Page 10 of Gravel and Grit

other possible outcomes to occur to her. Who was to say her attempt at warning them off wouldn’t have the opposite effect and draw them to Earth even faster, leading them to their demise which would, at that point, be directly her fault? No amount of ambition would let her live with that.

Her time as an orphan had taught her to distance herself from people, and being a scientist hadn’t done anything to improve that inclination, but in spite of hard life lessons, she’d always had what she considered an overdeveloped sense of empathy. It made the biological sciences courses she’d taken more than a little difficult to bear because of the dissections and experiments on lab animals. To think of those things happening to an intelligent being made her feel physically ill.

Taking a deep breath to calm herself, Mira worked through her options of what to do next.

She decided to give herself four more days. In that time, if she hadn’t decoded what she needed from the device, she’d take it offline.

The next three days made her new plan seem both half-witted and dangerously assumptive. That same night, not hours after the device pinged, an alarm went off, though it originated from the base above, and she didn’t learn about it until the next day.

She dismissed it initially. She’d overheard some of the security guys quietly talking about it in the hall outside her lab but didn’t think much of it when they speculated that it was caused by an animal. However, when it kept occuring, she began to worry it was connected to what was happening with the device.

From what she could gather, the alarms were set off by little things—a motion sensor here, a redirected camera there—but it added up to an equation that worried her.

A staff meeting ended up being called during which everyone was reassured about the rumors and told that the alerts were most likely due to a curious coyote and that they needed to be extra vigilant, to report anything unusual.

Mira returned to her lab at the end of the meeting, trying to convince herself the coyote theory was right and the bad feeling in her gut was wrong.

When she walked into the break room later that afternoon, deciding it was worth braving the masses for further information they might be able to unwittingly provide her, she heard a few of the other scientists joking about the possibility that it was an alien come to reclaim their stolen technology.

Listening to them voice her exact fear demolished any progress she’d made in convincing herself she was wrong.

That night, after everyone else left, she made a decision. If she didn’t succeed tonight, she would take the device offline and report herself to General Harrison first thing in the morning. There was a chance she was being paranoid and the alarms really were caused by some inquisitive animal, but she couldn’t in good conscience take the risk, not when a being’s life may be on the line.

Maybe I’ll catch the General in a forgiving mood, and I won’t be fired ortaken out back and put down like a rule-breaking, secret-keeping, rabid dog.

Stranger things have happened.

7

ZAEK

Zaek crept, cautiously but quickly, up to the large building from which the soldiers had just left. Peeking around the corner of the open hangar doors, he saw a dozen of the white pickup trucks they used, weapons stations, and various other military equipment. What was most interesting were the elevator doors at the very back of the hangar and the two armed men, dressed in black, standing guard in front of them. What he didn’t see was another entrance that he could sneak through.

Sighing with irritation, but not surprised to find breaking in wouldn’t be as easy as he’d hoped, Zaek reluctantly withdrew one of the rocks he’d pocketed for a snack. He threw it at the opposite side of the wide doorway, making sure it clanged against the metal wall of the building, then darted inside to a shadowed corner.

From what he’d seen of their comrades’ easily encouraged complacency, he didn’t think the soldiers guarding the elevator doors would actually go outside to investigate. He’d just wanted to distract them from his entry, but they surprised him. Both men immediately peeled off and moved in a bent-legged, shuffling walk to the open doors, weapons raised and ready.

Zaek instantly recognized that these men were different from the ones that went to check out his previous disturbances. These were better trained, and that was a problem.

Aside from cataloguing their responses, timing, and weaponry, he’d also used his reconnaissance as an opportunity to examine their training. He

thought he had a good chance of success with what he’d seen, but if a different, better trained contingent of soldiers guarded the underground, his chances of sneaking around until he found the beacon, and extracting it without being detected, just dropped significantly.

Zaek hated going into a situation without any insight as to what he’d face, but it didn’t look like he had much of a choice. It had been almost two weeks since the beacon went live and he couldn’t afford to waste any more time scouting.

I guess we arewingingit.

Chuckling silently at his own pun, he silently withdrew a tranq gun of his own design. It used the same diamond-tipped darts he had in his security system and would penetrate their armor.

When they came in line with his hiding place, he fired twice with a soft puff of air, his aim perfect, then darted to the closest one and grabbed the plastic card off his uniform. They’d be out for at least six hours, given their size and the dose in the darts.

More than enough time.

Using a flashlight to blind the camera to his approach, he quickly stabbed the lens out with his wing claw. Someone somewhere would surely notice the loss, but it was preferable to his image being captured.

He gave the doors an assessing once-over but, other than the small screen set into the wall beside them, he didn’t see any booby traps or sensors that would set off alarms. That didn’t mean there weren’t any, but he was running out of time to be as thorough as he’d like. The soldiers investigating his latest disturbance would return any second and find the ones he’d sedated. He needed to be out of sight before that happened.

Scanning the card only succeeded in making a password prompt show up on the screen.

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