Mimic and the Journey Home (Space Shifter Chronicles Book 2) Read online

“They are alive,” Mimic said calmly, crossing to the console.

  “That’s good to know.”

  “Can you hold Giomatti up for me? It will be easier with such a close example.”

  I did as she asked, supporting the short, portly man. In a gross display of moving flesh, Mimic’s features began to rearrange until she was an exact replica of what had to be the most unpleasant boss I had ever had.

  “Make sure you’re out of view,” she said in a perfect match of Giomatti’s voice. “Hopefully, Clairbella and Due will sound the alarm at any moment.”

  “Who the hell is that?”

  She looked at me blankly, which was a disturbing look coming from my ex-boss’s face. “You have been on a ship with them over a week. They are the siblings that do not share features.”

  “Oh, you mean the coin twins?”

  “Ah yes, I believe that is what you call them.”

  Before I could go into a long explanation about given names, figurative twins, or anything else, an ear-splitting alarm cut through the air. I resisted the urge to clap my hands over my ears and dragged Giomatti’s body out of the way of the holo-reader while Mimi walked over to stand in front of it.

  With the ease of someone who had been doing it for years, she activated the machine and soon was projecting Giomatti’s face through the entire ship.

  “Attention crew, I have received an alert from the engine room that our ship has been compromised from previous interference by the traitors. We’re going to have to evacuate to the ships currently apprehending them. Everyone get to the escape pods; the readings are giving us less than three minutes.”

  Just as I predicted, pandemonium erupted on the ship. Mimic didn’t seem to pay it much attention, however, and was already shifting to a new, beefier form.

  “I’ll take these guys to an escape pod,” she said, piling them onto what had previously been a meal cart. “You get the ship ready.” She paused at the door and sent me a smile. “And be safe, of course.”

  “I’ll try my best.”

  She disappeared through the door and I ran to the console. We were down to the last few minutes we had before our cover was blown. Once more, I was sweating those proverbial bullets as my stomach went through multiple aerial maneuvers.

  “How’s it going up there?” I nearly jumped out of my skin as a coin twin’s voice crackled through our personal coms. “I’m guessing you heard we did our part.”

  “Mimic is taking a trip to the escape pods. She’ll tell us when the last one has exited and we’ll make our jump.”

  “You know we only have about a minute at most before they get into our old bridge and know that something’s up.”

  “I’m aware.”

  Then, thankfully, Mimic’s voice came over the comm. “It is done. I just sent them off to our old ship’s coordinates.

  “Then what are you waiting for? Punch it, broom-boy.”

  “Brooms haven’t been used in general maintenance work in several centuries,” I corrected, pressing the buttons like I had been taught, engaging the engines and gripping the flight controls. “I’ll give you a whole history on it when this is all over. But for now…” I slammed on the accelerator controls and we shot forward at an impossible speed. “I would recommend holding on.”

  I couldn’t resist a whoop as we leapt forward into space. We had done it! Against all odds, we had hijacked one of the biggest mining vessels and were now rocketing through space.

  I kept all of my concentration on flying until a gentle hand patted my shoulder. I jumped, before realizing it was Gonzales coming to take over.

  “You are amazing,” she said, sliding into my seat as soon as I stood.

  “Thanks.” I looked to the door to see Mimic standing there, back in her typical human form. “We did it,” I said quietly, almost unbelieving as I saw her looking both refreshed and triumphant.

  “You did it,” she said, walking forward to take my hand. “I thought finding other sentient life was amazing, but it turns out that pales in comparison to finding you. You have done so many impossible, amazing things.” We both turned to look out of the nav-window, eyeing the beauty and terror that was space. “And you will continue to do even more amazing things.” She squeezed my hand. “If anyone will get me home, it’s you.”

  “I’m glad you think so.”

  “Of course. I believe in you, Higgens. And that’s what friends are for.”

  Part II

  The Journey Home

  Waking Up Lonely

  I woke up in my own bed in what felt like the first time in forever.

  In reality, it had been just under a week, but what a terribly long and draining week it had been. Between jumping through wormholes, planet hopping and the like, I was sure that I would never see my little home away from home again.

  And yet…here I was.

  I looked to my empty bed then the empty floor, sighing when I realized that Mimic was nowhere to be seen.

  She must be out eating again.

  Ever since they were sure that they were in the clear, she had been exiting the ship every few hours to gorge herself on whatever it was she actually ate.

  I couldn’t blame her, though. After what we had been through, it was completely apparent that she had been at starvation’s doorstep. If I was her, I would do much of the same.

  Still, I couldn’t help but feel a bit nervous that she was out of sight. Getting dressed, I headed out of my room and went straight to the lift.

  The ride was silent, but when the doors opened, Gonzales was standing there, dressed in civvies.

  “Hey there, friend! I was just coming to get you.”

  I blinked at her, not nearly awake enough for this strange change-up. With all the upheaval in my life, I liked a little order, and seeing her out of the mandatory uniform of the mining shaft was making me uncomfortable.

  “What? Why are you staring at me like that?”

  “Uh, I, uh… What are you wearing? It’s different?”

