The hall we were in looked even more locked down than our own had been. There were bulkheads every ten feet or so and it looked like each door required a passcode and a keycard.
“They gotta be holding something good here,” Gonzales remarked, heading toward the first room.
“Didn’t you come this way, though?” I asked, still following her. “Wouldn’t you have checked for Mimi already?”
“Well, no, because I assumed she was with you all. Now that I think about it, I realize that was a silly assumption to make, but it’s my first time planning a coup to a coup, so I think a little error is allowable.”
Ciangi cleared her throat beside me and I couldn’t tell if her tone was teasing or patronizing. “Sure, whatever you say. But can you actually open any of these doors? They look pretty fortified.”
“Don’t worry about that,” Gonzales said, pulling something from one of the utility packs attached to her belt. “I tried to come at least a little prepared.” She placed the small, circular thing on the door and pressed the center button before stepping back. The disk gave off a few beeps, before I felt the electricity in the air suddenly spike and the door blasted off its hinges as the circuits around it overloaded.
“And that’s how you make an entrance,” she remarked, stepping in.
I followed quickly after her, my heart in my throat, but instead of seeing Mimi, or even a containment chamber, there was just server after server after server full of memory crystal chips.
“She’s not here,” I said, unable to keep the defeat from my tone.
“No,” Bahn said, coming up behind me. “But I think what we’re looking at might be the entire data center for this particular base.”
“You’re kidding me. They really just have all their vital info here for anyone to just come along and blow up?”
Bahn ran his hand over his stubbly head, grimacing as he did. “Considering that one normally has to go through a dozen or so layers of security to get here, I doubt they thought it would be an issue. Also, I have no doubt that they have backed this information up elsewhere as a failsafe, so damaging it, while being cathartic, would ultimately be a useless endeavor.”
“So, what? We found a treasure trove of their data and it’s useless?”
The taller engineer smiled ever-so-slightly, perhaps for the first time since we had been captured. “No, not quite. While it would be counter-productive to destroy it, I never said anything about stealing as much as we can possibly carry.”
Gonzales’s face lit up and she shook her finger at Bahn. “Clever, clever. See, this is why we all need each other. Fregos, Jannin, I need anything you have resembling a bag. Pass them around to everyone cause it’s time to load up. Quickly, of course, considering we have that whole rescue thing to get to.”
Although I hated the idea of delaying our search for Mimi for even a couple of seconds, I knew that this opportunity was too good to pass up. So, I helped fill up all the packs we had, slinging one over my shoulder and looping my arms through the straps of another.
A man’s voice suddenly came over Gonzales’s comm, causing all of us to look at her. “My help on the outside,” she whispered with a wink as we listened in.
Hey, gun-head. I’ve got a blip on a floor above you, but all the way over in the west wing. It looks like they’re using some of the shielding from the landing bay to power a room that’s almost completely scrubbed off the map. I was only able to find it thanks to some old maintenance blueprints.
“What do you know,” Gonazles said, smiling at me. “Looks like that good ol’ janitor knowhow is saving our rear end again.”
“Does that happen often?” Eske asked.
“Oh, more than you know.” She looked to the door and lifted her gun again. “So, who’s ready to finally save our fearless leader?”
I didn’t need to be asked twice and followed her out. One way or another, we were going to get out of this, all together or not at all.
11
Storming the Castle
With the lifts being out of order due to the lockdown, we made our way to the closest stairs. While I could still hear the battle going on, they all seemed to be from above us. How far above us, I didn’t know. While we had only encountered the one group of soldiers that Jannin had promptly blown up, I was certain that there would have to be others we would run into along the way.
Geez, this was nothing like our previous escapes, where few people ever got hurt and weapons were more of a suggestion than a requirement. I almost felt like that was a simpler time, like another life where I wasn’t aware of just how evil so many people could be.
