God Save the Queen

God Save the Queen

By Cleve Taylor

There weren’t always dragons in the Valley. And there weren’t any to be found there for nigh on five hundred years. But there sure the heck was some there now.

The scientists at Cal Tech and MIT speculated that it was the nuclear tipped warheads on the Russian missiles that their frustrated and irresponsible leader had launched at Kiev and Chernobyl that wakened the giant flying reptiles from their centuries long sleep. The gigantic blasts coupled with radiation woke the dragons. At least that’s what four out of five scientists who endorsed Honey Nut Rice cereal concluded on Channel Five News.

Much to the dismay of Russian leaders, the dragons somehow deduced the source of the missiles that wakened them from their sleep and the thunder of dragons flew en masse to the launching areas and laid waste to the towns and villages they found there. After turning the Russian battery towns to rubble, the dragons did not return to their caves near Kiev. Instead, they stayed in the mountains that encapsulated the Russian valley which had hosted the nuclear missile launch pads. It wasn’t that they didn’t like their nesting caves near Kiev. It was that the dragons had awakened hungry, and their long flight to the valley and their attack covering the whole of the valley left them even more hungry and tired. And the valley, being a natural larder for the dragons, offered up beef, lamb, human, and a variety of other dietary choices. Some of the meat was naturally aging after the attack, while other meats could be had fresh off the hoof.

The Russians were now fighting on two fronts, one in Ukraine, which they were now losing, especially after angering the entire Western world by introducing nuclear weapons in desperation, and the second in their homeland against wily flying dinosaurs who could torch a Battalion without making a sound or providing a targetable profile. Sightings of the dragons were harder on the morale of Russian conscripts than would be the sighting of an enemy howitzer battalion.

The entry of the dragons into the war was a cause for celebration in Ukraine and for their supporters around the world. But everyone who gave thought to the implications of an untethered thunder of dragons knew that great danger lay ahead. No one had had cause to deal with dragons in over five hundred years. The pictures from the valley gave no clue as to how a country could protect itself from similar devastation. One day the dragons’ food supply would run out. Then what?

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Commander Michael Brannon, recalled to duty only yesterday, waited outside the Prime Minister’s office, unsure of why he was there. Across the room, equally unsure, he recognized General Douglas Mortl, who had been buried for years in an off the books facility near Fort Meade in the states. Before he had a chance to renew acquaintances, he saw a slightly younger face that he recognized being brought into the room. The name, William Hagan, he associated with DARPA at the Pentagon. But he gave Hagan only a glance. His eyes locked on the young female Lieutenant who pointed Hagan to a chair. She looked familiar, but he could not place her. She disappeared into the Prime Minister’s office without knocking.

She reappeared a minute later and said to them, “Gentlemen, the Prime Minister will see you now.”

Inside the Prime Minister welcomed them, introduced them to the heads of MI5 and MI6, and thanked them for coming on such short notice. “These are dire times,” she said. "We are still dealing with Brexit, Covid variants are still with us, there seems to be a world-wide breakdown of civility, and now it is predicted that a flock…”, she hesitated and looked at the lieutenant and she said, ‘They call it a thunder, Mam’. She nodded and continued, “and now it seems that London is on the flight path of a thunder of dragons which currently is laying waste to a large valley in Russia. Since dragons have not been seen for centuries, what we know about them is what we can currently observe. That information is in the folders in front of you.”

She stopped and looked around the room, stopping and catching the eye of each man in turn. “Gentlemen, I am told that you as a group are the men and women who can save Britain from the threat the dragons pose, that you can draw on the resources of Britain and the United States as needed, and that you have the flexibility of mind to answer impossible questions against impossible odds. Gentlemen, I ask only one thing of you.

“Save Britain!

“Lieutenant Ellis will be your liaison to me and help you get set up. Commander Brannon, you are in charge.

“God save the queen.”

With that, the Prime Minister left the room and everyone started talking at once.