Mimic and the Fight for Freedom (Space Shifter Chronicles Book 3)

by James David Victor

  Silence fell over us for a moment as we zoomed through the vast expanse. Perhaps even a couple of seconds passed before Bahn finally let out a whoop, clapping from his seat.

  “We made it!” he cried. “Three out of four isn’t a bad ratio at all.”

  But Gonzales didn’t seem to share in his mirth at all.

  “I wouldn’t cheer yet,” she said, her expression hardening. “We still have to get through Earth’s outer ring defenses. And if I know anything about weapons, which I totally do, they’re going to have their moon’s nuclear cannon trailed on us any s—”

  Warning. Ship has been targeted by weapons system. A nearby base is sending a signal to stand down or be destroyed.

  “—econd,” Gonzales finished. “Hold onto your hats, everybody. It’s about to get very bumpy in here.” With that, she tightened her grips on the controls and leaned forward. It was right at that moment I knew without a doubt that we were in for the flight of our lives.

  Dodgeball, Extreme Cruiser Edition

  I held on for dear life as the ship spun and bucked every which way.

  “Let’s see how quick I can make this big lady twist!” Gonzales cawed, practically throwing the steering gage to the side and sending us spiraling. My stomach heaved, but I managed to keep myself from gagging as we zigged and zagged, bucked and reared and otherwise avoided the oncoming fire.

  I could see the scanners on both Gonzales and Ciangi’s consoles as we hurtled through space, avoiding missile after missile.

  For all of a single breath, it seemed far too easy, but then dozens of large blips started to approach us from ahead.

  “What are those?” I asked, trying not to sound utterly panicked and not doing too well with that.

  “Oh, nothing too important,” Gonzales shot back, her voice sharper than a desert planet. “Just fighters from our military outpost on Mars.”

  “Why do we have a military outpost on Mars?” I countered. “That’s supposed to be a peaceful, agricultural colony!”

  “Yeah, well, things have changed since you were in middle school and taught about all our different outposts. Mars is now used as a military post to house all five hundred of our space-worthy fighters on the off-chance we do have some sort of planetary invasion. And right now, four hundred and twenty of them are deployed straightforward.”

  I heard Bahn swallow hard even from where he was sitting. “Oh, is that all?” he muttered.

  “Don’t worry, though,” Gonzales continued, her face brighter than an LED candle. As terrifying as the situation was, it was good to see her getting closer and closer to her former self. I had a feeling that there would be far-reaching consequences of the horrors she had endured, but it gave me hope to see that she was recovering as well as one could expect. “All I have to do is get to the Saturn Hyperjump and we can shoot to the last colony. All they have there is a rickety old cruiser that’s been hanging in space for an entire generation. They won’t have a single thing that can hit us.”

  As soon as the words were out of her mouth, the ship suddenly jerked to the side, moving so quickly and fast that my neck twinged in protest. Suddenly, alarms were going off and the computer was quickly listing on different stats that I could only understand about half.

  “We can only maybe take one more direct hit like that,” Ciangi said. “The shields haven’t had enough time to generate to full capacity, so we’re basically just an armored boat out here.”

  “I’ll see what I can do,” Bahn said, unbuckling his restraints and struggling to the doors. “If I can get to engineering before we’re blown to smithereens.”

  “Be careful!” Ciangi cried, sending him a pleading look. “Harunya will kill me if I let anything happen to you.”

  “Don’t worry,” he answered with a wink. “I’m an expert, remember.”

  With that, he ducked out and once more, I was a spectator in my own flight for my life.

  It was almost funny. After so much studying, so much self-improvement, there was still nothing I could do in the situation. I hoped that would change once we arrived on Mimic’s planet.

  If we arrived on Mimic’s planet.

  “We’re almost there!” Gonzales cried, yanking the gear this way and that while punching different codes into the console with her other hand. “Just gotta keep dodging. Ciangi, I need you to lay a suppressive fire to keep them from crowding in front of us.”

  “But what if we hit someone?” the woman countered. “Those are just soldiers doing their job out there. I don’t want to blast any of them into space!”

  Gonzales drew an impatient breath, but ended up nodding in agreement, much to my surprise. “Fine. If you wanna be all moralistic about it, I’m sure there are some sort of incapacitating volts instead. Can you figure out how to scroll through the weapons database?”

