Mimic: The Space Shifter Chronicles Boxed Set (Books 1 - 9)

by James David Victor

  Finally, I was able to heave a sigh of relief. Part one of our plan was finally over, and had been entirely successful.

  Now, on to part two.

  10

  S.O.S. (Steal Our Ship)

  “Come on! What do you want from us?!”

  I winced as one of the captive crew screamed at me, almost making me flinch and drop the water I had brought them.

  “Nothing, really,” I said for what had to have been the tenth time. “Look, I know it’s confusing and all, but we only really need you to sit tight and not hurt yourselves. We’re gonna be here for a week and a half, maybe two, and then we’ll be out of your hair and you’ll never have to deal with us ever again.”

  “What? That doesn’t even make sense!”

  “I’m sure it doesn’t, to you.” I took a deep breath to steady myself. “Now, in a few minutes, we’re gonna undo your bonds one by one so you can walk about, eat, and sleep comfortably. You can try to escape, but that would complicate things a lot more than they need to be. We honestly aren’t going to hurt any of you, unless you force ou—”

  “Wait, I know you!” another woman interjected. She was tall, and thin, with ashen hair and eyes that seemed too wide for her face. “You’re that first contact fellow.”

  I didn’t know if them being aware of my identity was bad or not, so I found myself trying to sputter out some type of lie. Too bad I was absolutely terrible at lying.

  “Uh, no. That guy’s on Earth. Why would I be here?”

  “You’re totally him! What’s his name? Uh… Hog? Hagger?”

  Clearly, I was not fooling anyone. “It’s Higgens.”

  “Yeah, that’s right! Higgens! What are you doing all the way out here? And why have you pirated our station? That’s a felony, you gotta know that.”

  “It’s, uh, complicated. And I don’t want to tell you because that might implicate you in all of this. Just know that I’m helping my alien friend, and we really need your station for just a bit. So, if you all don’t mind sitting back and just letting us do our thing, everyone can leave this happy.”

  “I don’t believe you,” the original, yelling woman screamed yet again. I was beginning to think that her volume was stuck at full blast after the trauma of being drugged. “Whatever you’re up to, I won’t let you get away with it!”

  “Uh, yeah. Okay. Whatever you say. I’m just gonna leave this water here, and then in a few minutes, we’ll call you into the hall one at a time and take off the cuffs. So, uh, see you all later.”

  I finished setting the pitcher down and rushed out, feeling a strange mix of embarrassment and relief. But once I was out in the hall, my work wasn’t done, and I rushed to the communication room of the station.

  Even with my scanner, I made a few wrong turns and had to double-back on myself. But I arrived at my destination before anyone could complain to me over the comms, and barreled in with a half-grin on my face.

  “Sorry that took a minute. Some of our guests are a little angrier than the others.”

  “That’s too bad,” Gonzales said. “But Mimic was able to get all the footage she needed.”

  “That I was,” Mimic said. “Children, come here.”

  The rest of the mimics huddled around her as she played the footage recorded from my wrist-controls. They each pointed to a crew member, then watched them intently. And when the recording ended, they had all taken the forms of whomever they had picked.

  “I think we’re good,” Mimic said, turning to face us with the body of the screaming woman. I guessed she was the highest-ranking worker on the shift, so it made sense that the ‘highest-ranking’ shapeshifter would take her form, but I wasn’t exactly happy about it.

  “Actually, I think there’s one more thing we’re missing.”

  Ciangi stepped forward with a cup of what I was pretty sure was dust and ash. Where she had gotten it, I didn’t know.

  “Time to rough yourselves up. All of y’all are looking a little pretty for a distress message.”

  “Ah, good point.”

  For once, I was glad not to be the center of the action as the mimics all began to rough up their hair and rub dirt across both their jumpsuits and faces. A couple even tore some rips in the fabric, and their skin rippled below then opened like a wound.

  “Aw, that is totally gross,” Gonzales said after what I was pretty sure was Astaroth had a large gash appear on his arm. “But also very convincing. Good job.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Alright, now I think we’re ready. The rest of you need to get to the blind spot of the camera.”

  I gave a little mini-salute. “Aye-aye, Captain.”

  The others rolled their eyes, but I was already moving to the one spot by the door where the message cameras wouldn’t catch sight of us. Once we were all squeezed in, Mimic straightened and activated the communications relay.

  “Attention, Earth Gov, this is emergency zeta-three! We have been hit by an unprecedented asteroid wave that seems to have been caught in a gravitational tug-of-war by the planets on either side of us. We are repairing damages as best we can, but it won’t be long until we run out of supplies. We have a week, maybe two tops, before this station will become irreparable and we will have to abandon ship. We ask that you send one repair ship and a handful of fighters to take out the worst of the belt. Obviously, we won’t need one of your cruisers, but our station defenses just aren’t enough at this point.

  “We will continue to update on our survival situation. Our estimates show that it will take one to two days for this to reach you, and a week minimum for even your quickest of ships to arrive. Please, we can only ask that you respond to this as the utmost of emergencies. Faithfully, Senior Officer Collins, out.”

