Mimic Saves Her People Read online

  “Unless they can’t,” Bahn said.

  “Come again?”

  “Our gun back at home was destroyed, wasn’t it? If they targeted it, that most likely means it was an actual threat to them. What if it actually did some damage before they took it down?”

  “Really? You think our one dinky gun was able to do all that?” Gonzales asked, rubbing her chin.

  “Yeah. Especially if Harunya was able to divert a significant level of shielding to it. It’s quite possible that they might have underestimated its power considering all the improvements that we have done in the past year.”

  “Here, I’m going to have my datapad run the info we got to see if it can find any visible damage. Give it a few seconds.”

  It took more than a few seconds, but compared to how long we had been waiting, a full minute was nothing. Once the info did finish processing, the holo lit up with paths of bright purple streaking through different parts of the ship.

  “They’re leaking something,” Mimi said, pointing to a faint smattering of green beside the ship. “Bahn, have your datapad figure out what that is.”

  “Coming up.” Another few breaths. “Apparently, it’s nuclear waste output. But…different from ours.”

  “Different from ours how?” I asked.

  “I don’t know. There’s some compounds in it that just aren’t in our databases, but it does indeed read as nuclear waste even with that missing info.”

  “Nuclear waste, you say?” Mimi asked. “Well, I know exactly what to do with that.”

  “Uh, I’m not sure you should just go into random alien ships and chew on their waste output,” I said cautiously. “We have no idea if that’s actually edible for you like ours is.”

  “I’m willing to risk it,” Mimi said determinedly. “Besides, I can always test it with what’s leaking on the outside. And then, once I’m in, I’ll be able to slip in with the other mimics and we can plan in earnest.”

  “And just how do you expect us to get you close enough to that thing without being spotted?”

  “Well, that part’s easy,” she said with a smile. “There are almost ten thousand little mimics in their hold. I’m pretty sure we can ask them to make quite the ruckus and they would be more than happy to oblige.”

  “Alright, so we have the how you get in,” I said, still not liking this plan at all. “But what do we do once you’re in?”

  “I…I think I might actually have an idea about that,” Ciangi said, raising her hand. “I could be wrong, but I thought I saw a total of forty life signs total on our scan, right?”

  “Let me double-check,” Bahn said, quickly hitting a couple of buttons. Sure enough, in addition to the purple lines and the green spatter, several clusters of red blips started to glow on the holo.

  “Forty-three, to be exact.”

  “Okay, forty-three on a ship that huge isn’t nearly enough for them to be everywhere all the time. Or even in most places at all times. There are most likely some pretty damaged areas of the ship that they’ve cut off to save resources, and I vote we stay within those areas while we take out the crew one by one.”

  “So essentially, this is a sneakier, larger scale version of that one time we hijacked a space station?” I asked, trying to go through all the variables in my head and see if what she was saying was indeed possible.

  But Ciangi’s eyes just went wide for a moment. “You know, I totally forgot we did that. Huh, how sad is it that hijacking a space station doesn’t even make it into the top ten craziest things I’ve done.”

  “You call it sad,” Eske said, “but I just wish I had been there to see it.”

  “Looking back, it wasn’t actually all that exciting.”

  “Guys, can we focus here?” Gonzales said, pulling us all back to the matter at hand. “So, we use the mimics to sneak Mimi close enough so she can get in. She then gives us what interior readings she can while on the inside then joins up with her brothers and sisters while we get inside. We make it in through one of the damaged areas in our enviro-suits, then we stay there until Mimi makes her first snatch and assumes their form. Is there anything we’re missing?”

  “Yeah,” Eske said, pushing her goggles up her nose, a habit I noticed she did when she was especially nervous. “My family is in the hold and I’m not keen on leaving them floating in space in case this plan goes belly up. So, who’s staying on the ship to fly it and work as a rescue if we need to get out quick?”

