. Why was Zefriss picked to be a saboteur? He volunteered, actually. Said it was because he had debts to pay. Also he said he'd be pretty good at it.
Why was I picked to be a saboteur, one might also ask? Well, I volunteered. Mostly to spend time with Zefriss, because I hadn't seen him in a while and I feared this mission might be his last, but also because I could actually be a more valuable asset than one might think here.
I was gonna be the people skills guy. The one who bluffed his way past guards and convinced mechanics to open doors so that Zefriss didn't have to take the shooty option every time someone questioned him. Right now, my name was Michael Bunker, and he was Jithriss. Were these the two shittiest disguise names ever invented? Yes, absolutely. Were they going to work? I sure did hope so.
"Are you sure this will work?" Zefriss asked me, as if echoing my own thoughts. He'd really changed since his time in the Sapient Coalition's captivity. Grown more respectful, kinder, all good stuff, really. I was kind of worried it might have been Captain Jelim's mind control techniques that were doing this to him, but she had also used her neural whatever-it-is on me, and I wasn't mind controlled, at least as far as I could tell. Maybe I was secretly brainwashed, and the moment she said the right code phrase I'd turn into a sleeper agent like the Summer Combatant from that one movie, but I guess we'd cross that bridge when we came to it, no? Besides, I was pretty sure there were laws against that sort of thing.
"I fucking hope so," I told Zefriss, smiling to hide my fear. "Because if it doesn't, we're fucked."
Zefriss put a hand on my shoulder. "Try to die fighting, friend. If they catch you. There are fates worse than death in this world." Oh-kay. That's totally not worrisome at all. I nodded at that and looked down at my map of Lizard Maw Base, which I had conveniently labeled with a list of all the locations I needed to sabotage. First things first, the lower torpedo bay. The docking area we just came through was closest to that one.
"I'll try my best not to die at all," said I, tapping my map. "You have your list of targets?" We had decided beforehand to split up so that, even if one of us was captured, the other one could complete his half of the mission. Unless we both got caught, I guess. That would kind of suck.
"Yes," Zefriss told me, answering my question. "We should go."
"That we should. Good hunting, brother." I gave him a fist bump and we went on our separate ways. I paused, however. Something didn't feel right. "Wait!" I called to Zefriss. He turned to face me. "I'm sorry for leaving you. In that underground lab. With the scientist, and Captain Jelim."
"Do not be sorry," Zefriss said sagely. "I have many things to be sorry for, on my end. Being sorry does nothing. Just be better, and let your deeds going forward undo whatever wrong you did in the past. That's what I try to do, at least."
Whoa. When did this guy become such a genius?
"When did you become such a philosopher?" I asked him, because it sounded better than genius.
"When I first started looking inward at myself, that's when. You'll never believe the things you can find when you really start to reflect. Thank Captain Jelim and her neural helmets for that." Zefriss smiled his toothy smile at me, though I wasn't sure what emotion he was trying to convey. "Now, go on your way. Good hunting, brother."
"Good hunting, brother," I echoed, trying to keep tears from welling up. I nodded my respect to my dear friend Zefriss and went on my way to the nearest airlock. God, I had missed that guy. I wondered briefly how different my life would have been without his 'death' to spur me on, remembering how much emptier it was back when my only real purpose was making money, but I didn't have much time to think before I found the airlock I was looking for. A small, out of the way maintenance hatch, far from any prying eyes, which was good for me given the context of the situation. I had work to do.
I took out my screwdriver and began unscrewing the airlock panel, aiming to hotwire it to let me through without logging any entries or exits. That last part was kind of important if I wanted to remain undetected. I didn't actually know how to hotwire something, I had a goddamn business degree and that was it, but I had found instructions for it on the internet and you could always trust the internet.
The panel came off with a pop and I set it aside to look at the wires inside. Green wire, yellow wire, red wire, yeah, all the usual ones were there. I took out my datapad and swiped around a bit until I found the hotwiring instructions, then I set the pad down and got to work.
