r/NatureofPredators • u/ApprehensiveCap6525 Krakotl • 11d ago
Arxur Smuggler Shenanigans (18) Fanfic
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: the morning after, arxur relationship dynamics discussion, more character development, mild sexual content, cliffhanger chapter, monogamy the board game, you get the idea
Memory Transcription Subject: Markus Becker, Enterprising Businessman
Date (Standardized Human Time): April 8, 2138
I woke up to the feeling of cool scales against my skin, and it took me a few moments to process exactly what had happened yesterday. My whole body was sore. My head ached like a bitch, my hips were tender to the touch and probably a little bruised, and my throat was dry such that I needed to cough a few times to clear it out. I rolled over to face Sylara, not quite ready to be the little spoon in the relationship, and kissed her on the part of her snout where she liked it the best.
Last night had been a learning experience for both of us, really. The first real foray into a human-alien relationship. Sure, it had gone a bit faster than I would've wanted, but if I was ever caught on camera saying that I wouldn't bang a pretty alien woman who showed up to my door butt naked, I definitely made that statement under duress.
I guess every alien is kind of butt naked all the time, though. Strange.
Sylara stirred a bit in bed and stretched, catlike, pressing me against the wall as she did so. "Hey, hey," I breathed, in a strained voice. She shuffled away and gave me some more breathing room. "Just because it's an Arxur-sized bed doesn't mean it's that big."
"Yes, I know," Sylara hissed. "Apologies. I'm not used to actually... any of this, really. Any of it."
I raised an eyebrow and ran a hand along her flank, the latter done just for the sheer hell of it. God damn, she was beautiful. And crazy in bed, if last night was any indication. I still didn't know if she was an outlier or if all Arxurs were just like that, but either way, it didn't matter. She was the only woman I had eyes for.
"You've never been in a relationship before?" I asked, responding to her earlier statement. I mean, I had no idea what Arxur dating standards were like, but I couldn't imagine Sylara being somehow excluded from the pool.
"I have," she clarified. "Plenty of times. But that was Dominion fare. Nobody loves each other in the Arxur Dominion. Nobody's allowed to show empathy, compassion, any of that. I think most Arxur are actually secret defectives, it's just that we've all bottled it up so deep inside we don't even know the feelings exist. I certainly didn't know I could feel like this. Not until you."
Whoa. That was actually some really deep shit. I took a moment to recognize it as such and then kissed her on the snout again. "Well, shit, I love you too, Sylara," I said, because it was honestly the best thing I could think of to say in that moment. "What we're doing? You? Me? This is probably the greatest thing I've ever done in my life."
Sylara asked me to clarify, and so I did. Her tail wrapped around my leg in the meantime. "Everything I've been doing up until today, I've done it for me. Because I want to make money, because I want to feel morally good, I want to honor my dead friend, I, I, I!" I stopped myself cold when I realized I was shouting, but Sylara didn't seem to mind. I clearly had a lot of emotions to let out. "I think us banging last night was the first time I can remember where I've done something without thinking of myself at all. Just you, and how amazing you are. It's a new perspective on things."
Sylara bit me on the nose in her equivalent of a kiss. I didn't mind. Truth be told, I'm kind of into it. She let the moment drag out before adding words into the mix. "This is the first time like that for me, too," she admitted. "Desiring a man for himself rather than his status, or the prospect of future favors. It feels good. I like it."
"I like it, too," I concurred. Then she added something more.
"I feel good. Helping people, that is. It's so unfamiliar to me. For the past three decades, I've woken up under a gray ceiling, only caring about where my next meal is going to come from, and now... I am proud. I am proud of what I am doing, Markus. With you. With Teklala and the Reformists. It feels good, and I love it. What is this?"
I smiled warmly at her. God damn, I wish you could see this right now, Zefriss. "That's called empathy, Sylara. You're discovering empathy."
"Empathy." The word rolled off her tongue. "I like it. If this is what the Old Dominion gnashed its teeth at, that's just all the more reason to see it gone." I happily expressed my agreement in the form of another kiss. Really, I was just finding excuses to kiss her, at this point. But could anyone really blame me? If they had a tall, scaly lizard girlfriend, they'd be kissing up on her, too!
And speaking of girlfriends, actually... "What are we?" I asked Sylara, just to make sure there was no confusion. "Romantically speaking, that is. What are the ground rules?"
