But then there was a change of pressure in the air and I could see the faint green charge of a shield rush forward and envelop most of the battlefield.
“Looks like they finally caught on,” the human beside me murmured.
But my stomach dropped out and went through the floor. The shield meant no more flyovers with the fighters, and that our landing ships wouldn’t be able to contribute either until their soldiers disembarked. It also meant that all of us that were posted high above, meant to rein down suppressing fire, would no longer be able to help at all.
No.
That wouldn’t do at all.
I looked around, trying to see all the ways I could escape, but they were all too slow. I could see the line of alien foot soldiers marching forward, their own massive guns drawn.
I grabbed onto the railing with my mimic hand and threw myself over the edge. As I fell down, for the tiniest beat I was afraid I would jolt to a stop with a dislocated shoulder.
But I didn’t, and instead my arm turned as dark as night, stretching and stretching and stretching. I expected it to hurt. I expected my arm to burn and my strange, mimicky skin to crack and bleed. But that didn’t happen either.
Instead, I landed on the ground, the force of my fall enough to send me toppling forward into a shoddy sort of roll. My arm took several moments to get back to me, winding into itself like some sort of ancient, revered jack-in-the-box.
But I paid that no mind and got back to my feet, pelting towards the front and to where I knew Mimi would be.
I wasn’t going to let her fight this battle alone.
I ran possibly harder than I had ever run before. Harder than when I was racing away from explosions or giant tentacle monsters or anything else.
We’d been through so much, I couldn’t leave her now. If this was how things ended, if we fell at this final hurdle, then we would be together for it.
I made it to the front, looking back and forth, trying to pick her out of the barriers. There were so many faces, so many bodies.
And then the deep thumping of footsteps.
So many footsteps.
They picked up their pace, row after row of Harvesters charging forward. It was a weird sense of déjà vu to the same sound that I had heard during the first invasion, but this time, I was able to see it firsthand instead of when they were charging up the main lab base.
“Mimi!” I cried. “Mimi! Where are you?”
Of course, there was no answer. Just that last breath of bracing before the final clash.
And then the two lines fired.
I ducked behind one of the barriers, surprised when their shots glanced off of it, fizzling out into the air in multiple directions. I didn’t know why I was surprised considering I had spent at least five different days working as a wrench monkey on that project, but perhaps there was a difference between the theory and seeing it in action.
I leaned out from behind the barrier and fired my gun. I thought I saw someone fall, but I couldn’t tell for sure. Once more, my world was devoured by violence.
I hated it. I hated how it made me feel. I hated how it made me think. I hated how it made me act. I just wanted everyone to be safe. To be comforted and happy. I wanted no one else to be in danger, and I kinda just wanted to tinker around with stuff and make fun little doodads that did stuff that nobody really needed done.
I didn’t want to kill. I still remembered the first alien that I had ever gunned down. How it had taken a chunk of my own soul.
And here I was, doing it again.
Hopefully for the last time.
My nose burned and my eyes watered, but I kept fighting and firing and firing. Until finally the aliens reached us, trampling over their fallen kin in the effort to get to us.
It was a strange transition. One moment, we were in a long-range firefight, the next moment, someone was launching themselves at me, flying through the air with an unintelligible snarl falling from their lips.
Did they even have lips?
Not the question to worry about.
The two of us rolled to the ground, fighting for purchase. I could hear dozens upon dozens of other struggles—mimics screeching, humans crying out, the Harvesters letting out those bellowing roars that made my teeth chatter.
I managed to get on top and punch downward with my arm, it shifting and morphing into something akin to three large, dark hammers. It only took two hits until the beast stopped, but then I was grabbed from behind.
I went flying forward yet again, my face scraping along the dirt. We came to a stop when I slammed into a body. Whose body, I didn’t know.
I fought to get up, but the pressure on my back was so incredibly strong. Then I felt someone grab my feet, someone grab my arms, and pull.
Pain raced through me, and I choked on the dirt and grass my face had uprooted. I couldn’t see, I could hardly think. There was just the ice-cold panic as my lungs started to protest the lack of air. I needed to get free. I needed to fight.
But my body was so incredibly tired. Even just getting down to the ground with my rudimentary mimic abilities had taken so much out of me. I needed just a moment, a singular moment to breathe and gather myself and shake the haze of battle from every thought in my head.
But I didn’t have that. All I had was dirt and suffocation and the grunts of the aliens above me. Why wasn’t anybody helping? Were we losing? Was this where the tide turned and our luck finally ran out?
I could see the vision forming in front of me as my head swam, more dirt coating my tongue and forcing its way down my throat as my attackers pushed my head down father and pulled my limbs that much tighter. I could see the scattered carcasses of mimics dotting the landscape, some turning to dust just as Astaroth did. I could see another one draped across a barrier, its blood staining the ground with loss. I could see all of them. Destroyed. Stolen. Cut short when we had fought so incredibly hard just to live.