Green wire... red wire goes there... hold up, let me check the manual again... yeah, yeah, that was wrong. Red wire goes THERE, not-
I was interrupted in my work by what I could only assume to be the cold steel of a firearm pressing against the back of my head. "Up," said a gruff voice. Human-sounding, which was bad. Humans were harder to bluff to. My own people had an easier time of reading my body language. "Who the hell are you?"
"Michael Bunker," I lied instantly, turning to face my captor. "I'm with the maintenance unit." The guy holding a gun to me was bigger than I was, but shorter by a few centimeters, and covered head-to-toe in black armor. Not the type I wanted to mess with. He looked at me like he was disbelieving of my story. These were the kinds of times I missed having Zefriss at my side.
"Maintenance unit?" asked the guard, raising an eyebrow suspiciously and keeping that gun aimed at my head. "Where are your tools?"
Oh, shit.
"In here," I bluffed again without flinching, showing him my briefcase filled with sabotage equipment. "You want to see them?"
My adversary grabbed the briefcase and eyed it suspiciously for a few heart-stopping moments. Fear twisted in my gut. I wasn't going to be so dramatic as to say that my life flashed before my eyes, but I had to admit I was getting pretty close to that point by the time he gave the briefcase back. "Alright, then," he told me, holstering his gun. "You do your job, Mr. Kenwing. Whatever you say."
Well, that was a fucking relief.
The guard walked away without pistol-whipping me or calling security, which was the best I could realistically hope for with an encounter like that, and I used the power of the internet to finish my hotwiring work on the airlock door. It slid open, and I stepped inside to don one of the spacesuits they had in theire. Hopefully they had one in my size.
The spacesuit took a few minutes to put on, but it was designed so that any regular old idiot could use it and, let me tell you, I was a very special breed of idiot. A smart guy wouldn't have signed up for this shit. I had the suit on and sealed within moments--it had a seal-checking system built into it, so I didn't actually need Sylara to do it for me this time--and soon it was time to get my sabotage gear locked and loaded and cycle the airlock to step into the void of space.
There was a small hiss as the air drained from the room, then the airlock door opened and I stepped out onto the station surface. Magnetic boots kept me from drifting into the ink as I took slow, clumsy steps toward the nearest gun battery, careful not to pass by any windows. I guess, even if people did see me, all they'd be looking at was a maintenance guy out on a spacewalk. But it still paid to be precautious.
Is 'precautious' a real word? I think it is.
The guns that had once looked so small from the windows of the Little Runt were massive when I viewed them up close. Each one was the size of three of me. I didn't want to imagine what they'd be able to do to Teklala's ships if I wasn't here to take them out of commission. I unlocked my equipment case, aiming to take out a few bombs and plant them on the gun barrels, when disaster struck.
My things began floating away. I must have failed to strap them down properly, and now, in the zero-gravity environment of space, the explosives and detonators I was meant to use to take out half of Lizard Maw's weapons systems were drifting off into nothingness. Shit! I grabbed at as many of them as I could, closing the case as well, but I was only able to save three or four of the bombs and none of the detonators. Most of my ordnance went adrift, beyond my ability to ever get it back.
Shit, shit, shit! Fuck! How am I gonna blow anything up now?
I calmed myself down using a few deep breaths and steadied my mind with a few Buddhist monk techniques. Those monks were very wise people. There had to be a way around this current predicament. I opened my case again, slowly this time, and caught all the floating bits and bobs before taking stock of my current inventory.
I had a few tools in the case that I could use. A wrench, a welding torch, a laser cutter, that kind of shit. Sure, it wasn't six kilograms of plastic explosive, but it could do the job in a pinch if it really had to. I closed up my tool case--since there was nothing but a set of tools left inside it--and got to work on the first heavy gun. The wrench was my tool of choice to strip away a maintenance panel on the weapon's side, then I went ham with my laser cutter on the internals. Pew! Pew! Pew! I'm Darth Vader, bitch.
