The General's Son: The Offspring Trilogy, Book 1 by Charlotte Goodwin

Author:Charlotte Goodwin [Goodwin, Charlotte]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Independently Published
Published: 2023-03-03T16:00:00+00:00

20

Spying And Secrets

Location: Zargon observation ship, 400 km above Earth (Planet B13536)

Lukin was on shift alone. It was the best part of her day. The other pesky crew members were off duty, sleeping, doing their own thing; she didn’t care as long as they stayed out of her control room. She sat in her chair in front of the control panel, keeping one eye on the screens while she perused the logs of the previous shifts, looking for any more anomalies, especially in the log of H108. He was an interesting specimen indeed. Something was going on with him. She still recalled the first blacked-out period from half a cycle ago, she suspected there’d been more. The logs looked like they might have been tampered with to cover the gaps in the drone’s video record somehow, but she couldn’t be certain.

The suspicious episodes always happened when she was off-shift, at roughly the same time of the day on their planet usually. But it was not regularly enough for her to be able to predict it or to be in the control room at the right time.

She’d read everything she wanted to. She slumped in her chair and ordered a cup of carrowcel, then sat watching the Specimens of Interest go about their business. One was in the middle of a long car journey – how dull. Another was engaged in an act of reproduction with a female. More interesting, but routine. One was in a meeting, another sat at a desk, and H108 was walking towards a geological anomaly; a large sandstone feature in the middle of sector seven.

He’d visited the place a lot recently, she’d seen that in the log. It tended to be at the same time as when she spotted her presumed cover-ups. This time he was doing it when she was watching. She’d know if he did vanish.

She leant forward in her chair and watched with interest; she enlarged the screen. She watched him leave his car and walk up a gulley and into a tunnel. The drone stayed with him. She tracked him underground and the drone followed for a while longer before he vanished. The screen went black, the signal lost, the drone suddenly unreachable.

‘Ship, report on location of H108’s drone.’

‘No signal detected,’ the ship replied.

‘Ship, check recent drone report for signs of faults.’

‘No faults detected.’

‘Ship, has the loss of signal on this drone been reported before?’

‘Invalid question.’

Lukin scowled. ‘What do you mean invalid question?’ she muttered. ‘Ship, check log of H108’s drone for previous gaps in the reporting record.’

‘Invalid question.’

Lukin huffed and prodded at buttons on the control panel in an attempt to find the answer manually. She spent a while searching, scouring the logs, trying to find some hint of evidence to reveal a cover-up, but she had no luck; the information didn’t seem to be there. She glared at the black screen as if staring at it would make it come back to life and give her the answers she sought. It didn’t change.

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