The captain's voice was cold and numb. Green heard no anger in it, as though he had long since grown used to this.
Yet Green could faintly sense the restrained fury beneath it, anger and energy building before a volcano erupted.
There's something wrong with this captain, Green thought. Then a briefing for the combat mission appeared on the screen before him.
Nothing in the earlier sections seemed amiss, but when Green finished reading the briefing, he noticed a tiny envelope-shaped icon at the end.
"What's this?" He clicked it without thinking.
A black drop-down menu appeared, with a one-minute countdown in its lower right corner.
The menu contained a secret mission briefing.
According to it, Green was to carry out a covert mission: enter a Federation Void Warship and steal the manufacturing technology for the Small Stellar Missile.
Green narrowed his eyes. The mission was intriguing. The empire already had the technology to manufacture Stellar Missiles, so there was no reason to steal the Federation's version.
And yet the person Green was playing had received precisely that mission. There was more to it than met the eye.
Green also found a name in the briefing—William Tattle!
"Emperor Tattle!" The surname instantly brought that emperor to Green's mind.
But he soon realized William must be Emperor Tattle's ancestor, quite possibly Emperor Tattle I himself—the man who would overthrow the Finite Empire and found the Tattle Dynasty!
It looks like I'm a spy embedded in the Finite Empire, but serving the Tattle Lineage, Green thought. If so, everything made sense.
The Tattle Lineage was a great noble lineage within the Finite Empire, but it did not possess Stellar Missile technology and had no other way to obtain it. Its only chance might be to exploit the war with the Federation and