“Yes, ma’am. Gimme thirty seconds.”
“Good. Taking off now.”
It had been so long since I had been in the ship that I actually jumped in my restraints. Thankfully, nobody seemed to notice, and soon we were taking off into the air. The rumble of the engines that had once been so familiar to me was now foreboding, like they were taking me back to a life that I had left behind.
As much as I sometimes complained about day-to-day routine being boring compared to our high-flying days when we had first escaped Giomatti, I was quickly realizing that I didn’t want to get back into the action. I liked knowing I would see tomorrow. I liked that there was no one chasing or trying to kill me.
Why did I have the feeling that was going away?
Suddenly, there was a booming sound and I nearly jumped out of my skin. “What the heck was that?”
Mimi sat bolt upright in her chair, her gaze unfocused as she listened intently. I couldn’t be certain, but I thought I saw her ears growing outwards slightly, something I had learned she liked to do when she was trying to pick up more info.
“You’ve got to be kidding me!” she snapped suddenly, striding past us. “Someone take the helm!”
“Uh, I guess that’s me,” I said, unbuckling and sliding into the chair she’d vacated. While I was definitely wondering what had set her off, I was much more interested in making sure that we got out of orbit safely.
I went through the steps that I had learned in our six months of peace. It turned out that if you could fly a fighter in the middle of a giant space battle, you could pretty much fly anything. Granted, I still wasn’t an ace pilot or anything, but I could get any of our ships into space.
We went through the familiar rattling, reverberating, and otherwise havin’ a real party, then we shot into space. Once I plotted a course for an appropriate distance from the Earth ship, I unbuckled and decided to check on what Mimi was doing.
I didn’t get very far. I was maybe just to Eske’s seat when Mimi came stalking in, her hand firmly gripping Mari’s collar.
“You are not supposed to be here,” she snapped, looking quite perturbed at the smaller shapeshifter.
“Sooorrrry!” Mari whined, looking quite contrite. “I just wanted to come along! This could be history and I didn’t want to miss it like I missed so much else!”
“That does not matter. You could have been hurt or put our entire mission in jeopardy!”
“Mimi,” I said softly, approaching the two of them. “Can you really blame her?”
I didn’t want to say it out loud, but it was clear that Mari worshipped the ground that Mimi walked on. She’d even named herself after her fearless leader. A possible treaty between the mimics and Earth could be happening. I wouldn’t want to miss that either.
“I… I guess I understand.” She looked back to her underling with a firm but loving expression on her face. “But you and I are going to have a serious talk about protocol when we get back, and there are going to be consequences.”
“I understand…” the younger mimic murmured, looking at the ground.
“Good. Now go sit down and stay there. Do not say anything, alright?”
“Yes, ma’am.” A broad grin spread across her face and she scampered into a chair near Eske.
“We’re in range to directly hail via holo-chat,” Ciangi said.
Mimi took a deep breath, then went to stand at the helm where the holo-projector would scan her in order for her to appear on the other ship and vice versa. “Go ahead and hail them.”
Ciangi did so, and there were a few moments of tense silence as we all waited, the pressure of the moment and what it meant quite apparent.
Finally, there was a reply back, and it played over the comm system.
“We are ready to receive your communication.”
That was it. Succinct. Forthright. My mind turned it over, trying to hear if there was any malice within the words, but there just wasn’t enough there for me to guess. Not that I was very good at discerning emotions anyways.
Mimi gave a nod to Ciangi, and there was a slight buzz. She was broadcasting. A few moments later, we received theirs, and a holographic form came into being in front of the helm.
It was of a military person, that much was for certain, and judging by everything they had pinned to their chest and shoulders, they were quite a big deal. Their face was stern, hard-lined, and decidedly unhappy. It certainly helped that they were flanked by two fully armed soldiers, guns clearly evident.
“What is your purpose in coming here?” Mimi asked flatly. I had to admire her on how much she had learned about human tone and how to control it, because at this point, I was pretty sure that she was better at it than me.
“I presume that you are the leader of the discovered lifeforms,” the stern-faced one said, their tone just as grating as I guessed it would be. “The first contact called Mimic?”
“That I am. And who do I have the…” She paused. “…pleasure of speaking to?”
“Commander Jensen Diylok. I have been sent to see if, after our somewhat shaky start, there is a chance we could overcome our slights and try again.”
“Shaky start?” Mimi echoed. “You mean as in going back on our treaty, stealing the technology I gifted you, and illegally imprisoning my allies who also happen to be your citizens?”
“We apologize for the actions of a few renegades that helped contribute to you stealing Earth Gov property, causing excessive damage, endangering the welfare of our planet, other acts of treason, and kidnapping a citizen.”
“Kidnapping a citizen?” What the heck did they mean by that? We hadn’t kidnapped anyone.
“The worker that you abducted from our facility who was working on the ship.”
“Oh! That’s me!” Eske said, standing up and stepping into the holo-projector reading field. “I’m not kidnapped! I’m very happy with this arrangement and how it turned out.”
