Winter's Legacy: Future Days (Winter's Saga Book 6) (26 page)

55 Monarchs and Milkweed

Michelle spent most of the flight gathering intel and preparing for their assignment.   In that planning, she had secured satellite images of the Winter ranch and the surrounding area.  She made it her business to know not just the weather, wind direction and velocity, but the topography of the land and roads in the area.  Using the data and the known location of 17th Company, she already determined two valid campaigns that would serve their purpose.  She wanted to be prepared when she approached Company Leader Hays.  With his onsite surveillance and her added muscle, Meg Winter was never again going to see the light of day.  

Michelle was smiling as she plucked her phone from her pocket to call Rhett Hays.  As it rang, she looked around.  The driver of her truck was a trusted metamonarch who, like all of them, had several names for his alter personalities, but primarily went by Gipson.   His eyes skillfully took in the road before them while glancing into his mirrors to be sure the rest of the convoy was following as they should. 

“Hays,” he answered.

“Hays, it’s Michelle Andrews.  My team is en route to your location with an ETA of twenty minutes.”

“We’ll be ready for you,”  Rhett assured.  

“Excellent.  Andrews out,” she ended.

“Copy, Hays out.”

Michelle replaced her phone and watched the scenery go by beneath a dark and moonless sky.

Exactly twenty minutes later the trucks had maneuvered down a path just wide enough to fit their trucks.   Michelle’s senses were heightened.  Something was wrong.

“Is this the exact GPS coordinates?” she asked the driver for the fourth time in five minutes. 

“Yes, ma’am.  We’re still receiving the signal from just around that hill.” The driver nodded toward the slightly elevated ground their headlights were bouncing from as they slowed to mount it. 

“
Where are the lights?” Michelle thought aloud.

“Maybe their leader had them snuff
out all lights once the sun went down to hide the base.”

“Maybe,” Michelle said, although the frown hadn’t left her forehead.  “Maybe it’s something else.  You don’t know Meg
like I do.”

“Excuse me, ma’am, but she’s just one girl, right?  How much of a threat is she against all of us?”

“I would rather face an army of metahumans than take on that ‘one girl.’” 

Her driver glanced at Michelle’s face—sure she
was exaggerating.  Instead, Gipson saw Michelle’s eyes crackle with hatred.

“Meg Winter is brilliant and powerful—unpredictable and influential.   She always has been, but now she knows how to wield her gifts.”

They rounded the small hill and pulled into a clearing. 

“Stop the truck.” 

Gibson obeyed immediately. 

The two trucks behind followed suit, stopping to a duet of squeaking brakes that echoed too loudly.  Headlights were left on
trying to light up the site.

Michelle opened her door and looked around.  The others followed her lead. 

“Here?  Are you sure this is the correct location?” she asked no one in particular.

A monarch marched up to her holding out his phone.  “This is where we were to meet, ma’am.  We’re standing on the exact coordinates.”

“The grass is trampled,” another monarch noticed aloud.

“We found
tire marks here,” a third reported.

“It looks
as if they were here.”

“I just spoke to the Company Leader twenty minutes ago.  They
were
just here.”  Michelle wracked her brain trying to figure where they would have gone and why.

“They must have left in a hurry, ma’am.  They left a whole case of weapons.”

The three dozen monarchs had gotten out of the trucks and were milling about as they worked the kinks out of their stiff legs after a long day of travel.

Michelle had just pulled her phone from her pocket and pressed the redial button when she heard the last slave’s comment
on the case. 

He was moving in impossibly slow motion as he leaned over, flipped the case’s latches open and began to lift the solid lid.

“Noooo!”
she held out her left hand and screamed, her mouth still pressed into the forgotten phone.

Her stomach dropped to her knees in the fraction of a second it took to trigger the explosive.  

Time hung in the air.

Everybody had turned toward Michelle as she yelled.  Instinctively she’d flung herself to the ground, but she wasn’t fast enough.  She
saw the blinding burst of light against the flesh of the monarch who had taken the bait and opened the case.  The upper half of the man’s body exploded from the lower half.  Monarchs flew into the moonless night, spinning and tumbling in an aerial dance of death before crashing in heaps. 

The
IED’s concussive blast was immense.  Its effect devastating. 

Michelle gingerly pulled herself up on her elbows.  Her ears were sources of screaming, stabbing pain.  Blood trickled from her lobes.  She looked around trying to assess damages, but couldn’t see through the dust and debris.  She thought of yelling to her team, but decided to save her breath.  They wouldn’t be able to hear any better than she could.

