“Of course you are,” Ciangi said. “Now, Mimic, you mentioned first aid?”
The voices continued, and I felt multiple pairs of hands on me. I heard wrapping crinkling, and then something sharp poked at my neck.
Warm tingling spread through me, then I felt a spike in my heartrate. I gasped, just in time for something sticky and gelatin-like to be wiped across my face. I tried to shut my eyes against it.
“Shhh,” Mimic calmly urged. “It’s a medical gel with a steroid that should help your eyes. You’re gonna need to be able to fight at least a little when we get to the ground. Until I can get you someplace safe.”
Finally, I seemed to understand that I wasn’t dead, and a million questions came along with it.
“I… I’m alive?” I rasped.
“For the moment,” Mimic answered, her voice tense. “The long-term truth of that statement will rely on whether or not we’re shot out of the sky.”
“Wouldn’t that be ironic?” A chittering keen sounded next to my ear and I jerked to the side.
“Whoa, hold still there. Ciangi may be piloting us, but I do not need you wiggling around.”
“You saved me,” I whispered hoarsely.
“You saved me,” Mimic replied softly, her hand ruffling through my hair. “It seemed only right that I return the favor.”
“Good point.” A sharp stinging lanced behind my eyes and I couldn’t help but curl into Mimi, hissing slightly.
“Hold on, the directions say you need at least ten minutes to heal superficial abrasions and cuts. Your corneas were probably scratched as they froze out in space,” she murmured, patting me with at least six hands. Maybe it was a good thing that I couldn’t see. “We’re almost to the ground. I’ll get you somewhere safe before we’re in another firefight.”
“No, I want to be a part of the fight. I want to see this through to the end.”
“You will. Ciangi, Bahn, and Gonzales will all need someone to watch their backs while they install our stolen cannon. Hopefully, you’ll be a fair shot by then.”
“Except he never was a fair shot to begin with.” I was surprised to hear Eske’s voice over the comms. “When you land, leave him with me. The two of us will make sure the others have a guard, and you can lead your people as only you can.”
I felt Mimic nod, and felt a strange sort of peace, considering we were still running from a horde of advanced fighters.
“Entering atmosphere in five seconds. Brace yourself, I’m not slowing you down.”
“Thanks, Ciangi.”
“You can thank me when you touch down. Hold on.”
I felt Mimic’s six hands and arms cradle me, cramped as we were in the tiny cabin of what was meant to be a single-man fighter that now had three of us crowded into it. I got the feeling that the mini-mimic had taken a much smaller form, because there was no way a trio of humans could fit into the scrunched space.
Ciangi hadn’t been kidding about the rough ride. We slammed into the atmosphere so hard that shocks went up my spine. Once more, I heard my breath wheezing in my throat as our ship rattled like a rock in a turbine. My head felt like it was reverberated at a speed that could take it from my neck, but for the first time since we had started this fight, we weren’t surrounded by a green haze of enemy fire.
That calm lasted only a few minutes, because then we were landing in a spray of dirt and grass. For a split-second, the three of us sat there in disbelief, but then Mimic was wiping the gel off my face so I could see again.
The world was just as hazy as it had been when I first was pulled into her ship, but it slowly clarified as she climbed down the wing of the fighter and set me on solid ground. I certainly wasn’t at a hundred percent, but instead of being completely blind, it was more like I had stared at the sun for too long and was suffering the consequences.
I kinda, sorta saw a tall figure bounding toward us, and I recognized Eske’s voice as she began to talk.
“You two are in so much trouble if we survive all this,” she said with what I guessed was a cheeky grin. “Come on, Higgens. I’ll take you to the crashed ship.”
“But the barricades!” I objected. I didn’t just risk my life to save Mimic only to abandon her to fight on the opposite side of the battlefield. But it was her hand on my arm that calmed me.
“I know it runs a bit contradictory to what we just did out there, but we both have different places in this battle. Protect your friends, and I will protect my people as only I can.”
Our comms buzzed yet again. “Whatever you’re gonna do, you’re gonna wanna do it now. Looks like enemy ships are incoming!”
I looked up to the sky as Eske wrapped a strong, elegant arm around my waist. Yup, there were definitely ships coming down, and I was sure more would follow. We had certainly gotten ourselves into a mess, hadn’t we?
Well, with any luck, I was sure it was about to get so much messier.
10
The Fight Takes to Ground
“You don’t have to carry me, ya know,” I reminded Eske as she hauled me into the lower entrance to the crashed ship that the mimics had mined out while we were away stealing ships. “I can see just fine now.”
“Until one of the Twins gets a look at you, I’m not really about trusting the patch job of an alien who’s never so much as had a splinter.”
“Fair enough.”
But the woman’s tone darkened as she continued to drag me through halls. “You know, what you did out there was insane. Amazing, stupid, and insane.”
“Yeah, war makes you do things like that, I guess.”
“Oh, so we’re going to pretend that it was because of this big fight and not because apparently the two of you lose your minds around each other now that everything’s out of the bag?”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“Heh, of course you don’t.”
