“Ah. Yes. How…interesting.”
We finished suiting up without any more interruptions, and I couldn’t help but muse at how different the mimics were. Sure, they all had that same insatiable sort of curiosity, but they all went about it differently. Pyjik was endlessly effervescent in her requests, wide-eyed and enthralled with the world. Astaroth only asked them when they were necessary to his current function, and would listen with an intense look. Urdet was quick to point out when things didn’t make sense to them, and Meridyna just preferred to stand with a puzzled expression on her face until someone guessed what was perplexing her.
It really was like Mimic suddenly had a gaggle of little siblings that all insisted on coming along with her. I didn’t think I could handle it nearly as well as she did.
“Alright, everybody ready?”
“Ready,” was the unanimous response.
“Good,” Gonzales said through the comms. “Let’s go for a walk.”
We made our way to the airlock, and my heart was in my throat once again. Not only had it been forever since I had been outside of a ship in just an enviro-suit, but Pyjik’s words were echoing through my head. Sure, this wasn’t the only crazy thing I had done, but it was certainly up there.
Not that I could object or opt out or any other form of declining the mission. If I wanted Mimic and her people to live to see another day, then I had to do this. We needed the ships, and our meager defense couldn’t lose even one willing warrior.
Gonzales shut the door behind us, and the airlock began to slowly depressurize. With one last glance toward us, she opened the control box and put in for the outer door to drop.
It did, slowly, like it was reading the tension in my gut, and then we were facing the vast, cold void of space.
“Engage your nav-boots.”
We all pressed the button in our wrist-controls and soon the thrusters in our boots came to life, lifting us off the floor. The mimics around us all drifted out of their human form and reverted to their natural shiny, black selves.
Of course, Mimic stayed beside me, and once she was in her space-worthy body, she hooked a couple of spikes through the straps connected to my suit. I could tell that she was being very careful not to pierce my protective layer in any way, but I trusted her implicitly.
Gonzales headed out first, Urdet connected to her straps. Then Ciangi and Meridyna, then Eske with Pyjik, and me bringing up the rear. The other couple of juvenile mimics were staying on the ship, the weapons engineer having taught them how to handle the ship in the case of an emergency evacuation. Or even if our plan was successful. After all, we would all be flying ships and unable to return to the battle cruiser without some lengthy and dangerous docking that we just weren’t willing to risk. I hoped that her lessons proved to be effective, because there was no telling how our plan was going to go.
Space was just as vast and empty as I remembered it, lingering like a nightmare at the edge of my peripheral vision. Smelling vaguely of steak, it burned at my nostrils even through all the filters of my enviro-suit. Had it really been over a year since I was out in the great expanse last? I guessed so…
“We’re about to reach the edge of their sensors. Aim your boots for seven o’clock, ‘cause we’re about to take a trip through their blind side.”
“You would think that a blind side is something we would have learned to eliminate by now,” Ciangi groused, struggling to get her short legs to change her angle appropriately.
I reached out and grabbed her ankle, adjusting her to a better trajectory.
“Thanks,” she said with a sheepish grin.
“No problem. I—”
“Mine!”
Suddenly, Gonzales was spinning off to the side, and I barely caught a glimpse of shiny chrome in front of me before Mimic used some sort of force to push us downward. Everything spun for a moment, and I was sure that I was going to die, but I managed to get my thrusters under me and slow our momentum.
“Is everyone alright?” I asked through the comms.
“They have mines?” Eske gasped raggedly. “I know that I am new to this, but I thought that might be something we would have in our intel! Doesn’t that seem like something that should have been in our intel?!”
“We had no way of knowing,” Gonzales answered, her voice quite tense. “We’re just going to have to go carefully and keep an eye out for any explosive devices. If you do see one, remember not to overreact. A little too much thrust and you can spiral off into the deep so far even your nav-boots won’t be able to save you.”
Eske’s face twisted with worry. “That is…not a comforting thought.”
“Space isn’t comforting. Get used to it.”
Normally, I would have objected to the harsh tone in her voice, but I knew that Gonzales had changed from the woman I used to know. Our time in captivity had changed her, and I needed to accept that she was going to have a very long healing process.
“I’ll go first,” I said, adjusting my aim again and going back to our goal. “I’m the most expendable of all of us.”
“Um, that may be true in a purely logical sense, but you are carrying the entire leader of the mimic people on your back.”
“Oh…right.”
“I’ll go,” Eske said. “All I have to offer is hand-to-hand combat and a knack for great maintenance skills.”
“I, uh, I’m not sure that’s the best idea,” I countered. “Didn’t you say you had an injury that has damaged your vision to this day?”
“Yeah, but that’s what the goggles are for.”
Gonzales sighed. “You guys do know that we have a limited amount of oxygen in these suits, even with the carbon dioxide recyclers?”
“Yeah, but—”
I was interrupted as a body moved past us. I realized it was Ciangi. Well, that was certainly unexpected. Although the blonde woman was endlessly loyal, she had never exactly been one to jump right in the way of danger before.
I guessed we were all evolving.
