“I think I’m into their system now,” Bahn whispered, breaking me from my reverie. “As far as I can tell, there are no alarms going off now, but there was…something on the starboard side of the ship a few minutes ago.”
“That must have been their response to Mimi,” I said, my stomach flipping as I was reminded of how we were separated at the moment. The last time we had been separated was when we were kidnapped by the coup and I had my head shaved, so I wasn’t eager to repeat anything about that awful process.
“Speaking of which, I’m a bit worried that she hasn’t tried to contact us yet.”
“Maybe she has to be covert for a bit while the guards investigate,” I suggested, trying to be hopeful.
“Or maybe she’s feeding all the little ones some sweet, sweet nuclear energy so they can get back to being their sentient selves.” Eske offered, unloading her own pack.
I nodded agreeably. “Or that.”
“Alright, let’s hope for that then. But for the moment, it seems like we’re on the ship and everyone is none the wiser. We’ve made it behind enemy lines…again.”
Ciangi stood from where she had been crouched by the cloaking device, stretching all the tension out of her small body. “So, what now?”
11
Not the Folks One Wants at a Party
‘What now’ turned out to be even more waiting as Bahn tried to further infiltrate their systems and the rest of us waited for Mimi to establish contact. As hard as I tried to force myself to think positively, all sorts of dark and terrifying thoughts managed to wiggle their way into my mind.
I didn’t like it.
But I couldn’t exactly help it either. Mimi was such a huge part of my life that I couldn’t imagine existing without her. If it weren’t for her, I probably would have always believed that I was some moronic screwup that wasn’t even good enough for the maintenance job I had. That I was nothing, and I would always amount to nothing.
Knowing Mimi had opened my eyes to the fact that I was just…different. Sure, I didn’t process things like other people. And yeah, I could get overstimulated and sometimes social cues flew right over my head, but I almost had my engineering degree, and I had saved my friends’ lives just as much as they had saved mine. We were a unit, and I didn’t want to imagine what I would be like without any of them. Being apart from Gonzales for a year had been hard enough.
“Uh, guys, we’ve got a problem here,” Ciangi said, standing up from where she was huddled by Bahn, reviewing some of the information he was siphoning.
“What’s going on?” Gonzales asked, crossing to her.
“We’ve got a lifeform approaching us.”
“What, really?”
“Yeah, and it fits the general parameters of all the rest of the lifeforms on this vessel, meaning it’s probably an alien.”
“But there’s no alarms going off?” I reiterated, pulling up my gun.
“Not that I know of.”
“Well, we’re missing something then,” Eske said, grabbing one of my weapons as well.
“Let’s go on either side of the door.” Gonzales slipped into giving orders quite naturally. “Try to keep it quiet. If we mess this one up, we could blow this whole thing before we even get started.”
“Let’s not do that,” I said, pressing myself against the wall.
The mood grew more and more tense as they drew closer, and when the door of the place finally creaked open, I had my gun cocked and at the ready.
A large, yellowy foot stepped inwards, and then another. I could feel that we were all holding our breath, and I was prepared to do whatever the heck it was I had to do to make sure that—
“Are you all going to actually attack me or are we going to avoid that whole misunderstanding and skip to figuring out how to take over this ship?” its voice asked, low, guttural, and like nails across a chalkboard.
“Mimi?” I asked, almost dropping my gun entirely.
The alien’s body slowly faded away until only Mimi’s human form remained. “Glad you could tell,” she said, cracking a smile. The first one that I had seen her wear since we had returned to our planet. “It would be terribly inconvenient for you to have shot me.”
“Would that have even hurt you?”
She shrugged. “I don’t know exactly what advancements Gonzales used on her weapon upgrades there, and we do know now that my species can indeed die from weapons fire.”
I thought back to Astaroth and how she had held him in her arms as he passed from this world to the next. “Right.”
That was enough conversation for my taste and I rushed forward to hug her. She slid right into my embrace, where she was supposed to be.
To their credit, the group let us have our moment before Gonzales cleared her throat.
“So, what did you learn on your little party with the young ones?”
“So much,” she said with a pained expression. “So, so much.” She walked to the center of the room and sat down, gesturing for me to join her. I did, as did the rest of our little group.
“The aliens’ ship is damaged, yes, but one of the reasons they’re going so slowly is because they have a mandatory quarantine for bringing any new life to their planet.”
“Hold on, they have a mandatory quarantine procedure? Meaning that they do this so much that they have a literal procedure for it?”
“Yes, exactly that,” Mimi said with a nod. “These aliens are not good. Apparently, they were always warlike on their own planet, but once they discovered space travel, their bloodlust moved on to other species they found.”
“Other species?” I asked. “So, this isn’t like our system where so far there’s only been humans and mimics?”
“Not at all,” Mimi said. “And it’s hard to say because I don’t have nearly enough evidence, but I would be willing to bet that we somehow came from this system and just are transplants of our own.”
“That’s a loaded theory,” Gonzales said. “What makes you think that?”