  She tilted her head back and laughed. “That’s right, you’ve never seen me in my civvies.” She spun in a circle, showing off her tank top and athletic pants. “I figured there are no more regulations, so I’m not going to be in that stiff, rough jumpsuit unless I’m doing some sort of actual physical work.”

  “Oh, that makes sense.”

  “Yeah! That’s my point exactly. It just makes sense. Why don’t you dress in your civvies too?”

  I blinked at her, my brain trying to catch up with everything that was happening. I guessed I really had been much more wiped out from our cross-universe trek than I had thought and it was taking me a bit to shake off the last dregs of grogginess. “My civvies?”

  “Um, is there an echo in here? But yeah, I feel like I only ever see you in your jumpsuit or enviro-suit. Now’s your chance to relax, man.”

  “I, uh, I don’t have any civvies.”

  Now it was her turn for her eyes to go wide. “You don’t have any civvies?”

  I shook my head. “Just my pajamas, and I’d rather not run around in those. That would definitely confuse my brain.”

  “Dude, I do not believe that. I’ve seen you in a tank top before!”

  “Well, yeah,” I answered, unzipping the top of my suit a bit. “I wear them under here with my boxers. Sometimes I like to pull the top half down and tie the arms around my waste. But mostly, I like the feel of it being all the way up.”

  She looked like she was having trouble comprehending what I was saying. “You…like the feeling of the jumpsuit?”

  “Yeah,” I said, not sure if I should tell her anymore, afraid of her judgment. She looked at me like she was waiting for me to finish my sentence so I did. “It’s very secure. And if I get anxious, I can just rub my fingers along the different textures of it and it really helps ground me.”

  “I see.” She continued to stare at me for a couple more moments before nodding. “People like what they like, I guess, and there’s nothing wrong with that.
Anyway, the whole reason I’m down here is I thought you might want to see what your girl is doing. It’s pretty darn adorable.”

  “She’s not my girl, and where?”

  “Really? You guys act like it. And she’s in space, of course, but the best place to see is the officer rec-room. Come on.”

  She grabbed my wrist and I let her tote me off. “We don’t act like anything other than friends. I never understood why people always have to turn everything into a romance like it’s the only important type of relationship there is.”

  “Whoa, okay there, Socrates. Didn’t mean to imply that regular ol’ friendship was lacking. After all, we’re friends, right?”

  I smiled softly. “I’d like to think so.”

  “Rock on.”

  She finished leading me off to the rec-room and they stopped in front of a long line of windows. Sure enough, Mimic was outside, happily hopping from comet to comet. And, considering that these were full, un-mined comets that were nearly the size of an entire town, that was no small feat. I supposed it helped that she was back in her original black and spikey form.

  I never thought I would come to identify a featureless, undulating, angular mass as adorable, but there was no other way to classify how its little limbs wiggled and danced while it rolled and ran along the hole-riddled surface of these celestial floating masses. They were full and they were happy, which filled me with a resolute sort of satisfaction while they played.

  We watched for much longer than we should have, and eventually, I wondered if we were being vaguely voyeuristic. But in the end, I figured it was more like we were proud older siblings watching our little sister have fun after fighting through some tough stuff. Yeah, that was a much better way to put it.

  “Higgens?”

  I tore my eyes away from the window to see Gonzales looking at me quite seriously. So much for my theory that we had both been raptly watching Mimic.

  “What’s up?”

  “Have you ever thought about pursuing engineering seriously?”

  I scoffed, her suggestion coming completely out of left field. “Why would I have done that? Even if I could afford it and wasn’t currently a traitor to our race, I would never make it through the program.”

  “What? Why do you say that?”

  Why was she making me say all this? It should be obvious! “Um, because I’m too stupid. I barely got through the maintenance vocational school, and that’s supposed to be where losers go when they don’t want to be a complete drain on society!”

  “Whoa,” the engineer said, holding up both of her palms in what looked like genuine surprise. “I don’t know who drilled that self-hatred into you, but in no way are maintenance workers inferior or stupid. They’re a vital part of the ship. Besides, you’re not dumb! Not that that would affect your value as a person anyway, but I just want you to know you’re not.

  “When we were stranded in that other dimension, you picked up the job of wrench monkey faster than anyone I’ve ever seen. And you came in with several ideas right in the clutch. I don’t even think we’d be here if it wasn’t for you.”

  “Well, yeah, in several different ways.”

  She playfully punched me in the arm. “That’s not what I mean. You know that.”

  I shrugged. “I just… I guess… I don’t think I did anything that special.”

  She made a clicking sound with her tongue. “Here you are, willing to go to the end of the universe for a friend, but can’t even give yourself a single compliment. You’re a strange one, Higgens.”

  “I know, everyone tells me that. It’s one of the reasons Giomatti said he hated me so much.”

  “Giomatti was a miserable jerk. You’re fine, Higgens. And nice to boot.”

  “Whatever you say.”

  “Well, I say that you should look into pursuing an engineering vocation. I think you have a knack for it.”

  “I’ll…keep that in mind.”

  “Why do I get the feeling that you’re just saying that to be polite and get me off your back?”