  Then she was turning off the comm and sinking into her seat.

  “Being a shapeshifter, one might think that being duplicitous would come much more naturally to me.”

  “You did great,” I said, walking forward to offer a hug. She went to take it, but I was unfortunately intercepted by Pyjik and Meridyna. It seemed that we would need to have a lesson on when was appropriate for a group hug, and when wasn’t.

  Mimic, however, just smiled and watched her charges as they squeezed me.

  “Well,” Gonzales said, cutting between me and the little ones. “We sent out the message. Now we can only hope that they respond.”

  I sighed as I settled down into my bed in the secondary living quarters. We had uncuffed and fed our prisoners, who seemed to be acclimating to the situation pretty well, and were now just stuck waiting to get a message back from Earth Gov.

  My stomach was churning over and over as I imagined the thousands of different scenarios that could go down.

  One, Earth Gov could decide to entirely blow the station off. It wouldn’t be the first time that they hadn’t fulfilled their part of a bargain, and I found it safer to expect them to abandon anyone who trusted in them.

  Or they could send some massive fighter with a hundred employees that wouldn’t do us any good at all. While we had managed to take over the station, there had only been seven workers for us to deal with. And even Giomatti’s ship had heavily relied on us using trickery to get the entire crew off of the vessel. While we definitely had an edge to our side by having a group of shapeshifters, expecting them to take on a crew that big wasn’t just impractical, it was suicide.

  Or they could send a bunch of fighters that would look for an asteroid field and then completely turn around when they didn’t find one on their sensors.

  I was sure there were even more that I didn’t think of, but just those few options were enough.

  A knock sounded on my door, interrupting my thoughts. I looked up to see Gonzales standing in the entryway. The rest of the group either eating, showering or just unwinding before the next big upswing in action came.

  “Hey, can we talk?” she asked.

  “Sure,” I said, sitting up and scooting back on the bed so she had room. “Have a se
at.”

  She hesitated for a moment, as if she wasn’t sure, but then walked over and settled down.

  “What’s bothering you?” I asked.

  “I, uh, nothing specifically. I just…” She leaned forward and suddenly her golden-brown eyes were incredibly close to me. I had never taken a moment to look at them so in focus, and I realized that she had flecks of both black and green in her irises. Strange that I had never noticed that before. “You love her, don’t you?”

  I could feel my face lose its color and I swallowed hard. “Love who?” I squeaked.

  “Come on, don’t play that game. I know you’re different from other people, Higgens, and that maybe you don’t feel or interpret things the same way as everybody else, but you love that alien, don’t you?”

  I opened my mouth then closed it, then opened it again. How was I supposed to answer this?

  Yes, I cared for Mimic with each and every fiber of my being. She was as important as the light, or the air. I wanted to be her friend always, and see her succeed and be happy.

  Did…did that mean love? I didn’t know. For so long the thought that I could even have friends was impossible. Was there something more meant for me? Did I even want something more? I wasn’t sure.

  But if I was being honest with myself, I didn’t recoil at the idea. I liked holding Mimic’s hand. And I liked going to bed with her at my side and waking up with her still there. I loved the way she never relented. And how she forgave so many people who didn’t deserve it.

  “I…I think I might,” I answered finally.

  Gonzales sighed and sank back. “I thought so.” She didn’t seem angry, just disappointed, but for the life of me, I couldn’t figure out why. “Well, I wish you guys the best. I’m pretty sure she sees the sun itself every time you look at her.”

  “I… Wha—” But Gonzales was already standing up, and I thought I might see tears in those beautiful eyes of hers.

  “I should get some sleep now. You know, before the night terrors kick in. I don’t want any company, so if you hear me screaming, just let it go. I always wake up eventually.” She turned to go, although I didn’t know where to considering that I was in the secondary dorms for the crew and our prisoners were in the primary. She paused just before she was completely out the door. “You’re a really good man, Higgens, I hope you know that. And you deserve every bit of happiness you can get.”

  “I—”

  “Good night, furiendo.”

  And then she was gone, leaving me staring after her like something incredibly important had just happened but I had missed some sort of vital context.

  Settling back, I pondered over her expressions, wondering if I had somehow hurt her. But eventually, my thoughts couldn’t help but turn to Mimic, and the internal revelation I’d had about her.

  So…I might be in love. But what did that mean? And how was I supposed to tell?

  I didn’t know. It wasn’t like anyone had ever explained it to me. In fact, most of the people I had the misfortunate of interacting with regularly had been more than happy to tell me that no one would ever love me and that I should never reproduce. I had never even considered myself capable of love.

  But now… Now, I wasn’t so sure.

  I guess I could worry about it if we got back to Mimic’s home all in one piece.

  I snorted inwardly at that. Depending on what happened, I could arrive back on her planet whole only to end up heartbroken.

  …maybe I should just get some sleep while I could.

  11

  Grand Theft Spaceship

  In the end, we waited two weeks for them to arrive. It took a day and a half for them to send a message that they were sending five fighters and one repair ship. We had cheered quite a bit at that particular revelation, and our spirits had lifted considerably.

