Mimic Saves Her People

by James David Victor

  “Oh, is that all? Just predicting an alien vessel’s alien flightpath to their alien home planet.”

  Mimi snapped from beside me, “I finally understand what you guys mean when a word suddenly doesn’t sound like a word anymore.”

  “Really?” Gonzales asked, still not looking back. “It’s been over a year and you finally got that?”

  “Forgive me. I’ve been occupied by a couple of things. Such as finding my own people, saving them from slavery, and then being captured and tortured by your species.”

  “Point taken,” Gonzales said with a chuckle. “Now, quiet. I’m concentrating.”

  We did indeed fall silent as we drifted through space. Although anticipation and nerves were crawling up and down my spine, I tried my best to look out of the window and enjoy the view. After all, I was seeing planets that no human had ever set their eyes on. This was the second time I had been flung across the galaxy into an entirely new system, and I was going to try to enjoy what few seconds of peace we had.

  But those seconds turned out to be several solid hours. The tension was quite draining, with my eyes constantly sweeping space for any sign of the ship we were chasing, but I couldn’t look away.

  None of us could. The entire ship was silent and wound tighter than an ionic top, the only sound being the dampened squeaks that managed to escape from all the stress injuries from earlier.

  I was pretty sure over five hours had passed before we finally heard the tiniest of blips on the nav-system. My breath cut off, and I leaned forward from where I was still sitting at the communication station.

  “We have a reading,” Gonzales whispered. “They’re within an hour of us. It’s plotting out a more solid estimation of their trajectory now.”

  “Man, if we survive this,” Eske whispered, “we’re gonna owe Aja one heck of a thank you.”

  She wasn’t kidding. Sure, we were running all prototypes and there was a good chance that we could explode at any minute, but we wouldn’t even be that far if it wasn’t for Aja and her insane, law-breaking tech.

  “The plotting’s done. Setting our course now. We’ll be hiding in the crevasse of a moon that they’re passing. It should give us a big enough depth of field to get a full scan of their layout.”

  “Good,” Mimi said with a nod. “And while you do that, I’m going to try to talk to them.”

  That surprised me, and I looked to her with wide eyes. “You think you can do that? You’ve never tried to broadcast your sub-harmonic communication.”

  “True, but if the children can figure it out, then so can I.”

  I reached out to her, pulling her to the station. “I believe in you,” I said, taking in all the features of the face I loved so much. “Let me show you how to work this thing, and I’m sure you’ll be having conversations with them in no time.”

  She smiled gratefully at me and I went about showing her all I knew about that particular system. Which, as it turned out, wasn’t a whole lot. Within five minutes, Mimi was sitting there on her own and I was left with nothing to do but wait, just like Eske.

  Thankfully, the comm buzzed right back to life a few moments later.

  “Higgens, what are you up to right now?” Ciangi whispered.

  “Actually, not a whole lot.”

  “Good. Please come down to med-bay. Bahn needs me in the engineering room and I’m not done here yet.”

  I was tempted for a moment to ask what she could possibly need me for and if it involved anything similar to changing a diaper, but I quickly pushed those words down and headed out. Mimi gave me a sort of half-wave, her entire human face gone as she tried to get our very much people-designed system to pick up the part of her language that my species couldn’t even hear.

  I shook my head as I rode the elevator down to the med-bay. I only spoke common, some loose English, and now the bare bones of the standard programming language Jixbyl. All of those shared the same premises though, audible sounds that related to the same alphabet, or at least similar.

  But Mimi? She had gone from speaking a language that I couldn’t hear all the way to speaking common better than anyone else I knew. The mimic race was certainly a formidable one, and I didn’t think these aliens knew what they were getting into.

  Not at all.

  That was a pleasant thought to end my journey on and I stepped into the med-bay expecting to fulfill some sort of baby-related task.

  That was definitely not what I got.

  Ciangi was barely visible, her upper body completely submerged behind a mass of wires coming out of the panel she had ripped from the wall. She also had the old carcass of what I recognized as the flying panel from one of the fighters that had been damaged in our first fight.

  “What are you even doing?” I asked, staring at the mess and her two small legs sticking out of the wall. She answered me, but the sound was so obscured that I just looked to Harunya for explanation.

  “We had a talk last night,” the woman answered softly, Asha asleep in her arms. “And if we find these aliens and manage to get the jump on them, most likely what will happen is all of you either board their ship or help with the distraction. Even leaving one of you here to steer the ship would be taking away from your number when you’ll really need everyone you can get.”

  “So, you’re going to fly the ship?” I asked in surprise. “From down here?”

  She nodded. “Naturally, with my injuries, there is no way I’d be able to make it up to the bridge and maintain any sort of flight pattern. But if we were to set something up here that I can control while in this bed and place Asha’s containment unit next to me, I don’t see why I couldn’t hold the most basic of holding patterns.”

  “Have you ever flown before?” I asked dubiously. I knew that Harunya was an incredibly accomplished doctor, but as far as I knew, medical school didn’t have a unit on space-flight.

