Page 3 of Gravel and Grit

Roc’s sigh brought Zaek out of his musings. Seeing the expression of reluctance tinged with old heartache brought his thoughts back to Petronus.

Roc’s sire had not been able to weather the centuries alone. The lucky bastard had found a secondHondassa—something Zaek hadn’t been able to do once in almost fifteen hundred years—but when she died in childbirth, Petronus lost himself to grief. He went so deep into theduramna, that even his son, his closest blood relation, hadn’t been able to sense him.

Though all these centuries of being alone had been more than tiresome, he at least had never experienced the pain of losing not just one but two mates. Bitter loneliness was a small price to pay to escape that anguish. And since he held to the Prime Directive, his contact with humans had been absolutely minimal. He’d never been around any Earthians, let alone a female, long enough for them to do anything but run away screamingmonster.

It was actually one of his private concerns that he’d been alone fortoolong and wouldn’t know what to do with a female when he returned home, even if one pinned him down and tried to mount him. The Earthians had an odd saying about some things being like riding a bicycle, meaning impossible to forget, he assumed but was sure that didn’t apply to mating and damn sure not to a female’scanikin.

“Wait, wasn’t there some doomsday shit connected with the sigils?” Roc asked suddenly, startling Zaek from visions of fumbling awkwardness.

Zaek narrowed his eyes at the younger male, taken off guard by the unexpected question. Roc had a terrible habit of exaggerating, and Zaek was sure that’s what was happening here, so he remained silent.

He has spent too much time around humans, and not nearly enougharound his own kind.

Agreed. It has made him… weird.

While he wouldn’t put it past the humans to concoct some ridiculous end-of-days prediction about a fucking boot, let alone their sigils that were unexplainably unique in appearance, he hadn’t heard anything himself. Of course, being that he was a hermit, hewouldn’thave heard anything unless a Khargal told him directly, some word of it came over the radio frequencies he obsessively scanned for some sign of rescue, or it showed up in the news on television.

He did know that some of his brethren had given up all hope of rescue and lost track of theirs. The flagrant disregard for protocol was vexing, but it had been a long time since they’d crashed, and some slackening of procedure was inevitable. Zaek hadn’t been overly concerned about the abandoned tech while the beacon was still in space, since the sigils’ basic functions were inactive, but now that everything was online, and rescue was imminent, them being lost was a problem.

The Prime Directive, the mandate they all lived by, said not to interfere in the lives of more primitive beings. Part of that was not leaving anything behind that could irreversibly alter their technological evolution. Humans had come a long way in the last thousand years, and the possibility of them reverse engineering their tech was real.

“We need to put out a call. All the sigils must be retrieved immediately.

Even your sire’s, regardless of whether or not you decide to stay.”

“You think?” Roc shook his head at Zaek. “Except my sire, in his ultimate wisdom, didn’t wait till I returned from my little walkabout. He passed it off to his human friend and went to ground. The son of a bitch couldn’t even saygoodbye, good luck, don’t fuck-up and get lynched, Roc.”

“Fuck,” Zaek growled, his expression twisting in irritation at the news.

“Believe it or not, I’ve been looking, but shit’s not that easy.” Roc stood and began pacing the living room. “My sire’s friend was rather… prolific. Do you know how many descendants one human can have? And who’s to say they even kept the sigil in the family?” Roc shook his head and growled. “I should’ve come back home sooner. If I had known… ”

“I have been working on a tracker to trace the origin of the beacon’s operating frequency. That is why I was out when you…arrived. I needed parts. It may take me a few days to finish, but I am close.”

“I don’t have a few days, do I? They could find Petronus before then,”

Roc argued, waving a hand at the television, though it was no longer playing the news.

“Then you need to go. Find your sire, and that sigil,” Zaek commanded.

“And save the world.” Roc grinned.

“You are an idiot,” he muttered, rolling his eyes, but he couldn’t stop a quiet chuckle.

Zaek walked Roc to the door, nodded once in farewell, then slapped the younger male on the back.

“Be safe. And do not fail.”

2

MIRA

Mira stared in shock at the computer screen, before looking back at the device on the lab workbench next to her, where it was hooked up to about twenty different electrodes and sensors.

Unless she was hallucinating—something she couldn't immediately dismiss, considering the wholly unacceptable amount of sleep she’d been getting lately—the damn thing had just woken up. It had been about as active as a rock not five minutes ago, resisting every effort she’d made over the last two years to learn more about it, not to mention the efforts of both Team 3

and Team 7 before her.

Turning back to her computer, Mira tapped furiously on her keyboard, retracing the steps she’d taken, trying to figure out exactly what she’d done that finally brought the device to life. She’d taken the thing apart countless times, replaced what she could of the burnt-out connections with human tech and had been methodically sending small pulses of power through each replaced part, hoping something would work.

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