Him.

Bold as brass. Clear as day.

Top of the Jaguar Warriors’ Most Wanted list. Public enemy number one.

The Conquistador.

The lightning gun was warm and humming in the sergeant’s hands, plasma generator charged. He raised it to fire, but the Conquistador reacted quickly — too quickly. He snatched up the injured cameraman and threw him at the Jaguar Warrior, a kind of moving human shield. A bolt of blue-white brilliance leapt from the l-gun and struck the hapless cameraman full on. He howled and writhed and burned, laced with crackling light.

The cameraman’s smouldering corpse tumbled towards the sergeant, who twisted aside to avoid being hit. When he regained his balance, he found himself directly face to face with the Conquistador. Implacable blue eyes stared out from slits in the terrorist’s face mask. A rapier flashed. The sergeant looked down to see snakes emerging from a gash in his abdomen. He tried to catch them but they slithered out of his hands, falling at his feet in coils. That was when he realised the snakes were his own intestines. He looked up again at the Conquistador, who opened his throat with a swift transverse stroke of his sword.

The sacrificial victim currently on the altar started screaming — not in pain, but in alarm and horror, as the sergeant slumped to the floor. The priest gaped, dagger hanging uselessly from his fingers. The other Jaguar Warrior sergeant sprang into action. It would cost precious seconds to prime his lightning gun, so he drew his macuahitl from its scabbard and lunged at the Conquistador.

The Conquistador countered the first blow with ease, the macuahitl ’s obsidian blade glancing off the rapier’s steel. The sergeant went for the Conquistador’s neck on the back swing, but again the blow was deflected, this time rebounding off the rapier’s hilt guard. The two men thrust and parried. Metal and volcanic glass chimed as they met and met again. The sergeant managed to get a jab past his opponent’s defences, but it glanced off the Conquistador’s cuirass, leaving nothing but a scratch.