“Nuclear discharge levels are going down!” Bahn yelled, holding his hand up for Gonzales to high-five. But the woman’s eyes were on the screen in front of Ciangi. “Almost a minute until those guys break atmosphere.”
“Cranking the charge speed up to two hundred percent. I hope Mimic is ready for the biggest feast of her life.”
“I…I don’t know if that’s safe.” I countered, looking to where Mimic had disappeared into the runoff equipment.
“Not like we have much of a choice,” Gonzales countered. “You’re just gonna have to—”
Before she could finish the sentence, we heard more chittering and the pitter-patter of pointed footsteps. I turned to the door just in time to see a horde of mimics surging in, all of them making a beeline after Mimic.
“Oh God,” I breathed, looking at the rapidly moving procession in wonder. “They’re all going to eat.”
Sure enough, one by one, they launched themselves after their leader, disappearing faster than I thought possible.
“Change it to four hundred!” I cried, jumping to my feet.
Bahn nodded, and I saw him punch codes into the datalog in his hands. Gonzales picked up one of the guns and stalked to the door, laying down fire at something I couldn’t see. And Ciangi, well, her eyes were still glued to her holo-screens.
“Thirty seconds until they enter the atmosphere!” she cried.
“The cannon is charged! Firing now!”
Everything seemed to happen at once. The entire building shook, and we were all knocked off our feet. Ciangi’s screens all flashed brilliant green, and once more, dozens of alarms were going off at once. An explosion sounded outside of the door, and Gonzales was thrown all the way back to Eske, her front smoking, while nearly a dozen aliens poured in.
Time seemed to suspend itself for a moment, as if everything in existence had come to a stand-still. But then, the screens all cleared and what sounded like the loudest peel of thunder cracked in the sky above us.
“We have a direct hit!” Ciangi cried. “With just a little repositioning of the magnets, I should be able to cut the ship in two!”
“Too bad we’ve got company,” I shot back, grabbing both my gun and Eske to pull them both back to cover.
“Wait, what—” She turned just in time for one of the aliens to charge her, and she barely jumped out of the way. Both Gonzales and I fired, the weapons engineer apparently having recovered somewhere behind me, and that one went down, but that left us with the other eleven or so converging on us.
I was sure this was the end. We were bringing down their mothership, but there were still too many killers on the ground. But before a single one of them could lower their guns, a dark force shot over from the other side of the room, expanding rapidly until the aliens were completely blocked from our view.
“Oh…my…God,” I breathed.
There were no words for what I was seeing. A spikey, obsidian form stood in front of us, one that almost would have been familiar if its legs weren’t longer than my entire body and the top of its barbed back didn’t hit the ceiling. It was Mimi, alright, there was no doubt. But instead of her normal, completely noir skin, I saw green-blue rivulets of pure energy rushing through the cracks in her now-massive surface.
The aliens didn’t have a chance. She set on them like a force of nature, flinging some while stomping others. It was clear that they were in a bit of shock at the sudden transformation, but I couldn’t bring myself to feel pity for them.
It was all over within a second, and I could only stare in wonder at the giant creature who was also my best friend.
“The mothership is pulling away! It’s retreating!” Somehow, during the fray, Ciangi had posted herself right back in her seat and was looking at her screen once more. “The crafts on the ground are leaving too!” She let out a sound that was somewhere between a cry and a laugh. “We did it, you guys! We won!”
We stood there a moment, shell-shocked by the idea, but true to her word, there was no more sounds of gunfire, no more cries of battle. In fact, there was a real, true calm over the building for the first time since the first alarm had sounded.
Slowly, the gargantuan form in front of us shrunk and receded, until only Mimic was standing there.
“We did it,” I breathed, extending my arms to her.
“We did,” she answered, rushing to me and pressing her head against my chest. “It’s finally over.”
It was. We had all lived to see another day.
And what a day it was going to be.
