Too many questions, too much gray area. In the breath of just a second, I finally understood why war was so terrible, so scary. It had been told to me my whole life, but it took an actual battle to get it.
I leveled my weapon at the same alien again, then let several bolts fly.
They went down, a blackish-green liquid dribbling from the burning wounds I caused, and the rest of them marched on. Impassive. Relentless. I knew I couldn’t let them get close, or they would easily overpower us with sheer numbers, let alone their impressive firepower and muscle. The only reason they weren’t charging us already was probably because they had no idea how many of us there were.
Or even what we were. Sure, they had seen Mimic’s insane display in space, but that didn’t mean they understood it. They didn’t know that they had just declared a smackdown on a planet full of shapeshifters who were still raw with fury from centuries of enslavement and stunted growth.
“Open fire,” I hissed.
And we did.
Eske and I rained down shot after shot, and the mimics all surged forward to the edge of our makeshift barricade, tentacles, arms tipped in claws, and jaws lashing out. The line halted for just a moment, the group clearly surprised by the sheer range of weaponry facing them, and their weapons came up.
“Be careful!” I called. “They’re returning fire!”
I aimed at the same spot I had previously, hitting the alien that had been behind the first one I took out. It stumbled as well, but not before discharging its weapon.
The bolt hit somewhere behind my head, but I felt it as if it had been right next to me. My body reverberated, and I pressed myself against my cover as I felt wave after wave of heat over me. Sparing a single glance upward, I saw a molten, gaping hole in the wall a few feet to my left.
Right. I needed to make absolutely sure I didn’t get hit. It wouldn’t be like being shot with one of our weapons, where survival entirely depended on where I was wounded. It was clear that any successful shot by the enemy’s guns would be un-survivable.
In a move with chilling nonchalance, they leveled their guns on us as one, and I saw more green glows as they prepared fire.
Crap.
I ducked behind my cover, and the entire hall lit up in our firefight. I waited for the volley to end, then shot back up and delivered as many rounds as I could before the pulse-generator in my gun overheated and needed a second to cool.
Peeking over the top, I saw that the mimics—now that Eske and I had stopped firing—were attacking in full. Tentacles ripped off pieces of armor and tried to yank away guns. Spikes on lanky limbs buried in exposed flesh wherever they could. Quills and teeth flew in primitive barbs that seemed to be pretty good at actually distracting the oncoming waves.
But there were so many in the hall now. The original ten or so was at least forty, and they were marching ever forward. Over the bodies of their dead, over teeth and tines, over everything.
Killing them one by one wasn’t going to be enough. If I wanted to protect the people I loved, I had to grievously wound as many of them as possible.
My hand went to my grenade belt and I grabbed one of them. Pressing the ignition button, I waited three out of the five seconds I had before throwing it with all my might.
“Fire in the hole!”
All of us, mimics included, ducked behind our haphazard barricade. I clapped my hands over my ears just as I heard the grenade hit ground, and less than a breath later, another explosion rocked the hall.
“I’m guessing that it’s not pretty out there,” Ciangi’s voice cut over my comm, barely audible with everything going on.
“That would be accurate,” I said, popping up to see what kind of damage I had wrought.
The line was still marching onwards, with more from behind coming up to fill the gaps, but it looked like I had taken out at least ten of them.
It wasn’t going to be enough.
They leveled their guns again and I barely had time to duck before they let out a volley. I was all set to stand and return fire, only to have another wave of green slam into the walls, ceiling, and everything around us.
“The second line is firing while the first line ducks!” Eske called from where she was pressed to the floor. I saw some sort of strange information and aiming mechanism flashing across her goggles, and I quickly figured it must have been some sort of upgrade Ciangi had given her. Cool, but not exactly something I could allow myself to be distracted by.
“We’ll have to break their rhythm then,” I called. “Follow my lead.”
“Yes, sir!”
I pulled two grenades, pressing both of their ignition buttons. I lobbed one without looking, and I heard the firing stop just long enough for someone to grab it and start to throw it away.
I jumped up, gun at the ready, and opened fire on the alien who had it in their hands. They dropped it as they tried to roll out of our barrage, and I took the chance to toss the second one at the opposite side of the hall.
Once more, the explosion felt entirely unhealthy. A wave of fire rushed past me, but I couldn’t quite duck before some of my clothing was thoroughly singed.
I landed on the floor with a thump, rolling around a bit for good measure.
“That was impressive,” Eske breathed. “It’s almost like we know what we’re doing.”
“Improvisation can be a miraculous thing.”
“I would say so.” She let out a shaky breath, and it was only then that I noticed she had a pretty big gash across her forehead that was bleeding over her face. It must have been just shrapnel that got her, but it didn’t make me any less concerned. “But I’m worried it’s still not enough. There are so many.”
She was right. We were holding them off for now, but mostly because they were playing little leagues with us, just testing the waters and seeing what we were made of. I knew that they had to have more of those grenades, and it would only be a matter of time before they used them. In fact, I was pretty sure that the only thing holding them back was the mimics and the undoubtedly confusing data the aliens were getting from them.
