It helped, or at least I thought it did. Wearing them did make me feel less isolated in my idiocy, like the random charity case that been allowed into the playpen with the big kids.
Ciangi caught my hand and smoothed my hair back, looking up at me with a sweet grin. “Stop worrying. You look fine.”
“I don’t think his unease is due to any dissatisfaction with his physical appearance,” Bahn said, tugging at the end of his long, dark braid, “but rather nerves about the meeting to come.”
“Aw, come on, Higgy,” she said, gently cuffing my elbow. “This is like the seventh one. Aren’t you used to them by now?”
“I don’t know if I can ever get used to them,” I admitted, pulling at the end of my sleeves. “They make me on edge.”
“Well, don’t worry about it,” Ciangi assured. “It’s just going to be a discussion on what wave of support we’re going to send Mimic.”
“Wait, we’re still on that?” Bahn asked. “I thought that was what the first meeting was about.”
“And the second,” Ciangi answered. “And the fifth. Do you two even pay attention to these?”
Bahn and I shrugged. “I was distracted by the third and fourth meeting where we discussed a new wave of weaponry they were considering. We barely convinced them that the new type of nuclear fission they were proposing was too dangerous to risk,” the taller of the twins said.
Ciangi sighed. “Yeah. Gonzales was killer on those. I wish she was still around now.”
“Hey, does anyone know where she even is right now? I haven’t heard from her in a…week, I think?”
“I’m pretty sure that she is on some sort of secret weapon project related to those meetings we had.”
“Does anyone know when she’ll be back?”
Ciangi shrugged. “She talks to you way more than the two of us. Besides, you know how she gets when she’s on the verge of a breakthrough.”
I nodded and felt my stomach twist a little. I had caught my friend at the tail-end of a couple of her research benders and it was…intense, to say the least. It seemed the weapons engineer researched just as hard as she played. It made me wonder how she got stuck on a mining ship in the middle of nowhere rather than some lofty military position. Not that I wasn’t grateful…but still. It was a curious set of circumstances.
I heard footsteps down the hall and turned to see the military and political folk marching forward. Well, some of them marched. Some oozed along like they were exactly as shady as colony folk insisted they were. I was trying hard not to see them all as a line of Giomattis, but it was definitely a challenge.
The three of us bowed or shook hands with each of them as they passed, depending on the preference of the person, until we were the only ones standing in the hall. Ciangi shot me a knowing look before we all filed in.
It wasn’t a large group, or even a large meeting room, by any means. There were maybe eleven of them total, and that was including the two aides that were always either perpetually taking notes or fetching drinks.
The holo-projector was booting up as we took our seats, several images forming then melting above the table. I recognized the logo of the company that was contracted with the military, then a map of our solar system, before finally the default symbol that was supposed to represent any projects related to Mimic.
“Thank you for joining us, Doctor Bahn, Doctor Ciangi, Mister Higgens. Did you receive the agenda for this briefing?” It was General Masevkov who spoke. As far as I could tell, he was the leader of their group. I had looked up a bit of his history and so much of it was scrubbed from every database that all I knew was his birthday was in September and he had been born on Earth. He was an older man, with salt and pepper hair and a clean-shaven face. He was what I supposed some people might call a Silver Fox, but I mostly found him intimidating.
He was flanked by General Santos and Dr. Bar-Lev. Santos was a rounded, wrinkly, jolly-looking man, but when he spoke, he was really anything but, while Bar-Lev preferred to stay silent until he was called upon.
Thankfully, no one was a screaming, argumentative jerk, but that didn’t stop some of our meetings from growing a bit tense. While I never got the feeling that any of these men were outright evil, I didn’t always sense they really cared about Mimic like we did.
Then again, I didn’t know if it was possible for anyone to care like we did. They hadn’t hopped over the edge of the universe with her. Or almost died together a handful of times. Maybe it was ridiculous of me to expect them to have the same emotional bond that we did.
But still… I couldn’t help but be suspicious. It was just part of my nature now.
“Yes, sir,” Ciangi answered quickly, smiling brightly at him. “We’re discussing the allocation of ship and personnel to assist the leader of the Mimic species for the imminent threat to her people and our alliance.”
“Yes, that.”
“I believe there were reservations about the second fleet, the one containing the collecting vessel and the warhead carrier,” Ciangi continued like she was meant for this. And who knew, maybe she was. If it weren’t for the Siren call of engineering, maybe she would be a great politician.
“Yes. The concern is that we are allocating too many of our newly procured resources that have not had time to be properly stress-tested.”
“So, you’d rather send nothing at all?” Ciangi said, almost too sweetly. I would have smiled if it was remotely appropriate given the situation. The tiny blonde had a way of saying things politely and with a smile, but it was still very obvious that she was asking what the heck they were thinking. “I know I’m just a scientist, but I can’t help but think that this is not a very grateful way to treat the people responsible for shooting us into the next technological age.”
