The afternoon sun lay across the half-dried Yangtze channel. Blood and river water had mixed to the same color.

More than half of the Trembling Brigade were dead or wounded. Several small Jin-Skin Dolphins and one mid-sized specimen lay motionless on the sandbar alongside them.

The King of Jin-Skin Dolphins had been dragged clear of the water.

But every time it turned — every time the enormous fluked tail swept around — it caught one or two of the fighters trying to close in and flung them into the shallows, where the other dolphins were waiting to finish them.

Even so, even with that violence still in it, the King was losing. Stranded on the bar, its head torn apart by the centipede bomb detonations, it was bleeding strength with each passing minute. The terrible force that had scattered everything in its path began to ebb.

The hunt had taken an hour.

When five members of the Trembling Brigade were all that remained standing, the Jin-Skin Dolphins in the shallows let out a collective cry — the sound of grief, or something close enough to grief to be indistinguishable from it.

The King was dead.

Five people. They took the cables and pulled the King's carcass toward the bank.

Every step deliberate. Every step without hesitation.

Han Shoucheng and the other command officers climbed down from their armored vehicles and went to meet them.

"Mission accomplished." Chu Chuanshu let the cable drop from his hand. He didn't say more. A single gesture to the four surviving members of his brigade, and he turned to lead them slowly back into the water.

They pushed a wooden boat out.

Five people climbed in, took up oars, and rowed toward the middle of the channel.

Ragged clothing. Backs like endings.

Chu Chuanshu's voice carried back across the water, loud and clear:

"Forward! Forward! Forward!"

Then all five of them were rowing and singing together, their voices rising over the dried Yangtze:

"Our ranks march toward the sun — / Feet planted on our motherland's earth, / The hopes of our people on our…