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  Mimic’s Last Stand

  Space Shifter Chronicles, Book 9

  James David Victor

  Fairfield Publishing

  Copyright © 2018 Fairfield Publishing

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. Except for review quotes, this book may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without the written consent of the author.

  This story is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual people, places, or events is purely coincidental.

  Contents

  1. Gearing Up for the End

  2. Dreams Safe in A Warm Embrace

  3. Three-Way Call

  4. Long-Term Guests

  5. Long-Term Confession

  6. Tick Tock Goes the Ancient Clock

  7. Beginning Phase Two

  8. The Third Phase’s the Charm

  9. Take it to the Ground

  10. Happily Ever After. For Now

  Thank You

  Bonus Content: Story Preview

  1

  Gearing Up for the End

  “Entering orbit now.”

  I looked out of the view shield of our stolen ship, taking in the sight of the mimic planet. We had been gone for so long, rushing through space and unable to use the same trick we had getting there. Three months had passed since we took over the ship.

  Three months was a long time to have a host of very hungry mimics on board. We fed them what we could, unable to stop and mine space for any nourishment, always fearing that the aliens would come bearing down on us at any moment—even if we knew that was practically impossible.

  And also, three months to get used to my new arm.

  Yeah.

  That was strange.

  Most of the time, it felt like my arm and looked like my arm, but it took up a chunk of concentration in my mind, often leaving me exhausted at the end of the day. However, occasionally my concentration would slip, or I’d get nervous, and the arm would go wild. Sometimes it whipped around, a tentacle of shining darkness. Sometimes it just bubbled up like a cauldron full of onyx goop. Mimi was pretty good at talking me through those points, but it was always a bit alarming to have part of my body acting so completely on its own.

  I was a mimic now, in a strange, not really sort of way. Somewhere between human and shapeshifter, I was something else entirely.

  Because I could tell that it wasn’t just my arm. Sure, that was the only part of me that could change its form at the moment, but I could feel something else, deeper within myself. Maybe it was just my body accepting the mimic DNA—assuming they had DNA. Really, we didn’t know a whole lot about their anatomy considering we were still trying to figure out what made them shift.

  Unlike most of my other experiences in ships, this vessel didn’t shake or rumble as we raced through the atmosphere. Instead, it gave a little bit of a buck and then we were cutting down through the sky to the ground, where smoke wasn’t cloaking the sky as it was all those months ago.

  Had it really been so long? In some ways it seemed like it, and in others it seemed like an eternity. Although we had used planets to slingshot ourselves along much faster than we would have gone normally, it had still taken just so darn long to arrive.

  “I can’t believe we’re here,” Eske breathed, shifting from foot to foot anxiously. “Did we make sure my family knows we’re landing?”

  “Oh, they know,” Gonzales said from the pilot’s seat. “You’ve been sending them holos since we hit this system, and you’ve talked to them three times since we’ve been in communication range.”

  “I know,” Eske murmured. “But it seemed like just after we were reunited last time that we were parted again almost instantly. I want them to know that everything is going to be okay.”

  “To be fair, I wouldn’t promise them that,” Harunya said, rocking her little one back and forth. “We have quite a fight looming on the horizon, and we’re not guaranteed our safety.”

  “No, we are definitely not,” Bahn agreed.

  The ship finally landed, its docking feet extending then settling. I almost wanted to pinch myself, but I still wasn’t very good at gauging my strength with my mimic hand and I didn’t want to injure my fleshy arm.

  …even after three months, it was strange to think that I had limbs of different substances.

  “Uh, guys…” Ciangi muttered, turning back to the communications helm as it suddenly let off a series of beeps. During the time that we’d been rushing through space, Ciangi, Bahn, Gonzales, and I had set up a sort of relay to run any communications we got on our warship down to our stolen alien ship. Of course, we didn’t get any communications considering how far out we were, but it was something to do and helped us understand the ship better.

  It turned out that we could learn a whole heck of a lot about our stolen alien vessel in a quarter of a year. While there was still so much to disassemble and analyze, we understood their level of technology and how their systems worked so much more.

  And we would need every ounce of that knowledge we could squeeze out for when the aliens would come.

  Because they would.

  And this time, they wouldn’t send some sort of dinky fighter that we just barely managed to beat.

  No, they were going to send a full armada. Every ship they had like the one we had just stolen would come to our planet at once and rain down terror. Maybe even blow up the whole thing. And once they dealt with us, they would move on to Earth.

  No one was safe.

  And we all knew that.

  “Alright,” Gonzales said with a breath as she pressed some levers and there was a slight thunk from outside. I guessed that was the disembarking door, and I took a deep breath.

  We were finally home, so why were nerves twisting so harshly in my stomach? I should have been happy, but instead, I was filled with a distinct sort of dread.

