Heritage

Heritage (Chapter 48)

Chapter 48: Ethan

"What do you mean he's gone, Captain?"

"I mean General, that as of twenty-one thirty-four universal standard time yesterday, your son, Lieutenant Leon Blake went missing in action with the rest of his squad on planet Valdun,"

I stare at my desk for a moment, quiet. I feel the anger swelling inside of me. My heart pounds in my chest. I feel my face flush. I look back at the monitor in front of me.

The Captain's face stares at me in anticipation.

I breathe deep and run a hand over my face, stifling the building rage.

"What happened?" I ask.

"From what our monitoring of the mission shows, everything was going very smooth. However, at the point of infiltration, Leon's bodycam shows him yelling something incoherent towards the direction of a gun tower before it exploded. The blast wave ended up knocking out the camera. Comms went silent after that. We can only assume that his team was either captured or killed. I opt to believe the former as I'm relatively sure they know who he is,"

"What were they there to grab in the first place Captain? I'm looking at the schematics of the base right now. This place was fortified like Fort Knox,"

"Unfortunately, I can't tell you that. The boys in suits want to keep this compartmentalized. I barely convinced them to tell me before sending my guys in,"

"Why did you even send them in the first place?!" I yell, coming out my chair. I place my hands on the desk, remaining in a standing position.

I hang my head low, taking a few deep breathes to choke the anger back down. I look back up at the monitor. The Captain stares at me with the face of a disappointed father. He raises one eyebrow at me. It's the same face I've seen from him all too many times before back when he was my Captain.

"Now you listen to me Ethan. General or not, I taught you every single thing you know about leading men. You will not under any circumstances speak to me in that way again son. Even if we had the luxury of saying no to the suits, it wouldn't make any difference. They'd just move on the to the next group of people and get them to do it. And that runs the risk of it being less experienced individuals doing it. I knew that Leon and his team could handle it,"

"Then how did it go so wrong, McCall?"

"Well, this is the part that you should be actually be pissed off about. It wasn't until after the mission went south that the suits decided to reveal to me that none other than Warlord Superior himself, Rin'Gal, was in charge of the base,"

I close my eyes and let out a long sigh. So many questions race through my head that it forces me to retake my seat.

I zone out, interlacing my fingers on my desk, rubbing my thumbs together as I think. I decide to let the questions go as they all would do nothing to help the situation.

"What are you doing to have them released?" I ask simply.

"As of right now, nothing. We've been trying to make contact with Rin'Gal for hours over every known Sekrid channel we know. Nothing,"

"You should get back to that then Captain. I apologize for my demeanor before. Let me know anything as soon as you can,"

The captain begins to say something but I end the call before he can. I lean back in my chair, trying to allow the waves of stress to fall off of me. I shut my eyes, letting it drift away.

As I start to doze off, I hear a beeping sound. I try to ignore but something gnaws at me to answer it. I sigh quickly and open my eyes to find that it's a call notification on my computer. I tap the plasma screen and the call answers.