“And what exactly are those?”
“I do not know what you call them. Merely that they were plentiful in my home. Perhaps if you had some scrap left from what you destroyed, that could sustain me until we’re able to return home.”
“Unfortunately, anything we smashed up was sucked into the tubes and into the processers or recyclers.”
“So, what you’re saying,” I said slowly, realization dawning on me slowly, “is that there’s nothing for Mimi to eat until we get her home.”
“Um, yeah. I’m afraid so.”
“Might I point out,” Bahn said slowly, “that if she starves to death, it would make our entire risking of our lives rescue mission an exercise in futility.”
“We’re not going to let you die,” I assured, holding her hands once more. “We’ll get you back home in a few hours and find a nice, uh, comet for you to munch on.”
“There might just be one hang-up in that plan.”
I couldn’t help but sigh in aggravation. My nerves were stretched thin as it was and I certainly wasn’t feeling up to more friendly back and forth. “What is it?”
“It seems going through a wormhole was pretty hard on our engine. As in…we might have burnt out the crystals that give it power.”
“Then use the reserve fuel.”
“Burned through that too.”
“Nuclear energy?”
“This is a simple transport craft. There’s no nuclear back up or dampener. Right now, we’re stuck on impulse and that’s not going to get us home any time in the next billion years or allow us to survive the shake-up of going into the wormhole.”
“You have got to be kidding me,” I groaned, head in my hands. “So we’re stuck out here?”
“Stuck? I wouldn’t say stuck,” Ciangi said softly. “You’ve got three of the brightest engineers in our generation. I’m sure we can whip something up?”
“With what materials?” Bahn questioned. It wasn’t an aggressive objection, but a practical one. “We have only the basics here, and they won’t be enough.”
“The scanner works, right? Let’s check the celestial objects around us to see if they’ve got anything we can synthesize into the crystals that we need.”
I let out a breath, feeling the panic that was tight in my chest begin to relax slightly. We had a plan. That was good. If we had a plan, that meant we had hope and that we were moving forward.
“I’ll go through the rest of the ship and see what I can scrounge up.” My hand went to my belt. “Thankfully, I brought several of my tools along when I went to rescue Mimic, so I’ll make any repairs if I come across something that needs repairin’.”
“I will accompany you,” Mimic said, standing as well.
“Alright, everyone break to your respective tasks at hand and we will meet up later at the food processor.” She paused and squinted at the console. “Uh, this ship has a food processor, right?”
“Yes, they’re standard issue.”
“Whew. Good. I’d hate to have to end up eating each other for sustenance,” Gonzales laughed
“You wouldn’t do that,” Ciangi countered with a snort.
“Oh yeah?” Gonzales said with a wry smirk. “Glad you’re so sure because I’m not. You coin twins have some lovely legs there.”
Now it was a hair past awkward even for me. “Alright, Mimi and I are gonna go now. Later.”
“Later.”
I rushed out, even though my knees were still shaking a bit from the adrenaline dropoff, and didn’t stop until we were well away from the cabin.
I leaned against the wall, breathing hard and letting myself collapse into a pile on the floor.
“Are you alright?”
“Yeah…” I answered after a couple of very deep breaths. “It’s just all catching up to me at once.”
“That was a very stressful string of events, wasn’t it?” Mimic said, patting my head in a borderline mechanical way. I appreciated the gesture, however. I knew she was still learning much about intrapersonal interaction. “But come, let us take care of the task at hand.”
I allowed her to pull me up, which she did with surprising ease, and then we were off again.
Sure, the situation wasn’t the best, but I needed to have faith in my friends who had been willing to risk their lives to save us. They hadn’t failed us then and they certainly wouldn’t fail us now.
I would just have to do my best by them.
I guessed that about three more hours passed before the five of us joined each other at the food processor, each punching in different codes for the meal we wanted. Except for Mimi, of course, who just looked at our plates with a vague sort of disinterest.
The ship turned out to be even smaller than I had expected. Containing only two floors and no elevator, it was definitely meant for short crews on short trips. All of the sleeping quarters were bunk style, and arranged on either side of the engine room with the communal bathroom at the very back. The top floor, where the cabin was, also had the cafeteria, the weapons room, and a mini-medbay.
“So, what’s the verdict?”
“It’s not just the engine crystals that were burnt out, but somehow we overloaded the safety failsafe and fried about a quarter of the capacitors. I found enough materials to make a sort of bypass around the fried ones, but nothing for the crystals themselves.”
“I mean, we expected that,” Gonzales said, biting into her burger with relish. “But good work on the capacitors. Ciangi? I’m guessing you two spent most of the past three hours together?”
“Actually, I was checking the circuitry and outputs. I think if we cut life support to all but the most necessary rooms when we make the jump, it will give us just enough leeway so we don’t fry ourselves into crispy little bits. I’ve got to do some rewiring and preprogramming to make sure that doesn’t put the ship into lockdown, but I could do it in the next day or so.”
“Fantastic. And you, Higgens?”
“I found a few buckled parts of the hull and managed to reinforce them. Thankfully, there wasn’t much damage to the infrastructure. I took the time to refill all of the coolant vats that deal with fire damage and set the shielding mechanism to recharge for the next few hours.”