Mimi shook her head slightly and gestured for Eske to sit down. “They don’t care if you’re willing or not. They’re leveraging your presence to have more negotiating power.” The custodian sat down, and Mimi’s voice hardened as she looked back to the hologram in front of us. “And that’s what this is, right? A negotiation?”
“It could be. That mostly depends on you.”
“I disagree. I think this largely rests in your hands.” My eyes flicked from her to the holo-commander and back again. “Before we discuss anything remotely resembling peace, or a treaty, I want to know why you’re here.”
“I think the reason we’re here has already been discussed—”
“No. You say you’re here for a treaty, but why. Earth Gov, and even the coup taking place, would never give up their grudge against us unless there was a greater threat. I believe there’s an old human adage, ‘the enemy of my enemy is my friend.’
So, what I want to know is, what’s brought you here? What are you so afraid of?”
The commander’s expression soured, but he surprised me by answering. I supposed I didn’t have the best impression of a lot of Earth’s high-ranking military members. “Earth recognizes that the acts of a few interlopers have lost us an alliance that could benefit us quite greatly. So, we would prefer to extend the olive branch before we need something, rather than waiting until the last moment.”
“I see. And what are you hoping you might get out of such an alliance? More technology? More samples of my DNA? I may not know much about humans, but I do know that your governments are rarely willing to give more than they get.”
“Perhaps this conversation would be more productive if we did not assume each other’s motivations.”
“I’m not assuming,” Mimi countered, her voice like steel. “I’m asking you directly. Although I understand the human tendency to beat around the bush, I believe the term goes, I personally do not couch my words.”
“I can see that. We are interested in benefiting both our cultures in any way that we might need.”
The two continued to talk back and forth but I was distracted from the stressful conversation by Mari’s shuffling next to me.
“What are you doing?” I whispered, not wanting to interrupt the obviously very important conversation happening in front of us.
“Just a little uncomfortable,” she said, wiggling further and pulling her bag into her lap. “I still haven’t really gotten the hang of sitting down. It bends the spine funny.”
I chuckled very lightly at that, again trying not to get picked up by the holo-scanner. “I don’t think your outfit is helping. That’s new, right?”
She smiled at me, her cherubic cheeks making her eyes close. “I made it out of some of the rubber insulation in the recreational deck. Did you know that they used a special type of rubber that was synthesized with an artificial polymer to make it that much more resistant to electricity and other isolatable forces?” I just blinked at her, surprised by the info dump. “Isn’t it cute?”
“You’ve learned how to make garments already?” That was something most of the mimics struggled with, and I knew several of them just shifted their bodies to have the illusion of a bodysuit or unitard on.
“Of course,” she answered blithely. “I had to make sure I was prepared for this moment. It would be silly to spend four months in planning just to be tripped up by a little outfit mishap.”
“Planning? What do you mean?” Was this some sort of mimic thing that I didn’t understand?
But she just reached into her bag and pulled out a tube-like thing with a couple wires sticking out of it. “You’re fun, Higgens. Out of anyone, I think I’ll miss you the most.”
“Wait, what—” Instead of answering my question, she just pressed a button and dropped the thing to the floor. I tried to catch it, but I was hardly even out of my seat when it felt like my whole body caught fire.
I tried to scream as I toppled to the ground, but I couldn’t get the muscles of my throat to work. I couldn’t even breathe. My whole entire body was tensed so hard that I was sure I was going to implode on myself in a crumpled ball.
I had experienced something like this before, but not nearly as excruciating. I was being electrocuted, and judging by the screams all around me, I wasn’t the only one.
The pain continued, building and building and building on itself until I was completely overtaken by it. My bleary eyes, locked into position and unable to blink, watched as Mari calmly walked over all of us to the helm.
She said something, I couldn’t hear what, and then the entire world slipped away from me.
5
De Ja Oh No
I wish I could say I woke up peacefully, that birds were chirping or that I came to with Mimi beside me, but that was not the case. My head was pounding, and my mouth felt like it had been stuffed with cotton then filled with blood. I was pretty sure I had bitten my tongue.
I groaned and looked around, my entire body aching. We were in a ship, that was for certain, but it didn’t look like our own.
I tried to sit up, but I couldn’t roll myself over. Pulling at my arms, I realized that they were in cuffs, as were my feet.
That definitely wasn’t good.
I gave myself a couple of minutes for my mind to settle, although my adrenaline was pumping, and I could feel my heartbeat accelerating. I needed to calm down and examine the situation if I wanted to be of any use.
But I couldn’t help it, my mind was flashing back to the time I had already spent imprisoned on Earth. The terror, having to sit back and watch Gonzales be terrorized, the electrocution. Occasionally I still had nightmares about it and to be pushed into the same situation again was making my body go into crisis.
I focused on my breathing. In and out. In and out. As the minutes passed, I became aware of other inhales rasping around me. I wasn’t alone, but I couldn’t tell yet if that was good enough.
Finally, I was in control enough to fully open my eyes and rock myself onto my back. From there, I was able to sit up and look around fully.