She felt around for her phone, but it was gone, blown from her hand by the blast wave.  She forced herself to her feet.  Her long, dark hair torn loose from its clips, stuck to the bloody scratches on the exposed skin of her neck and face.  Her equilibrium affected by her blown eardrums, she stumbled back to where she believed the trucks were.

The screaming silence and pounding heartbeat in her head made it hard to think, but she knew she had to warn Arkdone.

Never had she been on the receiving end of destruction. 

Meg will pay for this,
Michelle seethed.  She knew full well Meg Winter was the reason she was counting bodies on the ground—digging through their pockets looking for a working cell phone. 

By the time she found one, eleven Monarchs had surfaced alive and
were as fight-ready as she was.  Five more were alive, but too injured to be useful in battle.  The rest were maggot food in the making. 

None of them could hear past their torn eardrums, so Michelle scrounged up a pencil and paper to write her orders.

The Winter Clan set this trap.  Assume metahumans of 17th Company are enemies now.  Gather what you can off the bodies and load up the two working trucks. Be careful!  Don’t touch anything you don’t have to.  More traps could be set and we cannot afford to lose any more people.  We leave in five minutes.    

The note was passed hand to hand until all eleven had read it.  They stood alert, waiting for her to dismiss them.  Absently, she waved her hand, motioning for them to get moving.  Though bloody and battered themselves, every slave obeyed without question.

Michelle made her way to the first working truck and climbed inside.  She knew she would be severely punished for her failure.  She just wished the Senator would allow her the chance to kill Meg Winter before her penance.

Grasping the cell phone with both hands, she managed to steady her trembling fingers just enough.  Choosing her words carefully, she began dictating the text message to her Master. 

56  Half

An hour later, the remaining metamonarchs had relocated to the east of the Winter Ranch.  They chose the location so the sunrise would be to their backs obstructing visibility to anyone in the west.

By the time Arkdone arrived, the new site had been scouted and secured.  The central command base tent was erected and communications were in place.  Each Monarch was set up with a radio and throat
mic, but using them was still tricky.  Everybody who experienced the blast was regaining their hearing slowly.

Arkdone had been yelling from the moment he leaped out of his Jeep having come directly from the airport
—though his yelling had far less to do with being sensitive to everybody’s ability to hear than his fury over the turn of events.

“How many
metamonarchs are left, Andrews?” he hissed.

“Half, sir.  Our numbers were cut in
two.” Michelle stared at her master with absolute obedience clearly etched in her expression.

“
Half?
  Who did this?”  He flung the papers detailing their losses directly at Michelle’s face.  She leveled her gaze but knew better than to flinch. 

“One of our people tripped an explosive.  From the looks of the explosion and the devastation it created, I would say there were several blocks of
C4 triggered when he opened what had looked like an abandoned weapons case.”

“
C4, set by whom?” he seethed.

“Preliminary recon confirms it.  Williams’ 17th Company has changed allegiances.  They’re fortifying the Winter ranch house now.”

Arkdone narrowed his eyes leaving obsidian slits.

“Get Williams on the phone now!”  He bellowed and hurled his phone at Michelle.

She reached out and snatched it from the air effortlessly.  Her stoic, obedient expression hadn’t changed. 

“Yes, sir.”

She manipulated the phone and had it ringing within seconds.

“Please hold for Senator Arkdone,” she spoke smoothly into the phone and stepped toward Arkdone, to pass him the device.

He snatched it from her hand and started yelling even louder.

5
7 Retaliation

Looking through a night vision scope, Meg swallowed hard at the carnage left in the wake of the explosive. 

“How many did we get?” Valen asked for the second time.

Meg was trying to count the bodies, but was having difficulty.  “I’m estimating fifteen, though it’s difficult to,” she winced at the bile threatening to rise in her throat, “identify the pieces.”

Beside her, Valen was lying on her belly carefully studying the Monarch’s new position in the east. 

“Excellent.” Valen grinned into her scope.

“It looks as though their new base is pretty well established.  I still haven’t seen Arkdone since he arrived.  How far away is Williams?”

Though Valen quickly adjusted to having access to Meg’s psychic abilities, she wasn’t any less impressed every time she saw her eyes glass over as she zeroed in on the other players in this war.

Meg forced herself to drop her scope and take a slow, deep breath. 