“Alright, great. Great. We’re all on the right track.” She took another bite then swallowed, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. “So, the scanners are still going, but preliminary results are pretty encouraging. A moon about an hour or two away from here has a fairly large deposit of one of the compounds we need to synthesize the crystals.”
“What about lifeforms?”
“I dunno, man. I can only do one thing at a time on this janky ol’ pile of scrap.”
“Maybe we shouldn’t insult our only chance at surviving the wormhole jump back home.”
“Why? You think the ship is going to hear me and get all offended?”
“Who knows? We have a shapeshifting alien in our crew and hyper-jumped to an unknown part of space. Skepticism is out the window at this point.”
“Can’t argue with that logic.” Another bite, another swallow, and then she was leaning back to the machine and punching in another code. For a moment, I was distracted from the stressful situation at hand to be impressed by her voracious appetite. “Gimme another two hours or so on the scanners and we’ll plot a course to all the stops we need to make. I recommend everyone getting what rest they can. It’s going to be a very long couple of days. You gonna make it, Shifty?”
“It’s Mimic.”
“Right. I’ll take that as a yes.” She nodded before digging into her next burger. “Good meeting, team. I say we finish up here and then we’ll meet at the cabin later.”
I finally took a bite of the thick pasta I had requested. Thankfully, it was still warm and delicious, a tiny slice of comfort.
And I needed all the comfort I could get.
Touchdown
I wish I could say that I caught forty or so winks and felt both alive and refreshed when w
e all met up yet again to hear what the scanners had discovered, but that definitely didn’t happen. Instead, I laid in one of the stolen bunks and stared at the ceiling, Mimi curled into my side with her eyes closed.
I couldn’t tell at the time if she was sleeping or not, but when my data-log beeped that it was time to get up, she had risen instantly and had started walking. Perhaps she had only been laying down with me for my own comfort. I was sure that she could tell how stressed I was, and it was sweet that she wanted to help, but as the five of us stood in the bridge, I felt all that anxiety sweeping back to me.
Could we go back to when I was the know-nothing maintenance guy who just patched pipes? My life was much simpler then. Dirtier. But simpler.
“So, what’s the verdict?” Ciangi asked, leaning over the console to stare at the screens.
“A collection of two moons and one planet have all the compounds we need. It will take us a solid day to swing by all of them. If you figure an average of four hours per mission, then a day to get back, then another day to piece everything together, we’ll be out of here in a jiffy. Can you last that long, Shif— I mean, Mary?”
“It’s Mimic.”
“Right. I knew that. But can you?”
“I will have to, will I not? There is not much of an option besides that.”
“Unless any of these planets have something that you might be able to use as sustenance?”
“Most likely not, but if you have a handheld scanner, I can punch in the atomic structures I need it to look for,” Mimic said matter-of-factly.
“I’m sure I can dig one of those out of the medbay. If not, Bahn could probably whip one up for you.”
I looked to him with an eyebrow raised and he shrugged. “When I have anxiety attacks, I like to disassemble instruments and put them back together. Sometimes I combine them. A standard communication pod and a data-log with a molecular node make an excellent scanner.”
“Good to know,” I said, trying not to sound sarcastic because I certainly wasn’t. “You’ll have to show me sometime.”
“Yes. It would be a handy skill for a worker such as yourself to have.”
“Speaking of which,” Ciangi interjected. “I need some extra sets of hands to begin arranging the medbay how I need for our little construction venture, so you and Mimic are with me.”
“Can do.”
“The first moon is that same one I mentioned earlier, which I already plotted a course to before we started talking. Make sure to shower, eat, and do whatever it is you need to be refreshed, because we’re all going to have to be on guard. With no prior knowledge of this planet, its flora or its fauna, we need to be prepared for everything.”
“Righto.” Ciangi stretched and let out an egregious yawn. “Well, I’m going to take a shower before this all goes to hell in a hand basket in some way that we haven’t anticipated. Anyone want to join me?”
My eyes went wide, and Mimic just shook her head in a bored manner while the other two laughed.
“Guys, there are like seven stalls in there. I didn’t mean it in a salacious way.”
“We know you didn’t. But that didn’t stop it from being hilarious anyway. Come on, I could use a good wash-up too and I don’t know where they’ve crammed the towels on this tub,” Gonzales said with a laugh.
“Towels?” Ciangi echoed as they walked off. “What kind of ancient setup do you think they have here? They have an air-whicker just like a standard vessel.”
“Huh, color me surprised.”
Mimic and I watched them go, then Bahn excused himself quietly. I didn’t know what he was up to, but I didn’t feel the need to question him either. I was still a bit intimidated by the taller of the coin twins, even if he had been consistently polite.
“Higgens?”
“Huh?” I jolted as Mimic’s cool hand rested against my arm. “Oh, sorry. What’s up?”
“I will be honest that I am…worried about what could happen on these missions we are about to embark on.”
“Yeah, they sound like they could be pretty dangerous.”
She nodded. “I was hoping you wouldn’t mind helping me with something.”