Of course, with her sudden progression, the rest of us weren’t going to sit around and continue debating. We followed her, spreading out enough so that if someone needed to move quickly, we could.
We had gotten barely a minute closer to our landing zone when Ciangi shot upward, barely remembering to kill her speed before going too far. I didn’t have time to go after her, and found myself spinning to the right as another mine drifted toward me and missed me by a mere foot.
“We’re lucky these things aren’t magnetic, I suppose,” Eske said from somewhere behind me. I didn’t dare to look just in case a mine managed to sneak up on me.
“Actually…” I dreaded the tone in Gonzales’s voice as she continued. “I think that might not be the case.”
“What are you—”
But then I saw it, in the distance—a wave of ten or so mines coming straight toward us. They were colored differently than the others, and there was no denying that their destination was entirely intentional.
“Oh crap,” Ciangi gasped. “What do we do?”
“There should be a shield around the actual station itself,” Gonzales answered, her voice like steel. “If we get in there, I’m assuming the mines can’t enter.”
“Why would you assume that?” Eske asked.
“Because the station is magnetic, and hasn’t been blown to bits by the mines. They must have some sort of protective field and we need to get inside of it.”
“So, all we have to do is dodge a group of magnetic explosives?”
“Yeah, that’s about it.”
“Oh good,” I said with a sigh. “I was afraid that it was going to be complicated.”
She spared a dry laugh, but that was it. “Everyone spread out. We launch on the count of three.”
“Got it,” Eske answered, the edge clearly evident in her voice.
“One.”
I tensed, and felt a comforting ripple go through Mimic. I was sure that she was probably chirping encouragements,
but I couldn’t hear them through the void of space plus my suit.
“Two.” I saw Eske and Ciangi drift above and below me so that we almost made a star-like formation.
“Three!”
And then we were all rushing forward, caution thrown to the wind as we went hurtling for a head-on collision with the mines.
We would have to make sure our timing was right. Wait too long, and we risked crashing into one of them and meeting a fiery demise. Dodge to the side too quickly, and we would lose our advantage, meaning the mines would have enough time to redirect and take us out anyway.
Fantastic. What about this situation had I missed exactly?
I didn’t have time to think about that, however, because we were almost there.
“Get ready!” Gonzales cried over the comms.
Oh, I was ready. As ready as I ever would be to play a game of chicken with an explosive the size of a small hovercraft.
The mines were almost to us, and I swore that I could see my reflection on their overly shiny sides. I wanted to veer off, to get out of the line of fire, but I held fast until Gonzales gave the signal. I didn’t know when she had become our tactical leader, but I certainly wasn’t complaining.
“Now!”
We all shot in different directions, some of us over, some of us under, some of us diagonally across. And once we were behind the line of oncoming mines, we hit our thrusters for all we had.
I could feel my suit wheeze and protest as we launched forward, but I didn’t let up. Sure enough, the mines had trouble killing their momentum or turning, and we were able to gain some distance on them.
Well…almost all of them. The two on either end managed to compensate in time, one trailing me and one hurtling behind Eske.
“What do I do?” her panicked voice asked, although her long, lanky body remained ramrod straight as her boots rocketed her toward our safe spot on the blind underside of the station.
My mind hurtled through a dozen different options in what seemed like a nanosecond, and then my mouth was moving. “Cross paths with me?”
“What!?”
“Cross paths with me. With any luck, they’ll slam into each other.”
“And without luck?”
“Well, it’s been nice to know you.”
“That is not comforting at all!”
“No time for comfort. Now cross!”
She did as I ordered, and then we were hurtling on diagonals toward each other. It wasn’t until we were racing that I realized there was the ever-so-slight risk that we could collide even before the mines hit us, but I chose not to verbalize that as we rushed through space.
Thankfully, we didn’t crash into each other, but managed to zoom past within a couple of inches. Once more, I found myself face to face with a mine, and I rocketed upward as fast as I could.
They did indeed crash into each other, and after a moment of crumpling metal and reverberations, I thought that they might not actually go off.
I was mistaken.
The resulting explosion was like nothing I had ever seen. One moment, the two metal goliaths were trying to push through each other, and the next, fire and shrapnel were billowing out like the most violent version of a cloud there could be.
I tried to rush out of the way, but there was only so far and so fast that the thrusters could take me. The edge of the blast caught me, then engulfed me, sending me flying off and making the thermos-gauge on my enviro-suit beep like mad.
For a minute, everything was senseless as I tumbled head over heels through the abyss. Honestly, I was pretty sure I should have been roasted to a crisp, but something was keeping me from turning into a Higgens version of popcorn chicken.
I knew that I wouldn’t lose momentum in the vacuum of space, or at least not for a long while, so I needed to do something ASAP. Using all of the meager abdominal muscles I had left over from my maintenance life, I shifted my feet to turn around, taking myself in sort of a slow half-circle back into the flames.
I was either going to get on course or get incinerated. I just had to hope that by the time I made it around, the ravenous maw of the void would dissipate the inferno. I couldn’t tell, as the visor of my enviro-suit was completely covered in soot and debris, while all of my sensors were going crazy.
“Higgens! Are you alright?”