  She paused a moment, giving me a patient look. “You do know that I was contracted through the military, right? The requirements I had to get my position were the same as yours to be on that mining ship.”

  “Oh. That I didn’t know, actually.”

  Ciangi finally slid from the wall, covered in dust and what I assumed were insulation fibers. “Plus, if we all die on what is essentially an insane suicide mission, she can beat a hasty retreat.”

  Harunya’s patient look turned sharp. “But that’s not going to happen. You’re going to be successful and save the children, and we’re all going to finally have about three seconds of peace before the next thing hits us.”

  “Uh…right. That’s exactly what’ll happen.” Ciangi looked to me and shrugged. I knew what she meant. The children were more important than any of our lives. Sure, most of us may have not been the same species as them, but that didn’t matter. Between being enslaved by an alien for thousands of years, being forced to kill their parents and live a life of barely-there sentience, then fighting a literal war against an invading species set on revenge, they deserved to finally live their lives.

  And we were going to make sure they did.

  “So look, I left a pretty simple plan here. I trust you with the re-wiring and testing this out. You okay with that?”

  I swallowed, allowing myself a second of doubt before abolishing it. This was actually simpler than the shielding upgrade I had done, so I had no reason to fear.

  “I got it.”

  “Great,” Harunya said brightly. “I’ll have someone to keep me company.”

  “Yes, you will,” Ciangi said with a smile before returning her attention to me. “Come on, Higgens, let’s do a quick walkthrough before I head down to engineering. You’ve got maybe four hours to finish up what should be about a two-hour task, but this has to be up and running before we leave the ship. I’m adamant on that point.”

  “Sounds great to me.”

  I finished the wiring with time to spare. Ciangi was right, she had written out a very good list of tasks which made me wonder if she always did that for herse
lf or had anticipated needing to run to engineering.

  But I supposed in the end, it didn’t matter, because the task was done, and I found myself just sitting and talking with Harunya.

  Even on Earth, I didn’t think that we had ever been in a one-on one situation. Almost every time we met was in the coin twins’ presence. In fact, I was sure that every time we had ever interacted had been with either of them on her arm.

  She was a nice lady. Smart. And although I could tell that she was clearly aware of how dire the situation was, there was a defiant sort of hopefulness to her.

  “Hey, guys,” Gonzales’ voice came over the comms, soft and whispery. “I’m about to approach the moon. Once we’re settled, I want zero cross-floor movement until they’re out of scanner range, so get to where you want to be now.”

  I looked at Harunya over the interface that I had posted over her bed, almost like a table. “Are you alright being alone?” I asked.

  She nodded. “I’m not alone here. I’m on a ship with all of the people I love.”

  “Well, you know what I mean.”

  “But I don’t think you do.” She reached out, her hand resting over mine. “I was trapped under that piece of metal for days upon days. The only drink I had was my own blood and condensation on the metal around me as it cooled. I had no food, and I was either freezing cold or burning hot depending on where the fire was raging in the ruins in those moments.

  “I was so scared, and I was in so much pain. I was certain that me and my precious little child were going to die there. And during those dark thoughts, I was more alone than I ever could have possibly been.

  “But then you, my family, found me, and I wasn’t alone anymore. And I don’t think I could ever possibly be alone like that again.” Her face hardened ever so slightly, and I felt strength emanating from her. “Those children are all alone with those aliens, so you do whatever it is you have to do to make sure they never have to feel that way again too. You got it?”

  I nodded, understanding pouring through me. I guessed I hadn’t really given much thought to all the trauma that Harunya had faced in the attacks—everything had been going so fast since then—but she was way more resilient than I probably would have been.

  “I got it.”

  “Good. Now get up to the bridge. Goodness knows they need you.”

  I gave her hand one last squeeze before rushing up, and just in time, apparently, because Gonzales was about to boot up the scanner.

  “Ready?” she asked, looking back at us.

  “Ready,” everyone answered in a wave from their various parts of the ship.

  “Alright, starting the scanner now. Hopefully, they’ll be within range soon.”

  “And if they aren’t?” Eske whispered.

  “Then we wait.”

  9

  Know Thine Enemy

  Several times, I found myself holding my breath as I waited for the scanner or the nav-system to give any indication that the aliens were coming within range. It was only after the corners of my vision went dark that I would remind myself that inhaling was just as important as exhaling, and I would start that pesky breathing pattern up until I forgot again.

  But just when I felt like I might actually go mad from all the waiting, there was the tiniest flicker of a blip on our nav.

  “They’re within range,” Gonzales whispered. “Now we’re going to be able to see just how big a ship we’re dealing with.”

  “Surely it cannot be that large,” Mimi murmured from the comm station, only the bottom half of her face reconstituting itself into human form so she could speak, leaving the other half as prickly obsidian smoothness. “The children are still saying that they’ve only seen about twenty their entire time there.”

  “Are they responding to you?” Gonzales asked sharply, excitedly. “They can hear you?!”

  “No, they’re just stating random facts in a loop. I couldn’t hear them without this communication station so maybe they cannot hear me. Nevertheless, I will keep trying.”

  “Yeah, do what you can.”

