Mimic Saves Her People Read online

  “Look, I know that I’m only a weapons engineer to y’all, but I know how to count to eight.”

  “Okay, so there’s a whole lot of insecurities to unpack there, but we don’t have time for that,” Aja said. “Try narrowing the variable of allowance to a single percent.”

  “A single percent for a margin of error?” Ciangi said dubiously over the comms. “I know that we did some improvements, but that’s a little extreme, isn’t it?”

  “Maybe. Maybe not. You might as well try.”

  “You heard her,” Gonzales urged.

  There was another hesitation before Bahn responded, “Changing margin of error now.”

  There was another delay while we waited, every second weighing at my heart and soul, until finally it beeped again.

  “Alright! I’m down to two readings!” Gonzales crowed. “One for right here and one for, uh…” She paused and reached over to the nav-system, shrinking the map down on one of its panels and squinting. “Very far away.”

  “Holy crap, that worked,” Aja’s hologram muttered.

  “And to think you ever doubted us,” Eske said over the comms.

  “Alright, I’m putting in the coordinates now. Engineering, you ready to fire those warheads?”

  “Only if you’re ready to catapult us around the planet.”

  “I’m plugging in the flightpath now.”

  “I guess this is where I’ll take my leave of ya,” Aja said. “If we get this right, the transmission will cut off as soon as you’re past the event horizon of the wormhole and I don’t really need to be takin’ up any of your ship’s resources before then.”

  “Thank you, Aja,” I said, giving her a nod even though I knew she wouldn’t see it. “If we never meet again, I’d—”

  “Ah, shut it with that crap. You’ve done some great things, Mister Higgens, but I can tell your story ain’t done yet. We’ll talk again, but for now, you get those kids, got it?”

  “Got it,” I said, a small smile finding its way onto my face.

  “Flightpath is in the system. Are we ready to see just how good we are at what we do?” Gonzales asked.

  “Yes,” Mimi said breathlessly. She hadn’t spoken in so long that I had almost thought she’d forgotten human speech for a bit. “Let’s go save our family.”

  There wasn’t anything else that needed to be added to that, so Gonzales just gave a nod and started up her flightpath.

  This time, I could definitely feel as we rocketed forward, my skin pulling back from my face under the strain. I could see from our front-facing viewing shield that we were just shooting off into empty space before eventually curving right back to the planet we had just left.

  Closer and closer we zoomed until it felt like we were going to crash right back where we had started, but at the last moment, we started to tilt to the side, just barely skimming the outermost atmosphere.

  I didn’t think it would be possible to feel it as we were caught in the natural gravitational pull of the planet and then flung off into space with even more momentum, but I definitely did. My organs seemed to all smoosh to one side and even the rise and fall of my chest was labored before the tension was suddenly broken in less than a second.

  “On track for target wormhole location. Twins, fire those missiles.”

  “Firing missiles!”

  Two pairs of bright, magenta streams shot out far, far ahead of us, almost completely disappearing from vision before an explosion bloomed. Even from so far away, the eruption of energy was truly a beautiful sight of spiraling colors and fire, with the force of it rippling through our ship.

  “Uh, that field of destruction is gonna die down before we hit target, right?” Gonzales asked from the helm.

  “Of course,” Ciangi answered, and I could hear the nervousness in her voice. “What’s the matter? Don’t you trust us?”

  “Now that’s a very loaded question in a time like this.”

  “Uh-huh. What you have to worry about is if the wormhole actually forms or not.”

  “Oh, is that all?”

  “I can’t get a solid reading on it,” Bahn said, cutting in on the nervous banter that the two did so love to slip into. “There’s still too much radiation.”

  “I could be wrong,” Mimi said calmly. “But isn’t radiation quite dangerous for your species?”

  “Yes,” I answered flatly.

  “I see.”

  We hurtled toward it, faster and faster, and I could see that the fire wasn’t dissipating fast enough. Wasn’t that supposed to be impossible in space? It being a void and a vacuum all at once, right?

  “Uh, we’re getting a little close here.”

  “I’m getting some strange readings, but none of them can confirm a viable wormhole.”

  “I’m going to need to know whether I need to alter our course in about three seconds,” Gonzales said tightly. “Because if that wormhole is only half-formed, or stabilizing, we could be vaporized on contact. And that’s, like, the good death.”

  “I am well aware of the implications, but I can’t help that the radiation from our missiles along with the natural radiation of space is affecting our readings. Especially since all of our ship-level scanners are now wired into the process that’s allowing our nav-system to find the other mimics.”

  “Yeah, I’d like some answers, not excus—”

  “The wormhole has stabilized behind the radiation cloud!” Ciangi cried, interrupting the two. “Go, go, go!”

  I didn’t think it was possible for us to go any faster, but we did, and I was thrown back against my seat, skin pulling once again. It was hard to even keep my eyes open as we shot toward the still fading inferno hovering in space, the energy of it crackling through me.

  Closer and closer it rushed until we were about to burst through. I held my breath, waiting for our inevitable demise, only for us to smash through it like an ancient wrecking ball through a brick wall.

