I could see the children now—they would be able to shift like both of us, but they would still be human. They would need to eat and sleep like I did, but they could survive in space like she did. They didn’t learn like she did, but they would be smarter than me. Always smarter than me.
The thought was enough to bring a smile to my face. We would have a house that they would play in and around, and they would all get along. I didn’t want to think about puberty, though. I’d barely gotten through my own.
“But maybe not right now.”
“Not right now?” I echoed, relief flooding me.
The children and the house vanished. But not entirely. More like…temporarily. They faded to the background of my mind for another day.
Maybe when we were a bit more ready.
Maybe when it didn’t feel like my heart was going to climb up my throat and out of my body.
“Yeah. Is that alright?” She sounded so uncertain that I just wanted to hold her until that worry cleared from her face. Even after the Harvesters were no longer a threat, our entire life had become rebuilding our home and establishing our colony once more. It was intense, and sometimes thankless, but it was completely worth it.
But now that was mostly done too, and now that we were on our honeymoon, I didn’t want her to ever worry again. I wanted only happiness and ease for her.
I mean… I still didn’t believe that it could last. It often felt too good to be true, but after two years, I had learned to tuck my paranoia away and enjoy the blessing that we had been given.
“It’s just that…” Mimi took a breath. “I just want time. Everything just seems so unreal. I know we’ve been kinda talking about this forever, but I’m still not ready. I still feel like I’m learning who I am and you’re learning who you are.”
“I feel exactly the same way,” I murmured, laughing lightly and pressing a kiss to her cheek. “Yes. Of course. We’ll wait until we’re ready. After all, we have all the time in the world.”
“Yes,” Mimi said, returning my kiss and placing a dozen more or so across my face. “We finally have all the time in the world. All the worlds.”
“Yeah, we do,” I said between little pecks. Goodness, I loved this woman with every fiber of my being. Just being there with her was enough.
And the insane thing was that we had so much more to still learn and experience with each other, but we didn’t have to rush about it. For once, we could take our time instead of fearfully flitting from disaster to disaster.
I could finally find a word for the way I felt when she walked into the room. We could both solve the riddle of my arm and getting it to behave. We could figure out what felt good to us, what didn’t, and what was right. There had never been a couple like us in all the universe, but we didn’t have to rush all of our new discoveries. No, we could savor and cherish every step going forward.
We’d been just two lonely creatures locked in our own personal prisons not too long ago. Now that we were free, truly free, I was going to enjoy every single moment of it.
Because we had earned it.
“So which world should we go visit first?”
“All of them,” Mimi said breathlessly, her body returning to her human form that was most familiar to me. “Any of them. As long as I’m here with you.”
I took up her hand in mine and kissed the top of it, her cool, smooth skin sending goosebumps up my human arm. “Don’t worry. For the rest of time, I will be.”
“Promise?”
One last kiss to her nose before I called up the nav interface on our datalog. “Promise.”
And I meant it down to my very core. As long as we both lived, I would always be by her side. Her eternal shadow and support.
And that was possibly the best happily ever after that I could ever imagine.
The End
For Now
THANK YOU
Thank you so much for reading Mimic’s Last Stand, the ninth and final book in the Space Shifter Chronicles. I hope you’ve enjoyed the entire journey. I am moving on to other sci-fi projects now, but I have an idea for a future series that just might feature some of the characters from this one…or their offspring.
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At the end of the book, I have included a preview of Parallax which is the first book in The Deep Black series which is a not-quite-black-and-white space opera featuring ruthless pirates and a corrupt military. Captain Bayne is the man stuck in the middle. The preview is right after the information about our newsletter. After you read the preview, you can download the book on Amazon.
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Preview: Parallax
The UNS Royal Blue, like its captain, was built for the harsh environments of the edge of space. Sleek, sturdy, and armed to the teeth, there was no threat out in the black that either could not handle. The boredom, on the other hand, was an enemy United Navy Captain Drummond Bayne had never prepared to battle. His tour in the Deep Black could be characterized as one long stretch of nothing, periodically interrupted by bouts of violence and intensity.
