Horsemen's War (The Rebellion Chronicles #3) - Steve McHugh Page 0,2
murder. I cried for her, for me, for the horrors I’d inflicted. I cried in a snowy, blood-speckled field in Virginia as my best friend held me and brought me back from the darkness that had enveloped me. And right then and there, I knew there was nothing I wouldn’t do to repay him for that kindness.
Chapter One
MORDRED
Somewhere over the Atlantic Ocean
Now
Mordred stood at the rear of the open cargo door on the heavily modified Airbus A400M Atlas. Hades had made some calls to a few friends who still had access to military equipment and found two identical planes that he’d been able to borrow.
The Atlas’s twin had already made its pass and was on its way back to its base in England. Hopefully without difficulty.
“Don’t tell me you’re afraid,” Hel said from beside Mordred, using her earpiece and mic to communicate over the sounds of the engine.
“No,” Mordred said as the plane continued along above the clouds. “Just hoping this works out as planned.” He touched his cheek, just under where his eye had been ripped out almost a year earlier. The eye itself had grown back, but he still couldn’t see out of it, and occasionally the constant healing itched.
“We have a good team here,” Hel assured him.
Mordred looked behind her at the team. Each of them had joined knowing they were going to do a military free fall, or HALO jump. Few of them had done one previously, and certainly never one that culminated in landing on a moving target. Mordred wasn’t even sure it would be possible, but his air magic was going to ensure it was as smooth a landing as he could make it.
“We ready, then?” Remy the foxman asked as he pulled down the visor on his specially designed mask. He made sure the two black-bladed swords in the sheaths on his back were in place and did the same for the two custom Colt revolvers in holsters against his hips. “I’m looking forward to this.”
“Me too,” Diana said, loading her MP5 with hollow-point silver rounds. As a werebear, she was acting as the muscle of the group, muscle that Mordred was fully aware was going to get a workout, but not everything could be killed by brute force or magic, so everyone apart from Remy carried an MP5.
Heading up the team were Zamek the dwarf and Chloe Range-Taylor, an umbra with the power to absorb and redirect kinetic energy, both more than capable of holding their own. Although Zamek had been less than thrilled about having to wear a face mask for the jump. He held his double-bladed battle-ax in one hand, rolling his shoulders as if about to fight the clouds themselves.
“No one tell him what happens if there’s lightning,” Remy said in a stage whisper.
Zamek gave him a scowl and placed the blade of the ax in a sheath before attaching it to his back.
“We know what we’re here for,” Mordred said to his team.
“Yes, but maybe next time we could pick something to land on that isn’t moving on an ocean,” Zamek said. “Like not a passenger ship.”
“I like his suggestion,” Diana said.
“You all complain a lot more than you did before I was king,” Mordred said as the red lights beside him flashed green.
“We’ll complain more later, if we survive,” Chloe said with a grin. She was the first to jump out of the plane, followed by everyone else, with Mordred last.
He wrapped himself in a shield of air as he fell through the clouds. He spotted his teammates below him and pushed the air out in front of them to ensure that they moved smoothly.
The target was thousands of feet below, a small patch in an ocean of blue. If this went wrong, they’d be hitting the water or the cruise ship fast enough to, if not kill them outright, certainly do a lot of damage. None of them were human, but that didn’t mean that they were invulnerable to being killed or seriously injured.
Mordred had not made his council very happy with his announcement that he’d be joining the mission. They’d wanted him to stay back in Shadow Falls, to help organize the resistance, but as he’d pointed out, the resistance didn’t need him to organize anything. His friends did need his help. Mordred was a target, and landing on this cruise ship was going to make him bait. The mission needed the enemy to be focused on him and his team.