Team Sloth Strikes

     Inside, Galix was pacing, his brow furrowed, antenna twitching furiously.

     “Why are the scanners active? Where’s Morix’s override? Where’s Hax?”, he bellowed.

     One of Grundo Elite Troopers stumbled in from the cargo hold, panicked. “Sir, they’re surrounding us, we’re boxed in!”

     Galix growled. “We’re not here to get caught ...”

     He turned to his Grundo strike team, eyes blazing. “Release the Fuzzles. All of them. Now.”

     There was no hesitation from his subordinate. In fact, they had already begun opening the cargo doors upon entering the hangar. It was only a second after receiving the order that the Grundo had started slamming the buttons to open the containment crates. On their monitors, they could see an eruption of neon-green mist escape the containers. Then, dozens of Evil Fuzzles burst out. Their eyes were glowing, and their mouths were already snapping. The fuzzles were surging out of the ship’s hatch and into the hangar with surprising speed and agility.

     ---

     It didn’t take long for those present in the hangar to begin to scream and scatter. The feral fuzzles leapt onto crates and scrambled up walls. They began chewing through anything in sight. From power cables to hover-carts, nothing was safe.

     Ax and Ix, the Grundo brothers, ducked behind a cargo crate near their ship.

     “Why is it always Fuzzles?!” Ix shouted as they both darted back to their ships.

     The Evil Fuzzles were spreading out in all directions, and chaos engulfed the hangar. They were a miasma of colours, red, blue, purple, lime green, and even a particularly angry-looking rainbow one. They bounced and dived upon unsuspecting victims.

     Screams echoed through the air as the creatures darted between crates and under hover-lifts. They were leaving trails of chewed wiring and panicked engineers. Lasers fired in every direction, harmless stun blasts that zipped past the bobbing Fuzzles, missing more often than they found their target.

     "They're too fast!" shouted a Virtupets officer as he rolled behind a crate, narrowly avoiding a teal Fuzzle.

     "They're too buoyant! I can’t aim!" another yelled, trying to zap a cluster of them mid-air.

     Ax ducked low and attempted to remain inconspicuous. "What are we going to do?!"

     Ix dropped beside him, panting. "Well, we have to do something!"

     "Like what?", Ax snapped back.

     "The vacuums! I have an idea”

     Ax blinked. "No way. Oh, Jhudora’s claws, you're serious."

     It didn’t look like Ix had taken much notice of the last comment. He was already scrambling back into the ship. As he ran he kicked and knocked copies of ‘Beam Me Aboard’ and ‘Diary of a Baby Space Fungus’ scattering across the deck.

     Moments later, he returned armed with a high-powered GrundoVac 9000.

     He aimed at a bouncing indigo Fuzzle and flipped the dial to max power.

     With a satisfying shloop, the Fuzzle was yanked mid-bounce into the vacuum's wide nozzle and pinned to the ground. It wriggled in outrage but couldn't float away. The nearest security officer fired a stun blast and froze the target.

     “It works!” Ix grinned. “Ax! Tell the guards, it works!”

     Ax whooped and turned toward the scrambling officers yelling over the din of the hangar.

     Soon, vacuum units were being unpacked left and right. Officers grabbed hoses and handheld units, working in pairs, one to pull the Fuzzles down, the other to hit them with stun blasts. The hangar rang with the sounds of slurping motors, Fuzzle screeches, and the satisfying zap of successful takedowns.

     Within minutes, the hangar had begun to quieten. One by one, fuzzles were neutralised and tucked into containment crates. Two more guard units had also arrived to help.

     Ax leaned against the side of his ship, wiping sweat from his brow. “I think we’ve discovered how to market these. 100% effective against Fuzzles!”

     Ix nodded, beaming. “They’re also good for crumbs.”

     There was still a faint static fizz of stun blasts still echoing off the walls. Security teams moved around, sweeping through the aftermath.

     The Senior Security Guard approached Ax and Ix, who were still surveying the aftermath.

     “You really saved us there, friends. I offer you my thanks”, he said. The Senior Security Guard offered Ax and Ix a straight-backed salute.

     “It was nothing, we’ve survived much worse … there was this one time that we …” Ax broke off as Ix had stood on his toe.

     “Did you arrest the crew? Was this an accident or done deliberately?” Ix asked the Senior Security Guard.

     “There was no one on board”, the guard replied seriously. “Whoever this was, they’re still at large”.

     Just then, laser blasts erupted from the corner of the hangar; they could see the culprits huddled together in the distance. Illuminated by the light of their lasers.

