A muffled screech of agony followed as the beast landed and spun back toward him.
X got up, wincing from a searing pain where a toe claw had slashed his forehead. With one eye closed, he retreated from the flopping monster. It struggled up onto all fours, then reached down with one hand to keep in the loop of intestine that bulged from its midsection.
X felt the cut above his left eye—just a nick compared to the gash in the variant’s visceral wall.
Panting and grunting, the creature struggled to remain on all fours. At first, X thought it was going to collapse, but then it must have gotten a whiff of something. All its muscles seemed to flex in a ripple across its body. The powerful hind legs sprang the injured beast upward, on top of a shipping container.
X suddenly wondered whether starving these things had been the best idea. He moved backward with his sword up, ready for the monster to jump off the container.
The rope of intestine flopped out from the open abdominal wound as the Siren leaped down onto the top of the crate. But instead of attacking X, it darted toward the youngsters. The crowd scattered, with screams and shouts in all directions.
“Shit,” X muttered, pulling the knife from the armor strap at his hip. Closing one eye, he threw the blade by the hilt, end over end. The point sank into the beast’s right leg, and it crashed in a heap on the deck.
X ran over to the thrashing monster, then sprang backward to avoid a slashing claw before bringing the sword tip down hard below the thickly armored forehead, right where an eye should be. The cracking sound merged with a peal of thunder, and when the noise passed, the deck was silent.
Blood pooled around the dead Siren.
“Bring up the other cage,” X said.
Rhino nodded at the man on the crane, and the second cage clanked up over the railing and swung around.
Sheets of rain quickly rinsed away most of the blood on the deck. X touched his scalp wound. It wasn’t just a nick, after all, and would probably need a couple of sutures. Another scar.
Rhino shouted for everyone to back away from the new cage. Inside was a male Siren with its wings strapped down.
X plucked the sword from the female’s skull and held the bloody blade flat to the rain.
“Who’s next?” he shouted over the din of thunder. He held the sword out, offering it to each of the Cazador officers.
Colonel Vargas grabbed the hilt and held it up to the sky, looking down the blade. He handed it back to X, then drew the sword from his own sheath.
The colonel’s bulging eyes flitted to Rhino, and the sharp black teeth grinned.
X half expected him to challenge Rhino. But instead, Vargas moved over to the cage and tapped the side with his blade.
For now, Rhino and X seemed to have put to rest any potential challenges, but X had no illusions. It was only a matter of time before some crazy, ambitious bastard like Vargas tried to kill him and his loyal general.
First Ted’s dangerous little stunt, and now an intense storm that continued to strengthen.
Magnolia just wanted to go back to her quarters and sleep with the rain pounding the shutters, but she was stuck on the container ship used for Hell Diver training.
Waves slapped the vessel, and the pouring rain washed away the red chalk X had used to mark the landing spot for the Hell Divers in training.
Discovery had rushed back to the islands several hours ago to avoid the lightning after taking a hit to its new shields. The explosion of sparks had been visible even down here.
She walked over to Ada Winslow. The young lieutenant was helping make up for the lack of available officers while Timothy took her place on Discovery.
“Hell of a storm,” she said.
“Hell of a dive,” Magnolia replied. “Ted was just about shark bait.”
“Probably the best use for that guy. Maybe X should have let him splat.”
“What?” Magnolia said, glancing over.
The lieutenant kept her gaze on the bow as it cleaved the waves. The darkness ahead seemed to lighten as they approached the border between their little paradise and the terrors of the outside world.
Ada didn’t reply to her question, so Magnolia asked again.
“You think X should have let Ted die?”
This time, Ada looked over, her freckled features uncharacteristically hard.
“No, not really, but I do think he should have killed the Cazadores when we took this place. If it were up to me, I would have killed every last soldier. I still don’t understand how X could let them keep their weapons.”
The bow pushed through the barrier, and two oil rigs appeared in the distance. Magnolia felt a shiver of memory from her captivity, when she was in a cage on a ship, looking at these same two rigs.
“Take us wide around those,” Ada told the officer at the helm.
“No,” Magnolia said. “Let’s go right by them. I want to see something.”
As the ship approached the rigs, Magnolia wasn’t sure what she wanted to see. Perhaps she was curious to see what had changed since the sky people took over, or perhaps it was just the human fascination with things different. Either way, they were about to get a good, close look.
The large container ship sailed by the two outlying rigs, giving everyone on the bridge a view out the starboard portholes. Tarps fluttered in the wind and rain. Some were tied down over leaky shack roofs; others shaded crop seedlings that grew on the platforms. But by far the most important use of tarps was as catchment areas, sluicing rainwater into thousand-gallon cisterns, which stored it for drinking, bathing, and cleaning. The intricate system of reservoirs and pipes reminded her that these people weren’t barbarians, despite their appearances and violent culture.
When Magnolia had sailed underneath them months ago as a prisoner, hundreds of people were staring down at her from a bridge that stretched between the two rigs. She remembered their heavily tattooed bronze flesh, the clacking teeth, and the stares. It was like discovering an alien race, and she had been the alien.
Now most of the Cazador people were sheltering inside their shacks. Only a few came out to watch the ship pass. Ada folded her arms over her chest and watched a group that had gathered on the fifth level of the open platforms. The men held spears, and one woman had a pitchfork.
They stood at the edge of the platform, looking as if they were about to be invaded.
“Barbarians,” Ada muttered. “X should have taken every weapon at the very freaking least, and he should have killed the warriors, especially the Black Octopus Gods or whatever bullshit they call themselves.”
Magnolia didn’t necessarily disagree with Ada’s assessment, but X had made his decision in hopes of keeping the peace, aware that other threats still lurked out there. If the defectors did find this place, they would need every Cazador to help in the fight.
“We need them,” Magnolia said quietly.
“For what?” Ada said. “What can a woman with a pitchfork do against one of those machines?”
“They don’t all have pitchforks, Lieutenant.”
“Yeah, well, she does,” Ada said.
The woman continued to watch from the platform as the boat sailed by. At the sight of the next rig, Magnolia’s breath caught. She remembered this place well. The two-story structure was a warehouse and salting and drying rack for fish and livestock the Cazadores butchered.
But there would never again be dolphins hanging from those hooks. One of X’s first royal decrees had been to outlaw the killing of those intelligent creatures.
A chill rushed through her mind as she continued reliving the day of her capture. After the boat had passed the rigs, she recalled seeing a container ship with a deck full of caged Sirens—the same container ship she was on today.