“Well, I don’t see how that could have gone a whole lot worse, Lieutenant,” Wilhelm said to Lieutenant Larry Denton over the shuttle’s wireless. “Even with the original objective complete, the rest of the world is only hearing about the tour group. The Tees are in complete control of the media. All anyone’s hearing about is the fact that the resistance just blew apart the only ship in the fleet with civilians on it. The Resistance has been officially marked as a terrorist cell. Even the general population is backing the Tees right now.”
“Sir, by the time we knew about the civilians, there wasn’t even enough time to abort the mission, let alone evacuate the civilians or change the target. If I didn’t know better, I’d say it was a set-up.” The Lieutenant looked away from the comm unit to think about that possibility. “Sir, do you think it’s possible that–?”
“I don’t even want to hear the rest of that question, Lieutenant!” The angry tone of the Muffin Man’s voice made it apparent that he wasn’t going to tolerate the direction in which the Lieutenant was taking the conversation. “I personally know the man who provided that intel, and there’s no way he’d sabotage the intel.”
“Sir, I realize that, but isn’t it possible his intel was wrong? I mean, he had to have a source of his own, and his source could have found out.” Larry wasn’t sure why the enigmatic Muffin Man was defending some random informant when bad information had just ruined the operation.
“No, the intel was solid. We screwed up the timing. The time that the tour group was supposed to arrive was in the time zone under the ship, not standard time. Their shuttle was supposed to be between the docks and the ship when the ship was attacked. We screwed up, L.T. Plain as that.”
“Wait, so you’re saying you knew about the civilians?” Larry was astonished. If he had known about the civilians from the beginning, he would have been watching for them, just in case. “Sir, if you had told me that in the first place–”
“It wasn’t a critical piece of information at the time, Lieutenant,” said Wilhelm. “If I had told you, some of the team members would have been overly hesitant. You may have had to call off the mission because someone got cold feet needlessly, and worse, you could have had someone freak out on the ship and get your fellows killed. Now, I’m not saying that what happened wasn’t a tragedy, and was sure as hell bad for our recruitment. Hell, we’ve even had three percent of our safe houses threaten to shut down. Luckily, we were able to talk them out of it, but to be honest, we’re even luckier no one threatened to turn anyone in. My point is, the operation itself was a success. The fact that we were able to take out five Dragon Riders in one fell swoop only adds to the fact that we’ve proven these ships can be taken out.”
“Sir, about that,” Larry inquired, “what makes these five Dragon Riders such a victory? I mean, sure, they’re elite pilots, and we just cut out over ten percent of their ranks, but they can’t be as powerful as the scuttlebutt suggests.”
“Let me stop you right there, Lieutenant,” Wilhelm interrupted. “I have witnessed first-hand the power of one of these Dragon Riders. They are the the Armada’s most elite warriors, and I have seen a single Dragon Rider take out an entire facility filled with hundreds of highly trained Secret Service agents and Navy SEALS. With two knives. So I want you to understand right now that the Dragon Riders are a great deal more powerful and dangerous than any rumors you may have heard floating around.”
At this, Larry took a loud gulp and sat back onto his seat beside the comm unit. “Well, sir, then I guess we’ll just have to roll with the punches the media throws at us and hope no one turns anyone else in while this is all boiling over. I guess it’ll have to settle down eventually.”
“Precisely,” Wilhelm’s voice sounded off slightly more enthusiastically. “Now, bring my people home. I want to brief you all in Drury Lane.”
“Drury Lane, sir? You want us to come to headquarters? I don’t think Mickey even knows where Drury Lane is right now.” Drury Lane was code for whichever safe house the Muffin Man himself was staying at. Only a select few resistance members had ever been trusted with Drury Lane’s location before, and it had been said that the Muffin Man had worn a mask the entire time to prevent giving away his identity. Now, he was asking Larry’s entire team to come and see him personally after such a disastrous mission. Whatever he was up to, Larry was sure he didn’t like it. The Muffin Man wasn’t the only one who had been hiding his identity all these years. Other than the Aylings, no one knew him as anything other than the Lieutenant. He couldn’t have few enough people know about his connection to Drigondii Sheii’Cronell’s past.
“Don’t worry, Lieutenant. I already sent Mr. Shore the necessary coordinates. An escort will be waiting for you when you land. I’ll be expecting you, Lieutenant.” With that, the wireless turned off, and Larry was left to his thoughts.
“Well,” Larry said to himself, “This ought to be interesting.”
‘Yes, it should,’ Grie thought to himself. He had woken up just in time to catch the conversation reverberating through the hull of the shuttle. His suit, having fully rebooted, had been so kind as to take the tiny vibrations it was catching through its sensors and allow Grie to listen in, though the conversation had admittedly been muddled up slightly. Still, he knew quite a bit right now that he was sure the resistance didn’t want him to know, and they already presumed him to be dead. ‘Not that that’s really a stretch in the least. I should be.’
Grie thought back to those moments falling through space, and as he recalled using lifeforce to make his way to the shuttle, he became a bit uneasy. What did this mean? How could he have done that? He couldn’t be a Sheii’Cronell or a Valkyrie, and they were the only people in his culture who were known to wield such power. He had quite a few questions, but they would have to wait. Right now, he had to focus on this unique opportunity. Still about ten miles out from the shuttle’s apparent landing zone, Grie released the locking mechanisms his suit had been using to let him sleep without letting go of the vents, and he slipped off the back of the shuttle. This far out, no one would notice, and his suit could protect him from serious injury falling from this altitude.
‘Now, then,’ Grie thought to himself as he landed, using one of his hands to balance himself and keep from falling to his knees. ‘I think I’ll go meet an old acquaintance about some muffins.’ With that, he stood in the slight crater he had formed and began to walk toward the shuttle’s landing zone.