  “Probably because I am.”

  She sighed, but it was tinged in a small bit of laughter. “Fine, be stubborn then. Oh, by the way, did you want to see the progress the twins have been making on the scanner?”

  “Of course! And should we still be calling them the twins? They’re not technically related.”

  “You picked up on that, huh?” She laughed again as we strolled off toward the engineering bay that the two had taken over. I had gotten the distinct impression that they had mostly been confined to the readout or engine rooms while they were working, so they were relishing having command of all the build-space in the ship. “And I think a long time ago, they might have liked it to stop,” she said, referring to Ciangi and Bahn, “but now it’s become part of their identity. They’re another couple where it’s hard to tell if its friendship or romance. Sometimes I waffle between being sure of both in a single day.”

  “You have an unhealthy preoccupation with pairing up your friends, you know that?”

  “Hey, what can I say, I’ve been single for four years and I like to think I see love in the strangest of places.”

  I glanced over at Gonzales once more, vastly confused by that statement. From what I could tell, she was a brave, fearless, intelligent, beautiful woman with a banging paycheck. People should have been lining up across the cosmos for her. “How is that possible?”

  “How’s what possible?”

  “That you’ve been single for so long if you don’t want to be.”

  She shrugged. “You know how it is, a lot of people want their honey to be on the same planet as them. They want nightly snuggles, and a girl with long flowing hair who doesn’t beat the crap out of punching bags when she’s angry.”

  “That’s ridiculous.”

  “Is it? I can see the need to not want your lover lightyears away, facing unknown dangers and possibly never returning.”

  I shrugged. “I guess so. I just wasn’t aware love was so conditional.”

  “Everyone has a right to be picky with what relationships they choose to settle into.”

  “Fair.” Finally, we reached the engineering room and all the complicated talk of romantic entanglements fell away.

  “Hey, guys!” Gonzales said, practically vaulting into the room. “How are my favorite twins?”

  Only Ciangi was visible at first, dressed in what looked like a soft summer dress that might have once been a pale lilac but was so spattered with different engineering liquids that it was now somewhere around gray. Her thick curls were pulled into what looked like attempts at pigtails, but looked more like tightly coiled buns.

  “We’ve got a good plan in place. I think it’s promising. Right, Bahn?”

  In a weird sense of déjà vu, the taller of the twins rolled out from under a console. Did he just like to live under technical spaces or did I just have uncanny timing?

  “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. But I am…hopeful.”

  “Wanna let us in on what has you both thinking positively?”

  “We just think we’re going to be able to rewire this to some spare crystals we synthesized to boost the power enough to search for Mimic’s genetic makeup. We’ve taken several samples from her which are currently being deconstructed by the analyzer, and Bahn set up a program that should be able to auto-generate much of the algorithms needed for the scanner.”

  “That’s fantastic! So once this is all done, you’ll be able to scan whole chunks of space for anything like Mimi?”

  “That’s the plan.”

  I smiled and nodded, feeling like we were finally progressing. “Awesome. Anything that I can help with?”

  “Yes, actually. There are about seven hundred and twenty different wires we need to either remove, repurpose, or reroute, so I was wondering if you wanted a bit of a crash course.”

  My eyes went wide and I couldn’t help but notice the satisfied smirk on Gonzales’s face. “S-sure. If you think I’d be
useful.”

  “You’re always useful, Higgens. Now grab a data log, you’re gonna want to write some of this down.”

  Progress is Progress

  I had read plenty of novels on the net in my time and I was always aware of the trope of the narration summarizing highly technical or monotonous endeavors as to not bore the readers. As I cut wire after wire, then dutifully did the readings that the twins needed after every move, I found myself wishing that someone would do that to my own life.

  At first, I had been so nervous, terrified of doing something wrong. But after the initial dozen or so cuts, it went right into the mundane.

  Mimic sat by dutifully, however, asking questions and listening whenever I grew too bored, and then Ciangi and Bahn both would stop by occasionally to make sure I was on track and didn’t need any help. Our days blended into a bit of a routine, and not an unpleasant one at that, which left me looking less at the calendar and more toward space.

  I supposed I should have kept an eye on the alerts just in case Giomatti managed to catch up with us, but that was near impossible. Even if he had somehow convinced his crew to take off after us, they didn’t have the supplies or the means to do anything to the massive mining ship. It wasn’t like they had the advantage of surprise or a shapeshifter like my group had, not to mention that the engineers had taken the time to boost the defenses of the mining ship when they weren’t busy working on the scanner.

  “What are you thinking about?”

  I finished cutting the wire I had between my fingers before I looked at Mimic. She was wearing a large, baggy shirt courtesy of Bahn, and tight, synthetic leggings from Gonzales’s collection with the ankles rolled up. I kind of missed her in my oversized jumpsuit, but it seemed I was the only one who liked the thick, durable fabric.

  “Nothing important,” I said, handing her the wire then taking the power-cap she handed to me.

  “I think everything you worry about is important.”

  “That’s because you’re still very new to this whole bipedal, human-esque thing. Everything is fascinating to you. Even things that are not.”