“It’s a long story and ultimately irrelevant to the matter at hand, but what is important is that we know these people are conquerors. And not just conquerors, but violent, hateful ones at that. Who they don’t kill, they take back to their planet as slaves or for…experimentation.”
“Do I even want you to clarify that?”
“Most likely not, but I will anyway. Do you all remember how the original slaver alien we met had altered itself significantly with his ship parts and the elements from our home planet?”
“I don’t think I could forget,” Ciangi said, shuddering slightly.
“Man, I really missed so much, didn’t I?” Eske murmured.
“Yes. Yes, you did. Why are you bringing that up so much lately?”
“I don’t know,” she said with a shrug. “You guys just don’t talk about your past a lot even though it’s literally world history, and you’ve just been doing that more often since this whole attack thing.”
“Huh, I guess we have. I guess it’s because people from our past don’t always like staying there.”
“That is quite true,” Mimi said with a nod. “And these aliens are partially so insistent because they want to integrate us into their biological forms. Our resiliency, our shapeshifting, our ability to absorb knowledge. They want all of it, and they’ll get it even if they have to take apart each and every mimic they have in their hold. If they do succeed, you can believe they will come for Earth next.”
“But why?” Bahn asked. “If they already have you, they kind of have the superior species.”
Mimi tilted her head, giving him a confused look. “How so?”
“I mean… I would think that’s obvious. Your kind is just generally…better than humans in every way.”
But Mimi looked utterly baffled by the idea. “I do not agree with that at all. Sure, we have some amazing abilities that you do not, but I would hardly consider us superior.
“For one, your ability to adapt to nearly every situation is downright as
tonishing. From burning deserts or freezing tundra, you find a way to survive. Even space wasn’t enough to corral you.
“And your ability to reproduce? Shocking. Also, your sense of empathy and creation is unlike anything I’ve ever seen. Us mimics may be able to learn and replicate your inventions with ease, but I’m sure you’ve seen that we don’t really innovate or create anything on our own. Often how all of you come up with your own ideas, and these ‘harebrained’ schemes that we go through is truly mind-blowing to me.
“Which means, of course, the aliens will come after you after acquiring my species. If I was them, there is no way that I would ever pass up mankind.”
“Well, that’s a morbidly wonderful compliment.”
“So what, then?” Ciangi asked. “We find a way to sneak all the mimics off and go home none the wiser?”
“No,” Mimi said with determination. “It is clear to me that these beings will keep coming after us and throwing more and more resources until their forces are decimated. If we were to just slip off to go home, we would need to start preparing for another war.
“So, what we’re going to do is steal this ship.”
“You know…” I said after a moment’s thought. “This can’t be our solution to everything.”
“Why not?” Mimi said with a crooked smile. “It’s worked for us so far.”
Gonzales let out a short laugh. “She’s not wrong.”
I sighed and just rubbed my temples, wondering how exactly I had gotten to this point in my life.
“Alright then, how are we going to hijack the biggest ship that we have ever encountered while simultaneously being in enemy territory and not knowing the language of any of the systems?”
“I have a plan,” Mimi answered, unbothered by my doubt. “It is an old Earth saying, I believe. Simple, but proven effective.” We waited for her to say exactly which adage she was banking our future on. “Divide and conquer.”
“Divide and conquer, huh?” Gonzales asked, pulling at one of her curls thoughtfully. “You know, I like the sound of that a whole lot more than I thought I would.”
12
Divide and Conquer
I chewed nervously on my lip, my heart going a thousand miles a minute. I desperately, desperately wanted this plan to work, but it just didn’t seem possible.
“According to what I was able to observe while I was in their form,” Mimi murmured, peeking her head out of the door, “the furthest the aliens venture right now is to the hold where they’re keeping my kin. All of the support systems and power has been shut off beyond that point.”
“Well, that’s convenient,” Eske noted happily.
“So, it’s simple. When one comes in, I have the little ones shift enough to disrupt their comms again. We grab them, then I assume their form long enough to complete the rotation, then I’ll circle back to you guys in time to take the next one, and we replace them with a mimic too.”
“Wait, another mimic?” Gonzales asked. “Are any of them to the point of being able to shift into an alien?”
“Well, no, not right now. That’s your guys’ part of the plan. After I take the form of the first alien, you’re going to take the biggest mimics in there to their engine room, where they’re going to eat out of the same off-put system I crawled through.”
“Uh, won’t they notice that?”
“Not if you set up that cloaking device correctly, and if they do, it’s your job to dispatch them quickly and quietly so the mimics that just fed can take their form.”
“So that’s it? We just take them over one by one until we outnumber them?”
“Basically. The hardest part will be once we get to only the bridge crew left. From what I noticed on my walkthrough, there are always at least seven of them in there. I doubt that they never sleep or eat, so they most likely are expecting reliefs eventually. We have to start our engagement with them before they become suspicious.”
“Alright, so subtly take over the ship and don’t let anyone sound the alarm. If we do, it’ll just ruin everything.” Gonzales stretched and rose to her feet, offering me a hand. “Twins, you start packing up the cloaking device again. I guess we’re gonna find a hidey hole and re-set it up.”