  “Yeah, I got it. But I can’t help but wonder why you, the weapons engineer that helped design this, isn’t on the actual weapons systems in this mad escape for our lives.”

  “Ah, well that’s easy,” the dark-haired woman shot back. “I’m the best pilot we have.”

  “Oh really?” Ciangi said, selecting something I couldn’t see on her console and then grasping the firing controls once again. “I don’t recall anyone but you ever saying that.”

  “It’s not my fault you have terrible memory.”

  “There!” I interrupted, pointing to a small grey circle in the front portal. “We’re almost there!”

  “See?” Gonzales said, sending a cheeky smile to Ciangi. “I always get us to our goal.”

  “Yeah, yeah. Imputing coordinates for Mimic’s planet now.”

  The ship continued to roll this way and that, and I watched as smaller fighters tried to intercept us. Ciangi did an insanely good job of shooting them with some sort of purple, crackling ray that made them stop in their stacks and float away, leaving me to wonder if she had been practicing since the last time we had to flee for our lives.

  But even with Gonzales’s mad dodging and Ciangi’s uncanny aim, we were still occasionally taking hits. The computer reminded us how close we were to destruction with each blow, and it was the most macabre countdown of my short life.

  “I, uh, suppose this is the time to admit I’m not sure we’re going to make it,” Gonzales murmured after we took a particularly egregious missile to the back portion of the ship. “Which seems like a bit of a waste considering all the effort it took us to get to this point.”

  Ciangi slammed her fist onto the comm button in response, leaning over to yell into it. “Bahn, you better have something good down in there, or we’re going to die apart and you always promised me we would go together.”

  “Do not worry,” his cool voice came over the speaker. “A promise is a promise.”

  Before she could ask him to clarify, I heard the mild hum of the ship pick up into a full-on rumble and then we were shooting forward even faster than before.

  “Holy halibut!” Gonzales cried, quickly adjusting the gears as she drew out each and every syllable. “How fast are we going?”

  “Very,” Bahn’s voice answered over the comms.

  “How scientific,” I muttered, my skin pulling back from my face from our sheer velocity.

  “Forget scientific, this is downright awesome!” Gonzales whooped.

  She leaned into the controls and the small circle in the distance rapidly grew larger and larger until it was practically on top of us.

  “Coordinates are in!” Ciangi shouted.

  “Perfect. Initiating hyperjump. Everybody say bye-bye Earth.”

  “Bye-bye,” Bahn said through the speaker.

  I held my breath as the rumbling of our ship turned into a full roar and we passed the horizon of the Hyperring. I wasn’t sure how that sort of technology worked beyond the fact that it got someone from point A to point B rapidly, so I could only marvel as the circle crackled with energy around us.

  We almost seemed to stand still for a moment, and then suddenly we were sn
apped forward like someone had put us in an ancient slingshot. Space hurtled by so fast that it almost turned into a rushing, kaleidoscope of colors, swirling in a never-ending rush of miasmic rainbow.

  But then it was over almost as soon as it had started, and we were spat out just before Earth’s farthest colony.

  None of us whispered a single word, and the roar of the engines returned to its too-quiet hum. The last colony did nothing to stop us, the derelict cruiser not even budging. Like something out of a grand flick, we sailed out into the uninhabited parts of space without so much as a single bit of blaster fire.

  I wasn’t sure how long we sat there, shocked by our own survival, but Bahn had enough time to leave engineering and return to us, his face showing the same shock I was feeling inside myself.

  Surprisingly enough, it was Mimic who spoke first, her low, sweet voice a welcome change. “I suppose this should be less surprising since it’s the third time we’ve done this, but I was certain we were not going to make it this time.”

  Gonzales let out a shaky laugh while she programmed the autopilot. “What, do you mean you didn’t trust me?”

  “Of course I trust you,” Mimic answered with a brilliant smile. “It was the mechanics who built this vessel that I wasn’t sure of.”

  “Well, I can’t blame you for that,” she said, laughing weakly.

  I unbuckled myself and stood, hand still rapped in Mimic’s, who quickly stood with me. I could now see on Ciangi’s console how many days we had left before we reached Mimic’s planet, and for the first time, I wasn’t scared, terrified or uncertain. We were back together again, the eggheads and the alien, and there was nothing we couldn’t do.