“Spin up the forward batteries and open a channel,” Bayne ordered from the edge of his captain’s chair. This was one of those interruptions. A welcome one that just turned an administrative mission into something with action.
“They’ve acknowledged our hail, sir,” chirped Lieutenant Delphyne. She was a spritely thing, lithe and petite, but her demure appearance and mannerisms in no way reflected her nature. She could hold her own against anyone, in any arena one could imagine. “Captain on comms.”
Bayne forced himself back in his chair, not wanting to appear an overeager child on his birthday, staring at a pile of presents just begging to be torn open. His six-and-a-half foot tall frame leaned back, paradoxically becoming more uncomfortable in the supple leather seat. “Wex Shill,” Bayne said.
The haggard portrait of a man appeared on the monitor. What portion of his face wasn’t covered with an auburn beard was pocked with scars and the dry, red skin common to those who spent too much time in the sterile air of a ship. “That’s Captain Wex Shill. Or Terror of the Deep Black Wex Shill, if you prefer. That one’s new. I’m taking it for a spin. See how it feels on the tongue.”
Bayne raised a hand to quiet the man. “Pirate Wex Shill, by order of the United Navy, I am placing you under arrest. Surrender, power down all nonessential systems, and a team will board your ship. Resist, and we will engage with all the force required to subdue or kill you.”
It was a speech that, even though given too rarely for Bayne’s liking, had grown routine. He had once barked the words, in the early days of his assignment hunting pirates on the edge of known space—a time pregnant with the promise of adventure—but the speech lacked the fire it once did.
“Well, that’s not very cordial, now is it?” Shill laughed to himself, likely thinking himself amusing. They always thought they were so funny.
It was nothing Bayne hadn’t seen from a dozen other pirate captains over the years. They all fancied themselves the clever sort.
It took a certain type of person to pursue pirating as a way of life—brash, aggressive, reckless, fearless. Some of those traits could even serve them should they reapply them in a more meaningful way. But the other trait they all shared prevented them from doing so—ego. Massive, blinding egos.
“Where’s the nearest Navy base, Captain?”
Shill’s question caught Bayne off guard. It wasn’t often that his targets would engage in conversation past this point. It was likely an attempt at stalling or distraction, but Bayne was in an indulgent mood.
“One hundred thousand light-years,” Bayne responded. “Give or take.”
Shill ran his fingers through his beard. The facial hair made him appear almost alien. Being this far out was no excuse to dismiss protocol. None aboard the Royal Blue had even a stray whisker on his face, and those were the faces Bayne spent all his time looking at.
“A galaxy away.” Shill seemed to smile—it was hard to tell through the mass of hair, though his eyes gleamed like the muzzle of a blaster before putting a bolt through your heart. “You fly up my rear, bark orders in the name of the United Navy.” He elongated the name of the system’s military force, lacing each syllable with poison. “And they ain’t nowhere to be seen. They’re a hundred thousand light-years away, and my cannons are right here.”
Shill stepped forward. The projection of his face grew larger, taking up more room on the Royal Blue’s monitors. It threw a sense of claustrophobia over the bridge crew. “The United Navy ain’t but a hollow name way out here. Invoking it won’t bring you naught but trouble.”
Bayne scratched his chin, at the whiskers he might have if not for protocol. He stood from his chair. The urge to smile, to return Shill’s blaster muzzle glare, crept up on him. He suppressed it, brushed it away, and locked his hands in an officer’s stance behind his back.
The Royal Blue was in this sector of the Deep Black to make contact with Ore Town, a mining outpost that had gone off the grid. The Byers Clan, an influential conglomerate, struck a deal with the United Systems to police its own operations in the Deep Black, with the understanding that they must maintain regular contact to ensure the safety of the operation. Long-range relays were constantly going down, and so the Royal Blue spent half its time checking in. They were nanny missions.
“By the authority of the United Navy, I hereby declare you a hostile entity. Henshaw,” he said to the gunner, a broad man, who had been growing broader as of late, swollen with boredom. “Acquire a target lock on the Blighter.”
Given Shill’s proximity to Ore Town, Bayne could only assume he had a hand in it going dark.
