Mimic Raises an Army (Space Shifter Chronicles Book 4) Read online

  “What are you—”

  But then I saw it, in the distance—a wave of ten or so mines coming straight towards us. They were colored differently than the others, and there was no denying that their destination was entirely intentional.

  “Oh crap,” Ciangi gasped. “What do we do?”

  “There should be a shield around the actual station itself,” Gonzales answered, her voice like steel. “If we get in there, I’m assuming the mines can’t enter.”

  “Why would you assume that?” Eske asked.

  “Because the station is magnetic, and hasn’t been blown to bits by the mines. They must have some sort of protective field and we need to get inside of it.”

  “So, all we have to do is dodge a group of magnetic explosives?”

  “Yeah, that’s about it.”

  “Oh good,” I said with a sigh. “I was afraid that it was going to be complicated.”

  She spared a dry laugh, but that was it. “Everyone spread out. We launch on the count of three.”

  “Got it,” Eske answered, the edge clearly evident in her voice.

  “One.”

  I tensed, and felt a comforting ripple go through Mimic. I was sure that she was probably chirping encouragements, but I couldn’t hear them through the void of space plus my suit.

  “Two.” I saw Eske and Ciangi drift above and below me so that we almost made a star-like formation.

  “Three!”

  And then we were all rushing forward, caution thrown to the wind as we went hurtling for a head-on collision with the mines.

  We would have to make sure our timing was right. Wait too long, and we risked crashing into one of them and meeting a fiery demise. Dodge to the side too quickly, and we would lose our advantage, meaning the mines would have enough time to redirect and take us out anyways.

  Fantastic. What about this situation had I missed exactly?

  I didn’t have time to think about that, however, because we were almost there.

  “Get ready!” Gonzales cried over the comms.

  Oh, I was ready. As ready as I ever would be to play a game of chicken with an explosive the size of a small hovercraft.

  The mines were almost to us, and I swore that I could see my reflection on their overly shiny sides. I wanted to veer off, to get out of the line of fire, but I held fast until Gonzales gave the signal. I didn’t know when she had become our tactical leader, but I certainly wasn’t complaining.

  “Now!”

  We all shot in different directions, some of us over, some of us under, some of us diagonally across. And once we were behind the line of oncoming mines, we hit our thrusters for all we had.

  I could feel my suit wheeze and protest as we launched forward, but I didn’t let up. Sure enough, the mines had trouble killing their momentum or turning, and we were able to gain some distance on them.

  Well…almost all of them. The two on either end managed to compensate in time, one trailing me and one hurtling behind Eske.

  “What do I do?” her panicked voice asked, although her long, lanky body remained ramrod straight as her boots rocketed her towards our safe spot on the blind underside of the station.

  My mind hurtled through a dozen different options in what seemed like a nanosecond, and then my mouth was moving. “Cross paths with me?”

  “What!?”

  “Cross paths with me. With any luck, they’ll slam into each other.”

  “And without luck?”

  “Well, it’s been nice to know you.”

  “That is not comforting at all!”

  “No time for comfort. Now cross!”

  She did as I ordered, and then we were hurtling on diagonals towards each other. It wasn’t until we were racing that I realized there was the ever-so-slight risk that we could collide even before the mines hit us, but I chose not to verbalize that as we rushed through space.

  Thankfully, we didn’t crash into each other, but managed to zoom past within a couple of inches. Once more, I found myself face to face with a mine, and I rocketed upwards as fast as I could.

  They did indeed crash into each other, and after a moment of crumpling metal and reverberations, I thought that they might not actually go off.

  I was mistaken.

  The resulting explosion was like nothing I had ever seen. One moment, the two metal goliaths were trying to push through each other, and the next, fire and shrapnel were billowing out like the most violent version of a cloud there could be.

  I tried to rush out of the way, but there was only so far and so fast that the thrusters could take me. The edge of the blast caught me, then engulfed me, sending me flying off and making the thermos-gauge on my enviro-suit beep like mad.

