Mimic's Last Stand

by James David Victor

  I shrugged. “What exactly do you mean?”

  “Well, people like you and me... We’re always left to the sidelines of things. We’re burdens. When have we ever been in the pages of history books? Never. We’re inspirational stories, and ‘aww, isn’t that great,’ but never people that are learned about.

  “But you…you discovered life besides us and bonded with it in a way almost no one could. You made an alliance that has literally changed the course of our history forever. And me? The janitor with a head injury who’s always been a bit different from everyone else? I helped train an army. I’ve seen all of you use the hand-to-hand combat techniques I’ve taught to you. I’ve had my head shaved and been imprisoned because I was deemed essential to our side.

  “And all of that was just because I took a nap.”

  I let out a breath. I suppose that I hadn’t thought about all of that in a very long time. Strange, in the early days, our impact on history used to be a bit of a bigger deal to me, but now… Well, now I was just worried about surviving until tomorrow.

  But still, if we did survive, hundreds of years from now, would they know about me? Would they talk about me and Mimi and Gonzales in history class? Would they teach that I was different, that my mind didn’t work like a neurotypical person’s did? Or would they say I was just like everyone else?

  I hoped not.

  I could have used any sort of role model to look up to when I was younger. To know that I wasn’t useless and strange and destined to be nothing but a cleanup guy who tinkered around on mining ships in deep space. In fact, it probably would have made a huge difference in my formative years.

  If I could be that for future generations… Well. It was something to think about. Assuming all of civilization didn’t fall when the aliens arrived in our quadrant of space.

  Wait, no, not aliens. The Harvesters. I wasn’t very partial on the name, but Earth Gov had a meeting that apparently took an entire day amongst themselves and decided that was what they were going to call the big ol’ menaces in the sky.

  “So, are you gonna meet them down at the landing area?” Eske asked. “The mimics have been cleaning out a pretty good chunk of the mountain’s foot for all of them to land.”

  My gut twisted nervously. I still didn’t trust these Earth Gov folks when we had already been betrayed once before, but I guess I didn’t have much of a choice.

  Still, there were some things that we kept under wraps from them. For example, they didn’t know that I had mimicry literally grafted to my body. That was going to be harder to keep under wraps considering that my control on it was still only so-so. I supposed that in war, we couldn’t afford to keep secrets from each other, but my trust would have to be won in time.

  I shuddered and ran my hand through my hair. Its shortness reminded me of just one of the many things that had traumatized us since we’d found out about the coup. From Lazer and his very specific torture of Gonzales. From being chased halfway across the galaxy in fear for our lives. From being strapped down and having my hair forcibly shaved and then being starved and dehydrated.

  It wasn’t pleasant, and it filled me with a sort of anger that wasn’t very comfortable. I hated it. And I hated how Earth Gov made me feel.

  “Are we doing the right thing?” I asked, looking to Eske uncertainly.

  She shrugged. “I don’t know. I think repairing our old war and tech base first was the best thing to do while we waited for their supplies to come in.”

  I shook my head. “No, I don’t mean that. I mean with trusting them.”

  She frowned, thinking again. “Hmm, I, uh… I guess I don’t know. But I think if Mimi thinks that this is the best idea, then we should believe her. She’s never led us wrong before, and you know that her mimic mind is way more advanced than ours.”

  “Yeah…” I murmured.

  I thought back to all of my nights in the past two weeks. I’d spent them in Mimi’s arms, cherishing what time we had together. We were constructing our own little fantasy life about everything that we’d do when we finally had peace. Maybe it was a little putting the cart before the horse, but it gave us something to hope for.

  Something to live for.

  “Well, we’ve got a few more hours,” I said, delving back to the panel I was scrapping. “Let’s try to finish this then head to the landing. I’m sure Mimi will be down there.”

  “Yeah, I think this is one thing that she would never miss.”

  I looked up to the sky as the several ships descended through the clouds, the bottoms red-hot from the friction. I could feel the vibrations from their engines even from where I was, and it only made my nerves increase.

  Were we doing the right thing? Were we going to regret this? Were they going to betray us before the aliens even arrived?

  The Harvesters, I reminded myself.

  I felt a hand slide into mine, and I looked over to see Mimi standing there. I hadn’t even heard her arrive, but I assumed that she had probably been instructing other mimics on what to do.

  “You ready?” I asked her, feeling guilty that I had doubted her. She had so much weight on her shoulders, far more weight than was fair, and the least I could do was support her.

  “As ready as I could ever be,” she murmured, her eyes looking up.

  More and more ship bottoms dotted the sky, and in total I counted five war vessels. That was increasing our current armada by quite a bit. I wondered if these were just ships from different locations that we didn’t steal, or if they were newer models that had been made since our last visit. I supposed I would find out eventually, depending on how this plan went.

  When they finally landed, I forced my face into a neutral state. We were lucky that our negotiations had gone so smoothly, and it wouldn’t do to meet them with aggression right out of the gate.

  Even if I so terribly wanted to.

  The spacecraft let down their ramps in unison, but most of them remained empty. It was only the second ship that had personnel coming out of it, and I counted ten figures.