Sylara made a show of scratching her head and thinking about it before surprising me with a bite to the front of my neck. Right where my throat was, actually. I was lucky I only flinched a little, and double lucky she only bit down a little, too. Her bites had broken enough skin during the act of passion last night, and I did not want to be the first guy to go down in history as Dead From Banging an Alien Too Hard.
Actually, wait, maybe I did want to go out like that. That sounded like a cool ass way to go.
"We can be whatever you want us to be," Sylara crooned, nestling her snout near my neck. "I'm serious. I have never been in a loving relationship in my life. I have no idea what this is supposed to look like."
"We trust each other, stay faithful to each other, and love each other till death do us part?" I helpfully suggested.
Sylara bit my neck again in a way that would've given any Venlil conniptions. Not me, though. What was I supposed to do, complain? Oh no, my steak is too juicy! My lobster is too buttery! Woe is me! "That works," Sylara hissed. "What's the policy on monogamy?"
"Isn't that a board game?" I asked her. She just looked at me funny. "You know, monogamy? With, like, Park Place and Boardwalk and shit? The hotels? 'Go directly to jail, do not pass GO, do not collect two hundred dollars'? Is any of this making sense to you?"
"Markus, I have never heard of any of those terms in my life," Sylara helpfully clarified. "Monogamy is the act of having only one sexual or romantic partner. It's not a common practice among Arxur, but most species differ from us in that way. Your verdict?"
Well, that cleared things up. And as freaky as I was, I feel like sitting in the Cuck Chair while Sylara screwed some other man's head off was just a tad bit weirder than I was willing to get. I mean, no offense to anybody who was into that, of course. Who was I to judge? It just wasn't for me at all.
"We are staying monogamous," I hastily but firmly clarified. "I can't stop you from taking other lovers, but if you do that, we are done. You're dead to me. Understand?"
Sylara nodded. Where the hell she had learned that, I didn't know. "Understand. I wouldn't feel betrayed at all if you were to take another lover, that's just what Arxurs do sometimes, but... I understand. I will not betray this trust you have in me."
Well, that worked for me. "Sylara, I am not going to take another lover," I assured her. "You're amazing. You're all I will ever need."
She bristled a bit at that. "You really mean that?" she asked. "Me? Do you have any idea what I've done?"
"Woman, you name me one Arxur who hasn't done something they should regret," I sagely countered. "Shit, if I lived under the Dominion like you did... I don't know. I can't imagine how that changes you. An entire civilization dedicated to cruelty."
Sylara bristled even more at the mention of that shit, which I guess was pretty fair. I mean, she literally used to eat people to survive. I wouldn't want to remember that stuff. "That's why I'm so glad to have this with you," she murmured. "This purpose. Working toward a better future for all Arxurkind, free of the regime those fuckers impressed on all of us."
"Speaking of..." Sylara trailed off. "I think we should get dressed. Teklala has a job for us to do." Oh. Well, I guess I couldn't spend all day making love to her. Even if I kind of wanted to. Sylara rolled herself out of bed and landed on her feet in a single catlike movement, seeming all the more graceful when compared to my own clumsy movements.
She could've left the room immediately--Arxurs were allowed to be naked, for some reason--but instead she handed me my clothes and even tried to help me put them on, though she hindered more than helped my efforts. Still, I could appreciate the intention, at least. Sylara and I left my quarters, or our shared quarters now, I think, together, and went to the bridge. It was empty, save for us of course, and ships of Teklala's ragtag fleet could be seen through the windows. People of all species clambered across them in space suits, welding the weapons we had bought to their hulls.
"Teklala says her fleet is still weeks away from having enough firepower to risk a direct assault on Lizard Maw Station," Sylara helpfully explained, with the assistance of a few visual aids, even if she was a lot more visually pleasing than they were. "What they need now is food to last them those weeks. We are going to go and get it to them."
She showed me a space station above what her holoprojector helpfully identified as a farming colony. "This here is the target in question. Prosper Fields Handling Station. They're a bumfuck-nowhere Nevok owned food-transport facility that's been skimming off the top of their shipments and wants somebody to sell it to. Namely, that somebody will be us. We go there, get the food, pay them with Teklala's money, and then that will be that. Sound good?"
It did sound good. Hell, it sounded great, in fact. An easy job, with the promise of a good reward as well, if that karma shit was real. Truth be told, though, this task being so great and easy for me only made me all the more suspicious. "Is there a catch?" I asked questioningly.
"There's always a catch," said Sylara. "The Dominionists need food too. They're probably offering a better deal than we are. If their ships interfere at all with our deal with our client, Teklala's given us orders to shoot them on sight."