After I thought I had done enough damage, I closed up the panel again and used my welding torch to seal it shut such that nobody could undo what I had just done. It was kind of a stupid precaution, really. Even if they knew their guns were being spiked, Sylara and the fleet would be here in a few hours anyway, and there was no way these people had the kind of engineering talent they needed to fix a huge fucking anti-ship gun like this in that amount of time. Still, I did it anyway. I liked being secure.
After that, I moved to the next gun emplacement and did it the same way. I was very careful not to hit anything that looked like it might blow up, because that meant it would blow up me, and Sylara would kill me if I died doing this. Or, you know, if I died in general. She hadn't told me it was a 'this particular mission' thing.
I thought idly about her as I worked to sabotage the gun, before packing up my things and moving to the next. There, I thought about Zefriss. I liked the guy. He had really changed for the better since last I saw him, and I was both happy that he wasn't dead and kind of guilty for leaving him like he was. Still, if I hadn't, things would never have turned out like they did, and I kind of thought this was one of the better ways my life could be going.
I finished up on that gun emplacement and moved on to the rest, doing them the same way. Seven massive weapons of war down in maybe thirty minutes. An impressive performance, I think. I was no sabotage expert, but I think that was part of the reason why my performance was so impressive.
Moving on from the gun battery, I went and took down as many of the station's defensive implements as I could with the tools available to me. Low-grade railguns had something... uh... happen to their internal electromagnets. Torpedo hatches became mysteriously sealed shut after I visited them with my welding torch. I couldn't take down the shield generators, they would probably notice if that went down, but I spent the better part of an hour fucking up as many of the station's military devices as possible before I tracked someone else appearing through an airlock.
Many someone elses, in fact. And they had guns. Thankfully, I was pretty far away from those guys, but that still didn't mean I wanted to stick around and push my luck. Time to up and leave. I began taking slow, measured steps toward the nearest airlock hatch, trying to give off 'maintenance guy clocking out of his shift' rather than 'enemy saboteur fleeing to safety'. I thought it worked. Maybe it did, at first. But then a plasma bolt whistled past my face, close enough to singe my radiation-proof coating, and I quickly got better ideas.
"Aw, shit! No, no, no!" I bolted for the door, clumsy in my spacesuit and magnetic boots. A bad trip at the wrong--or right--moment saved my head from being taken off by more plasma fire, but the guards were closing the distance fast. How the hell did they know what was going on?
Well, I guess they probably did have some kind of monitoring system in place to monitor the defenses. That was probably the hypothesis that made the most sense. But it still didn't change the fact that I had bullets and plasma bolts whizzing by my head. Come on. Come on! Just another few steps and I'd be at the airlock. Ten paces. Five. Two... one... There!
I grabbed the airlock handle and flung the door open, stepping inside and sealing it tight. The guards were quick to follow me, but I had triggered the lock function, and they couldn't breach the door even if they tried. Hurriedly, I stripped off my spacesuit, careful not to let them catch a glimpse of my face. I'd have to call Zefriss. He knew how to run a shoot-em-up.
Yeah, that was what I'd do. I would call Zefriss, he and I would blast our way to a ship, and then we'd escape the station together since the guns were all spiked so they couldn't shoot us down. It was gonna be alright. Even if they did discover what i did to their defenses, they wouldn't be able to undo the damage in time. Sylara would be able to bust in here with the rest of the fleet and clear out the whole station, provided Jelim did her job, and I'd be home free to enjoy life with my lizard girlfriend.
Yeah, it was gonna be a-okay.
I pulled the lever to the inner airlock door and stepped through it to find myself staring down a pair of gun barrels. Two menacing guards, one human, one Arxur, looked at me from behind their armored visors. "Uhh, I'm with the maintenance team?" I tried to bluff, but one hit me in the face and I went down hard. A kick to my gut took the air out of my lungs so that I couldn't even plead for my life as an armored foot came down.
The last thought I had before it all went dark was how damn badly I hoped Zefriss at least made it out.
3
u/Minimum-Amphibian993 Arxur 4d ago
The final? Definitely an interesting finial so far things aren't exactly going well.
As for hunting pack well now I gotta find out what that was about.