  One second, we were racing through space, and the next, we erupted into what looked like a kaleidoscope of color. Gone was the eternal velvet black, interrupted by only the occasional star or planet. Instead, we were surrounded by swirls of pink, blue, purple, and teal, all twisting in on each other and lancing out, like some sort of multicolored lightning.

  It was beautiful and blinding all at the same time, making me squint while also not wanting to close my eyes until it was all over. My teeth chattered, my muscles tensed, and it felt like my cells were all going to burst into hundreds of thousands of little reverberating pieces.

  I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t even turn my head to see any of my comrades. I was just a witness to the incredible feat of science we were accomplishing.

  It would be a shame to die in a fiery blaze at the end, all of our progress being lost forever to mankind. I supposed I would just have to hope that we made it out the other end, but at the moment, that was difficult to believe.

  The rattling grew even more intense, quadruple of anything I had ever experienced during our many planetary takeoffs. The ship groaned, protesting the strain. Somewhere behind me, or maybe it was even below me, I heard metal buckling, denting, and straining.

  Then, as suddenly as it happened, it was over. We popped into space, once more enveloped by the onyx embrace of the void.

  And then about ten alarms went off.

  “Pull up, pull up!” Ciangi’s voice crackled over the comms. “We were dropped right into an asteroid field!”

  “I thought the thing you guys built was supposed to stop us from exiting into death-conditions!” Gonzales cried back, grabbing the controls and jerking them to the side.

  This time, I almost did lose my lunch as we suddenly changed directions, and the ship let out several noises of protest.

  “This is just like the first time we escaped, except that time, the big death rocks were before we shot through a wormhole that accelerated us well beyond the red-zone of our speed capacity!”

  “It’s a prototype,” I could hear
Ciangi bite, even over the comm. “It’s not going to be perfect. You can do this.”

  “Glad for the faith,” Gonzales said. There was another beep from the comms and she let out a loud curse.

  “Is that a planet I’m seeing on my readings?” Ciangi cried.

  “Yup. And we’re heading for it too fast to go around it, so prepare for another slingshot.”

  “Another?” Bahn asked, and I felt my own interest rise in alarm. I was pretty sure that was not a good idea. “But at the momentum we’re already going, we could—”

  “I’m aware, but I’m not the one who made a system that decided to drop us in some of the worse situations possible. So, hold on, I’m about to see how well our shielding is gonna hold up.”

  I swallowed, about the only action I was physically capable of as the asteroids gave way only for the dark blue planet to suddenly surge into view.

  In a déjà vu-like repeat of how we had started our little jump, Gonzales pushed the ship as hard as it could go until we were almost initiating a landing procedure. Then, at the last second, she changed the bearings until we were being whipped around the planet by its incredible gravitational force.

  My vision grew hazy as the g-force exerted itself without discrimination. I knew I had maybe seconds before I lost consciousness, and I fought to force myself to breathe slowly and powerfully.

  The moment we broke out of the slingshot was nearly enough to send me over the edge, but I managed to cling to consciousness. The dizziness slowly faded, and by the time I caught my breath, I realized we were floating peacefully in space.

  “I think…” Mimi murmured cautiously, undoing her buckles, “…that we did it.”

  It took all of us a moment to respond, our puny human bodies still trying to recover after the massive stimuli we had just put them through. But when we did, it was Gonzales who let out a loud whoop.

  “You bet your shapeshifting bottom we did!” She let out another whoop before sobering. “Now, let’s find the little ones, shall we?”

  “Yes,” Mimi said, her face hardening with determination. “Hopefully, we’re not too late.”

  7

  Needle in a Haystack

  Normally, I felt such an extreme experience would require a little downtime and recuperation, but we just didn’t have that time. Granted, most of our adventures involved flying from one insane situation or another, so maybe this was what all of it had been preparing us for: the singular most important mission of our lives.

  But the moment all of us caught our breaths was the moment we were all moving again. Eske checked in from medical that everything was alright then rushed to engineering to be the wrench-monkey for repairs.

  Ciangi and Bahn started narrowing the scanner we had jerry-rigged to go from a range that was looking for a general planet location to one that could find precise coordinates. I wasn’t entirely sure how that entire process worked, but I knew it took some rewiring, reworking, and then recalibrating. Not exactly a quick process.

  And Gonzales? Well, Gonzales busied herself with quickly mapping out the area she was in as best she could. I had no doubt that in her head, she was going over all the places a battle could be staged or a quick escape if we needed to regroup. While the weapons engineer had always been great in a fight, I could tell that her skills had been far more honed during all the time we had been apart. I couldn’t tell if that was a good or a bad thing, but for the moment, it was useful and that was all that mattered.

  As for myself, I hopped on the extra-ship communications to see if I could glean any info trails or other messages. Chances were, we wouldn’t be able to understand them considering the aliens’ language was completely unknown to us, but maybe we could find a frequency and track it without waiting for all the reworking from our scanner. For all we knew, the ship we were looking for was still days away and our wormhole only did us the favor of dropping us off in the same solar system.

  I was just scrolling through the chatter when Mimi suddenly snapped her head in my direction.

