No one was safe.
And we all knew that.
“Alright,” Gonzales said with a breath as she pressed some levers and there was a slight thunk from outside. I guessed that was the disembarking door, and I took a deep breath.
We were finally home, so why were nerves twisting so harshly in my stomach? I should have been happy, but instead, I was filled with a distinct sort of dread.
Maybe that was because I knew that if we were here, it was probably only two to three months before the aliens arrived themselves.
And we had a whole lot of work to do. If we thought our preparation for them the first time was difficult, this was going to be a whole new level. The aliens knew what we were capable of, and we knew what they were capable of.
“Let’s go home,” Mimi said, wrapping her arm through mine and walking out of the cockpit where we all tended to congregate. While we had dismantled anything in the ship that might harm us, it still wasn’t exactly a welcoming place. It was like the greedy malevolence of the alien conquerors had seeped into the walls and floors, leaving a bitter sort of violence to the polished metal.
As usual, my mimic arm pleasantly hummed when we touched. Somewhere between a tickle and a massage, it was an enjoyable, albeit distracting, sensation. It had once concerned me greatly, but I’d mostly learned to live with the confusing development.
We reached the outside and real, actual sunlight washed over us in a comforting blanket of warmth. We had landed the ship right outside of the ruins of our main town, and I was surprised to see that several buildings had been completely redone. Their workmanship was a bit haphazard, but it was definitely an improvement to the smoldering piles of debris we had left behind.
As expected, there was a sizable crowd waiting for us. Or at least, a sizable crowd considering how devastated our planet had been the last time we were around. All of Eske’s family was there, looking a bit gaunt but otherwise happy, and the mimics that had managed to hide or had stayed hidden shifted and bucked.
I noticed that none of them were wearing the human forms that they had used during the first war.
Huh. It was weird to think that our small, young colony of a nation had already had a first war and was about to head into its second one. It felt like I was having all sorts of personal revelations about the state of our massive family after three months of being in some sort of strange stasis, completely separated from both Earth and our home planet.
It was like my brain was sweeping out all the cobwebs, inventing new thoughts and neural pathways. All the activity made my hands shake, the urge to rub my fingers across something satisfying increasing.
But there would be time for that later. Happy to be home, all of us rushed into the warm embrace of our old friends, a wave of young mimics sweeping back into their once home.
Although it was a happy reunion, one full of relief and hope, there was another layer to it. This time, we could feel the coming threat more than ever, and unlike the previous attack that we had warded off, none of us seemed to think that we would survive.
2
Dreams Safe in A Warm Embrace
Night settled over the town like a thick blanket, and for a few moments, it was easy for my brain to think that we were right back in space again. I figured it out quickly, however, and settled into what was left of the bed in my and Mimi’s old house.
It was damaged, that was for certain, and there was a patch of roof that was ripped out, allowing me to stare into the night sky, but it was whole enough that we could rest there. And although it was certainly less comfortable than the warship we’d gotten from the revolution, there was something to be said about being home.
My fingers traced along Mimi’s pale arm, my own skin shifting to the inky black that I had come to identify with her. That same thrill of pleasure tickled along the back of my brain, and I didn’t think I could ever grow tired of it.
“You’re doing much better with that,” she murmured, her eyes flicking to me.
Most of the time, they were a brilliant purple or blue, but lately, they had taken on a pitch-black appearance, sometimes the white of them disappearing entirely. Most of us had the good sense not to mention it, but now I found my curiosity piquing.
“Thank you,” I said, trying to figure out a segue. But I was never very good at them, so I settled on my usual tactic. “Why’d you change your eyes?”
“Have I?” She sounded a bit surprised, which in turn surprised me. Had she not noticed? I guess we hadn’t exactly spent a whole lot of time looking in mirrors when we were rushing home as fast as we could.
“Yeah, they’re all dark now.”
“Dark?”
I nodded.
“Interesting.” She was quiet a moment, but we had known each other long enough for me to figure out that she was just thinking. “I’ve been sentient for so long, but there is still so much I don’t know about our own physiology. Entire records that still need to be discovered or decrypted. Perhaps it is because of my mood. Or perhaps I’ve used one form too much. I have no way of knowing, and I find that frustrating.”
“What do you mean by your mood?” I asked, picking up on the one I thought was more likely.
“I don’t know. It’s… It’s dark. I feel dark inside. What used to make me happy seems too impossible to grasp now and I’m just so tired, all the time.” She rolled to me and those dark eyes started to fade a bit, her usual gaze appearing the longer she maintained eye contact with me. “I feel like no matter what we do, no matter how hard we fight, no matter what insane circumstances we overcome or invent a solution for, we’re always going be fighting something even worse.”
Hearing her so in pain jolted me to my core. I supposed that during our mad dash back home, she and I hadn’t talked about much that wasn’t planning for the eventual attack. How long had she been holding these feelings inside? Letting them ruminate and fester?