“Williams and his team are about twenty minutes away.” She blinked several times as she mentally backed away from the connection and added, “He just got off the phone with Arkdone.  They’re both furious at the turn of events.”

5
8 Up, Down, Arch!

“How exactly are we going to do this?”  Theo asked the cabin as he watched Margo and the others secure the parachutes on their backs.

“While I agree it’s not the ideal aircraft for a jump, it’s still doable,” Jacobi explained.  “Basically we reduce airspeed to
fewer than 200 knots, adjust our altitude to 4,000 feet depressurizing the cabin, open the emergency doors behind the wings and jump.”

“You make it sound so easy,” Cole frowned incredulously.

“Well, I won’t lie.  It’s not a walk in the park.  The forward velocity is still going to thrust them along.  It’s dark as dirt out there and they’ll be landing in the middle of a battle zone.  So no, not so easy.”  He pursed his lips together and nodded once.  “I’d better get up front.  Trainer’s never piloted a craft with jumpers.”

Margo was checking each of the others’ equipment, tightening and securing where needed. 
Decades had passed since her last jump, but it didn’t matter.  Her military training was engrained. 

“We’re jumping at 4,000 feet so
when you exit, start counting ‘one-one thousand, two-one-thousand, three-one thousand’—until you reach ten.  Then, yank this cord to release the pilot chute—it is a small auxiliary chute.  It will catch air and deploy the main canopy.  Use the toggles connected to the edges of the chute to steer.  Our goal is to land as close to the house as possible, while avoiding Meg’s IEDs.  She already went over where those devices have been planted, just don’t get caught up in the moment and forget them.”

Creed, Farrow, Evan and Alik stood stone-faced and ready. 

“Yeah, I take it back.  There’s nothing easy about what you guys are about to do.”  Cole shook his head, wide-eyed.

“Everyone needs to meet in the house to gear up.  17th Company will be standing by with weapons and comm.”

“We haven’t talked about what happens if something goes terribly wrong,” Sloan spoke up in front of everybody for the first time in hours.  She had been trying to wrap her head around what they were about to do.  Cole inched closer to the girl with steel-gray eyes and reached out to hold her shaking hand. 

Sloan had never seen combat before and wanted to help, but felt useless.  She and
Kylie had shared a quiet discussion about their desire to help.  The two had decided they would do whatever it took to travel back to the house with Cole and Maze.  They agreed they may not be able to fire a weapon, but they were good at stitches and bandages.  Every war needed medics.

“Even Evan can’t see what will happen tonight.  We go into this with firm objectives, a solid plan and determination.  We stay in communication and above all, we pray.  This
could be over in the next twelve hours.  When the battle does begin, go into it knowing we will prevail—we will because we have to.”

The intercom overhead squawked to life.  “Ladies and gentlemen, we have less than five
minutes until drop zone.” 

“What do you think, Evan?  Any last words of advice?”  Alik asked.  Evan reached out and touched his brother’s shoulder, trying to get a vision of his immediate future.

He paused and closed his eyes. 

“I got nothing,” he said, shaking his head. 
“I’m so worked up, I couldn’t predict what letter comes after X in the alphabet.”

“Y,” Alik smiled good-naturedly at his little brother.

“You boys ready?” Margo asked.  Her usually warm brown eyes crackled with adrenaline.

“Yes, ma’am,” they chirped. 

“I love you so much and I’m so proud of you.”  She leaned in to hug each of the boys.

She continued the hugs to Creed and Farrow.  “
I’m so proud of each of you for your courage and strength.”

“Love you too, Mom.”

“Thank you, Dr. Winter.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“It’s time,” Jacobi’s voice came on over the intercom.  “Open the back door and get to jumping.”

“Let’s do this,” Creed breathed as he reached for the emergency handle of the door and yanked it wide.  The wind ripped through the cabin.  Everyone instinctively
gripped anything bolted down to steady themselves.

“Remember to wait three full counts before the next person jumps,” Margo yelled over the roar of the wind.  The other four jumpers nodded, tears leaping into their eyes as they squinted.

Creed moved into position first, wanting to model how to exit for Alik and Evan.  He crouched at the open doorway, held the frame.  He moved his body up, down and then pushed out of the plane arching his back immediately stabilizing himself.  He cleared the plane and resisted the urge to turn around to watch for the others.

Alik, then Evan each stepped up next and mimicked Creed’s movements exactly.  Margo gave Theo one last kiss before following Farrow out of the plane. 

The five skydivers hurtled through the night sky.