12
Recovery
War is a lot like a hurricane. Ruthless in its destruction, often devastating, and going hand in hand with a lot of cleanup. Even as the days passed after our battle, little aftershocks would occasionally rock us to our cores, leaving us feeling like we were right back in the fray.
And none of us came out unscathed. In that last hit Gonzales had taken, she’d gotten a ton of shrapnel to one side of her body. While the automated systems in the battlecruiser’s medbay took care of most of it, she permanently lost her right eye. She seemed to be adapting well enough, but it was clear she had a very long road to recovery.
Eske didn’t fare much better. Her open wound had been taken care of by making a skin-graft combining her DNA and a mimic sample, but her goggles had been damaged beyond repair. Sure, the coin twins could make her a new pair, but that was pretty low on the list of priorities.
Bahn and Ciangi were relatively fine, with only minor burns and nicks from the aftermath, and Mimic was…different. She was still herself, still kind and a great leader, but I could tell that she was brimming with the new energy and abilities that came from the massive amount of nuclear runoff she had eaten.
There were also an insane number of mimics that could now take human shape, and were just as advanced as Mimic had been before she took her nuclear bath. It was strange, having the number of friendly faces to learn suddenly triple, but I wasn’t complaining.
As for me, well, I lost a grand total of two fingers on my burned hand. Maybe they would had been salvageable if I hadn’t kept using them to fire and drag Eske around, but to me, it was the tiniest of sacrifices I could have made.
We survived. All of us.
It seemed an impossibility. You couldn’t have a war without casualties, and yet here we were. Sure, plenty of us had been irreparably hurt, irreparably changed, but we were alive, and we had hope for the future.
We had defeated an enemy with more resources than we could ever have. We had escaped the grasp of corrupt Earth Gov Officials. Everything that had been thrown at us, we destroyed.
But still, there was so much left to do.
We all knew that Earth Gov could assemble more ships and try to come and take back what we stole. We also knew the aliens could return in even bigger forces. But now, we had time to prepare. There would be no more slapdash Hail Marys. Goodness knows we relied on them far too often.
And that was what left me standing at the foot of the battlecruiser’s ramp, looking up at Gonzales’s bandaged face.
“Are you sure you’re ready to go?” I asked, shifting from foot to foot.
“Hey, someone’s gotta get our family and resources. Besides, I’ll be back in a month or two, depending on just how stealthy I gotta be.”
“Or you could just not go at all.”
She gave me a look with her good eye, and it was just as withering surrounded by bruises and scabs. “You know I need to. We need more supplies. Eske needs to get her family out of harm’s way. The coin twins miss their girlfriend-lady-pers…whatever she is. I also need to get the word out of what the coup is trying to do.”
“But it seems wrong for you to go alone.”
She patted my shoulder. “Don’t worry about me. A little space will do me good. Besides, you have plenty to do around here.”
She gestured to the others standing just behind me—Eske, Mimic, and the Twins. Even some of the mimics that weren’t going with her showe
d up to give her a sendoff.
“Y’all better hold this place down while I’m off, you hear?”
“We will,” I said with a dry, scratchy throat. I offered her a hug, and she gladly took it before parting.
Mimic was next, and although they shared a handshake instead of an embrace, there was no lack of respect there. “You have done so much for my people. Return to us with the proper equipment, and I will make sure you get a new eye to replace what you lost.”
“I’m sure you will, Mimic. You’re a woman of your word.” She gripped the shapeshifter’s hand tighter and pulled her forward a bit. “So promise me that you’ll take care of him.”
Mimic nodded, a soft smile spreading across her face. “I will.”
“Good.” Gonzales took a step back and gave a cheeky little wave. “I’d do the whole personal good-bye things with all of y’all, but that sounds boring and I gotta go. So I’ll see ya on the flip side, nerds.”
There was a chorus of good-byes and waves, then the ramp was rising, then the ship was lifting off, and then she was gone.