  “Funny you should mention that,” Harunya’s voice echoed from the comm down in the med-bay. “I have a solution to offer.”

  10

  Hitching a Ride

  “I can’t believe we’re doing this,” I said, hooking myself to the chunk of the moon that we had blasted out of the fissure.

  “Really?” Gonzales asked, her cybernetic eye glowing brightly in the darkness of space. “Out of all the crazy stuff we’ve done, this is what you can’t believe?”

  “Yeah,” Ciangi added on nonchalantly. “This isn’t even the first time we’ve used some sort of celestial debris as cover.”

  Eske shook her head beside me, still securing herself to the rock. “Boy, what all did I miss out on before I joined you guys? I don’t remember that being in the story.”

  “Some details of how we hijacked a giant mining ship weren’t made available to the public. Apparently, there was worry that some people might try to replicate what we did.”

  “I guess it’s just us who are replicating what we did,” I said with a shrug. “So that all worked out anyhow.”

  “I don’t know if you would call this working out,” Bahn said. “Let’s wait until we get Mimi into the ship, and maybe then we can say it might possibly have a greater chance of working out than zero.”

  “Aw, come on,” Ciangi said, ribbing him. “Have a little faith.”

  “A little faith is all I have nowadays.”

  “Are we all secure?” Mimi said, interrupting the banter. It felt like it had been ages since we had spoken to each other like old times, and it was a welcome change. Especially since this really could be the last time all of us would be all together.

  “Almost,” Eske said, finishing tying herself off. “Alright, I got it.”

  “Gonzales, are you sure those charges and thrusters you set won’t blow us up or notify the ship of our presence?” I asked.

  “I mean, as sure as I can be.”

  “Right, I guess that’s the best I can hope for.”

  “Everyone ready?” Mimi asked.

  There was a murmur of agreement and I took a deep breath, fogging up the visor of my enviro-suit before the controls cleared the condensation.

  “Charges releasing now,” Ciangi said before I heard her press a button on the control box attached to her waist.

  There was a slight delay, but I heard the sputtering of explosives and then we were shuttling away from the top of the fissure and heading out into space.

  “We’ve got maybe about a half-hour before we catch up with the ship’s impulse power,” Ciangi reiterated as we flew through the dark void.

  “Is that all?” Eske asked. “I felt like it would be longer. It’s been a couple hours since they fully passed out of our scanner range, right?”

  “We’re a whole lot smaller than them and their ship seems to be crippled.”

  “Huh, I guess it pays to just belt yourself to a small rock and fly through space.”

  “Yeah, something like that.”

  I didn’t talk, however, and just focused on Mimi’s face. Or at least what I could see of it. She was holding onto the rock by herself rather than being strapped to it like the rest of us, but that was mostly because she needed to be able to spring off it quickly. Besides, considering she could shift her fingers into rock-piercing daggers, she didn’t have to worry about being flung into the void like we did.

  Also, she didn’t have to breathe in space either. That certainly made a difference in her level of fear.

  The minutes ti
cked by, our enviro-suits doing their best to keep us warm and breathing. But the more time passed, the more and more the ultimate cold of space began to leech into our bodies, reminding me of just what was beyond the polymer protecting us from the depths of space.

  “The ship should be coming into view soon,” Gonzales said, eyeing something on the old arm-scanners that Bahn had made for us before everything went to hell in a handbasket. “You might want to start talking to your friends now, Mimi.”

  “Turning my comm to broadcast,” she said, fiddling with her handheld scanner as well.

  Just like before, her face slipped away, leaving only her natural shiny blackness. With no mouth or eyes, it was wholly strange to see her features vibrate as she sent messages across the vast gap between us and the ship. It was even stranger to have absolutely zero idea of what she was saying.

  It lasted for several moments, all of us deathly silent so we didn’t somehow accidentally tip off the aliens to our presence, and when her face finally came back as her comm clicked off, I couldn’t help but heave a huge sigh of relief.

