Chương 300: 127.I Nearly Lost You 1

The next second, Maki moved. No shout. No sprint. Just the armor's boots slamming down — one heavy thud against the deck — and her whole body launched forward in a straight line, like she'd been fired from a rail. The first swing wasn't aimed at the boss. It went for Fatty, the one pinning me down. The axe blade came down at an angle — not a cut. A smash. The powered frame drove the full weight of the axe down with it, and armor plating, bone, and the table's edge all shattered together in the same instant.

Fatty's scream made it only halfway out of his throat before the blow sent him — and the table with him — flying backward into the supply crates behind him. I lost my support and dropped to my knees, palms hitting the floor through dust and blood. D came in almost the same second. Not through the front door. Through the gap where the lander had punched in, clearing the rim in one motion, rifle already coming up as his boots hit the deck. Bang. Bang.

Two Imperial soldiers reaching for their weapons went down almost together — one shoulder blown open, the other's leg folding under him, dropping him straight to his knees. D didn't spare either of them a second look. His left hand swept out, directing the two transport soldiers who'd come in behind him toward the flanks.

"Clear the right!" he barked. One soldier dove behind the terminal desks. The other kicked over a side rack, sealing off the tall, thin man's escape route. The whole hall dissolved into chaos — like someone had shoved an iron bar into a vat of molten metal and started stirring. The boss reacted fast. He hauled Jess up by force, blade snapping straight across her throat.

"Back off!" Maki didn't. She didn't even slow down. She took one more step forward. Her armored boots ground through the scattered metal underfoot, a high, grinding shriek. Her breathing came through the external speakers, heavy, like some mechanical pressure being forced down and held. The boss clearly hadn't expected her to keep coming. His wrist tightened, the blade pressing a thin line of blood into the side of Jess's neck.

"I said get ba—" He never finished. Jess dropped her weight sideways all at once. She drove her one good leg straight into the back of his knee, taking the wrecked chair down with her. The blade scraped across her neck as she fell, slicing open a strip of her collar guard. In that same instant, Maki's axe arrived. Not a downward chop. A horizontal sweep. The flat of the axe hit the boss's knife arm first, snapping the whole limb outward.

Then the blade rolled back through the turn, coming down hard into the junction of his shoulder and neck. Armor split. The sound of bone breaking was clear even through the alarms — clear enough to make your scalp crawl. The force of it threw him sideways into the wall. He slid down. But Maki didn't stop. She really didn't. She moved like she hadn't even registered that he'd already fallen — the second strike landed an instant later, straight into his chest.

The third came down heavier still, the axe and the armor's power assist driving together, hard enough to shake the wall. Blood and shattered plating sprayed across her chestplate and the edge of her visor. Blindingly red. I stayed on one knee, watching her. Watching her pull the axe free. Bring it down again. Pull it free. Bring it down again. Every strike precise. Every strike deliberate. Unauthorized usage: this narrative is on Amazon without the author's consent. Report any sightings.

Every single one went far past the point of enough. The tall, thin one broke for the flank. D put two rounds through his legs and dropped him, then kicked the sidearm out of reach before his hand closed on it. Another Imperial got his rifle half raised before a Yukikaze soldier coming through the side door tackled him from behind — the gun fired straight up, blowing out a light fixture overhead. Glass rained down. The whole room was nothing but gunfire, alarms, ragged breathing, and metal striking metal.

But the clearest sound in my ears was still Maki's axe, coming down. Heavy. Blunt. Deeper every time.

"Maki!" I called her name. She didn't hear it. Or she heard it and didn't stop. D glanced back, his face changing, and crossed the room in two strides to lock both hands around the back half of the axe handle.

"Enough!" Maki wrenched hard enough to nearly take him with her. He staggered, cursed under his breath, then drove his whole body sideways into her, shoulder armor knocking her off balance.

"Kushima! Enough! He's dead!" The axe froze in midair. Maki stood there, still locked in the half-finished downswing, chest heaving. The armor's heat vents cycled open and shut, venting bursts of scalding white steam. Her hands stayed clamped on the haft, tight enough that the gauntlet joints let out a faint, grinding protest. She turned her head, slowly. Like this was the first moment she'd registered that the room held more than enemies. She saw D first. Then the blood on the floor. Then me.

I was still on the ground, one hand braced against the deck, the other cradling my numb shoulder. My lip was split. My face probably looked just as good as the rest of the scene. Jess was slumped against the far wall, her collar guard sliced open, a thin red line at her throat, her injured foot still shaking, her face pale enough that the facility's cold light seemed to have drained half the blood out of her on its own. Maki didn't come to us right away.