  For a minute, everything was senseless as I tumbled head over heels through the abyss. Honestly, I was pretty sure I should have been roasted to a crisp, but something was keeping me from turning into a Higgens version of popcorn chicken.

  I knew that I wouldn’t lose momentum in the vacuum of space, or at least not for a long while, so I needed to do something ASAP. Using all of the meager abdominal muscles I had left over from my maintenance life, I shifted my feet to turn around, taking myself in sort of a slow half-circle back into the flames.

  I was either going to get on course or get incinerated. I just had to hope that by the time I made it around, the ravenous maw of the void would dissipate the inferno. I couldn’t tell, as the visor of my enviro-suit was completely covered in soot and debris, while all of my sensors were going crazy.

  “Higgens! Are you alright?”

  “I don’t know,” I answered, panting as I finished my curve and headed back towards the direction I came. At least, I thought it was the direction I came. It was hard to tell given that I couldn’t really see. “Am I?”

  “Well, right now you’re encased in a giant black ball that I’m guessing is Mimic, so I’m gonna guess maybe?”

  Oh. Maybe that was why my visor was so dark. It wasn’t soot. It was Mimic. She must have shifted her body shape to protect me from the blaze. Huh, she really was something, wasn’t she?

  I reached out into the darkness, and sure enough, my hand hit a hard surface just a few inches from my skin. I gave it a couple of thankful pats, and then space slowly started to reveal itself to me once more as she reverted to her normal form on my back.

  “I owe you one,” I said, knowing that she couldn’t hear me.

  “You guys can pick up your awkward flirtations later,” Ciangi buzzed through the comm. “You need to get inside the safe zone before the other mines catch up to you!”

  Of course. It was never just one crisis, was it?

  I risked a single glance over my shoulder and saw that what mines had survived the explosion were indeed rounding on me. I set my thrusters to high once more and blasted towards my friends.

  It was not a…comfortable experience. I couldn’t look behind me to see if the mines were gaining on me, otherwise I would completely throw off the trajectory of my nav-boots. And I couldn’t ask my friends for a report, as I could hardly move my jaw with how fast we were going. I was worried my enviro-suit wasn’t going to make it, but it wasn’t like I had much of a choice.

  “Come on!” I heard Eske cry, waving frantically. “You’re almost in. Don’t let up!”

  I wanted to retort that I was well aware that wasn’t an option, but since I couldn’t, I just thought it bitterly.

  My ears started to ring, and I could feel myself grow lightheaded, but I kept on until I shot past my friends and into safety.

  I completely killed the speed of my nav-boots, relying on only basic thrust power, and slowly began to lose speed. But it certainly wasn’t enough, and I saw the underside of the station rapidly approaching.

  “Crap,” I muttered.

  “Oh man, brace for impact, Higgens! I’m going to try to get to you!”

  “No, don’t!” I called back. “You speed up that much and you won’t be able to kill your speed either.”

>   It was right around then that I heard a loud bellow from my back. Not quite human, but its intentions were perfectly clear. I felt Mimic move, and shift, but I couldn’t turn to see what she was doing.

  Then, suddenly, I felt my body jerk and my speed slowed enough for me to pull my knees to my chest and counter my forward movement with several spikes of energy from my nav-boots. I couldn’t believe it was working, but little by little, I ended up at a safe speed and was able to gently set my feet down on the underside of the station.

  I heaved a sigh of relief and the cacophony of discordant sounds within my suit began to settle down as my friends approached me. Within just a few minutes, we were all assembled and staring at each other, perhaps a bit shocked that we had survived.

  “Well…” I murmured after a long break. “That was fun.”

  “Sure, it was,” Eske answered, clearly just as shaken as I was despite the fact that she hadn’t been the one enveloped in an explosion. “But, uh, I would like to ask that we don’t do anything like that again.”

  Gonzales let out a slight chuckle. “You know, considering what we get into, I can’t rightly promise that.”