  “Did they get it?” I asked, almost afraid to ask.

  Mimi nodded. “I was able to put the knowledge of how to shift into something in their mind. All of them are going to do that at once, and the sudden shifting of mass should certainly make quite the ruckus. That should be enough to distract them while you close the final distance, Gonzales.”

  “What, a loud noise? That’s our great plan?”

  “Of course not,” Mimi said matter-of-factly. “I never would have been satisfied with that. But as I’m sure you’ve noticed with all the readings we’ve taken of my species over the years, it expends a great bit of energy to shift. Having ten thousand or so lifeforms—even if they are small lifeforms—suddenly take up that much energy will certainly scramble their instruments, and at that moment, you land, then we activate the same cloaking ability that Aja gave us.”

  “Oh. Well, that makes a whole lot more sense then.”

  “Of course.” I couldn’t be sure because of my angle, but it looked like Mimi winked at the weapons engineer. “This isn’t my first day invading a vessel that I wasn’t invited onto.”

  “Heh, that was almost funny. Guess you’ve had time to develop your sense of humor while I was gone.” Gonzales sighed, but I sensed it was a wry one. “Couldn’t even leave that for me, could you?”

  “Pardon?”

  “Mimi, we’re about to reach your jumping off point,” Ciangi cut in, and probably just in the nick of time. Sometimes it was difficult to tell when Gonzales was joking or not, and this was definitely one of those times where we were teetering on the edge of something uncomfortable. “Get ready.”

  “I am prepared.”

  “Now’s also about the time you might want to do that thing you were talking about,” Gonzales added, looking at her own scanner.

  “I will do so now.”

  If I didn’t know better, I would say she sounded nervous. Mimi was hardly ever nervous. Then again, maybe she had been much of the same at the battle a year ago. Funny how details like that slipped my mind. In my head, she had been the eternally fearless leader who had come in at the last minute to save the day.

  “Jump!”

  I was surprised by the sheer ferocity that Mimi launched herself up and over the piece of rock that we were all clinging to. I didn’t know how I still kept being astonished by the inherent raw physical power that each mimic had, but I found myself staring off after her in shock.

  “And she stuck the landing!” Gonzales hissed in a triumphant whisper a few moments later. I supposed I could have just looked at my own scanner to see that, but I had been far too distracted by watching Mimi’s graceful launch.

  “Navigating our rock to the damage point we saw in their hull,” Gonzales said, grabbing her own control-box from her belt. “There’s a chance that we might not have contact for a bit as you’re crawling around their systems and feeding on that nuclear waste. So, if ya gotta say something, now would be the time to do it.”

  “…good luck.”

  I smiled at those simple words from Mimi’s comm chip that Ciangi had grafted into her collar. Short and simple, just the way she liked it.

  “Good luck,” I answered before a spike of static cut me off.

  “Wow, she really does work fast,” Gonzales remarked before shaking her head. “Ciangi, you gonna help me land this thing or what?”

  “Oh, right. On it!”

  It wasn’t exactly the smoothest flight of my life, but the two of them managed to get us close enough for Eske to nearly bend over backwards and shoot a single grappling magnet to the side of their ship. Goodness knew they would probably think a giant rock that was just sitting on their hull was a little strange, which meant we had to ditch our ride while we still had the distraction of Mimi and her followers.

  Oh, and also break our way into the ship. I might have forgotten to mention that part earlier.

  The grappling magnet secured itself and Eske hooked one of the magnetic carabiners on her utility belt before solidly anchoring the tether into a fissure in the rock.

  “Here goes nothing,” she said with a shrug before undoing her buttons and sliding away.

  As if in response, our instruments all let out a warble and there was a distinctive sort of mechanical fry over the comm in my suit. For a moment, I felt my oxygen switch out and my visor instantly fogged over, but that terrifying instant passed just as quickly as it happened.