Inner existential crisis or not, I had a task at hand, so I brought my stun baton up as we climbed the stairs. We didn’t run, but we didn’t quite walk either. It was more like we rushed along at a heated pace, pausing only long enough to make sure there wasn’t an enemy waiting to drop out of some hidey hole.
When we made it to the next floor, I could tell that the firefight was definitely taking place right outside the door. Well, not right outside, but close enough that it was definitely a threat.
“Stand back, guys. We’re going to lay down suppressing fire.”
“Why not just bomb them out of existence, courtesy of Jannin?” Ciangi asked.
“Because some of our operatives might be in this hall and I didn’t manage to turn off the friendly fire settings on real life.”
“Oh.”
“Exactly. Now stand back, it’s time to see if all my practice has been paying off.”
“But we have guns too!” It seemed that Ciangi was in an argumentative mood now that she was freed. Maybe she was hungry, or maybe she was on edge from the fact that any of us could die at any moment. That was reasonable enough.
“Yeah, and if you don’t mind, I’d rather not be shot in the back by them. I’ll tell you when you have clear shots, so please don’t fire before then. I love y’all, but I’d rather not be killed by you.”
“Fair,” Ciangi said.
“Glad you approve of my logic. Now, if you don’t mind, get out of the way.”
Ciangi finally stepped to the side and the three rescuers took their positions in the doorway. There was the tiniest second where they all centered themselves, and then Gonzales kicked the door open and they all moved forward as one.
The sound of blaster fire picked up immediately, amplified that much further by their sweep forward. I tensed, sure at any moment that I would hear the death cry of one of my friends.
But eventually, the shots faded, and I heard a small cheer instead. Peeking out, I saw Gonzales hugging a young man whose bionic arm was draped around her.
“Carlos, you did good getting down here,” I heard her say as we approached.
“Thanks. Unfortunately, I lost Gibbens.” His face screwed into a look that was somewhere between mournful and angry. “Took a blast right to the face. At least it was instant.”
My stomach flipped at that. Were…were people actually dying for us? The thought made me feel more than a bit sick. As much as I loved each of us, sacrificing a life that was not my own for the cause seemed like far too great a price.
As if she was reading my mind, Gonzales looked over to me. “Relax, Higgens. They’re not dying for you. They’re dying in the hopes of getting rid of the people that have ruined so many lives. Beyond how they’ve royally screwed us over multiple times, they’ve hurt a whole lot of people a whole lot worse.”
“I…I guess I understand.”
“These are the folks that we’re supposed to add to our number?” the man, Carlos, asked, giving us a charming smile.
“That they are. My original crew in the flesh.”
“Huh. I thought they’d be taller.”
“I would supremely not like that,” Eske said. “It’s already hard enough to find clothes as it is.”
“I love the banter and all that, but we have a shapeshifting alien to save.”
“Right,” Carlos agreed. “Let’s
get going.”
Once again, we were moving along, passing by tons of evidence of fighting. The sounds were still coming in loud and clear above our heads, making me wonder just how many people Gonzales had managed to recruit.
I guessed I would find out eventually…if we were successful, that was.
Hey, Gunslinger, her comm crackled, nearly jolting me out of my skin. Obviously, she had the volume turned all the way up so it could be heard over the ambient sounds of battle, but I hadn’t thought about that before. According to my scans, you’re almost there, but it seems like at least a couple people knew what we were gonna do and they’re barricaded there behind a lot of energy shields.
“Gotcha,” Gonzales said, putting her large gun in a magnetic holder on her back and pulling out her stun-rod instead. “And what about our ride?”
Working on it. With varied success.
“Ride?” Bahn asked.
“Don’t worry about it,” Gonzales said abruptly. “But hey, for this next chunk, we’re going to do the same thing as before. Y’all hide, while we—”
Oh, crap! Remember that barricade thing I just mentioned? I’m reading three shields approaching you rapidly. It looks like they’re going on the offensive. You need to find cover, now!