  Ten? That certainly wasn’t the army we had expected.

  But I recognized the military person who had spoken first, an older man with goldenish skin and grey eyes, and the suited woman with blazing red hair and a piercing, black gaze. The rest all seemed to be security folk who were armed to the absolute teeth with guns I didn’t recognize.

  “Ah, greetings,” the woman said with a nod. “It’s nice to finally meet you.”

  “Is it?” Gonzales asked from behind me, causing me to jump. I had been so concentrated on the ships descending that I hadn’t even noticed that she had arrived.

  “Enough,” Mimi whispered before addressing the woman. She offered her hand in a shake, which the woman took. “Thank you for coming.”

  “Of course. I realize that you all are going out on quite the limb by inviting us here, but I assure you we are here to make amends, not sow more discord.” The woman put on a winning smile, and I was beginning to see why she had been elected by her district. “I’m Councilwoman Eva Delicato. You can call me Eva for short. I have a list here of all the supplies we brought.”

  One of the guards handed her a datalog that she immediately passed to Mimi. I looked over her shoulder and my eyes bulged at the detail.

  Five fully functioning, tested warships.

  Four hundred fighters of most current, fully tested models.

  One hundred long distance munitions

  Six hundred standard combat munitions

  Explosives

  Fifty Engineers

  Fifty accredited pilots

  Ten strategists.

  Five sub-commanders

  Nutritional supplies for a year

  Two Earth Gov members

  “Thank you,” Mimi murmured, looking it over. There was a further breakdown as she clicked on one of the tabs, and it started listing the exact specs of one of the many guns they had brought. She tucked it under her arm, and I had to resist the urge to whistle. “
This is assuring.”

  “We want you to know how serious we are about this,” Eva continued. “There will be more coming, of course, but these are what we could amass immediately.” She looked around. “I take it the, uh, other third of our unholy trio have yet to arrive?”

  “We thought it better that we stagger your entrances,” Mimi said. “Allows us to adapt and allocate more efficiently.”

  “Yes, that makes sense. So tell us where you’ll have us, and we’ll get to it. I’m sure your mimics need some practice flying in our fighters. I believe in your report you said you had a few?”

  “Very few,” Mimi said, gesturing for the woman to follow her. I could tell we were heading for what had once been the makeshift school that we had built but now was just the rubbly center of our barely rebuilt town. “And of a significantly older model.”

  “Yes, I believe you seized a research station and took theirs?”

  “That would be correct.”

  “At least it was nonviolent,” the military man said, his first words since he had stepped foot on the planet. I got the idea that he was observing his surroundings, observing us, and seeing just how much of a threat we were.

  We strolled to the burnt-out remnants of our school and if there was any doubt in these people’s minds that we were telling the truth about the ransacking of our home, it visibly faded from their eyes as they took in all the damage.

  Granted, their shock at the decimation around us fled from their face as they spotted a group of small mimics scuttling towards some of the foot storage at the very edge of our commune. Although they had seen plenty of footage of Mimi and our exploits, it was probably still jarring to just see a herd of aliens roaming about. It was one thing to know that shapeshifters existed, it was another to see several of them rushing along the ground, onyx, spikey skin glistening in the sun.

  “Those are your versions of babies, yes?” the military man asked.

  Mimi regarded him, and I could tell that she was doing that analyzing thing she did whenever she was learning something very quickly. What kind of information was she gleaning from him? I wasn’t sure, but I would have to ask her later.

  “We are still learning about our people. When the Harvester ship crashed here and subsequently wiped out all of the adults, they also erased much of our history. Technically, we don’t know how we reproduce or most of our life cycle.”

  “What?” Eva asked, shooting us a skeptical look. “You lot have been up to quite a lot. Are you telling me no little ones have accidentally popped up since then?”

  Mimi shook her head. “No. Many of us have reached sentient status, but there have been no births. Or egg laying. Or osmosis. Or any of the many reproductive processes that happen on your planet and others. There’s just us.”

  “Huh. That’s a bit interesting, isn’t it?”

  “Perhaps. But that is a mystery we can address once the Harvesters are defeated. Now, shall we discuss the allocation of everything you have brought as well as strategies?”

  “By all means,” Eva said. “As soon as we give the order, our men will begin disembarking with all of the supplies.”

  It was a bit strange to stand there and discuss such important military details and the gravity of the situation. I felt like these situations normally took place in a ship’s meeting room, or our own main house when that had been a thing. Instead, we were just standing in a loose circle surrounded by the rubble of what once was.

  Well, it wasn’t like we could build a meeting room now. Considering everything that was going on, that was the last thing on our minds.

  There was so much to do and so very little time.

  5

  Long-Term Confession

  Wind whipped past my hair with a weird sense of déjà vu as two more massive ships descended through the cloud cover. It had been three days since Earth Gov had arrived, and they were still settling in.

  The strategists had been the first to assemble, gathering in the ruins of our main house and immediately discussing the best things to do to whittle down the numbers of Harvester ships coming to take us down. I didn’t contribute much to those conversations, but they discussed everything from minefields to a forcefield to a line of floating cannons. All complicated and all with so many ways to go wrong, most of the technical talk went way over my head.

