Penguins of Anarchy IV: Endgame

One

Four penguins sat in a gunship, none of them talking to one another. The leader of the group, a penguin with snowy white hair and black skin, sat in the fuselage, leaning against his assault rifle. In his mind, he was beating himself up for all of the stupid decisions he had made in the past several months.

"Drake," a voice called from the cockpit. "Hey, Drake?"

"Yeah?" the aging black penguin replied.

"We're uh...getting close."

"How close?"

"Pretty close."

"How close, Camo? In terms of the metric system, I mean."

Camo hesitated. "About fifteen kilometers."

Drake nodded. He then decided to get up and walked into the cockpit, where his younger brother sat in the pilot's chair. "Remember, there's an energy shield up, so unless that goes down, you won't be able to cover us."

"Right. Thanks for reminding me." Camo, a black penguin with spiky orange hair that was graying on the sides, leaned back in his chair. He took a deep breath and stroked his gray goatee. "I miss my booze."

Drake laughed quietly and went back to his seat. Sitting across from him were his other two comrades. He looked at the more mysterious of the two—a penguin in a wool jacket, a faded blue baseball cap, sunglasses, a retractable infra-red lens, and a mask with teeth stenciled onto it which completely covered his face; Drake had never gotten to see what was behind that mask, and he wasn't sure he wanted to. "What do you have in mind for when we get to the island, Gostt?" Drake asked.

Gostt shrugged half-heartedly. "Just to get them out of there," he replied in a raspy voice.

Drake nodded. He turned to the aqua-green penguin with the brown flattop hair. "You ready for this, Glyphton?"

There was no reply.

"Glyphton?"

The aqua-green penguin perked up. "What?"

"I said, are you ready?"

Glyphton barely nodded. "Yeah. I'm ready," he said weakly.

Drake sighed. No one on this gunship was happy, or even looking forward to this mission. They all knew that the chances of Dreemo, Felly, and Riker still being alive were extremely slim.

They had first made contact with Dreemo two days ago, just when they were escaping from Antarctica after killing Waff. Dreemo had said that Sam, Riker, Marcosis, and Bledsoe Much were all dead, but Omniscion was still alive. Later, Dreemo reported that Riker was actually still alive, but then his radio went dead. They hadn't heard from him in forty hours. Drake wished he had taken an aircraft with supersonic capabilities. It would be almost impossible for all three of the soldiers trapped on the island to still be alive, especially if Omniscion was hunting them.

Drake scowled at himself. This was entirely his fault. Fragnile, Ursynz, Larikos, and Terasane were all behind bars because of him. He had personally shot Nekron out of necessity. Celtic had gotten shot because Drake had the guts to kill Waff when others hadn't. Marcosis and Sam may have died because of Dreemo's decisions, but those decisions were based off of what Drake had done to him. Drake had shot his own nephew and not told him about the plan. Dreemo had gone to Alcatraz, desperate for answers, thinking Drake and Felly were trapped there, when only Felly still remained on the island. That's why this mess was as big as it was.

Drake easily could have blamed Gostt for everything that happened, since it was Gostt's idea to get him captured, but at this point he was afraid to push his masked companion, who was probably blaming himself anyway—unless he had meant for all of this to happen. The idea that Gostt might have planned for this all along lingered in the back of Drake's mind, but if Gostt wanted to destroy Task Force Anarchy, he would have done it by now.