“Of course not. What d’you need?”
“I… I hope you do not perceive this as defeatist, but I feel like I must be practical and admit that there is a chance one, or all, of us could end up not coming back. I would like to make some recordings, and file samples, of myself so that—should I meet my end on these planets—I will not be forgotten.”
“Oh geez, Mimi.” I pulled her into a hug, and I felt her form ripple slightly. A few moments later, I felt several of her black and spikey limbs form around me. It was a bit of déjà vu, but it was nice to see her original form again. “That’s the absolute least I can do. Come on, I think we can find everything we need in the medbay.”
Her form reassembled itself into her human-esque shape and she nodded. Together, we walked off.
It felt good that she trusted me on something so obviously important to her. After all the important engineering chatter from the brain-trio, I was feeling next to useless.
But it didn’t matter to Mimic that I wasn’t brilliant, or that I understood physics on a ninth-grade level. What mattered to her was that I was her friend, and she knew I would go to the end of the universe and back to make sure that she was safe.
And hopefully that would be a literal journey, very, very soon.
“Is your helmet secure?”
“Yes.”
“How about your gloves?”
“Yes.”
“Is your suit-environment pressurized?”
“Yup.”
“What about—”
“I got it!” I interrupted gently. “It’s okay, Gonzales. I know how to put on an enviro-suit.”
“Okay. I know. It’s just… This is my first actual ground mission. I’m a little nervous.”
“Wait, really? This is your first?”
“Yeah,” Ciangi answered, struggling with the seal on her boot. “It’s all of our first times.”
“How is that possible?”
Bahn shrugged as he approached. “We’re engineers. Our jobs require us to stay in the ship usually. You’re maintenance. Why do you have enviro-suit experience?”
“What do you think I wear when I’m cleaning bio-hazards or any sort of space-rift? I’ve even had to clean drill-bit sludge off while tethered to the ship.”
“You clean—” The blonde blinked at me incredulously. “—outside of the ship?!”
“Not very often, thankfully. But yes.”
She let out a long breath. “I did not know that. You do not get paid nearly enough.”
I snorted. “You got that right.”
Prepare for orbital entry in one minute.
“That’s our cue. Everyone buckle up.”
“Yeah, because safety harnesses are going to be so useful when we burn to a crisp upon reentry.”
I smirked wryly. “Do you think we all use sarcasm as a way not to say something that could be misconstrued as incorrect due to a lack of knowledge?”
“Hey, who gave you permission to moonlight as my therapist?”
Ciangi let out a long sigh as she buckled herself into a chair. “I remember therapy. I miss it. Remind me to go back if we ever make it to Earth as non-fugitives”
“You can introduce me to them,” Bahn said. “But first, we need to find these compounds. Everyone fully harnessed and ready for orbit?”
“Yessiree.”
Ten seconds until reentry.
“I would like to note that this is the tiniest ship that I have ever entered a planet on, so if I piss myself in terror, I don’t want to hear about it,” Gonzales said dryly.
It took all of my strength not to laugh outright. It seemed, after so much time holding them in such high esteem, it made me feel a bit better to have them be so nervous about what was just a matter of course for me. I guess it made sense that, despite all their knowledge and expertise
, they probably had very few assignments that ever had anything to do with eviro-suits or dangerous maneuvers on small vessels.
I just hoped they held it together for when we were planet-side.
Orbital reentry imminent.
The voice of the helm clicked off and then the ship began to rattle.
Strangely enough, it wasn’t as bad as the wormhole. In fact, it was almost downright pleasant.
I could feel the ship’s auto-nav trying to fight the urge to skip across the atmosphere like a stone, and see the nose of our little vessel turn scarlet red with flames and heat, but other than that…it was relatively peaceful.
I heard a very small whimper from Gonzales, and I glanced to her white knuckles gripping her armrest like a lifeline. It seemed maybe my co-conspirators were not having as easy a time as I was, but they would be fine.
Or at least I hoped so.
The helm was prattling on some countdown about our descent, but I didn’t pay much heed. Instead, I watched the surface of the moon as it slowly became more and more detailed. It looked a lot like a forest, albeit a forest filled with wildly colored foliage and flora like I had never seen before.
The rattling slowed and the others let out a collective breath. I tried to see if I could catch any wildlife as we settled at the base of a mountain, but as far as I could tell, there wasn’t anything around. No birds taking flight as we settled down onto several trees, no frightened roars from beasts whose home had been destroyed.
Just…quiet.
The landing gear came down and we finally settled against the ground. There was a moment of silence, before Gonzales let out a whoop.
“We made it!” she said, leaning over to high-five Ciangi.
I did allow myself to smile at their earnestness as we all unbuckled and headed toward the exit, where our supplies were already strapped and waiting for us. “I knew we would,” I said honestly.
“Glad there was one of us.” She took a long breath to compose herself then squared her shoulders. “Are we all ready for our first off-world mission?”
“Technically, being sucked into your ship after you murdered my entire family was my first off-world mission,” Mimic mused, the very corner of her lip raising in a smirk.
Mimic and the Journey Home (Space Shifter Chronicles Book 2) Page 2