Shill’s laughter echoed on the bridge. A high cackle, like electricity in the air, that you could feel in your teeth. “Navy,” he said. “Don’t mean nothing.” Shill paced his bridge, the image of his face floating about like a ghost. “But I suppose them railguns you got do.” He nodded to someone Bayne could not see.
“Sir,” Callet, the engineer, a short, balding man with the voice of a sucking air lock, said. “The Blighter is powering down.”
For a moment, Captain Bayne felt like a hole had been opened in his veins. The adrenaline in his blood seeped out and he was drained of the increasingly unfamiliar feeling of excitement, but then he reminded himself that an engagement only brought with it the chance of casualty. His crew was more important than any amount of excitement.
“The Blighter’s weapons are offline, sir,” Callet said a moment later.
Bayne turned to his executive officer, Taliesen Mao. A steady man, always pointed in the right direction and never faltering in his pursuits. As reliable as the stars. “Ready the shuttle and your boarding party.”
Mao nodded and walked off the bridge.
Bayne fell back into his chair.
And that was that, he thought. Another pirate crossed off the list. The edge of known space a little bit safer and more secure for the interests of the United Systems.
Drummond Bayne had been a young man when he’d enlisted in what had since become the United Navy. The mining clans were warring. Warlords and their fleets were attacking everything. A dozen different militaries were tripping over each other trying to establish some semblance of peace. There was never a day that lacked for action.
He was still a young man when he was awarded his own ship. Rather, he was awarded his legitimate captaincy. He took the ship off a warlord he put down in the southern rim. He was a Ranger then, as he was now, though that title carried with it a different meaning. The Rangers of the early days were outliers, showing no allegiance to any particular military or government, only to their own pursuits. They were made an official unit within the Navy after the wars, offered officer ranks, and thus Drummond Bayne became a captain, and the Deep Blue became the Royal Blue.
He was not quite as young when he accepted his mission to secure the edge of the system, the Deep Black. He was 33 then, now only 36, but he felt like an old man, squinting against the flare of distant stars reflecting off the hull of the Blighter.
“The shuttle is away, sir,” Lieutenant Delphyne said.
Bayne nodded and grunted an affirmative into his knuckles. The shuttle came into view a moment later as it closed the distance between the two ships. The captain couldn’t help but feel a pang of jealousy for Mao and the away team.
The Deep Black was about as away as one could get, but Bayne couldn’t help but feel like he was tied to something.
“Sir!” Callet shouted. “The Blighter has acquired a target lock on the shuttle!”
“How the hell did they spool up their weapon systems so fast?”
“It seems they never actually took them offline, sir. They must have masked the energy signature.”
Sudden dread flooded Bayne’s mind. The space in front of him swam, became infinite and black. His legs were unsteady.
“Signal the shuttle,” he commanded. “Tell Mao to take evasive action.”
The black space lit up with weapons fire. The Blighter’s forward guns pelted the shuttle with laser blasts, searing the hull. The small vessel, big enough to hold a dozen but carrying only six, rolled to starboard then ducked beneath the Blighter’s range of fire.
Patch was at the helm. He could make a ship dance.
The pirate vessel’s sub-cannons whirred to life on its belly. They dropped concussive blasts, shaking the shuttle but never quite finding their mark. Either that ship was manned by the most incompetent crew in the Deep Black, or Shill wasn’t trying to hit the shuttle. He was disorienting it, keeping it from escaping.
Keeping it close.
“Shall I open fire, sir?” Henshaw asked.
“No,” Bayne said. “The shuttle is too close. If we destroy the Blighter, then the shuttle will be caught in the explosion.”
A voice came over comms. “Any time, sir.” Even bombarded by cannons, Mao sounded steady. “We could use a hand.”
“Working on it, XO.”
Standard engagement protocol: Hail hostile vessel, relay terms, fire warning shot, then shoot to kill. There is to be no negotiation once hostile party refuses terms. There is to be no engagement that does not have the express purpose of eliminating hostile party.
A kill shot. Standard protocol.
And there was no higher authority out in the Deep Black than standard protocol.
“Lieutenant Delphyne,” Bayne said. “Turn off the mission recorder.”
“Aye, sir.”
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Mimic's Last Stand Page 9
