~from Earthbeat

“She needs to know.”

Lontano, Tano to most of the colony, tipped his chin up in the negative. He leaned over the other’s shoulder, focusing on the screen Hani had pulled up on the main monitor. Satellite view, pirated from human tech. Brown, wrinkled land with scattered green vegetation. Could be any desert on the planet. He spoke aloud, using Male language, too high-pitched for humans to hear. “Where are you scanning?”

Hani pointed to a spot on the display. “The western edge of our mountain range. Too close. We need to tell her.”

Amr spoke up at that, the eldest in their work triad. “We tell her you spotted an unidentified blip on your scanner and didn’t bother to check it out, she’ll rip a notch in your ear for you.”

Hani’s ears went flat at that, his eyes widened. He smelled worried. Not that the matriarch was apt to do anything as immature as lose her temper, but this was the youngster’s first real job and he’d only been at it a few months. Hani ran a nervous hand over the elaborate braids decorating his hair, setting the beads a-jingle. 

Hani was full-blooded velyr, not one of the many half-breeds in the colony. He had a lot more hair to play with, but that was receding fast, settling into the adult pattern resembling a human “Mohawk.” That hair was nearly blond as well, not the darker color of a mature mane. Some of the youngsters had taken to shaving the sides of their heads, trying to look older, but Hani was a traditionalist in many ways. Tano liked the kid, even if he was a little undisciplined. 

“Thanks for calling me in on this,” Tano said, shooting the youngster a brief grin. “Let’s see what we’ve got.”

He sat and hard-jacked into his own tablet, needing the accuracy of a solid link. Hani’s screen flickered to life above the tablet. Amr and the third technician stood and crossed to watch. Tano leaned forward, zoomed in on the anomaly, ignoring the slight queasiness as his view dropped from satellite height to just above ground within seconds.

“Not a plane,” Amr said softly. “I don’t see anything in the air but that hawk.”

“No, it’s on the ground.” Tano tilted the view back and forth, searching. 

Liko, the third of the work triad,  mused aloud, “Too small to be a car or truck.”

Hani joined the group, peering over Tano’s shoulder. “A human hiking or mountain-biking? They get into some crazy places.”

Liko jerked his chin up. “Why would they be blasting out a signal readable a hundred miles away?”

The four studied the display, trying to spot something moving on the ground. What could it be? And how had it gotten this close without anyone else noticing?

“That’s such an odd frequency,” Liko said. “Nothing I’ve ever seen the humans use. What in the name of all that’s holy were you doing?”

Hani smelled of embarrassment. “I was trying out some of the older military frequencies. Think it’s some sort of military test? She’s not going to like that, not this close.”

Military testing didn’t sound good at all, not with the air force base so near. Their cover was a good one — no humans had penetrated the colony without permission since the Industrial Age, but if the military was playing around, who knows what they might uncover? Tano shot a glance at Amr, spotted the tension at the corners of the older velyr’s eyes. Amr’s scent was shifting to concern.

Amr clapped young Hani on the shoulder. “If we determine that’s what this is, we’ll let her know. Can we hack the source?”

“I haven’t been able to, but I don’t have Tano’s expertise.” The “sir” was unspoken, but there in the respectful tone. 

Tano ignored the flattery, switched from visual to code and dove in. Software was his specialty, the reason they’d sent for him. Back on the home planet, he’d been responsible for programming many of the non-sentient units so necessary to velyr life. He’d missed coding in the lonely years before he’d learned of the colony’s existence on Earth.

Whatever this device was, it used binary code, not trinary. That argued for human origin unless there was yet another tech-savvy species here, Raiji forbid. The device was protected to a degree — certainly well enough to stump young Hani, who’d been using a keyboard instead of a direct interface. Today’s youngsters were just as apt to choose an un-altered body as to augment themselves. Tano found no real firewall on the device, nothing that totally blocked determined access into the system. This wasn’t anything as sophisticated as even a modern cellphone.

Code streamed past Tano like the flickering lights of a human Christmas tree — on and off, off and on, each connection forming a unique pattern in the “brain” of the device. Code always smelled like ozone to Tano. Here was the signal source, pinging away like an old-school sonar device. Over there was an audio hook-up, transmitting whatever sounds impacted the device. That seemed to be the gist of the thing: listening to anything that went on around it and pinging out its own location. No way for whatever it was to back-track them or defend against their hack.

Tano spent three whole seconds making absolutely sure they couldn’t be detected, then  transferred the feed to speaker and the three of them listened to the peaceful sounds of the American desert at dawn. Birdsong, the soft flutter of wind through mesquite leaves, the patter of some small creature scurrying among the rocks, and an odd, muffled triple-beat that reminded him of nothing so much as a heart