Who did this? (Patreon)

 Purple Marten took a bite of her raspberry pastry and then took a sip of her coffee as she sat in the sun room of her house in my Equestria dreamscape. Along with enjoying her breakfast she reviewed the mornings dispatches, reports, and messages. The documents had already been decoded and came from locations all over Equestria. Now she was prioritizing them deciding which required her immediate attention. Once read they were either burned in the house furnace or forwarded via courier to High Command. 

 
  Amongst the reports was one from one her most talented operatives, Drone 992 who had all the traits of a great senior operative and possibly a theater chief in the future. Apparently Drone 992 had had a close call with several of Celestia's field operatives. Drone 992 was uncertain whether their next meeting should be cancelled or not in light of this.  Excuse me corporal 

      Purple Marten's pulse jumped just a bit at this news. Drone 992 had been tasked the responsibility of creating and orchestrating the capture of Princess Cadence. His operation was crucial to the overall success of the upcoming campaign.  Purple Marten jotted down some inquiries she wanted started right away to see if her star operative had somehow been compromised.  

 
  With that completed she turned her attention to other reports. One was from another operative working in the Royal Palace. Drone 992/Corporal Trotter was unaware of them or any of the other changelings that were now planted in the palace of the Two Sisters, and none of the other operatives were aware of him or each other. Which was just the way she wanted it.   

  This operative worked in the palace infirmary. The weren't suppose to report until the end of the week, but apparently last night there had been incident involving a prisoner in the palace. The prisoner had been one Lucky Card who had been swept up in the raids in Manehattan. However last night Lucky Card had died under very unusual circumstances during what should've been a routine interrogation.  Keep her away from me! 

 
  As a result Princess Celestia and Princess Luna were now turning the palace upside down trying to determine the individual, parties, being, or phenomenon that had caused the death of the prisoner. Fragments This worried Purple Marten. Rakorno's escape earlier this year had been carefully crafted to test the thoroughness of the palace's security, and to measure how effective the ponies would be in conducting their investigation of the event. 

  What happened last night was not something she'd authorized, nor did the incident match any methods used by changelings. It appeared there was another party who was also attempting to manipulate events in the palace.

 
  Purple Marten rose from her seat and began pacing around the room. The campaign to seize control of Equestria was a vast, complex, operation involving literally thousands of operatives. Now it appeared there might be an unknown 3rd party who was attempting sway events in the kingdom. Who did this?     

        Marten didn't like this at all. Would this unknown party attempt to derail her operation before, during, or after it had occurred? What capabilities did they possess? If they found out about the changelings plans would they allow them to occur? Would they try thwart them so their own scheme could come to fruition? Would they work with the changelings? Would they attempt to warn or even worse ally with the ponies to stop the plan Purple Marten was organizing? 

  
  She decided that first off she'd consult the High Command and see if they had received any news about events like this happening elsewhere in Equestria. Also she'd have the archives searched for any possible references to similar events in the past that changelings might've encountered before the Deep Freeze. Finally she'd have operatives start searching various pony libraries, government records, and university archives to see if ponies had encountered something like this before. This operation was too far along now to have another party disrupt it. They would be dealt with! 

 To be continued.