“Sure, that’s not an intricate task that our entire plan hinges on.”
“You literally set it up in less than a few minutes when we came on here. Pardon me if I don’t believe your doom and gloom now.”
“Maybe that was just luck.”
“Or maybe we’re a team of highly-skilled individuals who have done the impossible so many times that we should drop the humble pretenses.”
“Fair enough.”
“Thank you.” She went to pick out which guns and weapons she wanted from the impressive array we had hauled over. “Now I call the big boom-boom.”
“Didn’t you just make a point about how we had to do this stealthily?” I asked, coming up beside her.
“Well, yeah, but the boomstick is just for a worst-case scenario.”
“Uh-huh. I’m sure it is.”
The rest of us geared up, picking what tools we thought we needed. It echoed so many other moments in our life lately, between gearing up to take down the coup and the many other firefights involved in that whole mess. I would be happy when my life no longer required me to ever hold a weapon again.
But we weren’t to that point yet.
“Give me three minutes to see what I can do about this cloaking device. But the moment I have it offline, I suggest you tell the mini-mimics to make with the shifting.”
“They’re not too exhausted for that, are they?” Eske asked.
“I don’t think so. They were able to feed a little from the excess radiation on my form and that gave them a little boost.” Her face darkened. “But they are so hungry, Higgens,” she murmured. “So incredibly hungry.”
I didn’t know what to say to that, so I just nodded.
“Alright, I think I’ve managed a sort of portable power system that might get us through the halls until I can graft it into their power system,” Ciangi said, Bahn holding a hunk of cord that was woven into one of their packs. “Time to set off the little ones.”
Mimi closed her eyes, her face once again sliding away. I was getting used to her demi-human, demi-mimic form and watched as different spikes rippled across her flat visage. It lasted maybe a handful of seconds, and then all her features came back.
“They’re going to shift in three seconds. I think you’ll be able to feel when it happens.”
“Do you think that it’s a good idea to repeat the same trick that got us in—”
Eske’s words were cut off as the ship almost seemed to buck, and the hair on the back of my neck rose. A quick warble from our instruments and the immediate fog-up of my visor told me that the little mimics were indeed doing their thing.
“Let’s go!” Mimi hissed, opening the door and creeping forward.
We followed her, trying to be as quiet as possible while still moving quickly. We knew that we had to get to the hold first, but we also had to not be detected. It was a delicate balance, and one we couldn’t exactly practice for.
Sure enough, after a few seconds passed, I heard alarms start to go off and the lights all around us flashed.
“That’s our cue,” Mimi said, ducking down a hall. “Here, up in this vent. I melted a path into a duct that drops right into the hold.”
“Really, you just…melted whatever alloy this is?” Gonzales said as I knelt to boost her up into the chute.
“I was hopped-up on nuclear energy at the time.”
“Ah, right.”
It didn’t take us long to all get in the vent. At first, I thought that we were in for a long, uncomfortable trek through some cramped system, but the experience was surprisingly short. We traveled less than a cafeteria’s length before the vent suddenly tilted, and I started sliding down almost the moment I hit it.
I was reminded of one time we had escaped from prison. For the f
irst time, if I recalled correctly, but instead of some terrifying slide down a massive shoot that might kill us, we only went down maybe ten feet or so before we slammed into another pipe.
“This way,” Mimi said, leading us a small way to where I saw a grate that had already been moved to the side. She slid down and away into darkness, so I followed her without question.
I landed hard, completely unable to see, but I felt a spry hand grab my shoulder. “Just back up slowly until you’re against a wall. The children will shield you from view.”
“What view?” I whispered, stumbling to the side as Gonzales landed beside me and elbowed my side. “I can’t see anything.”
“Sorry, we can’t risk a light. Just trust me. They’re almost here and I need to get into position.”
Three more thumps as the rest of our group landed. Stretching out in the absolute pitch black, I found someone’s arms. “We just need to carefully back up,” I said. “The mimics will do the rest.”
“Back up, he says,” I heard Gonzales grouse. “I’m not sure if I even know which way is back. What if I stood up facing a different direction than you?”
“Here, everyone link hands. I’m holding onto someone.”
“That would be me,” Bahn said calmly.
It only took us a couple of seconds to find each other and then we slowly scuttled backwards like a child learning to walk. I could hear and feel little figures moving quickly past my ankles.
The entire experience was unnerving.
After what felt like forever, my back finally hit solid metal. I crouched down, as did everyone else, assuming that the hand I was holding followed me, and I felt movement a foot or so away from our faces.
Just in the nick of time, it seemed, as I heard a door above us open. Light spilled across the room, forcing its way through the tiny gaps in the mimic pile that was domed over us.
Wow, the little ones really were tiny. It was like when we had first found Mimi’s planet all over again, but at least this time, they had their own free will.
Mimic: The Space Shifter Chronicles Boxed Set (Books 1 - 9) Page 65