     ---

     Galix’s was close to losing his cool. He and his elite Grundo unit had slipped from the ship the moment the Fuzzles had been unleashed. Using the chaos as cover, they sprinted across the upper scaffolding toward the emergency exits, only to find every blast door sealed tight, red lights glowing along the panels.

     Galix slammed a fist against the control panel. “Sealed?! Why are they sealed?!”

     A trooper panted behind him. “None of the security protocols appear to have been disabled; there is also an unusual concentration of guards in the vicinity. We may have been betrayed,”

     Galix snarled, flipping open his communicator. “Morix.”

     ---

     ________________________________________

     In the command subdeck, Team Sloth undercover agent Commandant Morix was a mess of nerves and sweat, his fingers flying across the console as he tried to override the growing pile of security alerts.

     The screen flared red with a new incoming transmission, it was the Lieutenant, and he would be very angry. He flinched before accepting.

     Lieutenant Galix’s voice exploded through the speakers: “You said you’d keep the scanners down! You said Hax would clear the bay!”

     “I tried! Something’s wrong! Hax, our special agent, won’t respond,” Morix stammered, eyes darting across error logs.

     “You incompetent Blechy! My team is cornered! Open the exits, now!”

     “I can’t!” Morix shouted, slamming his palm on the console. “The system's locked me out!”

     Below, the surveillance feed showed Galix’s troopers hidden near an exit. They wouldn’t be able to remain undetected for long.

     Galix hissed through gritted teeth. “Forget it. I’ll get out my own way.”

     He hurled the communicator aside and scanned the wall above them. A ventilation grate caught his eye.

     “Cover me! Proceed to engage the guards”, he ordered.

     The loyal troopers fired wildly as Galix leapt up hoisted by three of the unit. He wrenched the grate open and squeezed into the shaft just as a stun blast zipped past his boots. The guards had reacted much quicker than he had thought, he assumed he’d get some of his unit into the shaft but they were already stunned on the deck below.

     Turning from them, he vanished into the darkness, leaving behind chaos, smoke… and one very panicked Morix.

     The hangar was still pulsing with after-action noise, guards shouting orders, Fuzzle containment units had begun to arrive and were hissing shut, and the unmistakable hum of vacuums powering down. Amid the bustle, an anxious guard ran up to the Senior Security Guard, flailing his arms. Ax and Ix, the twin Grundo brothers, were positioned close to the assembled guards and were able to hear every word.

     “Sir! One of them got away!” The guard stated.

     The officer barely glanced up from his datapad. “We’ve got containment protocols. He won’t get far. He will crawl out of a vent and fall into a laundry chute or something. Inform Command the surveillance teams will pick him up”.

     “He was carrying something Sir, strapped to his back”, the guard said.

     Ax chimmed in, “I didn’t get a good look but it looked like a Vortex Propulsion Device! I would know one anywhere. It looked like the VX-40 model with triple conductors and a flux handle! Definitely not-standard issue!”

     The officer raised an eyebrow. “A what-now?”

     Ix frowned. “That’s bad. We worked with those in our last job; things tend to get dangerous when they are around.”

     Ax nodded quickly. “There should be something about them in the book ‘Deep Inside the Kreludan Mines! These things were used for lifting meteorite cores and sometimes detonated in unstable shafts. If he sets that thing off in the wrong place...”

     The officer waved them off. “Kid, by now this place is locked down tighter than a Virtupets vending machine during maintenance. We’ll get him eventually.”

     “Not if he knows where he’s going,” Ax muttered grimly.

     He turned to Ix, lowering his voice. “If he uses that device in the central command ducts, he could trigger a pressure collapse. That happened in our last job and we … ugh … theres nothing left of it now”

     The guards were no longer listening and it was evident to Ax and Ix that they weren’t being taken seriously.

     Ax narrowed his eyes. “We’re going after him.”

     Ix blinked. “We are?”

     “We’ve got vacuums. We’ve got blasters. And we’ve got the element of surprise.”

     Ix grinned. “The only element missing from the periodic table.”

     Together, they jogged back to The Second Chance, each grabbing a modified vacuum unit, strapping them to their backs like backpacks. Ix handed Ax a blaster and slung one over his own shoulder.

     At the far wall, they spotted the open ventilation shaft Galix had disappeared into. Ax took one last glance behind them at the distracted guards.

     “Guess we’re going in.” he said with a shrug.

     With a grunt, he pulled himself up into the shaft, followed by a slightly wheezing Ix who muttered, “Why are the air vents always this dusty?”

     The shaft echoed with the sound of scuttling boots, humming vacuum packs, and the distant metallic clangs of a fleeing Grundo.

     “He won’t get far, he can’t have that much of a head start,” Ax whispered.

To be continued…