“You’re worried about her,” Mimic said, stepping up to me and wrapping an arm around my waist.
“Yeah. The last time we were separated for a long period, it didn’t go so well.”
“Do not worry. She is strong, and smart. She will do what is best for all of us.”
“I know.” I sighed and looked back to the city just over the hill. There was still debris everywhere, and many of the buildings had been partially destroyed. We had such a long to-do list, I probably wouldn’t even have time to take a breather before Gonzales was back with supplies, friends, and information.
“It’s a lot, isn’t it?” Ciangi asked, coming up alongside us, her hand wrapped in Bahn’s.
“It is,” I answered, looking over the horizon. “But nothing crazier than what we’ve already done.”
“No, certainly not,” Eske agreed with a slight nod.
Mimic squeezed my waist slightly, then slowly walked us forward. “It will be a long road, but we’ve come this far together, so the rest of the road can’t be all bad.” She stood on tiptoes to press a gentle kiss to my cheek, and I smiled.
“No, not bad at all.”
THANK YOU
Thank you so much for reading Mimic Goes to War, the fifth book in the Space Shifter Chronicles. I really hope you enjoyed the story of how they saved Mimic’s new planet. If you think this is “happily ever after…” you have another thing coming, though. Keep an eye out for the next story and find out what happens next. It should be ready in March :)
If you enjoyed this story, it would be awesome if you left a review for me. That really helps me reach more readers because Amazon features books with lots of good reviews.
At the end, I have included a preview of Recruit, the first book in the Jack Forge, Fleet Marine series which is an action packed space Marines series. This first story tells how Jack was plucked from the University and sent to basic training, essentially against his will. After you read the preview, you can download the book on Amazon
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Preview: Recruit
Jack Forge sat in the lecture theater watching the hands on his small silver pocket watch tick across its shimmering pearl face. The latest grades would be revealed in a few moments. The room was silent as the students counted down the seconds.
Attendance at his brother’s funeral had been authorized, so he had been free to leave his studies and attend. Jack knew missing time would count against his grade, but he was on top of his studies and his grades were excellent. He could afford to drop a few points and still maintain his two-plus student rating.
The recruiting sergeant stood at the front of the theater next to Professor Bowen. One of these men wanted the students to maintain their two-plus, the other did not. His classmates watched the seconds tick down on the large display. Jack watched on his small family heirloom. It was all he had left of his family.
The second hand reached the top of its final round. Jack heard the ripples of distress and gasps of horror as the students whose grades had dropped realized they were now the property of the military.
Jack looked up to the display. He picked out his name. He saw it there pulsing on the screen in red, a pattern that could only mean one thing. He scanned across to his grade. Two. Only two. The plus was missing for the first time in his three semesters. Three other names pulsed. Jack knew them all. He’d studied with them, socialized with them, laughed with them. He would most likely never see them again.
The sergeant barked out transfer orders to the first name on the list. Jack watched as the second hand ticked along. He was only seventeen seconds into his new life when his name was called out by the recruiting sergeant.
“Jack Forge. Fleet Marine training.”
Jack looked up from his watch. He looked at Professor Bowen. The old man was slumped in a chair, his eyes averted as his class was further reduced in number.
The doors to the lecture theater opened and military police entered. Jack had seen this before. Students had complained and argued, fought and resisted their removal from university to the ranks of the military or some war production facility. The arguments were familiar to Jack. He heard the most common of them now from across the lecture theatre.
The students being drafted into service promised to pull their grades back up. They argued that it was only a small drop. They argued that they were too smart to be sent to the military. The arguments and complaints descended into shouts and screams as the former students were dragged away. Friends shouted their good-byes. Lovers kissed and cried. As a guard came toward Jack, he tucked away his watch and stood. With a nod to his escort, he walked down the steps at the side of the lecture theater toward the open door.
Read the rest of the story here:
amazon.com/dp/B07695FRGG
Mimic Goes to War Page 9