“I know the past year has been rough, but—”
“It’s not just that it’s rough,” Mimi kept on. “It’s that it’s…it’s soul-shattering. Being betrayed by one of my closest underlings, one that I thought was going to succeed me when I finally got to lay my head down. Fighting a revolution. Losing almost every single one of my adopted children, brothers and sisters.
“Over and over again, it’s like life has brought my worst nightmares to life, and I don’t even really have nightmares. I just want it all to end. I want it to stop.
“I want peace.”
Her eyes searched my face and I understood the desperation there. With every word she spoke, it was like it was waking up thoughts that I had tried to shove so deep into my subconscious that they would never see the light of day.
“I want more than constantly fighting. More than war every day.”
I stroked her hair out of her face. “I know, love. I know. And you deserve that.”
Her eyes started to water but the tears didn’t quite come out. She was still working on that particular human response. “I want what I see in those happy holos we watch. I want happiness, with a reliable home, and no one coming to attack us. And children! I don’t understand it, but part of me wants to make little ones that are parts of both me and you.”
I looked at her with wide eyes. “You want a family?”
I didn’t know why, but I had never really thought about that. Maybe it was because our life had been one slapdash rush for survival since we had met with only tenuous months of peace. Maybe it was just because I had never thought that someone like me would ever have someone who wanted a child with them.
“With me?” I continued, my words coming from my brain like sludge. “But I’m…I’m…different.”
She let out the tiniest of laughs. “A shapeshifting alien with no actual gender or human anatomy just told you they want a family, and you’re worried you’re the strange one?”
Alright, she may have had a point. “How would that work anyway? We already have about two million children that we’v
e adopted.”
Mimi snuggled closer to me, her form soft and familiar. I knew it wasn’t her natural body, that she put it on to be more like me, but I didn’t mind. I loved her no matter what body she was in. No matter what she looked like. Because what mattered to me was that beautiful, fearless soul inside of her. The one that fought so hard for those she loved and protected everything she could.
“You know what I mean.”
“I think I do, but I’m not really sure on the…technicalities of how that would work.”
She shrugged. “We have years to figure that out if we survive. You’re at least part mimic now, so I’m assuming you’re going to live a bit longer than the average human.”
“Oh, that’s what it is, isn’t it?” I teased. “Before you were biding your time for your weird human boyfriend to pass, but now that I’m here long term, plans have changed.”
She laughed. “You know that’s not what happened.”
“I know,” I said, pulling her to me, my hands gliding up and down her spine. I loved holding her. It proved that she was here. That we had fought against everything and managed not to be separated yet. “If a family is what you want, then that’s exactly what we’ll try for.” I kissed the tip of her nose. “I’ll get you that peace you want, Mimi. I’ll get you anything you want.”
“Easy to promise that when in a few months, violent aliens could come and wipe us all out.”
“Yeah, but I’m hoping to avoid that whole genocide thing. One might even say it’s my mission currently.”
“Our mission,” Mimi countered. “Now I have a real reason to make sure we survive.”
“Oh really? It took marriage and crazy scientific experimentation to have children to make you wanna live? Not, ya know, the thousands of younglings we have skittering around, our friends, and actually, uh…living?”
“It never hurts to have a little extra incentive.”
I laughed, perhaps a bit louder than I should have, but the feeling was so nice that I didn’t care. When was the last time that we had bantered back and forth so freely? Talked about our dreams and our hopes? It had to have been before we were betrayed and held in confinement for so long.
In some ways, that seemed just like last week, but when I reached up and felt that my hair was just past my ears, I realized it was months ago. Strange how time worked.
“What are you thinking?” Mimi asked, seeming to sense that my mind was drifting backward.
“About that time we were separated.”
She frowned and pulled me closer, arms winding around me. “I never want that to happen again. Of all that I’ve experienced since I became me, that was the worst.”
I nodded, squeezing Mimi just as tightly. “It really was. And we’ve been through some stuff.”
“We really have.” She looked up at me, those eyes sparkling brightly once again, and gently pressed her lips to mine. “I love you, you know?”
“I do,” I responded, pulling the covers that we had brought from the ship over us. “And I love you just as much.”
3
Three-Way Call
I awoke in the morning with Mimi still curled in my arms. Unusual, considering she didn’t have to sleep and would usually slip off in the middle of the night to be productive, but I guessed after our conversation, she didn’t want to be apart.
I didn’t blame her. When I was beside her, things seemed more possible and the world was less harsh. When we were parted, that was when all the dark thoughts and doubts seeped in, whispering about all the danger lurking and how the odds were stacked against us.
Mimi’s eyes fluttered, and she looked at me with a drowsy sort of smile. Maybe as I was becoming more mimic, she was becoming more human. That would certainly be interesting.
“Morning,” she murmured, standing up and stretching.
“Morning,” I responded, pulling her closer to place a kiss on top of her head. “What’s the plan for today?”
“First we eat. All of us. We’ll need a full stomach for our next task.”
“Which is?”
Mimi looked to me a bit guiltily, but that only intrigued me more. “We’re going to reach out to Earth Gov and the resistance.”
