Chương 120: 47. Duty 47-2

She came out from behind the left buttress root and drove the short baton directly at the side sensor module on the helmet. I cut in from the front at almost the same moment, shock baton in hand—the one with the faulty contact—which chose this particular moment to cooperate, crackling blue. Harvey yanked the wire taut from the right-rear, trying to pull the Jäger off-balance a second time. Maki didn't advance; she placed the second decoy sphere precisely behind it, sealing the retreat.

On paper, the plan was beautiful. In practice, reality had us on the ground inside the next second. The Jäger didn't panic. It didn't even react like something that had been caught off-balance. It simply dropped its weight, hauled its center of gravity back into place, and raised its left arm to block Jess's baton before the impact landed cleanly. My baton hit the side armor—hit it properly, lit up enthusiastically—and accomplished absolutely nothing. Nothing.

The sensation was roughly equivalent to hitting an armored personnel carrier with an electric flyswatter. Commendable courage. Negligible effect.

"Shit!" It came out before I could stop it.

"You're just figuring that out?" Jess had it worse—the baton rebounded off the block and nearly took her off her feet, the shock running back up through her arms. Harvey's wire did catch, but it only stopped the Jäger's leg for half a second. Half a second later, the Jäger raised its right-hand pneumatic gun. The thing was shorter than I'd expected. Clean black, no excess material—it didn't look like a non-lethal weapon. It looked like someone had compressed every hostile intention into a single cold tube.

"Scatter!" Thwump. Thwump. Not gunpowder—a compressed, muffled discharge, the sound of something violent happening very quietly. The first round grazed past my ear and punched into the burned wood behind me, detonating a spray of splinters. The second round hit Jess in the outer thigh. She staggered once.

"Jess—!"

"I'm fine—" She didn't finish the sentence. Her voice changed. Not the sound of someone who'd been hurt. The sound of someone being switched off from the inside. Jess looked down at her leg. Her expression went through confusion first, then something that looked like recognition—like she'd just understood exactly what had happened—and she said something spectacularly obscene.

"…Fuck." Then she went down. No cry. No struggle. Like every bone in her body had been quietly removed. The sound she made hitting the scorched ground was light in a way that was genuinely frightening. My head went blank with a static burst. Paralytic round. One hour. Unconscious. Designed to turn a person into living luggage. Designed to drag a whole squad down with one shot. Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

"Hoshino!" Maki's voice was almost a shout.

"Don't you dare—" But I was already moving. I knew it was stupid. I also knew I'd just finished saying, out loud, don't charge out because your ego gets the better of you. But the person on the ground was Jess—the one who'd been calling me Your Highness thirty seconds ago, the same asshole we'd cursed with and gone hungry with and slept pressed up against in the dark because it was too hot and neither of us wanted to admit it. So yes. The squad leader broke protocol. Completely and without reservation.

I threw myself down next to Jess and grabbed her harness, hauling her backward. The Jäger didn't rush a third shot. It simply walked forward, steady, confirming that the target had been neutralized. Harvey threw a second wire from the rear—this one caught around the knee joint. Didn't bring it down, but bought a fraction of a second. Maki came in from the other side, dropping hard onto both knees in the hot ash, pulling Jess with me.

"I'll count to three, then we drag her behind the buttress root!" she said.

"I don't need you to—""One!"

"Hey—""Two!"

"You absolute—""Three!" We pulled together. Jess wasn't heavy, but with her body completely limp, it was like dragging a bag of wet sand. Harvey somehow found the bandwidth to comment through the earpiece:"Congratulations. The squad has officially acquired its first piece of large furniture."

"Shut up!" Maki and I said it at the same time. If the timing had been different, that might have been a genuine team-building moment. Then it got worse. From the steam vents to the right-rear, a second heat signature appeared—pressed so low it was barely there at all. Every muscle in my body went cold. A second one. Not one. It had never been one. When the second Jäger stepped out of the steam, I almost laughed. Not from relief.

From the specific absurdity of realizing that our carefully constructed, painstakingly layered plan had probably looked, from the other side, like a kindergarten obstacle course. Harvey's voice came out flat and dry.

"…I hate this."

"Get in line," I said, grinding my back teeth. The two Jäger moved in tandem—one pressing forward, one holding the perimeter, neither hurrying. The unhurried quality was worse than a direct charge. It was the patience of something that already knew the outcome. The calm of it was more insulting than aggression would have been. You're not going anywhere. We both know it.

For the first time I understood it clearly—not as a tactical problem, but as a fact: When the gap in equipment and capability crosses a certain threshold, tactics don't become useless. They just mean you die with slightly more dignity. The first Jäger lowered its head, looking down at Jess where we'd dragged her behind the buttress root. Then it raised the gun barrel. Not at me. At Jess, who couldn't move a finger. Something cold and sharp drove straight through my stomach.

"No!" I shouted it, throwing myself forward again. Maki's grip locked onto my harness like a steel clamp.

"Hoshino, stop! You go out there, you go down with her!"

"Let go!"

"You charge out now and you're just volunteering to be our second piece of furniture!" I knew she was right. I knew. But watching that scene unfold still made my throat close up with something so ugly I wanted to be sick. And then—in that exact second— My HUD exploded. Not a routine alert. The entire edge of my vision washed out in blinding orange-red, warning text cascading across the display like a waterfall.

【THERMAL CONVECTION ANOMALY: CRITICAL EXPANSION】 【FIRESTORM WARNING】 【ESTIMATED FRONT ARRIVAL: 00: 27: 14】 【PROCEED IMMEDIATELY TO AVAILABLE SHELTER】 I froze. Maki froze. Harvey sucked in a sharp breath. Even the second Jäger stopped mid-step. Then the first one turned its head—slowly, deliberately—toward the second. The second looked back. Just one brief exchange. No words. No signals. Nothing you could point to.

But it felt exactly like watching two examiners—cold, methodical, utterly dispassionate—confirm between themselves that the test had covered enough material. The next second, the first Jäger lowered its weapon. Not out of mercy. Not because we'd earned the right to live. Simply because the firestorm was coming, and they had other protocols to follow. They withdrew. One step. Two steps. Back into the steam and charred forest shadow, until there was nothing left but empty air. No scrambling. No urgency.

Even calling it a "retreat" felt too human. It was more like— An audience deciding the performance wasn't worth staying for. I stood there, completely rigid. The firestorm had saved us. That should have been cause for celebration. We were alive. Jess was alive. We had time to find shelter. By any reasonable measure, this was the moment I should have snapped to attention and started barking orders like a proper squad leader. But the first thing that hit me wasn't relief. It was humiliation.