In two strides, he closed the distance. His hand shot out, claws fully extended, shattering the administrator's wrist and driving the body back into the table edge with enough force to snap ribs. A second strike crushed the larynx. The body collapsed without a sound.
The plated trader fired, a shot that would have taken Raveth in the chest. Makrath intercepted it with his forearm plating and returned violence in a single precise line, his claws splitting the seam between armor and softer tissue.
Bone yielded.
The kill was clean.
A blue energy beam lanced toward the gemstone case. One handler fell. The second stumbled, clutching the gravity cradle as he tried to stay upright.
Makrath pivoted. The beam dispersed against his shoulder plating, and he tore the wall port free, smashing it into the deck until it went inert.
The remaining trader seized the case and ran.
Makrath followed without accelerating. His gait was inevitable, his tail low and steady, counterbalancing his mass as bodies scattered ahead of him. He caught the trader at the edge of the hall, crushed the cervical column with one hand, and caught the case with the other before it could strike the floor.
A civilian collided with his chest plating: small, unarmed, panicked.
His tail lashed once to arrest momentum.
The correction came too late.
Makrath killed the civilian.
The body dropped, and something in his chest registered it; a cold notation of waste, the kind of death that served nothing.
Another body moved toward him, security, or something braver and more foolish. He no longer distinguished. His tailswept low and hard, destabilizing the target long enough for his hands to finish the work.
The movement lacked elegance. Control slipped, and he continued anyway.
Neutral security hesitated. Suppression fire struck him again, and his systems tore through it. He advanced faster than protocol allowed, not pursuing panic but removing interference until weapons lowered and bodies stopped advancing.
Then Makrath stopped.
The gemstone case remained intact in his hand. The hall had gone quiet, blood slicking the floor, the station's light dying against his armor and leaving his silhouette stark and unreadable. His tail lay extended behind him, heavy against the deck. Inside the booth, nothing moved. The Khelar delegation lay where they had fallen—some mid-lunge, others barely out of their seats.
Raveth approached carefully, stopping two full paces beyond striking distance. The old habit. The safe distance. "Makrath. We have the shipment. We need to withdraw."
Makrath handed the case to the remaining handler without ceremony. The handler's hands were steady. Shock would come later.
They withdrew. The station alarms rose too late to matter.
As the shuttle sealed and the familiar pressure of controlled atmosphere replaced recycled air, Makrath stood unmoving. His armor was cycling down, the dermal plates softening incrementally, but something beneath them had not settled.
The violence had felt good.
Not the civilian—that remained cold and flat in his memory, filed alongside the other costs of what he was—but the rest of it: the ambush answered, the bodies yielding, the brief, sanctioned permission to stop holding back.
He had needed it too much and had let it run too long.
The release had come easily—too easily.
And somewhere beneath his helm, in the space where no one looked and no one asked, Makrath wondered when permission had stopped being enough.
CHAPTER 2
Makrath was summoned before the recall alert finished cycling.
He did not slow.