“We’re not talking about sending them nothing. There is just a sizable concern about sending promised help to our only otherworldly ally only to have it not be a help at all. Also, you’re asking an awful lot of men to give up possibly a year of their life or more, or even die hundreds of thousands of light years away from their home.”
“Isn’t that what you ask us already?” Bahn asked. “Or did I remember our years doing dangerous mining in deep space wrong?”
The generals and other political people bristled at that. Ciangi grimaced for a split-second, but managed to pull back on her ever-polite grin.
But an idea came to mind, so I took a deep breath and tried to steady my voice. “Actually, since—”
“Yes, there are many people such as yourselves who volunteered themselves for civilian jobs in space, but it is another entirely to order nearly a city’s worth of people into a war. We haven’t had a war in over a hundred years. Surely, you understand.”
I tried again. “You don’t need—”
“Also, there’s the issue of enabling our ally too much,” another spoke up. “I know that you have the upmost trust for your friend, but we do not know her. Also, we do not know how well she will lead her people. Once they reach maturity, will they accept her governance or will they stage a coup? With no track record to speak of, we run the risk of creating a powerful enemy who will later come to haunt us.”
“I could be wrong, but I thought that was one of the risks that comes with having an ally,” Ciangi countered. “No one can tell the future, so you must mitigate the risks of course, but not adequately helping our only line of defense against an incoming force is far riskier than possibly aiding an ally a little too much.”
“We have to disagree.”
“Actually, I—”
“I know it can be difficult to hear, considering how close you are to the alien, but we must be practical—”
“We don’t have to send that many men!” I nearly shouted, finally reaching my limit of being talked over.
All eyes flicked to me and I felt myself shrink a bit, but I had to push through. It helped that I was more than irritated. Usually, I didn’t mind much when I was talked over, but this situation was too importan
t and affected those I loved a little too much for me to just sit quietly.
“What was that, Mister Higgens?”
“You don’t need to send a city full of men.”
The room grew quiet and Ciangi looked to me, her gaze clearly asking if I needed assistance, but I shook my head.
“Could you explain yourself a little more clearly, Mister Higgens?”
I swallowed and did my best to sound as official and assured as they did. “Well, when we return to Mimic’s planet, most of the children will be grown. We’ll give them all datalogs and some training, and they’ll be passable enough soldiers in a couple of weeks. Really, you only need the bare bones of crews for every ship, maybe five people max, and the rest is left to autopilot guided by a single ship.”
“You expect us to trust our most valuable weapons and spacecraft entirely in the hands of an alien species?”
“Well, not entirely. Just mostly.” I shrugged. “Besides, we would be there.” That caused another bought of silence, and the generals’ faces hardened. Well, they could look down on me all they wanted. They could consider me some sort of janitor that had been charity cased into high society. It didn’t matter.
“We will, take that into consideration.”
“Actually,” Ciangi said, plastering that same smile across her face. “I would like to extrapolate exactly how much staff we would need, since that seems to be the main objection.” Somehow, it grew even more sickly sweet and she almost batted her eyes at them. “Would that not assuage a significant portion of your concerns?”
There was a reluctant sort of agreement and both Ciangi and Bahn started peppering them with different estimates that they quickly projected using the holo-projector above the table and the datalog interface. It started to go above my head, so I sat back and just listened.
When I had a moment out of the spotlight, I thought about how the generals had reacted to my proposal. It was now clearer than ever that they didn’t respect me. That they didn’t value my opinion even a single modicum.
Well, that was fine. I didn’t care if they thought I was stupid. They were going to have to deal with me no matter what. Mimic had ensured that I was invariably tied to her destiny, and I was eternally grateful. It was very clear that her manic perusal of the net had taught her how easily humans like to discredit those they thought were less than them.
By the time it ended an hour or two later, I hadn’t said anything else and Ciangi’s voice had long since grown raspy. When we were dismissed, I wasn’t quite sure what had happened, but I knew the Coin Twins would catch me up later.
We filed up in near silence, not even the high-level military folk saying much. An official escort greeted us at the hover-lift and then guided us out of the remainder of the building.
It was only during these moments that I remembered the facility we were in was some super-secret, high-level, off the map sort of structure. It wasn’t a place that any usual citizen would ever get to see, let alone be in, and yet here we were.
Once we reached the front entrance, we piled into the hovercraft waiting for us, and our driver took us to the government-protected lot we had left our own vehicles in.
“So,” I said, looking to the twins who were both staring out of opposite windows. “Want to go catch dinner or something? Talk things over? Or we could go to my place. I’ve got a full fridge.”
“Sorry,” Ciangi said, shaking her head and returning her attention to me. “We’re supposed to meet up with Harunya and her parents. They just returned from where they teach on Colony Theta. You can come, of course!”
I thought about going to some restaurant that I didn’t know with people I didn’t know. As much as I liked Harunya, I didn’t relish the thought of meeting anyone’s parents. “Ah, no. Thank you, though. We couldn’t even discuss Mimic in that environment anyways.”
Bahn finally looked to me, and I couldn’t read the expression on his face. “You know that you don’t have to only talk to us about Mimic, right? We’re still your friends outside of work.”