  Maybe that was because I knew that if we were here, it was probably only two to three months before the aliens arrived themselves.

  And we had a whole lot of work to do. If we thought our preparation for them the first time was difficult, this was going to be a whole new level. The aliens knew what we were capable of, and we knew what they were capable of.

  “Let’s go home,” Mimi said, wrapping her arm through mine and walking out of the cockpit where we all tended to congregate. While we had dismantled anything in the ship that might harm us, it still wasn’t exactly a welcoming place. It was like the greedy malevolence of the alien conquerors had seeped into the walls and floors, leaving a bitter sort of violence to the polished metal.

  As usual, my mimic arm pleasantly hummed when we touched. Somewhere between a tickle and a massage, it was an enjoyable, albeit distracting, sensation. It had once concerned me greatly, but I’d mostly learned to live with the confusing development.

  We reached the outside and real, actual sunlight washed over us in a comforting blanket of warmth. We had landed the ship right outside of the ruins of our main town, and I was surprised to see that several buildings had been completely redone. Their workmanship was a bit haphazard, but it was definitely an improvement to the smoldering piles of debris we had left behind.

  As expected, there was a sizable crowd waiting for us. Or at least, a sizable crowd considering how devastated our planet had been the last time we were around. All of Eske’s family was there, looking a bit gaunt but otherwise happy, and the mimics that had managed to hide or had stayed hidden shifted and bucked.

  I noticed that none of them were wearing the human forms that they had used during the first war.

  Huh. It was weird to think that our small, young colony of a nation had already had a first war and was about to head into its second one. It felt like I was having all sorts of personal revelations about the sta
te of our massive family after three months of being in some sort of strange stasis, completely separated from both Earth and our home planet.

  It was like my brain was sweeping out all the cobwebs, inventing new thoughts and neural pathways. All the activity made my hands shake, the urge to rub my fingers across something satisfying increasing.

  But there would be time for that later. Happy to be home, all of us rushed into the warm embrace of our old friends, a wave of young mimics sweeping back into their once home.

  Although it was a happy reunion, one full of relief and hope, there was another layer to it. This time, we could feel the coming threat more than ever, and unlike the previous attack that we had warded off, none of us seemed to think that we would survive.

  2

  Dreams Safe in A Warm Embrace

  Night settled over the town like a thick blanket, and for a few moments, it was easy for my brain to think that we were right back in space again. I figured it out quickly, however, and settled into what was left of the bed in my and Mimi’s old house.

  It was damaged, that was for certain, and there was a patch of roof that was ripped out, allowing me to stare into the night sky, but it was whole enough that we could rest there. And although it was certainly less comfortable than the warship we’d gotten from the revolution, there was something to be said about being home.

  My fingers traced along Mimi’s pale arm, my own skin shifting to the inky black that I had come to identify with her. That same thrill of pleasure tickled along the back of my brain, and I didn’t think I could ever grow tired of it.

  “You’re doing much better with that,” she murmured, her eyes flicking to me.

  Most of the time, they were a brilliant purple or blue, but lately, they had taken on a pitch-black appearance, sometimes the white of them disappearing entirely. Most of us had the good sense not to mention it, but now I found my curiosity piquing.

  “Thank you,” I said, trying to figure out a segue. But I was never very good at them, so I settled on my usual tactic. “Why’d you change your eyes?”

  “Have I?” She sounded a bit surprised, which in turn surprised me. Had she not noticed? I guess we hadn’t exactly spent a whole lot of time looking in mirrors when we were rushing home as fast as we could.

  “Yeah, they’re all dark now.”

  “Dark?”

  I nodded.

  “Interesting.” She was quiet a moment, but we had known each other long enough for me to figure out that she was just thinking. “I’ve been sentient for so long, but there is still so much I don’t know about our own physiology. Entire records that still need to be discovered or decrypted. Perhaps it is because of my mood. Or perhaps I’ve used one form too much. I have no way of knowing, and I find that frustrating.”

  “What do you mean by your mood?” I asked, picking up on the one I thought was more likely.

  “I don’t know. It’s… It’s dark. I feel dark inside. What used to make me happy seems too impossible to grasp now and I’m just so tired, all the time.” She rolled to me and those dark eyes started to fade a bit, her usual gaze appearing the longer she maintained eye contact with me. “I feel like no matter what we do, no matter how hard we fight, no matter what insane circumstances we overcome or invent a solution for, we’re always going be fighting something even worse.”

  Hearing her so in pain jolted me to my core. I supposed that during our mad dash back home, she and I hadn’t talked about much that wasn’t planning for the eventual attack. How long had she been holding these feelings inside? Letting them ruminate and fester?

  “I know the past year has been rough, but—”

  “It’s not just that it’s rough,” Mimi kept on. “It’s that it’s…it’s soul-shattering. Being betrayed by one of my closest underlings, one that I thought was going to succeed me when I finally got to lay my head down. Fighting a revolution. Losing almost every single one of my adopted children, brothers and sisters.