  The engineers were doing what they could to repair our main base, cannons, and shielding. While they waited for newer orders from the strategists, the soldiers and military personnel took inventory of the defenses and capabilities we already had.

  I also noted that there were some staff that hadn’t been listed on the datalog handed to Mimi. There were at least fifty maintenance workers across the ships and it seemed as many mechanics. That would certainly do us good since the engineers were much too busy working on reestablishing our defenses rather than repairing or upkeeping the many ships.

  Certainly concerning if the military folks decided to band together and overthrow us, but I was beginning to think they wouldn’t.

  Not that I trusted them. Oh, not at all. After I getting burned once, I rarely ever forget. But even though they had an impressive amount of supplies, they didn’t really have enough to contain all of the mimics at once. They wouldn’t have the drop on us or the power level that the Harvesters had.

  But still, I was glad that the revolutionists were finally arriving. These people I could trust, even if I didn’t completely remember them. But there was one person in particular I was looking forward to seeing...

  The ship landed, and its ramp slammed down, causing an unreasonable cloud of dust to rise up. Clearly, they hadn’t taken the time to recalibrate the opening mechanisms in their time on Earth. Technically, they needed to be evaluated every month they were exposed to natural forces such as wind, rain, and salt, and not the vacuum of space. They really should have—

  Something smacked my thigh, hard. “Ay there, my boy! You look like you’re thinking deep thoughts!”

  I looked down to see Aja staring at me, a broad grin across her face.

  “Just about general maintenance.”

  “Hah! That’s my lad!” She clapped my thigh again. “Good to know that even with all of this going on that you still have your head right on your shoulders. Let me guess… It’s that they ain’t been upkeeping with the peripherals of the ship, isn’t it?”

  I nodded. “The ramp. It’s making the wrong sounds.”

  “Right, right, we were in a bit of a swampy area back at home. About the only place their sensors couldn’t find their own ship.”

  “What? I thought you made a parts scrubber. That’s the whole way we were even able to land on Earth. That’s why we saved you from the gangsters you wound up with.”

  “Speaking of which,” Gonzales said, bounding up. “How are you doing with that whole gambling thing?”

  “Ay, you’re much too young and I’m far too old for you to try to mother me.”

  Gonzales shuddered. “Ew. Don’t say the m-word around me.”

  “Hah! A girl after my own heart.”

  “That I am,” Gonzales said, patting her back a few times. “And because of that, you’ll do me a favor and give me some time alone with our boy here, right?”

  Aja looked up to her suspiciously. “Uh, forgive me if I’m wrong, but isn’t he with the more alieny one—”

  “Not like that, Aja.”

  “But I’m sure I’ve seen ya moonin’—”

  “Hey, Aja!” Ciangi cried, also bounding up. “You haven’t met the baby yet! You should come with me!”

  “Ew, baby? Why would I want to see that?”

  But Ciangi had a firm grip on the woman and was already leading her away, their heights nearly the same. I thought I saw her look back and wink at Gonzales.

  “What do you need?” I asked, looking to the weapons engineer.

  “Not here,” Gonzales said, wrapping her arm through mine. “How about we take a walk? Maybe to where the animals used to be?”


  “You sure?” I asked. Almost all of them had escaped in the massive amount of damage that had befallen our little commune. They were just an empty example of one of the many ways our preparations had all been for nothing.

  But we wouldn’t let that happen again. This wasn’t just defending our turf, this was wiping out a menace that had been committing genocide, medical torture, and slavery for eons. This was making a declarative statement that not only were we a people, but we were a force to be reckoned with.

  Or we would all die.

  While I was musing on the cyclical nature of our issues, we ended up reaching the abandoned animal enclosures. I looked around, surprised at how much time I had lost. I hadn’t done that in a long while. Perhaps it was the stress?

  “So…” Gonzales said, unlooping her arm from mine.

  “So,” I repeated, then waited for her to continue. I had no idea what she could want that she would need to speak to me specifically about. I wasn’t one of the lead engineers like Ciangi or Bahn. I wasn’t our leader like Mimi. I didn’t even handle the hand-to-hand fighting like Eske. I was the spare. I helped everyone but ran nothing.

  I would think that maybe she just wanted to talk about things like we used to, confide our worries to each other or share jokes, but we hadn’t done that for quite a while. Although things had certainly gotten better since her disappearance, they certainly weren’t to the way they were before… Well, before I had ruined everything without quite understanding how.

  She laughed. “Hah! Classic Higgens.”

  But I kept quiet, sensing that part of her was just looking for a way to weasel out of whatever it was that she had brought me here for. I may have had a pretty hard time understanding most humans, but I was beginning to understand my friends.

  It had taken me long enough.

  She laughed a bit more, then that faded to uncomfortability and she just stood there for a bit, walking back and forth.

  I watched her walk to and fro, looking the most insecure that I had ever seen her. Even when she was scared out of her mind, even when she was being tortured by Lazer, there had been this spirit of assurance to her. A sort of certainty that I always admired but didn’t think I could ever have myself.