I was sure ‘shapeshifters’ were the last thing on their minds, so the strange amalgamation of different species they were seeing in such a confined space no doubt went against everything they prepared for. But eventually, they would get over the novelty of our little friends, and then we would be SOL.
“How’s that cannon integration coming?” I asked over the comm in my scanner.
“It’s…coming. I think,” Ciangi answered belatedly.
“You think?”
“Yeah. I mean, probably. I’m kind of busy with a lot of stuff on my own screen. We’ve got about two hundred ground troops landed now and more on the way.”
“Yikes.”
“Yeah, yikes is about right.”
“Well, we’ve got about fifty of them right here in this hall, and that’s not counting the dead. I’ve already used three grenades and I don’t know how much longer we’re going to be able to hold them off.”
“Right, yeah, of course. With just two gunmen and five mini-shifters, we should probably be grateful you lasted this long.”
“Um…thanks? I think?”
“You’re welcome. Try to hold them off for a couple more minutes, I think I have something that can help.”
“A couple of minutes. Right. I’ll try my best.”
Gonzales’s voice cut over the lines before I could disconnect and get to firing again. “Honestly, we’ve got at least five minutes of work on our end, and that’s if everything goes absolutely right, which, you know, it won’t. So yeah. Don’t die out there.”
“We’ll try,” Eske answered before standing and laying down a volley of fire once more.
I took a hint from the aliens and stood a hair after her, making sure there was no break in our onslaught. Or at least, there wasn’t until they interrupted us with their own greater barrage and we had to duck behind our smoking cover.
Honestly, I had never b
een so eternally grateful that the original alien’s vessel had been so sturdy. Although certain sections of the wall and ceiling around us were melting, the scraps that were protecting me from being a Higgens-kabob were pulled from somewhere heartier. The bulkhead, perhaps? If they had been just regular metal, or even something from our own ships, I was sure that they would have been shredded like paper long ago.
But even the most solid of barriers could only withstand so much onslaught, and I could smell the acrid vapor as the opposite side of my cover began to melt. I knew from maintenance work that it was an exponential type of reaction. The hotter the outside became, the more easily heat would permeate the structure and weaken it.
Meaning I probably didn’t have five minutes.
I would just have to hope whatever Ciangi was trying to plan would buy us the extra time we needed, otherwise we were going to have to use the door itself as cover, and I didn’t see that going anywhere good.
As if she had heard my thoughts, the blonde woman’s voice came over the comm. “Alright, I’ve got help on the way. But you’re all going to want to duck, and stay as low to the floor as possible.”
“Why’s that?”
“Oh, you’ll see in about ten seconds.”
I would have told her that it wasn’t the time for being cagey, but then I heard the telltale thrum of one of our fighter’s engines growing quite close. Wait, she couldn’t be…could she?
The noise grew deafening and small debris started blowing up the hall. Oh yeah, she was.
I ducked down just as the small fighter lit up the hall, hitting the soldiers from behind in a spray of red. Some of them tried to run forward, tried to get out of the way, but there was no escape.
Even from where I was pressed against the floor, I could feel the massive heat and electricity in the air. It made my hair stand on end and my heart hammer in my throat.
It lasted a couple of seconds, maybe ten at most, and then the fighter flew off and we were left with a resounding silence.
11
Final Stand
I cracked open a single eye and found that I wasn’t swallowed in yet another fireball. Peeking upwards, I saw a hall filled with smoke, only a few standing silhouettes against the haze.
“Rush the line!” I cried, vaulting over my still quite hot cover and dashing forward. Eske followed right behind me and the mimics, oh boy, did the mimics make a terrifying force as they exploded forward.
Bodies expanded and rippled in some places, popping out limbs, claws and teeth like some kind of genetic soup, then shrank and buckled in others. The mass of our five shifting friends reached the alien survivors first, and both Eske and I had to skid to a stop as they completely blindsided the few that survived.
“Remind me to never get on their bad side,” Eske murmured, looking queasy. I couldn’t blame her. Despite all the adventures we had been on, I still wasn’t much for blood or carnage.
“You should go check on the eggheads. I’ll make sure there aren’t any stragglers.”
“You know they’re going to send more, right?”
The tall woman sent me a sort of slipshod smile. “We’ll deal with those when they come. You better hurry while you can.”
I nodded and dashed off, keeping my gun close just in case. It was scary how quickly you could get used to having a weapon at your side, and I hoped that this violence wasn’t an indicator of what was coming in the rest of my life.
“What’s the word in here?” I asked, dashing into the engine room.
“We’ve got it!” Gonzales cried from above, clambering down. “But now we’ve got to charge the thing.”
“Yeah,” Bahn said, following her more carefully. “And once that ship reads the energy spike, they’re going to send their whole armada.”
“About that,” Ciangi said, her tone steely. “They just released a hundred more ships.”
“Well, that’s not good,” Gonzales growled.
“And they’re beginning a landing sequence.”
“…oh.”
“Wait,” I interjected, heart picking up pace yet again. At this rate, even if I survived the war, I was going to die at an early age due to apoplexy. “You mean that massive mothership is coming down here?”
“Yup.”
