Penguins of Anarchy III: Edge of Disaster

Fourteen

Dreemo lay on his bed, in the dark, before the sun came up. He was thinking—thinking about Drake, and about Felly. How he longed to fight alongside his uncle again! How he wished he could touch his bride's face again! But no, all of his hoping was futile.

Dreemo thought that, after recovering from his initial depression, he would be able to do anything. He had even tested that theory when he went onstage, disgraced Waff, and got the people of Antarctica to cheer for him. When he had done that, he had felt invincible, like nothing could hurt him anymore.

But now Dreemo had crashed back into reality and remembered what a broken world he lived in. No matter how great or skilled he was, it still couldn't bring Drake and Felly back. Gostt was right: They didn't know where to look. And Fragnile was right, too: Any attempt at a rescue was suicide. And besides, Dreemo knew in his heart that Drake and Felly were dead.

Now he was stuck here, in a bunker, surrounded by chaos. His company consisted of a drunken, pessimistic uncle; an unsympathetic colonel; a mysterious masked soldier who could be as much of a foe as he seemed to be a friend; and four more young soldiers just like himself who were as powerless as he was.

Dreemo thought again of what Gostt, that mysterious penguin, was to him: a masked soldier who could be as much of a foe as he seemed to be a friend. Things had been going alright until Gostt came along. It was only after Drake had recruited Gostt that they almost died in Brazil, that Bledsoe Much betrayed them, that President Larikos was captured, and that Omniscion broke out of prison and escaped with Drake and Felly.

A question popped into Dreemo's mind. It seemed like an obvious one, but he hadn't thought about it until now: Had Gostt deactivated the defense artillery? Had he been the one who sabotaged Blizzard Base's defenses and allowed Omniscion to get away? Dreemo hadn't seen Gostt during the entire battle. Maybe Gostt was as much a traitor as Bledsoe Much.

Dreemo would have continued on this train of thought, but he was still weary from his months of sleep deprivation. Before he could stop himself, he drifted into a deep sleep.

Waff paced the brightly-lit conference room, like he always seemed to do, as the other high-ranking officers of the Antarctican Army sat at the meeting table. "Drake and his task force have been nothing but a problem ever since they showed their faces!" Waff exclaimed.

"You call rescuing Antarctica from captivity a problem?" one of the lower-ranking generals asked skeptically.

"Sure, their motives may have been pure at first, but just look at them now!" Waff said. "I shouldn't have to keep stating over and over again that Drake betrayed the entire nation when he shot his own teammate and allowed Omniscion to escape!"

"You still don't have proof that Drake's teammates were the ones that deactivated the defense artillery," Col. Terasane said. "And you still don't have any evidence of Drake's motives."

"If Drake's team had helped him lower our defenses, then why would he shoot Sgt. Dreemo?" another colonel asked.

"Yes, and if they weren't the ones who did it, then what makes you think that all of Task Force Anarchy is corrupt?" another general added.

"At one point I didn't have an answer to that question," Waff replied, intensity in his eyes. "I admitted to myself that Task Force Anarchy may not be wholly corrupt. But you all saw what Dreemo did the other day. He humiliated me and Project Homefront, and he tried to elevate himself to leader of the Antarctican forces!"

"Don't exaggerate things, General," the first lower-ranking general said. "Sgt. Dreemo suffered from sleep deprivation for three months. You can't expect us to think he was clear on what he was doing when he knocked you off the stage and tried to cause an uprising."