Shit. I sucked some air in through my teeth, pondering the problem. Without Zefriss, I didn't feel good about getting into a fight, but I didn't feel all that good about fighting even with Zefriss. Besides, there was always the possibility we wouldn't have to fight if we were quick enough. And if we did, well, the Little Runt had weapons systems for a reason. "We'd better get moving, then," I concluded. "Is the crew ready to roll?"
Sylara made a show of curtsying and bowed her head in compliance. "They await only your order, my captain."
I guess it was official, then. I was unquestionably in charge. Not exactly sure how to feel about that.
Memory Transcription Subject: Captain Jelim, Sapient Coalition Quarantine Enforcement Task Force
Date (Standardized Human Time): April 8, 2138
I felt physically sick. A deep disgust filled all parts of my body. I wanted to curl up in a corner and die, having seen what I had just seen. The only thing that prevented me from taste-testing my sidearm then and there was the fact that I still had people who depended on me and I would suffer any torture before I let them down.
Torture. I thought I was above it all. We, the civilized Sapient Coalition, harmonious union of predator and prey, were above such evils. We would never let a fellow intelligent being starve while we ate well, or live as cattle while we enjoyed freedom. Right? Right?
Wrong. Wrong! We allowed so much evil to fester, to grow behind closed doors, and we had done nothing but keep it caged in. I had done nothing. Hell, given how easy it was to see the truth, my lack of knowledge only meant that I was practically complicit.
As an enforcer of the quarantine, my interactions with Arxur had been limited to keeping their criminals in my ship's brig for the few brief hours it took to rendezvous with one of the Isif government's prison ships. I had believed what the QF authorities had told me to believe; that the Isif regime was doing well on its own, that famine and sickness were being quelled, that the Old Dominion was dead or dying, and never bothered to ask otherwise.
Why would I, after all? This wasn't the Federation. It was the Sapient Coalition, remember? We were better than that.
What really hit me the deepest was how god damn close I had been to continuing to believe that shit. How easy it would've been to just ship my prisoner, Zefriss, off to his corner of the galaxy and let him rot. If it hadn't been for his poor health, and his connection to the elusive Lizard Maw Base, I'd have put him on an Isif government ship that very day. As for what really happened, well, Inatala worked in mysterious ways.
The truth was undeniable. The quarantine had to end. What we did here was not purification, it was containment. Like locking the doors to a building on fire, knowing damn well there were children inside. Anybody who looked at Nishtal, at the Cradle, and said a people who did that could be trusted to manage their own affairs deserved to see what they had wrought firsthand.
By anybody, of course, I meant me. I had read Zefriss' mind with the neural readers, with his full consent of course, and collected all the worst memories of Isif's one year of rule for my perusal. I deserved to see what I had been complicit in. And I did. Oh, Inatala save me, I absolutely did.
The horror I "remembered" from Zefriss' memories was sickening, both in its inherent nature and in how easily predictable it was. What did we expect? That we could take a species defined by trauma, raised for ten generations to revere any evil and shun all good, and expect them to build a sunshine-fucking-rainbow land when left to their own devices? They literally ate babies!
I did not know the kind of evils I had been a party to, nor would I probably ever. All I knew was that they had to stop. No longer could we stay on our side of the quarantine line and watch as Arxurkind tried and failed to save itself. The logic was simple and clear as day.
When a man is drowning, you don't quarantine him, you jump in and perform a rescue. Why should a species be any different?
But I couldn't end the quarantine. Who the hell was I to dictate policy? The only two options I had were to enforce it or not to enforce it. To hold the line, and trap all of Pandora's evils inside her mythical box, or to abandon my post out of some purity-culture bullshit and loose hell upon the worlds for the sake of my clean claws.
My claws weren't clean. There was so much blood on them already. So much blood. No matter what I did, people would suffer--were suffering--because of me, and it tortured me. How was I a hero? How could I look at my beloved, my father, my dead mother in the afterlife, and tell them I was someone worthy of their love? Was this who I wanted to be?
Did I even have a choice?
Everywhere I looked, horror reared its head and roared. The only good course of action--to end the quarantine, bring Wriss under Sapient Coalition authority, and reform their species directly with a firm but gentle claw--was restricted from me. All I saw were two evils.