And of course, I saw Mimi. They would never kill someone like her, the mother of a species that could grow up to protect the entire universe. No, they would take her and trap her like the humans once had. I had read the briefest snippet of their medical files they had on board and I knew exactly the sort of insidious things they would do to her in the hopes of integrating her into their systems as she had integrated with mine.
I couldn’t let that happen.
Something changed, and the flickering flame of life within my soul burst into a raging inferno that refused to be put out. It wanted to live. It wanted to consume and clear away all the danger until there was only peace.
I could get behind that kind of message.
Reaching down inside of me, I called upon the slippery, inky cool that now resided in my DNA. I couldn’t see what happened, but I could feel my arm split and curl, winding into a swarm of whipping tentacles that lashed out at all who were holding me.
They fell back, and I jumped to my feet, snarling in a way that I have never heard myself utter. For just a moment, all the rest of the world fell away, and I was solely honed in on destroying the three Harvesters who were struggling to get upright.
Unchecked power rushed through me. With a cry, I felt my body bend and snap under the pressure, and then I was something else entirely as I crashed down on my enemies.
I didn’t really know what was happening. I didn’t understand all of my bodies or limbs. But that didn’t matter. I reached out and tossed the offenders away. Was this how Mimi felt all the time? Powerful and limitless and always rushing just below my skin? Overflowing with energy, ready to do whatever it was that I needed.
A strange, thrumming sort of hum filled my entire brain and I jerked, craning my head around. Heads? Did I have more than one? I couldn’t quite tell. Everything was confusing and different and oh so delicious.
And then I saw her.
Tall and towering and massive. She had taken on the form of something purely out of her own head. All limbs and gnashing teeth and pure power. And in that moment, she
was just so beautiful.
I bounded over to her, feeling my form shift back to the human one that I was more used to as I went. I was so small, so insignificant next to her power. But instead of making me feel inferior, it filled me with a giddy sort of happiness that made me want to follow her everywhere and do anything she asked.
Goodness, was this what all the mimics felt when she had freed them from the original Harvester’s cruel grasp? No wonder they were willing to die for her.
I reached her just as she stomped on a group of Harvesters that were unloading their weapons all on her. She spared me only a glance, but when our eyes met, it was like I was filled from head to toe with purpose.
Fight.
No fear.
Just fight.
And so fight I did. I felt my mimic arm grow and expand into those snaking tentacles that I was able to control the easiest, but that wasn’t the only thing that changed. I felt a cooling sensation run across my body and down my spine until my other arm started to ripple and buck too.
I didn’t fight it, didn’t doubt it even though my brain couldn’t understand what was going on any more than it had when I had fended off the three attackers, but it formed a thick, hardened shield that looked exactly like a mimic’s skin.
“Higgens!”
I recognized Eskes’s cry and whipped to see a Harvester leveling their gun at me at point blank range. For a breath, I was sure that I was going to die—rather anti-climatic after all of the revelations and discoveries I was having—but then I remembered that I had seen Mimi take a full-on ship missile to the face and be fine.
I jerked my shield up and the blow crashed into it, ricocheting somewhere else. I also flew backward, my feet digging into the ground for purchase, until I finally slowed.
Right in the center of a group of Harvesters who were facing off with some of the middle-developed mimics.
Now that wouldn’t do.
I set in on the closest one, grabbing him, lifting him up in the air as high as my tentacles would allow, then slamming him into the ground. By then, all of them had noticed me and began to close ranks.
It was intoxicating, this intense power that I felt. And suddenly I understood how Mimi managed to be so calm all of the time. I felt more powerful and connected to myself than I ever had.
Yet even as I knew that my mind was hovering somewhere between mimic and human, I realized that the hive-sort of mentality wasn’t all that different from my own sort of strange thought.
Huh. That all made sense, I guess.
But it didn’t matter. What mattered was ending this fight.
So I fought. I sank into what my body thought was best. Punching. Throwing. Deflecting with my shied.
Time took on no meaning, although my body grew more and more exhausted. It seemed that even with all the raw energy I felt rushing through my veins now that I’d finally given in to my mimic DNA, the well was beginning to run dry.
My forehead beaded with sweat. My breath grew short. All of my limbs became heavy and sluggish.
But I kept on. I punched a Harvester across the jaw that was trying to relieve a soldier from his head. I purposefully threw Eske against another two to whom she delivered violent kicks. I kicked, and tentacled, and carved a path through the battlefield.
Eventually, however, the attacks began to slow. My targets grew farther and farther part. And that was right about when our ships lowered themselves into the atmosphere, each bearing their own device that had been mounted during the whole ground battle.
I wanted to watch, but I couldn’t. Even though I knew exactly what was happening. They created a formation and slowly lowered.
With the alien ships having no way to fire up at the vulnerable underbellies of our own warships, they could only sit there, trying to force out all of their troops.
But there wasn’t any way for them to push that many of their foot soldiers out that quickly, and I felt the change in the air pressure as they booted up their different components.
And then, once they were all up, a tractor beam locked onto all three of the ships, hauling them high into the atmosphere.