She stood where she was, like something inside her had jammed. The violence that had been driving her a moment ago had its power cut all at once — but a machine doesn't snap back to normal the instant you pull the plug. It idles first. Overheats. Shakes. Only then, a half-beat late, does it register that it's actually stopped. The axe was still raised. But her eyes weren't right. Not a killer's eyes.

The other kind — the look of someone who'd run in on nothing but rage and fear, and only once the people she came for were actually safe, realized exactly how close she'd come to throwing herself in right alongside them.

"... Shimo." Her voice, when it came, was wrecked. Like her throat had been scraped raw. She took one step toward me. Stopped again. She'd probably just really seen the blood at the corner of my mouth, and the bruising already blooming where Fatty had pinned my wrist. Her eyes held on me for less than two seconds before snapping to the thin cut at Jess's throat, and the obscene swelling of her ankle. Whatever crossed Maki's face in that instant was hard to name. Not simple anger. Not simple fear.

More like something had cracked straight through the middle of her head, and everything she'd been holding down — the delayed terror, the fury, the guilt, and something else she never normally let herself anywhere near — all surged up together and collided on the same face at once, so completely that for a second she couldn't manage any expression at all. D holstered his weapon and swept the room.

"Area secure," he said, flat.

"Two live, one critical, the rest are down. Team's still clearing the upper level." Nobody answered him. Or rather — nobody in this small pocket of air had any bandwidth left for a tactical report. Maki finally lowered the axe. The blade dragged along the floor, pulling a shriek out of the metal. She walked toward me, but slower than anything she'd done a moment ago — like every step first had to confirm there was no more violence left in her hands. She crouched down in front of me.

The powered armor made the motion clumsy, almost comic. Under any other circumstance, I'd have said something — you look like a piece of heavy construction machinery that just learned to kneel. I opened my mouth and found nothing there but the taste of blood. Maki's hand rose halfway, then stopped. Like she didn't know where it was safe to touch. Afraid of hurting me. Afraid of what was still on her own hands.

In the end she only brushed her fingertips against the side of my face — pulling back before she reached the reddened patch of skin.

"... Sorry," she said. The word came out so quiet it was almost nothing. I looked at her and managed, voice wrecked: "Isn't it a little backwards to say that after hacking someone to pieces?" Maki's breath caught. Not a laugh. Not a sob. Just a breath that couldn't decide which way to go, stuck somewhere in her chest. Jess, propped against the wall, pale enough to match the sheets on a hospital bed, still found the energy to speak.

"Agreed." She dragged in a breath and managed a crooked, not-quite-steady smile.

"And... ten more seconds, and I was filing a formal complaint about the Yukikaze's rescue response time." Maki's head snapped toward her.

"You—" The word broke off. Because she'd finally gotten a real look at what Jess's leg looked like. That was exactly where the break happened. The Maki who'd walked in carrying a battle axe, driving it down blow after blow — she seemed to get pulled straight out of her own body in that instant. What was left was a different version of her: pale, the residue of killing intent still fading out of her eyes, already being overtaken by what was actually standing in front of her. Shimo's mouth, bleeding.

Jess's throat, cut. Her ankle, swollen past recognition. The floor covered in bodies and groaning survivors. The air thick with hot metal, blood, disinfectant. And her, standing in the middle of it, the axe still dripping. She looked, for the first time, like she understood exactly what she must have looked like coming through that door. I watched her throat move. Her grip on the axe handle loosened, then tightened again, hunting for an angle that wouldn't shake.

D walked over, crouched to check Jess's leg, brisk and businesslike, like he'd decided not to see anything else in the room.

"Can you walk?"

"No," Jess said, perfectly honest.

"Good. Then don't try." He turned to me.

"You?"

"Not dying."

"Then up." D pulled me to my feet with one hand, his eyes already past me and on Maki.

"Kushima. Stow the axe. This isn't the time to space out." Maki jolted like the words had physically yanked her back. Her fingers trembled once before she finally snapped the axe onto its magnetic mount. She still didn't straighten all the way. She looked at me, then at Jess, mouth pressed into a hard line, the fracture where control had been forced back over chaos still plainly visible. I found myself thinking that this, right now, was somehow worse to watch than her swinging that axe had been.

Because when she was swinging it, at least she knew what she was doing. Right now, she didn't.