It was a strange sort of sensation, and one I didn’t let distract me from the battle at hand. But even in the back of my mind, I could tell that there were less and less to fight.
Then there was the sound of our main cannon coming to life, charging up to a full blast and aiming directly toward the three ships locked in our beam.
We had done the calculations at first and even with Aja’s help and the best of the best happening, we had known that there was no way to lift them as high as we needed if they were packed to bursting with their weapons of war. So we had needed them to empty a bit. That was why destroying so many of their fighters in the space battle had been important. Why all the robots and all the hulking soldiers with massive guns needed to be out. Or at least most of them.
The cannon’s buildup sound faded and for the first time in what felt like hours, there was utter silence.
Then it fired.
This time, I did finally spare a glance from the battle and I saw an incredibly brilliant bolt of pure energy shoot into the center of the three ships just as our own let it go and took to space as fast as they could.
The resulting explosion was insane, and I had to close my eyes from the vibrancy of it. But even from all the way on the ground, I could feel the heat of it and all of us were blown back several feet.
Heat and smoke filled the air while rubble flew everywhere. The mimics all around us bucked up and flattened, lancing out over any humans near them as shields from the falling shrapnel.
It was like the hellfire of old legends, and for a moment, I wondered if this was the end of our own world. That if in trying to save ourselves, we had destroyed ourselves.
But then, after what seemed like an impossible amount of noise, there was finally quiet.
I looked up from my own arm-shield to see that the sky was clear. Rising slowly, my body shaking the entire time, I looked around to see that what few foot soldiers that weren’t crushed, dispatched or wounded were holding up their multiple arms in surrender.
Surrender?
…this was it.
We had won!
A happy sort of cheer rippled through the entire field, some of us laughing, some of us crying.
We had done it! We had finally done it! We had wiped out the entire army of the Harvesters and sent a message that their tyranny wasn’t going to continue.
We had our peace.
“Higgens!”
My neck craned, and I saw Mimi running towards me. She was covered in soot and sweat with bruising along her face, but I didn’t care. She was alive, and we had won!
I ran to her too, and when we reached each other, she jumped into my arms. Our lips crashed against each other, neither of us paying attention to the fact that our faces were filthy and beaten up. We kissed like we were breathing for the first time, and when we broke apart, I felt like I could cry.
“We did it!” Eske said, running up to us. Her goggles were cracked, her lips were split, and it looked like some of her royal braids had been burned off, but she was happy and healthy too.
And then I heard crying from over the scanner and the unmistakable voices of the coin twins came over the comms.
“We did it!” Ciangi cried. “It’s over! It’s all over!”
“We ended it,” Bahn breathed, almost as if he didn’t believe.
I couldn’t believe it. I felt like laughing, I felt like crying, but most of all, I wanted to hug every single person I loved.
And speaking of everyone that I loved…
“Does anyone have contact with Gonzales?”
“Gonzales?” Ciangi echoed. “Let me look up her…” the engineer trailed off and my stomach dropped.
“Ciangi,” I growled.
No. After all this time, we couldn’t have lost her.
I refused to believe it.
We didn’t get this far, we didn’t win, just to lose her.
“Can you find her signature?”
“I…I’m so sorry, Higgens. It’s not anywhere.”
“No!” I snapped, feeling Mimi’s arms tighten around me. How could we stand here and celebrate our victory when we didn’t know where she was? “She’s not— She can’t—”
“Would you relax?”
I whipped around and sure enough, Gonzales was standing there with blood dripping down her arm and no scanner.
“I just lost my techno gadget thing. Nothing to freak out about.”
I laughed giddily and ran to her, pulling her into a hug. Mimi and Eske joined me, a happy pile of laughing and crying and disbelief.
We had done it.
We had beaten the aliens. Our planet, and Earth, would finally have peace. All those dreams that we thought could never be real now were total possibilities.
And it was in each other’s arms that we greeted our victory. Because we were going to have the rest of our lives to see just what living meant.
I couldn’t wait.
10
Happily Ever After. For Now
The sun shone brilliantly down on the field I was standing in, not too bright and not too hot, but perfect—just like the day that was unfolding before me.
I looked around at my friends, my family, who were all sitting on blankets in the grass, looking up at me expectantly. It wasn’t every day people got to see a wedding between a mostly-human and an alien, so I couldn’t blame them for their interest.
There was Gonzales, curled up with a pile of human mimics and dressed in a soft, lavender sort of dress that I never would have guessed she owned. Then again, ever since our victory over the Harvesters about a half-year ago, Earth had been much better about establishing trade routes with our planet.
Ciangi and Bahn were there too, with Harunya’s baby toddling between them. Already the scientist’s belly was rounded again, their newest baby coming in a few months or so.
Aja was present, of course, as well as Eske and her whole family. There were even some prominent Earth figures and members of the resistance.