Gonzales’s eyes went wide and she whipped toward us. Her mouth opened, and I could tell that she was about to give us some tactical order, but the door blew open behind her and knocked us all off our feet.
My skin felt the raw heat of the blast, then my back crashed into a solid wall. I tried to open my eyes, but the sting of acrid smoke blinded me anyway.
Time wasn’t willing to slow down to let me recover. I heard footsteps running toward us, and the hair on my arms was standing up from the electrical charge. I’d never encountered someone using an electrical riot shield before and I had no idea how to deal with it.
I fought to get to my feet, blinking rapidly, but I couldn’t make anything out beyond some shadows flittering this way and that. But what I did hear was Eske letting out a huge battle cry that quickly approached the footsteps running for us, then ended up behind them.
Did she…did she vault the shields?
I wished I could have seen that, but I didn’t have much time to worry about the missed moment. The smoke was beginning to clear just in time for me to hear several blasters discharge and then suddenly, I was fully embroiled in a firefight.
With no gun.
But in a way, I guessed that was alright. I didn’t want to have to kill another living human being. I still had nightmares about the aliens that I had shot out of the sky. I didn’t need to add anymore trauma onto my already sizable pile.
I wasn’t sure why no one was firing at me, but I realized that I had landed by a door that was barely hanging from its hinges, and even though I was on my knees, it was protecting me from their view.
I could easily just crouch there and wait for the battle to end, with other people having the weight of the fight on their conscience, but that just wasn’t my way. Bracing myself, I peeked around the corner and saw that Eske had indeed managed to break their ranks, allowing the others to take advantage of that. Gonzales had ducked into a side room, with only her gun out as she shot at anyone who tried to take any of us out. Fregos had some sort of massive hammer that was crackling with electricity, and he was swinging it back and forth with abandon.
It looked like it had definitely become a melee battle. Sure, people were shooting, but between Eske’s expert staff-wielding and Fregos’s wild movements, this had definitely become a battle of who could smash things the hardest.
That was when I spotted that one of the soldiers had broken away from the brawl and was aiming toward where Bahn and Ciangi were huddled behind a piece of debris, their guns at the ready.
No.
I would not allow that.
I bolted toward him, my longs legs taking me across the hall in seconds. I didn’t know what was guiding me with such certainty, but I didn’t question it.
My thumb flicked over the switch and the next thing I knew, I was slamming it into the leg of the marksman as I slid in beside him.
He fell to the side, but unlike the general, he didn’t drop his weapon. Instead, I found myself staring down the barrel of his weapon.
That was unfortunate.
I took a breath, waiting for my life to end, but two beams of energy slammed into the gun, making it explode into several pieces and throwing me backward once again.
The amount of times I’d been airborne in such a small time was uncanny, yet I still hadn’t nailed the landing. My shoulder hit the ground first, absorbing all the impact and making my head rattle. Then my chest hit the ground and it took all of my effort to get one of my arms under my chin so I didn’t break my jaw slamming into the ground.
I slid several feet, ending up right by Ciangi and Bahn, whose guns were smoking.
“Thanks,” I gasped, sitting up. “Nice shot.”
“I was aiming for his head,” Ciangi said with pout.
Oh…well…
“Not bad, guys,” Gonzales said, walking over and offering me a hand up. It was only just then that I realized the fight in our immediate vicinity had stopped. We had beaten them.
My brow furrowed as I looked over the carnage. Why had it seemed so…anti-climactic? Was it because there was no war to win? Or because I knew there was a whole other group of people between us and Mimi?
“Fergos, make sure to relieve all the soldiers of their weapons. We’re going to use those to our advantage.” She took a breath, looking to the rest of us, and I was struck by how different she looked from when I had seen her last.
