Page 8 of Gravel and Grit

during military campaigns to Niruba, he hadn’t had many opportunities to bemoan the lack of ability to shift his color naturally, but life on Earth had given rise to plenty of situations where the ability to blend with his surroundings would have come in handy.

He hoped looking like an out of-place rock was enough to hide him from detection, even if it might not hold up to closer examination. He couldn’t afford to get caught. Khargals may be exceedingly hard to kill, but they weren’t impervious to harm, and humans had come a long way since carrying metal sticks as they had when he’d crashed here. Besides, he watched plays on TV. He knew about humans’ horrific treatment of aliens, though he’d never personally met any of the ones that visited this planet. He had less-than-no desire to be cut up and have his insides played with for the rest of his days. He had a mission, and his brethren, whether they knew it or not, were counting on him.

Pulling his sigil out of his suit, he relayed a quick message to Aeron, one of his Senior Officers, telling him where he was and that he’d located the beacon, just in case anything happened and he failed in his mission. He hadn’t anticipated finding it under guard, and most definitely not so heavily.

An answering ping told him the message was received and verified. Aeron would pick up his mission if he failed.

A backup plan, or six, never injured anyone.

That finished, he settled in to wait, making note of all the surveillance equipment he could see and planning ways to circumvent them. When night fell, he’d do some reconnaissance to pinpoint exactly where among the many buildings the beacon was being held.

He assumed they wouldn’t leave it completely unattended, but if he made his move during the very early hours of morning, before the sun rose, he thought there was a good chance they would have minimal personnel guarding it, and those personnel might very well be tired and, therefore, less observant.

Zaek spent the day snacking on the little rocks around him, watching the comings and goings of the people on the base, observing their patterns and routines, and keeping track of their numbers and firepower.

When it was finally time to scout, he shifted his outermost layer of skin to stone, so he wouldn’t show up on any thermal sensors. It made moving difficult, and took a lot of energy to hold, but it was necessary. Very carefully, he crept around the perimeter, listening to the quiet, steady beeps of

the tracker in his supply bag and waiting for it to ping when it came within closer proximity of the beacon.

After at least two hours of sneaking, he got what he was waiting for.

Unfortunately, the signal wasn’t coming from any building in particular, but instead from an empty area near one of the runways.

It took longer than he cared to admit to realize the beacon had to be underground. With that realization came a whole new set of problems.

If it was underground, there was no way he could dart in, grab the beacon, and dart out again without anyone the wiser. He’d have to find the entrance to the lower levels, gain access, then somehow sneak past what were sure to be extensive security measures until he found it.

The chances of doing all that without being discovered were slim, even for a warrior class Khargal with centuries of experience.

Bulldozing his way in was the very last option and one he wasn’t willing to spend much time contemplating. He may have gone a little crazy over the years, but he still had his honor. Part of that was following the Prime Directive, which meant he needed to remain undetected and not harm any Earthians in the retrieval process.

Perhaps an erosion tactic would work well here.

It would take longer than he wanted, but he didn’t think such a remote base was accustomed to an abundance of activity. If he set off alarms in little ways that could be attributed to animals, he thought they would, eventually, become accustomed to the disruption. Once they saw that the alarms were false and never presented a threat, they’d get complacent, and their response times would become progressively slower, giving him the time he needed to break in, find the beacon, and get back out.

After scoping out as much of the base as he could, Zaek scanned the desert around him and picked a new spot that offered a better vantage point in which to spend the coming day.

Finding a camera within line of sight of his new hiding place, he crept up behind it and adjusted the angle slightly, then quickly retreated to watch. This would tell him how closely they monitored their security and what kind of response they had, as well as their timing.

Within a couple of minutes, he had his answer.

He barely made it to his spot before half a dozen white, unmarked trucks, carrying at least five people in each, sped out of one of the biggest buildings.

From what he could see, they were all armed with an M27 automatic rifle and

a sidearm, but nothing beyond that, nothing that would present any real danger if he were forced to abandon subtlety.

Over the next three days, he set off alarms at random times throughout the perimeter, and occasionally the interior, of the base. As he’d hoped, their response times got a little slower with every alert. It went from less than two minutes, with six trucks and roughly thirty personnel, to closer to eight minutes with one truck carrying two people.

More importantly, they left the hangar door open, as if inviting him in.

6

MIRA

Mira worked quietly, keeping to herself and studiously avoiding Calvin. He’d, thankfully, lost some of his suspicion over the last few days when he didn’t see her showing any signs of excitement or an increase in the pace of her work.

She knew she wouldn’t have been able to fly under his radar if he became aware she was staying late, but her routine of falling behind the rush of people leaving to use the restroom worked like a charm. By the time she came back out, everyone was gone, and she could go back to her lab without anyone but the security men the wiser. Mira didn’t worry about those guys outing her. She knew they didn’t really give a damn what the scientists did so long as they followed the rules and didn’t show any signs of subterfuge or alarm.

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