“Wait, what? At the same time?”
She nodded. “We all need to be on the same page. Now that the coup is known and being eradicated, we can’t afford for there to be factions. We need to be a united front against our attackers.”
“Yeah, but, like…humans don’t really forgive or trust each other that well.”
“I know,” Mimi said with a wan smile. “That’s why we’ll have to be extra convincing.”
She paused for a moment, as if thinking. “Do you think Harunya will be willing to let me borrow her baby?”
“Her ba— What exactly kind of phone call is this gonna be?”
But Mimi was already heading down the stairs, her mind no doubt on a million different things. I followed after, wondering just how this could possibly go well.
“Are we really doing this?” Gonzales asked, her bionic eye’s light beginning to glow. In the months that we had been trapped on the alien ship together, rushing for home, I realized that she had the tendency to use it as a way to emphasize her words. It was certainly pretty intimidating.
“If you have a better idea, I would be quite pleased to hear it,” Mimi said calmly.
“Yeah, I bet you would.”
Bother.
While Gonzales and I had managed to get back to some of our old level of friendliness, I couldn’t help but notice that occasionally, she and Mimi would clash. Thankfully it wasn’t every day, but seeing the two powerful women vie against each other was like watching two planets try to out-gravity the other.
Thankfully, Gonzales shrugged, and her eye switched to blue before fading out entirely. “But as it is, I don’t have anything better to offer, so by all means, let’s have what’s probably going to be the most frustrating conversation we’ll have this year.”
“Who is even in charge of Earth Gov nowadays?” Ciangi asked, bouncing Harunya’s baby on her knee. “Do we even know?”
Gonzales shrugged. “I could probably send a message to the resistance and ask, but by the time they answered, we’d already be on our call.”
“Are we sure this is going to work?” Eske asked, idly feeding a couple of mini-mimics on her lap. “Last I knew, we were too far from Earth for direct communication and had to send holos.”
“Like I said before,” Bahn muttered, tinkering with something below one of the consoles of the ship. “I was able to integrate the alien’s technology with ours, and their range is considerably longer. Earth shouldn’t be a problem at all.”
“So you say,” Gonzales countered. “But what you say and what actually happens are two different things.”
“True.” Bahn slid out from under and looked to us. “Guess we’ll have to find out, won’t we?”
“Has anyone considered what we will do if no one answers?” Harunya asked quietly, sipping water from a battered canteen.
“They’ve gotta,” Gonzales said with an amount of determination that I was jealous of. “We left at the end of a big battle, but certainly not the whole war. They’ll have at least one person on the comms, even if it has been months since we last made contact.”
“I hope so,” Ciangi said, draping the baby over her shoulder and gently patting her back. I watched her keenly, wondering if that was something that I would one day have to do. Did mimics even need to be burped? I didn’t think that I had ever seen any of them need to cough up anything like humans did.
Actually, now that I thought about it, humans were a pretty weak, strange species, weren’t we?
Mimi took a deep breath, even though she didn’t technically need to breathe oxygen like we did, and squeezed my hand. “Is everyone ready?”
“As ready as we’ll ever be, I suppose,” I said. “Let’s call up Earth Gov and the people who we helped overthrow Earth Gov.”
&
nbsp; “Technically, we overthrew a coup that had infiltrated and undermined Earth Gov. If anything, they should be thankful for that.”
“We also caused millions or billions of dollars of damage and plunged the world into a chaotic power vacuum and reconstructive phase,” Ciangi said, the baby letting out a loud burp to punctuate her sentence.
“She has a point…” Gonzales murmured.
“Annnnd I’m calling now,” Mimi said, pressing the necessary controls. There was quiet for a moment and I could swear I heard all of our hearts beating, and then…and then there was the startup sound of a standard comm booting up.
“Wow, is it working?” Eske asked, leaning forward.
“Why do you sound surprised?” Bahn asked indignantly, brushing his hair out of his face. Although his dark hair had grown enough to put into a bun, it still regularly fell out of the hold and into his line of sight. We still all bore the scars of our time through processing, it seemed. “When have I ever made anything that didn’t work?”
“Well, there was that one time you turned our food generator into a seed germinator.” Gonzales said. “And then it exploded.”
“And you made the filament of my favorite gun melt when you tried to add Gonzales’ upgrade,” Ciangi offered.
“You’re an engineer. You only had one gun.”
“Yeah, and you broke it. Your point is?”
The console buzzed, and I cleared my throat. Everyone piped down just in time for a view of a room populated with high-ranking military officials to flash up from the holo projector.
My throat squeezed at the image. I tried to tell myself that these were the good guys. That the coup had been mostly eliminated and taken out of power. But somehow my mind wouldn’t let me. To me, the uniforms I was seeing meant danger and betrayal.
Thankfully, it was Mimi who did the talking. Not me.
“Are we receiving a communication from who I believe we are?” a woman asked from Earth, her grizzled voice matching the many medals on her chest.
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