  “Over and over again, it’s like life has brought my worst nightmares to life, and I don’t even really have nightmares. I just want it all to end. I want it to stop.

  “I want peace.”

  Her eyes searched my face and I understood the desperation there. With every word she spoke, it was like it was waking up thoughts that I had tried to shove so deep into my subconscious that they would never see the light of day.

  “I want more than constantly fighting. More than war every day.”

  I stroked her hair out of her face. “I know, love. I know. And you deserve that.”

  Her eyes started to water but the tears didn’t quite come out. She was still working on that particular human response. “I want what I see in those happy holos we watch. I want happiness, with a reliable home, and no one coming to attack us. And children! I don’t understand it, but part of me wants to make little ones that are parts of both me and you.”

  I looked at her with wide eyes. “You want a family?”

  I didn’t know why, but I had never really thought about that. Maybe it was because our life had been one slapdash rush for survival since we had met with only tenuous months of peace. Maybe it was just because I had never thought that someone like me would ever have someone who wanted a child with them.

  “With me?” I continued, my words coming from my brain like sludge. “But I’m…I’m…different.”

  She let out the tiniest of laughs. “A shapeshifting alien with no actual gender or human anatomy just told you they want a family, and you’re worried you’re the strange one?”

  Alright, she may have had a point. “How would that work anyway? We already have about two million children that we’ve adopted.”

  Mimi snuggled closer to me, her form soft and familiar. I knew it wasn’t her natural body, that she put it on to be more like me, but I didn’t mind. I loved her no matter what body she was in. No matter what she looked like. Because what mattered to me was that beautiful, fearless soul inside of her. The one that fought so hard for those she loved and protected everything she could.

  “You know what I mean.”

  “I think I do, but I’m not really sure on the…technicalities of how that would work.”

  She shrugged. “We have years to figure that out if we survive. You’re at least part mimic now, so I’m assuming you’re going to live a bit longer than the average human.”

  “Oh, that’s what it is, isn’t it?” I teased. “Before you were biding your time for your weird human boyfriend to pass, but now that I’m here long term, plans have changed.”

  She laughed. “You know that’s not what happened.”

  “I know,” I said, pulling her to me, my hands gliding up and down her spine. I loved holding her. It proved that she was here. That we had fought against everything and managed not to be separated yet. “If a family is what you want, then that’s exactly what we’ll try for.” I kissed the tip of her nose. “I’ll get you that peace you want, Mimi. I’ll get you anything you want.”

  “Easy to promise that when in a few months, violent aliens could come and wipe us all out.”

  “Yeah, but I’m hoping to avoid that whole genocide thing. One might even say it’s my mission currently.”

  “Our mission,” Mimi countered. “Now I have a real reason to make sure we survive.”

  “Oh really? It took marriage and crazy scientific experimentation to have children to make you wanna live? Not, ya know, the thousands of younglings we have skittering around, our friends, and actually, uh…living?”

  “It never hurts to have a little extra incentive.”

  I laughed, perhaps a bit louder than I should have, but the feeling was so nice that I didn’t care. When was the last time that we had bantered back and forth so freely? Talked about our dreams and our hopes? It had to have been before we were betrayed and held in confinement for so long.

  In some ways, that seemed just like last week, but when I reached up and felt that my hair was just past my ears, I realized it was
months ago. Strange how time worked.

  “What are you thinking?” Mimi asked, seeming to sense that my mind was drifting backward.

  “About that time we were separated.”

  She frowned and pulled me closer, arms winding around me. “I never want that to happen again. Of all that I’ve experienced since I became me, that was the worst.”

  I nodded, squeezing Mimi just as tightly. “It really was. And we’ve been through some stuff.”

  “We really have.” She looked up at me, those eyes sparkling brightly once again, and gently pressed her lips to mine. “I love you, you know?”

  “I do,” I responded, pulling the covers that we had brought from the ship over us. “And I love you just as much.”

  3

  Three-Way Call

  I awoke in the morning with Mimi still curled in my arms. Unusual, considering she didn’t have to sleep and would usually slip off in the middle of the night to be productive, but I guessed after our conversation, she didn’t want to be apart.

  I didn’t blame her. When I was beside her, things seemed more possible and the world was less harsh. When we were parted, that was when all the dark thoughts and doubts seeped in, whispering about all the danger lurking and how the odds were stacked against us.

  Mimi’s eyes fluttered, and she looked at me with a drowsy sort of smile. Maybe as I was becoming more mimic, she was becoming more human. That would certainly be interesting.

  “Morning,” she murmured, standing up and stretching.

  “Morning,” I responded, pulling her closer to place a kiss on top of her head. “What’s the plan for today?”