“We can’t let that happen!”
“Nope,” Ciangi continued, strangely calm. I was guessing that all the insane twists and revelations had gotten her to her limit and she was numb by this point. “It wouldn’t matter how much preparation we’ve done, they’d be able to crush us all just by setting down on top of us.”
“What do we do?” Gonzales asked. “I got the weapon integrated into our system, kinda, but I don’t have time to rewire its power requisites. It needs what it needs, so the only way to charge it faster is to give it more power.”
“And although the engines are powerful,” Bahn added, “if I accelerate their output enough to increase the rate of charge, the amount of nuclear runoff would be far greater than what our dampeners and storage ports could absorb.”
“Wait, did you say nuclear energy?” I asked, the tiniest of ideas flickering to life in the back of my mind.
“Yes,” Bahn answered, raising his brow at my tone. “It seems that they used some sort of energy source that might have been crystal-based on their own end, but we don’t have that kind of technology.”
“Charge the cannon at the higher speed.”
“But the—”
“I know!” I interrupted. “But trust me, I know how to handle it.” I dashed back into the hall, leaving no room for argument, and bolted toward the closest mimic.
I couldn’t tell who they were or how old they might be, but that didn’t matter. I caught one of them by the arm, barely managing to pull it from the thrall of battle as they continued to fight with the ten or so aliens that survived.
“I need you to get Mimic,” I said. “I need her here as quickly as possible.”
It chirped something at me and the air made a sucking sound as the mimic’s body quickly shrank down to what looked like an alien bunny. Without missing a beat, it dashed beyond the fight and out of the hall before I could even blink.
“Higgens, watch out!”
I heard Eske’s cry and barely managed to jump to the side as a green bolt lanced into the wall where I had just been. I jerked up my gun to return fire, only to have the alien be physically lifted from his feet by a rush of tentacles, and bashed repeatedly against both the ceiling and floor.
The sounds made my stomach churn, but a hand on my shoulder distracted me from the nausea. I felt it pulling me backward, toward the cover, and I scuttled with it until both Eske and I were once again where it was relatively safe.
“You want to tell me what you were doing out there?”
“Making sure that Mimic got a very important message.”
“Is the mysterious half-answer just kind a thing in your group, or is this a human thing that I somehow never picked up on?”
I cracked a smile at that, then peeked over the edge of our cover to deliver a few shots to an alien that was going toe-to-toe with the alien creature quite well. “I’m not sure who started it, but I definitely think it’s an us thing.”
“Well, a little bit of constructive criticism, sto— Grenade!”
I heard the distinctive sound of something small and metal hit the floor, then the mimics all vaulted back to the protection of our cover. Some of them didn’t even touch ground before the massive explosion rocked the entire hall.
I heard the cracking before I felt it. One moment, I was tucked tightly behind my cover, and the next, it was fracturing into pieces and I was flung into the wall. My hand slammed into a molten patch of metal, and I dropped my gun with a scream.
“Higgens! Are you alright?” Eske cried, dashing over to me.
I slid to the floor in a heap and tried to give her a thumbs up, but the skin of my hand was already swelling and blistering. “To be honest, I’ve been better.”
“This isn’t good. We need to—”
There was a blinding flash of green and then suddenly Eske wasn’t there anymore. I screamed, looking around wildly for her.
She couldn’t be dead! Not after everything we’d been through!
A groan sounded from just a bit away from me, and I saw her crumpled body. Fearing the worst, I rushed to her and saw a large chunk missing from her side.
“At…at least there’s no blood,” she wheezed, looking up at me through her shattered visor. “Perks of cauterizing energy beams, I guess.”
“Come on, I’m getting you inside.”
“But we have to watch the hall!”
“The mimics can do it. You’ll be no use to anyone dead.”
“Ironic, coming from you,” she wheezed but offered her arm to me nonetheless.
I hauled her to her feet, draping her arm over my shoulders. Limping along, I got her to the door and managed to punch in the code then have it slam behind me.
“Oh, you do not look good,” Gonzales said as soon as we were in.
“Don’t feel so good either,” Eske wheezed as I got her over to where I had been just a bit earlier to get Ciangi’s first aid.
“I hate to be the bearer of bad news here,” the blonde said, “but that ship is going to broach atmosphere in just a few minutes and they’re releasing bigger, multi-man ships to our location and to surround our city.”
“I already have the cannon charging at fifty percent higher input than we should,” Bahn snapped, sweat apparent on his brow. “And we’ve got two minutes max before the nuclear waste overwhelms our systems and we all turn into a cancerous sludge. I hope that plan of yours works, Higgens.”
“It will,” I answered, grabbing some injectors from the first aid kit and trying to figure out which would help Eske. “Because it has before.”
“Before?” the taller of the twins asked, cocking his head to the side. “What are you—” Then his eyes widened, and realization hit him. “The engine room, back on the mining ship.”
“You got it,” I said with a nod, never pulling my eyes away from Eske. We were so close to winning this; I wasn’t about to let her succumb to a silly side wound.
Mimic: The Space Shifter Chronicles Boxed Set (Books 1 - 9) Page 40