Sure, she was the same Gozales in general, though her bionic eye certainly was disconcerting, but there was more to it than that. The lines on her face were harder, and her normally short, thick hair had grown out considerably. She looked much more muscular than I had remembered, and she was considerably tanner, but it wasn’t that either. It was like something inside of her was different, something subtle, and I couldn’t quite place my finger on it.
“Alright, everyone grab as many as you can and come with me to the last bulkhead before we meet our new friends. I have an idea.”
Whatever your idea is, you better hurry. They can hear that the fight has stopped, and I don’t doubt that that they’ll send another wave soon.
“Good to know. Let’s shake a leg everyone, we’ve got a time limit here.”
“Oh, I thought I’d just do it leisurely,” Ciangi countered. “You know, take my time, stop and smell the bodies.”
“Again,” Eske said, powering down her staff. “I do not think this is the appropriate time for sarcasm.”
“It’s always the right time for sarcasm.”
“It’s always the right time to hurry your butts up and get to picking up stuff,” Gonzales interrupted, tossing a blaster toward the smaller engineer.
She caught it, and then we were all hurriedly picking up as many weapons as we could carry. A minute or so later, we were trudging toward the door, arms full of death and destruction.
When we made it to the bulkhead, Gonzales fixed us all with a serious look. “Listen up, when I open this door, I want all of you to throw these guns as far as you can then dive to the side. You got that?”
“Yeah, but why—”
“Jannin, you know what to do after that, right?”
The smaller woman nodded, still entirely silent, but that seemed to be enough for Gonzales because she was moving to the button that would have the bulkhead slide up into the ceiling.
“Everyone ready? The blaster fire and maybe worse is gonna be coming in hot the moment these gears go off, so be careful.”
There was a general round of affirmatives and Gonzales slammed down on the button like it had done something to personally affront her. The door slid open, thankfully much faster than the doors on Giomatti’s ship had ever moved, and true to her word, a dozen or so bolts fired through in an orange, blue, and red h
aze.
It lasted ten seconds, maybe more, not stopping until the soldiers must have wondered why no one was coming in. That was when Eske and I took our chance, chucking our armful of guns forward.
They didn’t make it far, maybe ten feet or so, but it was enough to get the folks behind the barricade firing again.
They lasted a lot longer this time, nearly a minute, but none of them seemed to dare to come closer. Either they were just that terrified of Gonzales and her friends, or they were in such a superior position that they didn’t want to give it up. Either way, I hoped our weapon engineer’s plan worked.
Eventually their fire wound down as they realized they weren’t hitting jack diddly, and the remaining people tossed their weapons in. Of course, Fregos made it the farthest, nearly skittering to the barricade of debris and energy shields.
That was when Jannin rolled into the doorway, pulling two somethings from her bandolier and throwing them inside. I barely had time to blink before she rolled back to safety and Gonzales slammed the button to close the door.
“Everybody duck and cover!”
We did so, huddling into a pile, and the entire hall was rocked as an explosion sounded just on the other side of the wall. If it hadn’t been a room built specifically with a reinforced bulkhead, we would have been toast. But even with all of the extra precautions, chunks of the ceiling fell on us, and the blast of heat was incredible. I was absolutely sure I smelled burning hair, but I didn’t dare to let go or raise my head from our cocoon.
The blast lasted a while, with dozens of mini-eruptions that told me whatever bombs Jannin had tossed in there were overloading the cores of each blaster. Clever, and I couldn’t help but both admire and be intimidated by Gonzales’s quick thinking.
Finally, after what seemed like an eternity, the maelstrom faded and there was nothing but smoke and terrible smells left. We uncurled slowly, taking inventory of the hellscape of our own making.
“Well, that was fun,” Gonzales said, dusting herself off. “Let’s go find your girlfriend.” She pressed the button to open the door, but instead of sliding upwards, the thick square of metal just fell forward, slamming into the floor with enough impact to make my ears ring.
Mimic: The Space Shifter Chronicles Boxed Set (Books 1 - 9) Page 48