Up, up, up they went until they were high enough that the foot soldiers would die if they dared to try to exit. And then, finally, the resounding background noise of our main base stopped, and I felt our planetary shield drop.
It was a strange sort of sensation, and one I didn’t let distract me from the battle at hand. But even in the back of my mind, I could tell that there were less and less to fight.
Then there was the sound of our main cannon coming to life, charging up to a full blast and aiming directly toward the three ships locked in our beam.
We had done the calculations at first and even with Aja’s help and the best of the best happening, we had known that there was no way to lift them as high as we needed if they were packed to bursting with their weapons of war. So we had needed them to empty a bit. That was why destroying so many of their fighters in the space battle had been important. Why all the robots and all the hulking soldiers with massive guns needed to be out. Or at least most of them.
The cannon’s buildup sound faded and for the first time in what felt like hours, there was utter silence.
Then it fired.
This time, I did finally spare a glance from the battle and I saw an incredibly brilliant bolt of pure energy shoot into the center of the three ships just as our own let it go and took to space as fast as they could.
The resulting explosion was insane, and I had to close my eyes from the vibrancy of it. But even from all the way on the ground, I could feel the heat of it and all of us were blown back several feet.
Heat and smoke filled the air while rubble flew everywhere. The mimics all around us bucked up and flattened, lancing out over any humans near them as shields from the falling shrapnel.
It was like the hellfire of old legends, and for a moment, I wondered if this was the end of our own world. That if in trying to save ourselves, we had destroyed ourselves.
But then, after what seemed like an impossible amount of noise, there was finally quiet.
I looked up from my own arm-shield to see that the sky was clear. Rising slowly, my body shaking the entire time, I looked around to see that what few foot soldiers that weren’t crushed, dispatched or wounded were holding up their multiple arms in surrender.
Surrender?
…this was it.
We had won!
A happy sort of cheer rippled through the entire field, some of us laughing, some of us crying.
We had done it! We had finally done it! We had wiped out the entire army of the Harvesters and sent a message that their tyranny wasn’t going to continue.
We had our peace.
“Higgens!”
My neck craned, and I saw Mimi running towards me. She was covered in soot and sweat with bruising along her face, but I didn’t care. She was alive, and we had won!
I ran to her too, and when we reached each other, she jumped into my arms. Our lips crashed against each other, neither of us paying attention to the fact that our faces were filthy and beaten up. We kissed like we were breathing for the first time, and when we broke apart, I felt like I could cry.
“We did it!” Eske said, running up to us. Her goggles were cracked, her lips were split, and it looked like some of her royal braids had been burned off, but she was happy and healthy too.
And then I heard crying from over the scanner and the unmistakable voices of the coin twins came over the comms.
“We did it!” Ciangi cried. “It’s over! It’s all over!”
“We ended it,” Bahn breathed, almost as if he didn’t believe.
I couldn’t believe it. I felt like laughing, I felt like crying, but most of all, I wanted to hug every single person I loved.
And speaking of everyone that I loved…
“Does anyone have contact with Gonzales?”
“Gonzales?” Ciangi echoed. “Let me look up her…” the engineer trailed
off and my stomach dropped.
“Ciangi,” I growled.
No. After all this time, we couldn’t have lost her.
I refused to believe it.
We didn’t get this far, we didn’t win, just to lose her.
“Can you find her signature?”
“I…I’m so sorry, Higgens. It’s not anywhere.”
“No!” I snapped, feeling Mimi’s arms tighten around me. How could we stand here and celebrate our victory when we didn’t know where she was? “She’s not— She can’t—”
“Would you relax?”
I whipped around and sure enough, Gonzales was standing there with blood dripping down her arm and no scanner.
“I just lost my techno gadget thing. Nothing to freak out about.”
I laughed giddily and ran to her, pulling her into a hug. Mimi and Eske joined me, a happy pile of laughing and crying and disbelief.
We had done it.
We had beaten the aliens. Our planet, and Earth, would finally have peace. All those dreams that we thought could never be real now were total possibilities.
And it was in each other’s arms that we greeted our victory. Because we were going to have the rest of our lives to see just what living meant.
I couldn’t wait.
10
Happily Ever After. For Now
The sun shone brilliantly down on the field I was standing in, not too bright and not too hot, but perfect—just like the day that was unfolding before me.
I looked around at my friends, my family, who were all sitting on blankets in the grass, looking up at me expectantly. It wasn’t every day people got to see a wedding between a mostly-human and an alien, so I couldn’t blame them for their interest.
There was Gonzales, curled up with a pile of human mimics and dressed in a soft, lavender sort of dress that I never would have guessed she owned. Then again, ever since our victory over the Harvesters about a half-year ago, Earth had been much better about establishing trade routes with our planet.
Ciangi and Bahn were there too, with Harunya’s baby toddling between them. Already the scientist’s belly was rounded again, their newest baby coming in a few months or so.
Mimic: The Space Shifter Chronicles Boxed Set (Books 1 - 9) Page 74