And of course, there were thousands upon thousands of mimics. Even more of them had learned to take on human form since the great war had finally ended, but there were still plenty who couldn’t or had other bodies that they preferred to reside in. But I still cherished each and every one of them, as well as the society that we were building together.
Urdet stood before me, having taken on the form of a standard human male. I supposed he kind of was the role of the preacher in our little arrangement, but considering our wedding was supposed to be somewhere between human and what little we had dug up about Mimi’s people’s old culture, I wasn’t exactly sure how accurate that presentation was.
Nonetheless, I was practically shaking with excitement. I was about to marry my best friend, the love of my life, and my confidant. I was finally uniting with the one soul who had always understood me.
I heard the faint buzzing of several media droids and did my best to ignore them. Apparently, there was plenty of hubbub on Earth about our nuptials, and we had agreed to let them be shown there in the hopes that it would further our Earth-Mimicry relations. Considering humanity’s track record with accepting those who were different from them, I found it prudent to do everything we could to help our two cultures blend.
After all, we had fought off the big bad creatures that went bump in the dark, but that didn’t mean there wouldn’t be another swooping in to take their place someday. We needed to be even stronger and more prepared for that.
But all of that could wait until after I married the most perfect entity that I could have ever hoped to run into.
The ground shook, jerking me out of my reverie. My breath caught in my throat and I wondered if this was it.
The ground shook again. And then again. And finally, a great beast broke through the trees and entered our little gathering.
There were cries of alarm from a few people, but most seemed to understand this was all a part of it. A few moments later, Mimi slid down the front of the creature’s head and land
ed neatly on the ground in front of him.
She looked…amazing.
Her whole skin was glistening, obsidian black, like she had been made out of the most beautiful, iridescent diamond the color of the night sky. And yet when her eyes gazed at me, they glowed a warm and welcoming purple, her white hair done up in a complicated series of braids.
She wore a dress, as was Earth custom, and it too was a shimmering, form-fitting white thing that went all the way down to the ground where it pooled like liquid. It almost looked as if she was floating as she walked to me and I wondered if somehow, I had fallen in love with an angel.
She reached me and held her hands out. I took them, and we both moved to stand in front of Urdet.
He took a breath, and then he was speaking the carefully agreed upon words that we had chosen.
“Humans and mimics, friends and family, we have all gathered here to celebrate the freedom that we fought and bled for. Not too long ago, our people were locked in slavery while yours were being manipulated toward nefarious ends. Neither of us with any hope for improvement, it took only a small band of renegades to unlock options that none of us ever knew were possible.
“And now we celebrate the union of those who helped start the chain of events that freed us all from our bonds. Higgens, of the human world, and Mimi, of the mimic realm, you have gathered all of us today to witness your love for each other. With your pledges, we unite the two of you as one. Two of our peoples. Our ideas. Our information. All of those belong to each equally. There will be no line between you. No divisions. No secrets.
“We will be two peoples united as one through your love. For now. For the future. And for always. If there is anyone who objects to this merge, we ask that you leave now, as we have fought through your hell and back to stand here on this knoll before you.”
There was a slight murmur of a laugh amongst them, then Urdet continued.
“Higgens of Earth, we have heard that you have written words for each other? Promises for your future.”
“I have,” I said resolutely. I was tempted to pull out the datalog I had hidden in my breast pocket of my ceremonial robe, but I had the words memorized. I had gone over them again and again, trying to get my brain to put out something that could possibly mean half of what I wanted to say.
“Mimi, I remember the moment I first saw you. If I knew all of the insane, terrifying, and painful things that would come from hiding you in my bunk, I would still do it all again.
“You have changed my world forever, and I can’t imagine how it would be without it. You’ve made me realize all that I can be, things I never thought possible. You’ve shown me worlds and ideas and experiences that were beyond anything I ever imagined.
“I love you, Mimi. When I thought love was impossible for someone like me. I thought that was the fate for my kind. I can never thank you enough for changing all of that for me, but I hope that you’ll give me the rest of our lives to try.”
Great, I could feel the tears welling up. I told myself I wouldn’t cry, but how could I not? She meant the entire world to me. All of the worlds to me.
“Mimi of Mimicry, we have heard that you have written words for this man before you?”
“I have,” she murmured, and I swore her voice was cracking too. Could mimics’ voices even crack? After all these years, we still had so much to learn about each other.
“For a long time, my world was dark. There was only the drive to find food and nothing else. Just surviving. Never living.
“But then I saw the faintest glimmer of light. It pulled me violently from my small, void of a world and thrust me into something that was big and bright and terrifying. I was just so small. And nothing made sense.
“But then you were there. Somehow, there was this giant, strange creature that wasn’t quite as terrifying as everything else and I knew I was safe.
“It was quite a gamble, really, but back then I didn’t even know what a gamble was. All I knew was that I should trust this giant thing that was making strange noises at me.
