Mimic and the Journey Home

Touchdown

I wish I could say that I caught forty or so winks and felt both alive and refreshed when we 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.

I could tell that Gonzales was struggling not to roll her eyes. “I suppose that’s true. Is everyone ready for what is most of our first off-world mission?”

“I am.”

“Guess so.”

I nodded toward what seemed to be our de facto leader. “Let’s do this.”

“Let’s.”

She hit the button to release the airlock, and the door slowly began to open. According to our readings, the atmosphere was similar enough not to mean sudden death if there was a puncture in our enviro-suits, but there was enough of a difference to lead to nausea, shortness of breath, and other uncomfortable complications—something we wanted to avoid if at all possible.

The door finished rising and the ramp started to extend. With another look at each other, we ventured into the outside world.