  9

  Somewhat Hostile Take Over

  “Do you have the stuff?” I asked, regaining my composure enough to remember the next step of the mission.

  “No,” Ciangi answered and I could almost hear her roll her eyes. “I totally forgot and left them on the ship. I guess we’ve got to go back!”

  “Very cute,” Gonzales said in a way that clearly said she thought it wasn’t cute at all. “Can you pull out the mini-shield generator and the splicer, or do you wanna continue with the sarcasm when we’ve already burned through, oh, I would say about half of our oxygen?”

  “Right. Good point.” She knelt down and the mimic on her back clambered off, skittering around the rest of us. I guess Meridyna had enjoyed the whole nearly-dying adventure, judging by her rippling form and spikes waving this way and that. At least one of us had had a good time. “I think I’m just off. It feels weird to not have Bahn here.”

  “I can imagine,” Eske said. “I’ve never seen one of you without the other, even on the net.”

  “Yeah, we’ve basically been inseparable since college. We turned down a lot of jobs that weren’t willing to pay both of our salaries or let us work on the same project. That’s how we ended up on a mining vessel when we really were always lab-heads. In retrospect, I guess our pickiness was a good thing.”

  “Huh, it certainly is weird to think about the paths that brought us here, isn’t it?” I asked.

  “Yeah, a real chin-scratcher,” Gonzales interrupted. “Field, now please.”

  “Right, right, I got it.” Ciangi finished pulling the small, metal cylinders from her pack and placed them on the surface of the station. I could hear them hiss as they attached, then their tops deployed a series of emitters. After a brief buzz and then a crackle, they did indeed manage to generate a very small atmosphere field.

  “There,” Ciangi murmured. “Now we don’t have to worry about our entrance causing the interior to violently depressurize.”

  Gonzales nodded. “Good. Now, if you don’t mind, hand me the ionic welder.”

  “If you insist. But wouldn’t Higgens have more experience with that sort of thing, you know, being a maintenance worker and all?”

  “Probably,” Gonzales admitted, taking the instrument and lighting it up. “But I think I just need to break in somewhere.”

  I didn’t need to argue with that reasoning. “By all means, weld away.”

  “Thank you, I will.”

  Ciangi stepped away, giving Gonzales room to kneel down and press the torch to the metal. Sparks flew up, illuminating our forms and the rest of the mimics as they proceeded to clamber down from all of us.

  Except for Mimic, of course. She stayed tightly curled against my back, all of her spikes pointed outward. I appreciated the contact, to be honest. Although I put on a brave face, my knees were still a bit weak and my heart was still pounding from how close to death I had been. Sure, we’d had tough scrapes before, but nothing like what I had just survived.

  The time that it took for Gonzales to finish allowed me to get over most of the shock, and I bent to help her pry the square hatch open with some of our magnetic clamps. Within a few seconds, we moved it to the side and were looking down into a dark, unoccupied room of the station.

  “We did it,” Eske breathed. “We actually did it.”

  Gonzales shut off the welder and waited for it to cool before answering. “You’d think that the disbelief you’re feeling right now would fade after you do enough impossible things, but nope… I would say that it’s still there.”

  “Yup, still there for me,” I agreed.

  “Me too.”

  I was just about to ask who should go in first when Mimic finally detached from me and skittered right in, dropping into the darkness below. I sent a surprised look to my female companions and gave them a shrug, which they returned in kind.

  “Might as well follow,” I said before doing just that.

  It was a longer drop than I thought it would be, and I landed hard. I was thankful I had my nav-boots, otherwise I might have sprained or broken an ankle right then and there.

  “Hey, Mimic?” I hissed, ducking down in case we weren’t as alone as I had thought.

  “I’m right here. Turn on your suit light. It seems to have gone out during the explosion.”

  “Oh, right.”

  I did as she said and, sure enough, the room illuminated partially. It was a storage area, just as we had hoped, but there was so much dust covering everything that it looked like no one had been there in years.