“And I was right. Bit by bit, I learned, I watched, and I became me.” She took a deep breath—even though she didn’t need to breathe—and I felt my heart kick up. “Slivers of life and thoughts and self bled into my mind, and in the center of it all was you. I had a whole universe opening up to me, but you were the rock that gave me an anchor to cling to when I felt like I was flung into this insane miasma of everything that was and that could be.
“I tried to tell myself not to idolize you. That you were different from me and would likely never see me as anything other than the creature you had wrested from the celestial muck in your drilling room. I told myself that the strange feelings that I was discovering weren’t real, that they were a form of god worship to the amazing man that pulled me from nothingness.
“But the more we learned of each other, the more I saw you risk life and limb for those you cared about, the more I knew that everything I was feeling was real. And that was when I knew I couldn’t pretend that I felt nothing anymore.
“Never in a million years did I think that you would ever reciprocate. I was just content in my own truth, a strange, shifting fly in the wake of a god.”
I couldn’t say anything, although I knew it wasn’t my turn to speak even if I could. Somehow, the most glorious, powerful woman in the universe was telling me that she had looked up to me. It was impossible. It was bizarre. I couldn’t wrap my head around it. But she kept on talking, and I kept on sinking right into the pool of love that engulfed so much of us.
Ugh, when had I gotten so sappy? I didn’t know, but it was kind of fun. Addicting even.
“But then the impossible happened and it seemed you felt as I did. And then my new world became even bigger and more rich and vibrant than I ever could have hopped.
“And now I am standing here, before all these people, uniting as equals and as equal loves. Something I never thought could be is happening right now, and I want to hold onto this memory and burn it into every far corner of my mind until there’s nothing left than the joy that you give me.
“So please, Higgens of Earth, my partner, my love, even a lifetime together wouldn’t be enough, but I ask you for every single moment of that lifetime that you can give to me.”
My heart felt like it was going to burst, and for once, it wasn’t because of fights or aliens or looming danger. It was because she filled me with so much happiness that I couldn’t speak.
Or at least I couldn’t until Urdet continued.
“Your words have been spoken. The union has been stated. Do you both accept to have each other, to cherish each other as two parts of the same soul? To protect and love, to care for and grow old with?”
“I do,” Mimi and I said at the same time.
“Then I now declare this union complete! Show us your love and let us share your joy for at least a short time.”
A cheer erupted from the crowd as Mimi and I pushed towards each other, pressing our lips against each other’s. It was a bit sloppy, and of course over-eager, but I didn’t care. There weren’t words for what I felt. It was all just too good!
Eventually we parted, however, Mimi blushing furiously at the applause, and I could feel myself turning a similar color. We turned and were swarmed by all of our friends, enveloping us in a warm and binding hug. There was laughing and tears and true happiness all around.
“Alright, enough of the waterworks!” Gonzales said, breaking away finally. “Let’s get some food and paaaarty!”
I laid on the bed in the captain’s room of our honeymoon ship, drifting off into space with no specific destination in mind. At first, neither of us were going to have a honeymoon, but everyone had been quite insistent.
They had packed a ship well and truly for us. There were flowers and real foods and all sorts of things in there to amuse us. But mostly, I just wanted to hold the beautiful woman lying in the bed next to me.
I looked over her skin, which was still as black and in
ky as at our wedding ceremony. I liked that she kept herself in this medium form, somewhere between human and mimic. Just like me.
I kissed her once again, gentle and a bit nervous.
“Hey, you know I love you, right?” I murmured.
“Of course,” she said with a smile. “That’s what all the spectacle was about today, wasn’t it?”
“Is that what you call it?” I asked with a grin. “A spectacle?”
“Well, it certainly was very dramatic.”
“Considering we literally have blown up an armada of ships, you really think a party with fancy clothing and a few pre-rehearsed words is dramatic?”
“Yes. Definitely.”
I laughed and snuggled into her, but my heart was going a hundred miles a minute. I knew what was supposed to happen on wedding nights, but that still seemed so strange and foreign and impossible—
She pressed a kiss to me this time, and my arms wrapped around her.
We laid there for a long time, nerves rising, and I began to wonder just why we were both feeling so anxious.
We had defeated our enemies. We had rebuilt our city. We had a flourishing relationship with Earth and were exploring that much more of space.
We finally had our peace.
“You know, we’ve faced down monsters and aliens and genocide, but I’ve never felt more scared than I am now,” Mimi murmured.
“Scared?” I asked, stroking her side with my arm. It too had turned into a shining obsidian, as if it wanted to prove just how similar we were. “I… I think I am too.” I paused to swallow, my mouth very dry. “Do you still want…everything that we talked about?”
“Yeah,” she whispered. “I want a family and a house and no more war. No more guns or explosions or fighting. I want little ones.”
“And I do too,” I muttered, my heart thrumming.
“But…” It sounded like Mimi was really struggling with what to say, but I waited. And waited. And waited. Even though my nerves were fraying, and I wanted to blurt out a million and one things, I waited.
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