Magnolia gripped the rail. She was furious at Ted for almost killing himself and others, but mostly she was elated that X had saved the young idiot. Maybe the “Immortal” thing wasn’t a crock after all. Maybe the king was indeed the sky god that some of the Cazadores believed him to be.
Rhino had never liked his Cazador nickname much, but it was better than the first one they had given him: Perrito, or Small Dog. He had known another name before that, but his birth name, Nick Baker, was abandoned after the Cazadores captured his and several other families living in a bunker.
The name sounded weak, and the boy he had been was weak. But the only thing that Cazador warriors respected was strength.
Strength was how Rhino had risen through the ranks. He was no Nick Baker, and he was no Small Dog.
As a teenager, he used physical strength and cunning to best fighter after fighter. In his twenties, he continued to climb the ladder from grunt soldier to sergeant, eventually becoming one of a dozen lieutenants commanding a platoon of soldiers. Then, after the battle for the Vanguard Islands, X had bumped him all the way up to general.
He had proved himself many times over in the wastes, slaughtering beasts that would make most men piss inside their armor. But it had never been enough to earn him the degree of respect and loyalty that el Pulpo had from his ranks. Nor had Rhino earned the respect of Colonel Vargas and the other officers of the Black Order.
Maybe he didn’t deserve it.
Rhino hadn’t been strong enough to protect his team of Barracudas on their last excursion to fight the monsters. They all were dead now, including Wendig, the toughest warrior, male or female, he had ever known.
Rhino stepped into his private training chambers inside the rusted hull of Elysium. The huge vessel was the biggest in the entire armada. It served as the training ground and barracks for new warriors and also as military headquarters.
Colonel Forge, Colonel Vargas, and Colonel Moreto would meet with him at the command center later to assess the new recruits. But first he had his morning training.
He lit the candles on sconces mounted to the bulkhead. The glow spread over a raggedy old mat, a rusty rack of weights, and a wall of mirrors, most of them cracked.
Wearing only a loincloth and sandals, he walked into the center of the space and went to work with the double-headed spear.
The mirrors reflected his movements as his callused hands twirled the spear over his head. He closed his eyes, picturing two enemies trying to flank him on the deck of a boat. The blades slit both men’s throats in a single swipe.
Then he swiped upward at a third imagined enemy, opening a gaping line from pubis to chest and spilling viscera onto the deck.
The vivid images in his mind were not fantasy. They were memories of the time a squad of Cazador assassins tried to kill him so their leader could take his spot as lieutenant. It had happened on a coastal foray to a place once called Georgia.
And but for Wendig, the assassins would have succeeded in their mission to kill Rhino. The ferocious woman warrior had saved his life, fighting by his side against six men.
The memory of the ambush prompted a little surge of adrenaline through his veins. He continued training, recalling almost every swipe, thrust, and parry of that fateful day.
Rhino lost track of time as he reenacted the fight. When he stopped to check the clock, he was bathed in sweat. He opened his eyes, and the memories vanished like footprints before a wave.
Chest heaving, he finally lowered the spear. If he didn’t hurry, he was going to be late.
After putting on his armor, he picked up the spear and climbed the companionway to the weather deck. There, in the faint glow of a crimson sunrise, a group of two hundred had gathered. They ranged in age from fourteen on up to their midtwenties.
Most of them looked like Rhino did at their age: thin and weak. It wasn’t until el Pulpo started feeding the growing Cazador human meat from their hunting trips that Rhino had grown in size. But these young men and women would not be eating human meat anymore. Their diets would consist mostly of vegetables and fresh fish. Their training would be rigorous, six days a week from dawn to dusk, in the baking sun or out in the wastes.
Some of them would never see their families again.
Rhino looked to the west, where the sky was still dark, and glimpsed the blinking red light on the last flying airship in the world. Its launch bay was also filled with young men and women.
Unlike the Cazadores, they worked mostly in the darkness, diving into the abyss to simulate what they would face out beyond the barrier surrounding the Vanguard Islands. Today they were returning from their first mission outside that barrier.
Seeing them reminded Rhino that the sky people had a lot more in common with Cazadores than he had ever thought. To fend off extinction, the Hell Divers, too, had fought on extreme terrain against mutant beasts—maybe even more than his own people had. Unlike here, where there were no electrical storms or radiation, living on an airship required constant maintenance just to keep from falling out of the sky to certain death on the poisoned surface.
He looked away from the airship and walked out onto the deck. A group of veteran Cazador soldiers in armor waited for him.
Colonel Vargas had also shown up to look at the new recruits. He remained in the command center in the ship’s island tower, watching like an eagle from its nest. The man was known for observing, with his own eyes and through the spies under his command.
Rhino had warned X about that, too, but as long as the spies stayed off the capitol tower, X was satisfied. And so far, the militia had kept any unwanted visitors away.
Vargas’s protruding eyes met Rhino’s. The colonel didn’t even bother trying to hide his resentment.
Rhino turned away to have a closer look at the newly recruited teenagers talking amongst themselves. Some of them sat on the deck with their heads propped up in their hands, trying to grab some sleep.
He woke them up with his booming voice.
“Get up, shark bait!” he yelled in Spanish. “You got two seconds to get into position before I start tossing you overboard!”
All side conversations stopped as the youngsters snapped to attention. All but one.
Rhino immediately gravitated to the biggest recruit, a kid with tattoos all over his muscular arms and legs.
A hideous crab image covered his shaved head from the widow’s peak to the nape of his neck, its stick eyes just two inches above his own.
The young man was Felipe, son of Whale, who had perished with the rest of the Barracudas. Rhino could almost hear Whale’s spirit screaming from the hereafter at his disrespectful son.
“Get in line!” Rhino yelled.
Felipe ignored the order.
The other teenagers watched, eager to see whatever was going to happen.
So this is how it’s going to be…
“Did you not hear me?” Rhino said “You got crabs inside your head, too?” He strode up to where the young man sat. Felipe showed his sharpened teeth.
Rhino sensed that this was due to bad blood, and he was right.
“Why should I listen to you?” he asked. “You got my dad killed.”
“You’ll listen to me because I will feed your nuts to the crabs if you don’t.”
Felipe unfolded his arms and stood up. “You could try, but you’re past your prime, old man.”
Rhino would have laughed, but Felipe was half right. Now in his thirties, he was indeed past his prime. Sofia, almost six years younger, didn’t agree when he worried about his age, but she didn’t know what it was like to fight against fit, cocky young men like Felipe.