  “Dude,” Ciangi said, landing beside me. “What’s up with this place? Did they turn off the environment filters or something?”

  “They must have,” Gonzales said once she touched down. “Otherwise there wouldn’t be nearly so much schmutz all over everything.”

  “Schmutz?” That was Urdet, of course. Looking at the mimics, I saw that they all had taken their human forms again. “What is this?”

  “It’s slang for dirt,” Mimic answered before holding her hand out to us. “Maintenance jumpers please.”

  We all knelt down to pull them and the rest of the supplies from our packs. It took a couple of minutes to explain to the younglings how to put them on, and I realized that they had never experienced zippers before.

  Sure, they all had some semblance of clothing back on their planet. A mix of pelts from animals and fabric salvaged from goodness knows where. I had the feeling that Mimic only clothed them for our sensibilities, as the mimics were always nude in their natural forms. Made me wonder just how silly our need to cover ourselves twenty-four seven was. Not that I was going to toss my skivvies to the wind, but it was something to think about.

  “Alright, weapons all tucked away?” Gonzales asked.

  “Yup.”

  “Roger.”

  “Who is Roge—” Urdet started to ask.

  “Colloquialism,” Mimic murmured. “Less questions for now.”

  “Of course,” he replied.

  “Good. Now, Ciangi, please tell me that you’ve been running a scan on whatever that thing was Bahn gave you.”

  “Do you mean…the scanner?”

  Gonzales clicked her tongue and I saw her eyes narrow as she removed the helmet of her enviro-suit. “I know it’s base functionality is a scanner, Blondie. But considering it’s Bahn’s creation, it probably can cure cancer and flip your pancakes too. So, I wouldn’t put it past him to give it some sort of silly, multi-syllable name that everyone will eventually shorten into an acronym because humans are inherently lazy. Now, are you scanning on the thing or not?”

  “Touchy, touchy,” Ciangi said, smiling and not taking Gonzales’s jibes personally. “And yeah, I’m scanning alright. Should be done by the time we all get de-suited.”

  I took that as my cue to get out of my space outfit t
hen carefully pack it into its protective bag within my pack. Perhaps it seemed a little redundant to have a bag within a bag, but I didn’t want it to somehow get accidentally punctured while I was toting it around. That would be a surprise that I certainly would not appreciate.

  The faintest of beeps told us that the machine was done just as I started to stand. Before I could comment on the good timing, Ciangi was rattling off the readings.

  “There only appear to be seven lifeforms on this entire station. Two are resting in crew quarters, one is in what I assume is the cafeteria, three are in what looks like a research area, and one is in the lavatory.”

  “Alright, that’s not bad. Should we split up? I feel like going after them all one by one could be too risky, and we can’t have them calling a ship-wide alert before we’re ready.”

  “Don’t you mean a station-wide alert?” Urdet corrected flatly.

  I only gave them a patient look before my gaze returned to Gonzales and Mimic, waiting for them to answer my query.

  “I think…split up,” the weapons engineer answered slowly.

  “I agree,” Mimic said with a nod. “Too large of a group is difficult enough to travel with quietly, and we risk one of them noticing what is going on and alerting the others, making our task that much more difficult.”

  Ciangi was the last to speak up. “As crazy as it sounds, I think I’m on board with this splitting up idea. And once we do contain a worker, we can each have a mimic with us imitate them. I think that’s our best bet.”

  “Then it’s decided.” I nodded, feeling determination rise within me again. “Mimic, you and I will go for the group of three in the research lab. That will be the most difficult. Ciangi, Meridyna, and Pyjik, you go in the lavatory. Gonzales and Urdet, you go to the two in the crew quarters, then Eske and Astaroth, you get the one in the cafeteria. Remember, we want them unconscious, not hurt.”

  “Righto.”

  “Heard!”

  “Yeah, yeah. We’re all aware of the plan.” Gonzales’s tone was gruff, but before any of us could rebut with our usual sarcasm, she strode forward and threw her arms around me in a hug. “You be careful now, okay?”