  “Uh, guys?” I murmured, not wanting to interrupt. “I thought ships were supposed to be marked in red for their general shape.”

  “They are,” Gonzales answered simply.

  “Then why is the ship just a thick red line on the nav-screen?”

  Gonzales’s head whipped to where I was pointing, and she too saw the thick line. “Oh…my gosh,” she breathed. “That’s the ship.”

  “That’s the ship?” Eske breathed. “That’s nearly a quarter of a screen. There’s no way it’s that big.”

  “It’s not,” Gonzales murmured as the red line grew longer and longer. “It’s bigger.”

  This time, we fell silent from shock instead of fear. How was it possible for a ship to be that big? Even our own vessel, the second biggest that Earth had ever created, was about the size of a wide thumbnail on the display. But the alien ship? It was a whole finger and then some.

  My heart hammered in my chest as it came closer and closer, and closer, until finally the craft passed in front of the moon we were nestled in. My jaw dropped the moment I saw the tip of its pointed snout, my mind struggling to comprehend what it was seeing.

  The ship was taller than the entire moon.

  Of course, it made sense that they would have to have a huge vessel to carry the thousands of mimics they had abducted, but the sheer scale of the thing was massive. How were we ever going to take that down?! It was impossible.

  Then again, so was just about every other thing we did.

  Yet somehow none of us breathed another word until the ship had passed nearly a half an hour later. They were running at a low speed, which was an interesting choice, but I was sure that even the fastest speed would have left its journey across our view still pretty lengthy.

  But eventually, that impossibly long red line disappeared from our nav-display and I let out a long sigh.

  “That physically hurt me,” Gonzales muttered, dropping her head to rest against the pilot’s dash.

  “The scanner is compiling the info it picked up now. We should have a blueprint soon.”

  “And that blueprint is gonna include how many life signs are on there?”

  “Well, the life signs that we know how to read, yes,” Bahn continued. “Reminder that this is an alien vessel and they could have a litany of things that we have no idea how to search for.”

  “Thank you for that cold dose of realism,” Gonzales said, rolling her eyes and giving me a knowing look. I didn’t know why she felt the need to draw me into her ire. I wanted to know all the variables of what might go wrong ahead of time. “How long will the compiling take?”

  “About an hour.”

  “Ugh. More waiting.”

  “How did that secondary dash come along?” Ciangi cut in, clearly addressing me.

  “Wait, secondary dash? What?” Gonzales gave me a much sharper look. “What do you mean?”

  “I’ll explain later,” I muttered under my breath before addressing the smaller of the coin twins. “We finished it. You’re welcome to go up and take a look for yourself and test it. I won’t be insulted.”

  “Great. Don’t mind if I do.”

  “Hold on, I still wanna know what—”

  Suddenly, a sharp warble of sound cut through the bridge, so high-pitched I could barely hear it, but just low enough to feel like it stabbed me in the ear.

  “Ow! What the hell!”

  Confused, I spun toward where I thought it was coming from to see Mimi on her feet, both of her arms in the air. Well, they were what usually were her arms, but now they were prolonged, metal spikes.

  She seemed to startle, and her form quickly returned to human, including her head.

  “I did it!” she cried, and I realized that lance of sound had been her subharmonics drifting into a range I could actually hear. “I established communication! They can hear me and respond!”

  I jumped up too, definitely excited. “So,
you’re saying that we have men on the inside?”

  “No, I’m saying that we have almost ten thousand men on the inside.”

  “Well,” Gonzales said, smiling goofily. “I’d say that our odds just significantly improved.”

  We all sat in the meeting room, tapping our fingers as the scanner finished its last couple of percent worth of compiling. I personally thought it would have been a whole lot more useful to put out energy every twenty percent or so, so that we didn’t have to try to scramble to understand all the info at the end, but I also understood why it couldn’t. A tiny piece of data that it picked up at the end could change whole hunks of previous information that it had told us.

  But still, it was definitely grating on my every last nerve.

  It was clear that we were all on edge, tensely waiting to see how we were going to successfully take on such a behemoth. Clearly none of us wanted to say it, but these might have been some of the worst odds we had ever been up against, and that was definitely a statement in and of itself.

  Finally, the thing gave a beep and our holo-projector began to hum as it processed the deluge of information that was no doubt being shoved into it.

  When the imagine finally appeared above the round table, I was even more defeated than I had been just seconds before.

  “My goodness, that is a big ship,” Eske breathed, adjusting her goggles. “I just… I thought maybe I was exaggerating it in my mind, but that’s just a big ol’ ship.”

  “That could end up being a good thing,” Gonzales said, standing up to look more closely at the thing, using her datapad to twirl the holo this way and that. “Its so big that there’s no way that there could be eyes on every single opening and weak point in the whole giant ship. Right?”

  “I mean, that would stand to reason,” I said, looking at the thing. I saw exhaust ports, multiple thrusters, and what definitely looked like multiple versions of the same gun that we had stolen from the original ship we had fought. “But the first thing I would like to know is why they’re going so slowly. They’re in their home territory. If I were them, I’d be jetting as hard as I could back to my planet.”