Ciangi, Bahn, and Eske were all in the room with me, similarly thrown face-down on the floor and bound by their wrists and ankles. From my position, I could see that the restraints were thick and lit up with nodules in several places. They looked more heavy duty than anything I had ever seen before, which made me wonder how dangerous they thought we were.
That thought made my stomach churn as I realized exactly what had happened. Not only were we in the custody of Earth again, but we had been betrayed by one of our own.
Crap.
I couldn’t believe it. Mari was but a child, and sweet as pie, if not a little clingy. Why would she do this to us?
I wanted to believe that it was a mistake, that she was somehow tricked, but I couldn’t see how. The self-satisfaction I had seen on her face before she fried us was one hundred percent deliberate. She had been planning this for months and we had walked right into her trap.
There was a whimper beside me and I looked to see Eske waking up. They had taken the goggles that the coin twins had made for her, and I felt my temper flare. Imprisoning us was one thing, but blinding someone for no reason was another.
“Hello?” She sounded terrified, her voice cracking, and I crept closer to her.
“Hey, it’s me.”
“Oh, Higgens!” She tried to turn her face to look at me, and I saw her eyes trying to focus on me, but one of them was wandering off in its own direction. “I… I think I see you. Where are we?”
“I think we’re in some kind of brig, but I can’t tell for sure. If you roll onto your back, you can kinda use your momentum to sit up.”
“Ugh, give me a minute. I don’t think I’ve been in this much pain since I lost an MMA match to a state champion back in high school.”
“No problem. Take your time.”
I sat back, waiting, as she went through her own little breathing exercises. Even with her face partially pressed against the ground, I could see the pain written across her features. There was a small trickle of congealed blood down her lower lip, which I could tell was quite swollen. Geez, they had really done a number on us, hadn’t they?
After five minutes or so, she went through pretty much the same process I had to get up, and then we were sitting face to face.
“This isn’t good,” she said hoarsely.
“That’s one way to say it.” I tried to make light of the situation, to find a glimmer of hope. “I don’t think I’ve ever wanted to scratch my nose so much in my entire life.”
“Oh, I can help with that. Gimme a sec.” Eske started to wiggle, rolling her shoulders several times until, in one smooth motion, she swung them up over her head, popping them out of joint only to end up settling back in and leaving her hands in front of her.
“How did you do that?” I asked, staring at her with wide eyes. You’d think after all the things I had seen, and all of the crazy experiences we had, that something so simple wouldn’t have surprised me, and yet it did.
“Do what?”
My eyes flicked to her hands, sitting in front of her like everything was normal, and she just laughed.
“Oh, I’m a little bit hyper-flexible. It’s partially what made me so good at a lot of the martial arts I liked.”
“A little hyper-flexible?” I retorted. “That was borderline terrifying.”
“Was it? Huh. That’s interesting. Anyways, I believe someone had an itchy nose?” She reached out and before I could tell her that I was joking, she was reaching for the general area of my face. After a few fumbling seconds, I realized that she couldn’t really see my face, so I gently moved my head in the direction of her fingers. Once she felt my touch, she scratched gently. “There we are. So, what now?”
“Should we go about waking the others, or wait for them to get up on their own?”
Eske rubbed her chin, her eyes still hazy and unfocused. “Honestly, I think it would be better if they were up. I can’t really see, and you have no hands. I think we can use all the help we can get,
considering the situation.”
“Fair enough.” I looked around, trying to see if there was anything that I could use as a handhold, but we were pretty much in an empty containment room. I was surprised that they even put four of us in there.
Shifting, I managed to get to my knees and sort of shuffle forward until I was by Ciangi. I went to sit, wobbling and almost falling on my face, but thankfully Eske caught me and helped me onto my butt without hurting myself further.
“Hey, guys,” I murmured quietly, trying to wake them up as gently as possible. “Are you okay?”
Eske, with her hands in front of her, reached forward to stroke Ciangi’s curly hair. I noticed that her normally well-taken care of mane was slick with both oil and sweat. I knew it took a while to get that way, so how long had we been unconscious?
I wasn’t sure, and I didn’t think there was any way to find out at the moment, so I just settled for concentrating on waking up the engineer.
It took a while, with both Eske and I comforting her and talking softly, but eventually, her eyes flittered open.
Well, one did. The other was swollen shut with a black and blue bruise around it. She must have hit her face on something during her convulsions. Judging by the coloring and spread of it, it was definitely several hours old, but not multiple days. Well, that was the mildest of reliefs.
“Ow…” was all she groaned at first before her eyes closed again. For a moment, I felt panicked, but I heard her breathing steadily through her chapped lips. She was conscious, just recovering like we had. With a nod to Eske, we moved on to Bahn.
He was in slightly better shape than his other half, but there was blood around his mouth as well. Apparently, we had all taken enough of a shock to clamp down that hard on our tender mouth bits.
“Hey, Bahn, time to wake up.”
No response at first of course. But we were patient and kept at it until finally both of the twins were beginning to stir.
“What happened?” Ciangi groaned, managing to roll partially onto her side.
Mimic: The Space Shifter Chronicles Boxed Set (Books 1 - 9) Page 44