We reached a thick, metal door and she punched a code in. The portal quickly slid to the side with a hiss, and I instantly recognized the engine room that Bahn had showed us what felt like forever ago.
My eyes may have still been healing, but they didn’t miss the blonde, bouncing curls marching toward me. Before I could open my mouth to say much of anything, her hand lanced out and struck me across the cheek.
“You. Are. An. Idiot!” Ciangi cried, face red and frustrated tears in the corners of her eyes.
“Ow,” I murmured, a bit surprised. The blow hadn’t really hurt that much, but the sting had certainly been a surprise.
“Don’t you ever do something like that again!” She was still yelling, and she held a single pointed, shaking finger up toward my face. “No self-sacrificing and making me watch! In this family, we fight to the end! The very end! You got that?!”
“I got it.”
Her level of emotion surprised me. Sure, I had seen Ciangi lose her temper over many different things, from failed projects to human incompetence. I had never seen her trembling and looking somewhere between a full temper tantrum and an emotional meltdown. I guess I had underestimated what our friendship meant to her. What my friendships meant to all of them.
I was going to have a lot of making up to do if we survived all this.
“Good. Now get your butt to that chair over there while I try to do as much rapid first aid as I can.”
“Uh, is that advisable?” I asked.
“No, but nothing about this situation is, and I need you to be able to hold a gun and watch our backs while we work.”
“Did someone say gun?” I looked to the door as I breathlessly shuffled to the chair I had been ordered into. Gonzales and Bahn were there, grim looks on their faces. “Because I just dropped down a cannon on top of this place and we need to make an opening in the ceiling so we can bring the wiring down into the setup you have here.”
Ciangi barely spared them a glace as she continued to work on me. Bandages here, injections there, medical gel elsewhere. I felt myself growing better by the minute, even if it was i
n a completely artificial way. “Um, the chances of us being able to power both the shield and the cannon are next to impossible. And I don’t even want to think of the nuclear discharge of running that thing.”
“Well, considering that we’ve blasted their cannon off, I don’t think we really need the shield anymore, do we? Very soon, every soldier on that ship is going to be landing here to hand our butts to us,” Gonzales said with a bat of her eye. I never knew that a wink could be sarcastic, but apparently, I was learning all sorts of things lately.
“Fair enough. Bahn, grab the welding array and there should be a mechanic’s platformer around here. Get that to the room and you can probably make a hole large enough to bring the wires down into our setup, and use some magnets to hold that giant thing in place.” Ciangi clicked her tongue as she continued to work on me. “We’ve got minutes at best, so once the hordes start landing, we better hope the mimics hold them off.”
“We have to trust them,” I cut in, maybe more in self-assurance than anything else.
But Ciangi just patted my cheek. “Oh, honey, it’s not about trust. It’s just about how capable these alien fellows are of wiping us out in a ground fight.” The large collection of holo-interfaces to our side blared, and she dropped the first aid kit. “That’s gonna have to be enough, friend. Got a job to do and all that.”
I nodded. “Do what you need.”
She ran from my side to her simple hover-chair in front of the displays. Her fingers danced across the light display, and I saw little symbols that looked like our ships all light up.
“Why are you booting those up again?” I asked, rolling a bandage over what appeared to be a burn on my leg. I was sure that was going to hurt later, but I was too hopped up on way too many stims now to even feel it.
“Unfortunately, we never got any time to set up ground artillery, so these ships will just have to be that.”
“You’re turning on ships and making them stand on end just to use their guns?” I asked, somewhat incredulously.
“Yeah, what of it?”
“Nothing.” I shook my head. “You’re just amazing, you know that?”
“I do. Maybe someday they’ll write a history book about it. But for now, I need you to grab one of the big guns I hauled here—although I’m rethinking what exactly qualifies as a big gun now considering the nearly building-sized cannon on our roof—and get into the hall. I’m sure the aliens know that this area is drawing a lot of power and will no doubt make this the center of their campaign.”
“You think so?”
“Oh yeah, I know so. Judging by what data Mimic was able to mine in the year that we were gone, their favorite tactic is to surround the enemy, then slowly close in while a hyper-contingent lands in high-profile areas and wrecks anything that might give the enemy an advantage.”
“Fantastic.”
“You’re telling me. Now go. You and Eske are our last line of defense, so don’t let anybody in here.” More alarms went off and several of her displays went red. “The first wave is landing, and I’m getting readings of more ships coming down. You guys need to get that laser installed before we get overrun!”
“Easier said than done,” Gonzales called from the roof as I headed toward the gun pile. She was standing on one of the hovering platforms that I had seen the engineers use a couple of times back on Earth, so I couldn’t see her, but I didn’t need eye contact to pick up on her tension.
I couldn’t blame her. The three of them suddenly had the whole battle riding on their ability to rapid-integrate stolen technology. I didn’t know how long they had been planning this little bonus mission, but it was clear they had never really expected it to work.
I grabbed the biggest gun I could reasonably support with two hands and a belt of what looked like pulsar grenades, and headed to the door. I took one last look at the trio, then stepped through, watching as the door closed behind me and locked.
“Things are getting real, aren’t they?” Eske asked.
