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  Preview: Mimic and the Space Engineer

  I stared at the little creature intently, noting its movements and habits. As soon as I had arrived in my room, it had scurried off my shoulder and under my standard-issue cot. And then into my shoes. And then out of my shoes and into my own personal scrap bin. I had never thought that I would have to alien-proof my quarters, but I was beginning to think it might be necessary.

  “Higgens!” Dang it, I had still forgotten to turn my comm down. It was obnoxiously loud in my tiny space and my new guest let out a squeal of panic. “Gonzales has some expired blaster cores that need to be disposed of. We just found the case that was lost on the load up. Some idiot labeled it as stims! Can you believe that?”

  “Have them meet me at the lift on their floor. I’ll make sure to have the proper containment unit.”

  “Yeah, yeah. I’ll deliver the message. Be there in ten.”

  At first, it had been strange to me that I only corresponded with the head of crew, Francis Giomatti. Now, I was grateful for it. The thought of having all twenty members of the crew bothering me with every little thing that went wrong—and probably wasn’t even in my job description—made my stomach twist.

  “Alright, so, I gotta go, but I’ll be right back in less than half an ho—” I trailed off as I realized I couldn’t see my new alien friend anywhere. “Um, hello? Little fella?” I walked toward my worktable, looking everywhere for the obsidian guy.

  Worry started to prick at me but that quickly disappeared when I realized something had changed on my desk.

  “Since when do I have two water bottles?” I murmured to myself, reaching for one.

  Only that same water bottle exploded into a dark goop in my hand, then it solidified into the alien.

  I screamed again—I really needed to stop doing that before I blew a vocal cord—but this time, I managed not to throw my friend into a wall. “D-d-did you just…?”

  The thing wiggled, sticking two of its spikes up like little waving arms and turning a gradient of grey and deep blue.

  “Y-you can shapeshift?” I said breathlessly, my mind thoroughly rocked. “You’re like uh…uh, mimic!”

  It trilled, then crawled up my hand once more to sit on my shoulder. “I’m sorry, lad, but you’ve got to stay here.”

  I went to pick him up, but he scurried into my open collar and curled up along the neckline of my work tank underneath. “You know what, that’ll work. If you can hear me, just stay in there.”

  It trilled again and I grabbed my power source containment case then headed out. I had to admit, my heart had never pounded so hard on my way to a simple energy-disposal pickup, but I was pretty sure I didn’t want my crewmates to know that I had picked up a bit of a straggler. I knew the regulations well enough, and that would mean the spacing of an unknown danger. I didn’t want my new sidekick to be hurtled out into the void of space when we were just getting to know each other.

  There was also that thing about it being a species I had never heard of and just learning that it could shapeshift. Which I was pretty sure was impossible.

  The lift doors opened and my heart spiked when I saw Gonzales standing there, half a dozen blaster coils in her hands. She was an impossibly tall woman, and had these dark eyes that just seemed to look through everything. From what little I knew, she was a mix of Mexican and Polynesian, which apparently explained her impressive height of six-foot-six. Granted, I knew almost nothing about Earth culture, considering I had been born on a colony and lived on ships and stations my entire life.

  “Oh, hello there!” she said, professionally pleasant.

  “Hi! I hear you have some cores for me?”

  “Indeed, I do!” she said, beaming and handing them over. I went about putting them into the case, only to feel my little hitchhiker pull against my shirt. Quickly, I pressed it flat with my hand and let out a pathetic cough to cover the noise.

  “You okay there?”

  “Fine! Everything is fine!” I chirped, hastily finishing up with the cores and holding the case flat to my chest. “I’ll make sure these are taken care of!”

  With that, I turned right on my heel and rushed back into the elevator. My mimic friend was going crazy, tickling at my collar and trying to crawl directly out of the front of my shirt.

  “Relax, buddy. We just gotta get to my room.”

  It didn’t listen. Granted, it probably didn’t understand me. It wasn’t like everyone in space automatically spoke English. By the time I reached my room, I was a bit of a mess, and I set the container down and finally freed the mimic from within my shirt.

  “Geez, little dude, what is your problem?”

  It practically erupted from me and ran over to the case, which it jumped up and down on several times.

  “What? You want to see the cores? I guess if you’re that enthusiastic about it.” Leave it to me to travel all of space to find some sort of strange, shapeshifting alien who was some sort of blaster core aficionado. With a shrug, I opened up the slotted, anti-rad case.

  Everything seemed to happen at once. The mimic jumped down it, spreading itself flat in a matter of seconds. It glowed vibrantly for a moment, before suddenly expanding into a bubbling, boiling heap.

  Once more I found myself leaping back in horror. Had I just killed my friend? What if it was the last of its species? Was I a murderer?!

  I didn’t get a direct answer, but the bubbling stopped, and my friend reassembled itself, chirping quite happily.

  ….and about a foot bigger than it was before.

  “Oh my…” I murmured, once again finding myself in utter shock by this strange creature. “You just…” I took a breath. “You just ate my blaster cores!”

  It chirped again, grey and light pink rippling through its body. It had just gone from palm-sized to small dog in seconds, but it seemed nonplussed by the transition.

  “Well, I guess that’s one way to dispose of them safely.”

  I sat down on my cot, the whole day catching up to me. In just a few hours I had made a new friend that just so happened to be an unidentified species, found out it could shapeshift, and devoured things that had nuclear energy in them which would then result in a rapid growth spurt.

  The mimic… Actually, that wasn’t a half-bad name for it. Mimic.

  Anyway, Mimic didn’t seem to pick up on my anxiety and nestled up to my side, trilling with a spacy, fragmented sound that reminded me so much of a cat’s purr. And I couldn’t help but think if our first day was this hectic, that day two was going to be one heck of a wringer.

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  amazon.com/dp/B075FKW915/