  “So, who’s ready to defeat an entire army?” I asked, sending my friends the cheekiest grin I could muster.

  “I am,” Ciangi said, standing as well and coming over to hug her taller twin.

  “As am I,” Bahn answered, nodding resolutely to me.

  “Count me in,” Gonzales said, also joining us. Her eyes flicked to me, and I felt that same strange intensity that I had once before in our cells. “I’ve got a whole lot of aggression to work off.”

  “I am eternally grateful to all of you,” Mimic whispered. I could hear the sincerity in her voice and it bolstered me even more.

  Yes, we had done the impossible and escaped Earth, but I knew the struggle was far from over. In fact, the story of the mimic and the space engineers was just beginning.

  THANK YOU

  Thank you so much for reading Mimic and the Fight for Freedom, the third book in the Space Shifter Chronicles. I really hope you liked the story of how Mimic, Higgens, and the team were reunited. The next book is in progress and should be available in December.

  If you enjoyed this story, it would be awesome if you left a review for me. That really helps me reach more readers because Amazon features books with lots of good reviews.

  At the end, I have included a preview of Recruit, the first book in the Jack Forge, Fleet Marine series which is an action packed space Marines story. This first story tells how Jack was plucked from the University and sent to basic training, essentially against his will. After you read the preview, you can download the book on Amazon

  Get Recruit here: amazon.com/dp/B07695FRGG

  If you would like to know when the next book is released plus learn about all kinds of new books and special offers, you should consider signing up for our Science Fiction Newsletter. The details are on the next page. You will get a free story that is only available to newsletter subscribers when you sign up.

  Thanks again. I hope you like what I’ve written!

  Sign up for our Science Fiction Newsletter

  and get a FREE short story

  fairfieldpublishing.com/sci-fi-newsletter/

  Sign up today!

  And don’t forget to check out the free preview on the next page.

  Preview: Recruit

  Jack Forge sat in the lecture theater watching the hands on his small silver pocket watch tick across its shimmering pearl face. The latest grades would be revealed in a few moments. The room was silent as the students counted down the seconds.

  Attendance at his brother’s funeral had been authorized, so he had been free to leave his studies and attend. Jack knew missing time would count against his grade, but he was on top of his studies and his grades were excellent. He could afford to drop a few points and still maintain his two-plus student rating.

  The recruiting sergeant stood at the front of the theater next to Professor Bowen. One of these men wanted the students to maintain their two-plus, the other did not. His classmates watched the seconds tick down on the large display. Jack watched on his small family heirloom. It was all he had left of his family.

  The second hand reached the top of its final round. Jack heard the ripples of distress and gasps of horror as the students whose grades had dropped realized they were now the property of the military.

  Jack looked up to the display. He picked out his name. He saw it there pulsing on the screen in red, a pattern that could only mean one thing. He scanned across to his grade. Two. Only two. The plus was missing for the first time in his three semesters. Three other names pulsed. Jack knew them all. He’d studied with them, socialized with them, laughed with them. He would most likely never see them again.

  The sergeant barked out transfer orders to the first name on the list. Jack watched as the second hand ticked along. He was only seventeen seconds into his new life when his name was called out by the recruiting sergeant.

  “Jack Forge. Fleet Marine training.”

  Jack looked up from his watch. He looked at Professor Bowen. The old man was slumped in a chair, his eyes averted as his class was further reduced in number.

  The doors to the lecture theater opened and military police entered. Jack had seen this before. Students had complained and argued, fought and resisted their removal from university to the ranks of the military or some war production facility. The arguments were familiar to Jack. He heard the most common of them now from across the lecture theatre.

  The students being drafted into service promised to pull their grades back up. They argued that it was only a small drop. They argued that they were too smart to be sent to the military. The arguments and complaints descended into shouts and screams as the former students were dragged away. Friends shouted their good-byes. Lovers kissed and cried. As a guard came toward Jack, he tucked away his watch and stood. With a nod to his escort, he walked down the steps at the side of the lecture theater toward the open door.

  Read the rest of the story here:

  amazon.com/dp/B07695FRGG