I turned to see that she and the mimics had already built a pretty impressive barricade plus plenty of firing cover while I had been talking/tended to. She certainly didn’t waste any time.
“Are you implying that they weren’t real until right up to this point?”
“True.” She snorted and shook her head. “Who’d of thought, with all the people scattered across this system, that it would be two maintenance workers protecting what just might be our only hope at winning all of this and saving both this planet and Earth?”
“Geez, when you say it like that, I almost feel important.”
“Almost,” she said with a broad wink. “Wouldn’t want you to get a big head and ruin that nice demeanor you’ve got going there.”
“Yeah, that’d be a real shame, wouldn’t it?” We shared another quiet laugh, and I found myself wishing that I’d had more time to get to know the visually-impaired woman. She was kind, and she was interesting, and I felt like there was so much more of her to know.
“You know, I’ve never been so glad I fell asleep on the job. It’s been good knowing you, Higgens.”
“And it’ll be good to know you tomorrow.”
“How hopeful of you.”
“I try.”
I wasn’t sure where our conversation would go from there, or even if either of us had anything more to say, but several booming noises sounded outside.
“I think our guests just landed,” Eske murmured.
The few mimics around us chittered and keened, taking on multiple forms that I didn’t really have names for. All I knew was there were claws and teeth and a whole lot of jagged limbs going on.
“You ready for this?” I asked, taking a couple of calming breaths. Had I really been floating in space less than ten minutes earlier? It didn’t seem like it. The short battle we had been in felt like full-on hours had passed, when in reality, I doubted if it had been even half of one. Time was just funny like that, I guessed.
But for the second time in a very short period, I found myself anxiously awaiting an enemy that I couldn’t quite see yet. I could hear our ships firing like mad outside, as well as shrieks and explosions that I could only hope they weren’t the mimics being slaughtered en masse.
But then the footsteps sounded. They were loud, shaking the hallway, and in a precise rhythm. There had to be at least fifty soldiers marching toward us, judging by all the footfalls, and I wondered just what these guys looked like. Their last friend had been far too altered by its experimentation and ship integration, and they did have several hundred more years of natural, genetic evolution on their side.
“At least the opening of this place is a bit narrow. They can probably only come in five by five.”
“Let’s hope.”
Right as I said that, something metallic tink-ed against our barrier and rolled along the floor. My eyes followed the movement, and a cold sweat broke out over me as I saw what I was pretty sure was our enemy’s version of a grenade.
“Get down!” I cried, launching myself forward.
But one of the mimics was quicker. A dark green tentacle whipped out, grabbing the ovular explosive, and it chucked the bomb right back out of the entrance it came.
Just in time too, apparently. The resulting explosion made my teeth rattle and my head throb. The feeling barely had time to clear before the marching started again, and the first of the aliens came into view.
They were certainly less…gelatinous than the first of their kind we had met. In fact, their solid forms seemed quite muscular, with a leathery, pebbled skin in various shades of green, brown, and blues. They weren’t quite reptilian, weren’t quite avian, weren’t quite anything. They were something wholly different, and bipedal, with massive arms holding equally massive guns.
I leveled my own weapon, staring down one of the line, and fired. The bolt hit them in the shoulder, sending them stumbling back, but they recovered and continued to march forward with the rest of the line.
They didn’t t
ry to find cover. They didn’t scramble out of the way. They didn’t even raise their guns yet. Which meant they were more than willing to sacrifice themselves to overwhelm the enemy.
I was faced with a sudden realization that I just had never comprehended before. I was going to have to kill someone. Many someones.
Sure, I had blown at least a couple of them out of the sky, but that had been different, detached. I hadn’t been able to see any of them in their ships. Hadn’t been able to see the brilliant colors of their eyes, or the deep inhales that filled their broad, muscle-bound chests. Did these aliens have families? Hopes and dreams? Did they want to be here? Or were they so hyped up on their own government’s propaganda that we were the bad guys? Had they been forced to come here? Was the alien military mostly comprised of the poor and minorities with the promise that risking their life was the only viable career they could have?
Too many questions, too much gray area. In the breath of just a second, I finally understood why war was so terrible, so scary. It had been told to me my whole life, but it took an actual battle to get it.
I leveled my weapon at the same alien again, then let several bolts fly.
They went down, a blackish-green liquid dribbling from the burning wounds I caused, and the rest of them marched on. Impassive. Relentless. I knew I couldn’t let them get close, or they would easily overpower us with sheer numbers, let alone their impressive firepower and muscle. The only reason they weren’t charging us already was probably because they had no idea how many of us there were.
Or even what we were. Sure, they had seen Mimic’s insane display in space, but that didn’t mean they understood it. They didn’t know that they had just declared a smackdown on a planet full of shapeshifters who were still raw with fury from centuries of enslavement and stunted growth.
“Open fire,” I hissed.
And we did.
Eske and I rained down shot after shot, and the mimics all surged forward to the edge of our makeshift barricade, tentacles, arms tipped in claws, and jaws lashing out. The line halted for just a moment, the group clearly surprised by the sheer range of weaponry facing them, and their weapons came up.
Mimic Goes to War Page 7