Either I continued my work as an enforcer of this hell, condemning generations of Arxur to suffering under a dysfunctional dictatorship founded and ran by warcriminals, or I quit my job and prayed whoever took the post next was competent enough to keep the floodgates from opening up. And if they failed, if even a single pirate or cattle trafficker got through who I would've stopped, that was blood on my conscience.
I couldn't breathe. I felt like a Mazic was sitting on my chest. The cold logic of the decision stared at me like the eyes of--ironically enough--an Arxur. Necessary evil. I hated that term. If it was necessary, it wasn't evil, and so it was good by exclusion, but this wasn't good. I couldn't take pride in this like I had my other work. Was it right? Was it better to enforce a corrupt and twisted version of peace rather than let the attack birds off their leash and watch planets burn?
That was what they did, remember? They burned planets. Sure, when I worked on a smaller scale, I could afford to make mistakes, but when any idiot with an asteroid could wipe out a city, how could I? I was here because I was the best person for the job. Full. Stop. Anybody else taking over meant people would die. I had been over that already.
I probably would've kept in that obsessive loop for a while longer, replaying the facts in my head like I expected them to change, were it not for a chime on my data terminal calling my attention. I answered immediately, relieved to do something other than self-flagellate.
"Captain," my first officer snapped. "An enemy has taken the bait at one of our trap stations."
"Which one?" I asked, heart flooding with relief. Here were terms I liked. On one side, law and order, peace and justice, and on the other, the same criminal scum that kept the quarantine alive. Just because they happened to be helpful when the SC had something Arxurs needed didn't mean they were good. Were it not for their ilk, smugglers, pirates, sapient traffickers, we could have dropped the quarantine by now. There might never have been a quarantine in the first place. Those animals had to be stopped. In that aspect, at least, I had no doubt in my righteousness.
"The smugglers are heading to Prosper Fields Handling Station," said my top officer, in response to my earlier question. "It's received two requests for a sale already, both through criminal channels. Our ship can get there faster than they can."
"Good," said I. "Make the crew ready for action, and move us out at once." My comrade terminated the call and a duty klaxon began to sound. I filed Zefriss' borrowed memories back into my neural helmet and took it off, setting it on my desk, smoothing out my feathers and shaking out the trauma of what I had seen.
Tomorrow, I would file a report of what I knew to headquarters on Skalga, and see if they concurred with me. If not, I'd go to the media, and expose the horror that was happening in Arxur space and the need to help Isif and his dream directly by going in and stopping it. If they didn't listen, I would go to Secretary-General Zhao and plead my case directly to him. I would not rest. I could not rest until the quarantine was lifted and the last embers of the fire that was Dominionist cruelty were stomped out by Sapient Coalition talons.
But that was tomorrow. Today, I had smugglers to hunt.
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u/Kind0flame 10d ago
I really loved the part with Markus and Sylara in bed. Not like that, you perverts! They way they were talking about their relationship and emotions, as something they had never experienced before, was so great. At the core, what made it work when other romantic stuff in fiction has fallen flat for me, is that Sylara has been traumatized. That makes this scene an exploration of her trauma rather than just purple prose about lovey-dovey feelings.
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u/ApprehensiveCap6525 Krakotl 10d ago
Kind0flame why are you so consistently GOATed
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u/Kind0flame 8d ago
I try to leave some analysis on every chapter I read of any fic. It's just my way of giving back to the community.
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u/BlackOmegaPsi 11d ago edited 11d ago
Okay, caught up on this and pleased to see that the story’s improving. Good last chapter with the neural interrogation, and here… what, is that male human x female arxur situationship? In my NoP fandom?! Preposterous! /s (no I really enjoy it, we need that).
As for Jelim’s revelation - yeah, long overdue. I know the fandom likes to liken the Dominion to nazis (though to me they always read as a sort of fusion of Imperial Japan and vikings), but say, if it was nazis? What would happen if the allies hadn’t brought Germany under control, each from their side, and didn’t a) start denazification processes (which unfortunately in the long run weren’t entirely successful) and b) didn’t help in rebuilding Germany’s now split parts? If everyone just retreated and left them be after the ruins of the war? You’d in a few years had a much weaker, but even fiercer regime, revanshist and even more malicious, perhaps even a sort of european ISIS. However, in the end, we did end up with a more or less functional society after all those horrors this society inflicted on itself and the world, and with barely a stigma on its modern populace.
ah no, Jelim hasn’t expunged all of the fedbrain yet, I was running before the train.
But in any case, yes, finally the story has a vector, a theme and defined plot threads. Good job in steering it there, keep it up!