  “What was that?” she asked, leaning over the display. While she was incredibly smart, smarter than I’d ever be, I was pretty sure that she had never learned what any of the readings meant.

  “What do you mean?” I asked, my fingers automatically flicking back to the frequency I had just been on.

  “That!” she said, her hand shooting to mine to make sure I didn’t change the frequency anymore. “It’s them! They’re speaking!”

  “I can’t hear anything,” I said, turning up the output as high as I could. All there was to me was a faint static. “What are you hearing?”

  “It’s… It’s quiet, and garbled. But it’s basically a distress signal, from what I can surmise. It’s broken up, but…” She closed her eyes and seemed to listen deeper. Slowly her human visage started to fade, and her skin grew the darkest black with little spikes starting to poke out of it. “They have us. Deep in the ship. There’s…large containment vessels all around them. Small crew. Ten? Twenty? Armed. They’re hungry. No food in days. They’re being kept weak. They… They…” Her words faded, and she returned to her completely human form.

  “They what?” Gonzales asked, making me jump. I had no idea that she had even come up behind us.

  “They’re scared,” Mimi finished, her face even paler than usual. “They are very, very scared.”

  “Fair enough,” I said. “I think all of us have been in similar situations and being afraid is quite the natural reaction.”

  Gonzales shivered. “I wouldn’t want to wish that on anyone.”

  “Me either,” Mimi said. “Starvation is not fun, and neither is containment. Imagining them both together is…” She shuddered as well. It seemed even after our many months together, she was still learning human traits. “Unpleasant.”

  “That’s one way to put it.”

  The conversation faded for a moment, but the quiet didn’t last long as the comm buzzed to life beside us.

  “We’re booting the configurated scanner now,” Ciangi said, sounding exhausted. “How’s it going on your end?”

  “We may have found a distress signal.”

  “A distress signal? Are you for real?”

  “That is a curious question,” Mimi answered. “Why would you question the reality of whether we are—”

  “Yes, we’re serious,” Gonzales interrupted.

  “Send it down here, man. We can put it into our scanner to make sure that we get an accurate reading. Having two points of data instead of just the skin sample makes this much more foolproof.”

  “Sending down,” I answered before recording the sample in our logs and then uploading it to our database for them to access. Once that was done, I turned back to Mimi and Gonzales.

  “That’s step two then. How about we gear up for step three?”

  Both women nodded.

  “Step three indeed.”

  “We have the location!”

  I looked up from the bowl of soup I was hastily slurping down. Sure enough, the comm in the mess hall was indeed buzzing away with Bahn’s voice.

  “Truly?” Mimi said, jumping to her feet and knocking her own nutrient slush to the floor. It was the only food-like thing she could eat while not in her natural form, and it smelled like iron and cleaning solution. I made a note to myself to clean that up later before it permanently discolored the floor.

  Huh, I guessed there were some maintenance man tendencies still within me. Some things never changed.

  “That was less than half an hour,” I said in surprise, setting the bowl down. I hadn’t known the next time I would be able to eat, so I had made sure to get at least some nutrients in me. Ever since we had found our home massacred, we hadn’t exactly had the best diet, and I had a feeling that I would need all the strength I could get.

  “I know,” Ciangi’s voice answered. “It’s pretty great, right?”

  “As humble as ever, I see,” Harunya’s voice added before Eske cut in.

&nb
sp; “So, is this the part where we chase down a ship that’s bigger, stronger, and better equipped than us?”

  “No,” Gonzales answered from beside me, having taken the extra seconds to actually finish her soup. “This is where we sneak up on a skeleton crew and show them exactly why you don’t mess with our family.”

  8

  Hush

  “Engines running on silent,” Ciangi’s voice whispered through the comm as we gently flew through space.

  All of us knew that we could probably shout at the top of our lungs and it still wouldn’t affect anything, but that fact didn’t make a difference. Everything was riding on us not being picked up by whatever scanners these aliens had in place, so we were taking every precaution possible.

  “Let’s hope Aja’s scramblers and cloakers work,” I heard Eske breathe beside me. Originally, I had thought she would stay with Harunya, but the woman was busy setting up something in the med-bay that I wasn’t privy to. I didn’t quite think it was the time to be keeping secrets, but I also knew it wasn’t the time to try to argue with a new mom, so that was that.

  “I mean, would she have been forcibly indentured by one of the biggest crime families on Earth if she wasn’t able to do what she said she could do?” I pointed out in response.

  More than anyone else in our little crew, I trusted Aja. She had a talent for going just outside the rules of things that I respected. Following rules and regulations to a ‘T’ had been my bread and butter when I was younger. When I finally went rogue to save Mimi, I had never looked back, and I felt like Aja understood that more than anybody else. Even Mimi.

  Or maybe it was because I was just desperate for a mother figure. I didn’t know. Psychology was well beyond my expertise.

  “Alright, fair point,” Eske conceded. “How close are we?”

  Gonzales simply pointed to the nav, not moving her eyes from the center of our view. “We’re going to try to swing up along its flightpath and hide behind a planet, so we can run covert scans on it.”