  “I’m guessing that was Mimi,” I said, pulling my own carabiner from my belt.

  “I hope so, otherwise we’re in for something much worse than we expected.”

  “Hurry, guys. We’ve got only a minute or so before our presence is gonna get real risky,” Bahn said, his tone forcibly restrained.

  “As if this whole thing wasn’t risky,” I muttered before unbuckling myself from my anchors and let myself drift off the rock.

  It’d been a while since I had to do a spacewalk, and once more I was struck by how small and insignificant I was in the grand scheme of things. It would be so easy to just die a cold, unfeeling death out in the void. It was as simple as the tether snapping, or my magnetic carabiner just releasing from the line. Just one little mistake and—

  I reached the hull and adjusted my feet to hit the surface. My enviro-suit took over, orienting me to ground and making sure my soles locked on.

  “Help me with this ionic welder,” Eske said, the front of her visor glowing a vibrant blue as she took the instrument to the hull. “I haven’t used one of these in a while.”

  “It has been a shockingly long time since I’ve done any actual maintenance,” I said, kneeling beside her and pulling my own tool from my belt. “Granted, none of my previous assignments involved welding a hole into something. Usually I was more in the repairing line of things.”

  “You and me both, friend.”

  We shared the smallest of chuckles before concentrating on our work. Normally we would never be able to sneakily weld through such a thick hull on a massive ship, but that was why we specifically targeted an area that was already damaged. We figured that was our only chance.

  I heard the faintest thud of Gonzales landing beside us, most of the soundwaves being snatched away by space. “We’ve only got a few more seconds. How are we doing here?”

  “Almost done,” I answered, the hot line of metal I was carving nearly having reached Eske’s.

  “Good. My instruments are back to normal, so I’m guessing that this ship’s will be soon too, and I’d like to be in there rather than out here when that happens.”

  “You afraid they might come out here or something?” Eske joked as Ciangi joined us.

  “No, I’m afraid that they’ll point one of their eighty bajillion turrets at us and we can kiss our general arrangement of matter good-bye.”

  “Ah, that’s a good point.” There was a pause. “But don’t we have a cloaking device thingy?”

  “Yeah, w
e have one for an emergency, but it’s not like we know for sure that it’ll work. And I’d much rather activate it inside, where we can splice into their system and see if it’s successful, than stand out here and test it.”

  “Ah. Right. Maybe I would have gotten more of this if we explained all of the finer details at our little team meeting together.”

  “No time. Are you done yet?”

  “Eske,” I ordered quickly. “Grab another magnetic anchor, it’s about to fall.”

  “Aye-aye,” she said with a bit of a salute before pulling another tool from her utility belt. It only took her a couple of seconds to attach it, and then she was pulling it upwards and setting it to the side.

  I took a cannister from my belt and held it to the red-hot edge, spraying it with a super-fast coolant that would make sure we didn’t give ourselves third-degree burns just as Bahn joined us.

  “Who wants to go first?” I asked with a sort of wry smile that could only be born out of such situations.

  “I’ll make the splash,” Gonzales said, sticking her head into the hole. For a moment, a thousand and one things that could go wrong flashed into my mind, from a hand suddenly dragging her away to spontaneous combustion caused by a simple spark.

  Thankfully none of that happened, and the weapons engineer simply found a handhold that allowed her to slowly pull herself into the ship.

  “Setting an anchor now. Give me, like, ten seconds.”

  “I think we’ve only got about ten seconds,” Ciangi said nervously. “My scanner is telling me the ship is booting up to full power. I’m willing to bet they did an entire system restart, and you know what always comes after one of those.”

  “I…uh, don’t actually.”

  “A full system scan,” I answered, knowing the answer myself. “It’s the first failsafe in these kinds of situations.”

  “Yikes. Alright then. No pressure.” There was the briefest of pauses and then another tether came out of the hole. “There! Now hurry up and get in!”