“I don’t know,” I answered, panting as I finished my curve and headed back toward the direction I came. At least, I thought it was the direction I came. It was hard to tell given that I couldn’t really see. “Am I?”
“Well, right now you’re encased in a giant black ball that I’m guessing is Mimic, so I’m gonna guess maybe?”
Oh. Maybe that was why my visor was so dark. It wasn’t soot. It was Mimic. She must have shifted her body shape to protect me from the blaze. Huh, she really was something, wasn’t she?
I reached out into the darkness, and sure enough, my hand hit a hard surface just a few inches from my skin. I gave it a couple of thankful pats, and then space slowly started to reveal itself to me once more as she reverted to her normal form on my back.
“I owe you one,” I said, knowing that she couldn’t hear me.
“You guys can pick up your awkward flirtations later,” Ciangi buzzed through the comm. “You need to get inside the safe zone before the other mines catch up to you!”
Of course. It was never just one crisis, was it?
I risked a single glance over my shoulder and saw that what mines had survived the explosion were indeed rounding on me. I set my thrusters to high once more and blasted toward my friends.
It was not a…comfortable experience. I couldn’t look behind me to see if the mines were gaining on me, otherwise I would completely throw off the trajectory of my nav-boots. And I couldn’t ask my friends for a report, as I could hardly move my jaw with how fast we were going. I was worried my enviro-suit wasn’t going to make it, but it wasn’t like I had much of a choice.
“Come on!” I heard Eske cry, waving frantically. “You’re almost in. Don’t let up!”
I wanted to retort that I was well aware that wasn’t an option, but since I couldn’t, I just thought it bitterly.
My ears started to ring, and I could feel myself grow lightheaded, but I kept on until I shot past my friends and into safety.
I completely killed the speed of my nav-boots, relying on only basic thrust power, and slowly began to lose speed. But it certainly wasn’t enough, and I saw the underside of the station rapidly approaching.
“Crap,” I muttered.
“Oh man, brace for impact, Higgens! I’m going to try to get to you!”
“No, don’t!” I called back. “You speed up that much and you won’t be able to kill your speed either.”
It was right around then that I heard a loud bellow from my back. Not quite human, but its intentions were perfectly clear. I felt Mimic move, and shift, but I couldn’t turn to see what she was doing.
Then, suddenly, I felt my body jerk and my speed slowed enough for me to pull my knees to my chest and counter my forward movement with several spikes of energy from my nav-boots. I couldn’t believe it was working, but little by little, I ended up at a safe speed and was able to gently set my feet down on the underside of the station.
I heaved a sigh of relief and the cacophony of discordant sounds within my suit began to settle down as my friends approached me. Within just a few minutes, we were all assembled and staring at each other, perhaps a bit shocked that we had survived.
“Well…” I murmured after a long break. “That was fun.”
“Sure, it was,” Eske answered, clearly just as shaken as I was despite the fact that she hadn’t been the one enveloped in an explosion. “But, uh, I would like to ask that we don’t do anything like that again.”
Gonzales let out a slight chuckle. “You know, considering what we get into, I can’t rightly promise that.”
9
Somewhat Hostile Take Over
“Do you have the stuf
f?” I asked, regaining my composure enough to remember the next step of the mission.
“No,” Ciangi answered and I could almost hear her roll her eyes. “I totally forgot and left them on the ship. I guess we’ve got to go back!”
“Very cute,” Gonzales said in a way that clearly said she thought it wasn’t cute at all. “Can you pull out the mini-shield generator and the splicer, or do you wanna continue with the sarcasm when we’ve already burned through, oh, I would say about half of our oxygen?”
“Right. Good point.” She knelt down and the mimic on her back clambered off, skittering around the rest of us. I guess Meridyna had enjoyed the whole nearly-dying adventure, judging by her rippling form and spikes waving this way and that. At least one of us had had a good time. “I think I’m just off. It feels weird to not have Bahn here.”
“I can imagine,” Eske said. “I’ve never seen one of you without the other, even on the net.”
“Yeah, we’ve basically been inseparable since college. We turned down a lot of jobs that weren’t willing to pay both of our salaries or let us work on the same project. That’s how we ended up on a mining vessel when we really were always lab-heads. In retrospect, I guess our pickiness was a good thing.”
“Huh, it certainly is weird to think about the paths that brought us here, isn’t it?” I asked.
“Yeah, a real chin-scratcher,” Gonzales interrupted. “Field, now please.”
“Right, right, I got it.” Ciangi finished pulling the small, metal cylinders from her pack and placed them on the surface of the station. I could hear them hiss as they attached, then their tops deployed a series of emitters. After a brief buzz and then a crackle, they did indeed manage to generate a very small atmosphere field.
“There,” Ciangi murmured. “Now we don’t have to worry about our entrance causing the interior to violently depressurize.”
Gonzales nodded. “Good. Now, if you don’t mind, hand me the ionic welder.”
“If you insist. But wouldn’t Higgens have more experience with that sort of thing, you know, being a maintenance worker and all?”
Mimic: The Space Shifter Chronicles Boxed Set (Books 1 - 9) Page 29