“Of course, I know that! It’s just on my mind, ya know? I don’t think I could enjoy the meal with it weighing so heavily on me.”
He nodded almost gravely. “I understand. There had been times a hypothesis or idea has plagued me so thoroughly I couldn’t concentrate on anything else.”
“Yeah, well, that was your ADHD talking,” Ciangi quipped.
“Says the woman who once got stuck in a concentration loop for three days and passed out from dehydration.”
“Hey, college was a weird time. You know that.”
I smiled at their banter, but before I could inquire further about their post-secondary experience, we pulled up to the lot.
“Well, message us later and we’ll set something up where we can talk about whatever’s on our minds.”
“I’d like that,” I said as I opened the door and stepped out. “Have a good dinner, you guys.”
“You too.”
With that, I turned and headed out, the twins walking in the other direction.
A few minutes later, I found my hovercar. It was something that would have been impossible for me to have on the colony, as most of the roads and infrastructure there was designed around vehicles that touched the earth. Electric blue and decked out with all the frills and gadgets that I had daydreamed about when I was young, it was one of the first things I had purchased for myself after my wealth.
Of course, then I had to go through the process of getting my license and actually learning to drive it. That had taken considerably longer than purchasing the vehicle.
I slid in and pressed my thumb to the print-reader and then let the scanner do its thing to my eye. A few moments later, the engine revved and my vehicle lifted from the earth.
I looked over the gentle, beautiful curve of the dash. The glow of the notifications and the smooth interfaces. It really was everything that young Higgens would have drooled over. But as I ran my fingers over the wheel, taking in the texture of the material there, I realized that it didn’t make me any happier.
Actually, that wasn’t fair to the car. It wasn’t like it made me unhappy. I liked having money. I liked never being hungry or worrying about paying bills and knowing that if I saw something, I could buy it.
I guess the issue was that I didn’t like any of that stuff as much as I liked being around my friend—the best friend I had ever had.
I couldn’t be sure, but that might be what was called irony.
Danger Alert
I pulled to a stop in front of the gate to my estate. Leaning out of the window, I scanned my finger and eye again, said the code phrase, and then waited for the shielding to drop. Once the coast was clear, I drove up the drive that was far longer than it would ever need to be, then homed my hovercraft in the garage I had specifically for all my vehicles.
I chuckled at myself for a moment. I had bought three different modes of travel in the past year and I hardly used any of them. I was beginning to think maybe I should sell them and then donate the proceeds to the scholarship fund a lawyer had helped me set up.
I nodded to myself, feeling a bit better as I marched up the corridor that lead to my main estate. If there was one thing that could get my mind off Mimic, it was improving the world in an actually viable way. I had two different scholarships running, along with a charity, and I was thinking of adding a hospital to the mix.
The educational funds had been on my mind from the start. One was a merit-based scholarship for lower class, colony residents to have full rides at an Earth college of their choosing as well as a guaranteed job in their field. The second was for neutral atypical applicants that maybe didn’t have the best scholastic transcript, but still had a drive for secondary education. I was proud of what I had done, but there was still so much I could do.
The charity was something that the lawyer had actually thought of. For all the stereotypes I had heard about that profession, she certainly seemed just as enthusiastic about m
y philanthropic efforts as I was. It was a multi-pronged non-profit. Part of it was dedicated to getting adequate and up-to-date medical supplies to even outer rim colonies, and the other was providing cross-colony transport for those who might not be able to afford things normally. Often, I had found the most frustrating thing about my young life on the colony was feeling trapped there. I could never save up enough to go to one of the inner colonies, let alone Earth. In the end, if I wanted to find new opportunities, I had no choice but to take on high-risk, deep space jobs.
I didn’t want anyone to ever be forced into a life like I was. While there was nothing wrong with the maintenance work I did, there was something wrong with feeling like I never had any other options.
I reached my door and punched in the code that opened the control panel where I slid my ID card and scanned my thumb. From there, I stepped into a small room that hummed with energy.
Greetings.
Once, the high computer voice had been unsettling to me. It was far friendlier than the voice used on the ships we had used during our adventure, and sometimes I felt like it was programmed to be flirty. When I had tried the masculine version of the default settings, it had been so macho and gravelly that I had just stuck with the cloying female voice. If Mimic were here, she would have made a comment about the discrepancy, but since she wasn’t, I just had to imagine her response instead.
Identity confirmed. Good evening, Master Higgens.
The doors in front of me slid open and I was finally allowed into my own home. When I had first bought the place, I had thought the security was a bit overkill, but since having a few experiences with rabid fans and xenophobic folk, I was now grateful for the extra protection.
I shuffled into my kitchen, unbuttoning my crisp delegate jacket and shucking it onto the floor. I was just about to punch something into the fabricator when I noted something from my main workstation.
There was a tiny green light steadily flickering at the bottom of the holo-projector. A message!
Mimic and the Fight for Freedom (Space Shifter Chronicles Book 3) Page 2