  But then there was the issue of making sure that we had everything set up for when they did arrive.

  The first thing was convincing the crew to tell us how to access their remote access to their mines. It took some considerable finessing, and an eventual show and tell from the mimics with just enough information to let them know it was serious, but their leader relented and soon we were setting up the hunks of explosive metal in an appropriate formation.

  Sure, they weren’t exactly comets, but they would come up as enough of a blip on the fighters’ sensors that they wouldn’t question our story right off the bat.

  Then there was setting one big trap in the hangar bay to make sure that we were ready when the fighters did eventually land. That in and of itself was a whole ordeal, and I wasn’t sure whether the mimics were a help or not considering how many questions they asked seemingly nonstop.

  I had thought it many times, but I was only reminded more and more of how Mimic had the patience of a saint. I mean, yeah, she had put up with me for quite a while, but fielding constant inquiries from her charges had to be exhausting, and she had been dealing with it far longer than I had.

  But eventually, the day came. We were in the middle of eating—having already served the prisoners—when an incoming hail beeped several times over the station comms. We all jumped to our feet and rushed back to the communications relay. The mimics all took on the form of the crew member that they were assigned, and arranged themselves within the view of the relay camera. After giving us a nod, Mimic hit a button on the communication relay and they were connecting with the hail from the oncoming ships.

  “Thank goodness you’re here,” Mimic breathed, sounding so much unlike herself that it was startling. “We were beginning to think that you’d forgotten about us.”

  “Negative,” the voice on the other end responded. I couldn’t see them, considering that we were behind the screen, but they certainly sounded like an intense, military type. “We are here and ready to help as best we can.”

  “You’re amazing. Really. Completely and totally amazing.”

  “No problem, ma’am. It’s our duty. Since you lot are the experts in this area, we were hoping that you could advise us on how best to aid you.”

  “Of course, of course. I’ll open our hangar bay and clear you all for landing. Again, thank you so much.”

  “Not a problem, believe us.”

  “Great. I’ll send over the coordinates now.”

  Then she turned off the comm and we all heaved a sigh of relief.

  “We did it,” Eske breathed. “Not to be repetitive, but I really can’t believe it.”

  “Hold your horses on that celebration just yet,” Gonzales said, running a hand through her hair. “We’ve still got to actually take their ships.”

  “But that should be easy, right? I mean, we have about a dozen sleeper traps set up in that room. There’s no way they can avoid it.”

  “If there’s one thing I’ve learned in all of our insane shenanigans,” Ciangi said, “it’s that there’s always a way for things to not go according to plan, and you’ve got to be ready to deal with that.” She gave me a wink then returned her attention back to the others. “So, let’s go see how this all can go wrong, okay?”

  There wasn’t any objection, and we all headed toward the hangar bay. It wasn’t exactly a quick trip, involving several floors on the lift and a couple of halls, but we reached our pile of stuff just as the depressurization light flashed on above the hangar bay doors.

  I caught myself holding my breath once more and reminded myself to inhale and exhale on a more regular basis as we gathered our stuff. Anything left behind wasn’t going to be retrieved, and we couldn’t spare a single supply.

  “Wait, why are there two duffle bags that weren’t here before?” I asked curiously, wondering if—with all the tension—I had just been especially unobservant.

  “Because I may or may not have raided anything that might help us with our little war without hurting the crew here,” Ciangi answered. “I had to do something since Bahn wasn’t here to take up all my time.”

  “Good job!” Gonzales cheered, offering her hand
up for a high-five. I had a slight moment of jealousy, but quickly knocked it down. Ever since that night in my room, the weapons engineer had been mostly avoiding me. I gave her what space I could, but I couldn’t help but wonder what was bothering her.

  Ciangi smiled for a second, but then her face fell. “Do you think he’s alright?”

  “Oh, for sure,” Eske said, clapping the smallest of the women on the back. “And if you think about it, he’s having a way better time than you.”

  She smiled and looked to the hangar bay. “I hope so. But let’s get these ships so we can find out for sure.”

  “You won’t have much longer to wait,” Mimic murmured, her face practically pressed to the viewing window. “They’re landing.”

  We all tensed at that and readied ourselves around the door.

  “You have the sleeper charges, Ciangi?”

  “Oh no, I totally—”

  “Forgot them at home, I know, I know.” I said. “I’ll take that as a yes?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good. Get ready.”

  “Just give me the word.”

  I nodded and joined Mimic. Sure enough, we could see that the ships were already all in the hangar, landing in different parts of the large room.

  To be honest, I was impressed that there was enough room for all of them. While the hangar bay was large, it wasn’t nearly the biggest I had been in. We were lucky. If some of them had had to wait outside, our plan would never have worked.

  That was one thing we needed to improve on in the future. Far too many of our plans relied on blind luck, and sooner or later, it was going to run out.

  “Alright, time for me to try this acting thing that I’m supposed to be so good at,” Mimic said. “Hopefully, I won’t have to say a single word. As soon as they’re in range, make sure to release the gas.”