Mimic and the Space Engineer

3

All You Can Eat Buffet

I woke up expecting to have company in my bed in the form of a little shapeshifting alien, but instead came to with an odd gap between my arms. I sat up like a shot, my eyes scanning my room for my new friend.

When I didn’t see him anywhere, I started to panic. That lasted for about a minute before I reminded myself that Mimic could shapeshift and looking for it in its black and spiky form was probably a waste of time.

“Hello?” I called instead.

There was a chirp beside my bed and a pillow that had dropped to the floor surged and buckled, warping inward on itself until my friend was sitting there.

“Hiding as a pillow, were you?” I asked matter of factly. As much as I was tempted to baby talk the cute little thing, how could I be certain that it wasn’t intelligent? Sure, it didn’t look like it… or act like it, but I preferred not to assume. Plus, if anyone overheard me, I could always pretend that I was talking to myself. Harder to do if I was using all that goo-goo-gaa-gaa talk my mother favored when speaking to anyone—or anything—under two feet tall.

It trilled at me once more before scuttling to my junk bin. In less than a blink, it jumped up onto my desk and then dove straight in.

“Hey!” I yelped, stumbling out of bed and rushing over to the bin. “I don’t have any energy cores in there, but I would really appreciate it if you didn’t jostle things around. I spent a lot of time collecting those pieces.”

Two black spikes poked up, waiting there for a moment as if it was debating, before it clambered out. I could be mistaken, but it seemed like it had grown a slight bit overnight. It was still a small dog sized, but a very fluffy small dog.

It chirped at me again as it stepped onto my desk. I assumed it was looking up at me, although that was hard to tell since it had no face. “What’s up friend? Do you need something?”

It didn’t react, because of course it didn’t understand me, but I had been hoping that it might.

“Alright, well I have to make my rounds to the recyclers and make sure everything’s in tip-top shape. You stay here, okay?”

Again, it didn’t move so I shrugged and started to gather up my things. Like usual I assembled my cart, but added my welder to my belt, along with several other miscellaneous things. One never could be too prepared after all, right?

When I was finally ready I headed to my door only to have Mimic follow after me.

“No,” I said, holding up my hand. “You have to stay here.” It took a few steps back then settled down into what I assumed was a sitting position. “Alright, very good. I’ll be back in a jiffy, I promise.”

I stepped out and quickly closed the door in front of me, heaving a sigh of relief that it hadn’t tried to squirrel out.

I turned to go, pushing my cart in front of me, only to hear some sort of scuffling behind me. Looking back to my door, I saw a thin, burnt piece of metal sliding out from the minute gap at the bottom. I watched, a little amazed, a little horrified, as the long strip worked itself through until it was all the way out in the hall. From there, it popped right back into my shapeshifting friend.

“You can’t be out here!” I hissed, looking around to make sure we weren’t in view of one of the ship’s many monitors. Thankfully, as a mining ship, there weren’t a lot of security precautions along the crew quarters, and even less so on my lower floor.

It made a sound at me then clambered into my cart before shifting into my compressor rifle.

I debated for the briefest of seconds about fighting with it, but I was quickly beginning to realize that restricting where a shapeshifter could and could not go was a lost cause. “Alright then. I guess we’re making the rounds together.”

An agreeable hiccup came from my bag so I shrugged and hit the start button for the hover mechanism. Without any further ado, we were on our way.

My first task was checking the environment filters. I’d never had a problem with them so far, knock on organic matter, and I was hoping to keep it that way.

I was on edge the entire time, sure that the miners were going to come flocking down in droves to arrest me for contaminating the ship with an unapproved lifeform. I knew that I really should report it. After all, a creature with the ability to change its shape on a whim would be a huge deal to the scientific community.

Humans had been expanding their colonies for a over a century, and while we had found signs of life in the form of long extinct bacteria, all in all we were still very much alone in the universe, as far as we knew.

I also supposed I should be more freaked out about the revelation that there was other life out there, but I had always assumed there would be. I just never thought I would be the one to discover it.

“Higgens!” I nearly jumped out of my skin.

“Yes?” I squeaked, hitting the button on my comm-watch.

“Ciangi just reported that there’s a weak spot on the venting in the engine output system. Said she’d like you to reinforce and patch it, just to be safe.”

“Sure, I’ll get right on that.” I clicked off then looked to the camouflaged alien on my cart. “We’re going up to where there’s going to be more crew, so promise me you’ll behave?”

It said nothing, which I supposed was a good thing, and I headed for the elevator.

Normally there wouldn’t be many people skulking around the engine output system, but Ciangi and Bahn, both galactic engine experts, liked to do an inspection every single morning. That meant they were always finding things to improve, but I would gladly take some busy work over critical engine failure any day.

They were an interesting pair. From what I had gathered, they became friends in college where they began working on a new propulsion system for space travel. Apparently, whatever they did was some impressive stuff, because they were snatched up, as a pair, by the largest research conglomerate in existence.

They had worked together ever since, sometimes mockingly being dubbed the ‘coin twins’. I hadn’t understood that particular moniker at first, but it had been Ciangi herself that explained it. She was short and blond, with curls as tight as a screw that made a halo about her head, and stacked every way from Sunday. Meanwhile, Bahn was golden-brown with pin-straight, black hair that he kept pulled back into a ponytail, an almost skeletal build, and a hyper critical gaze that could melt the toughest of alloys. Two different sides of the same coin. I still didn’t quite understand, but at least I knew.

I never would have put that together myself, but I guessed I was just terrible at observing things about people. Their faces all tended to blend together, so I mostly went by the sound of their voice. Those were as varied as the stars in the sky, and I always appreciated that.

We entered the doors quietly, my every nerve on edge, and Ciangi was standing just inside.

“Hey there, Higgens. You made it up here fast.”

“Oh you know, just trying to be efficient.”

“You alright there? You’re sweating.”

Crap, I was terrible at masking how I felt. I was… I was… What was this called? Some sort of ancient earth term, right? Ah, yes. Telegraphing. “Uh, I was doing some early morning cardio. You know, keepin’ in shape and all that.”

She shrugged. “I’ve never been much for working out. Bahn is over at the vent in question, taking some readings. Just under the coolant generators.”

“Gotcha.” I gave her a nod and kept on pushing my cart. Normally, I liked hanging around Bahn and Ciangi; they treated me much nicer than most people. Usually staff liked to act like I was either not there at all, or some sort of inconvenience. But normally I wasn’t smuggling a new alien life around a government contracted mining vessel.

I found Bahn right where Ciangi said he would be—they always had the uncanny ability to do that—and gave a little wave.

“Hey, I hear you’ve got something that needs some reinforcin’?”

The engineer looked at me before his hand pointed upward. Always a man of few words, that Bahn.

“Righto. I’ll hop on that.”

Of course, I didn’t literally hop on it, but I did put a good bit of hustle into my step. The longer I was down here, the greater the chance that something could go wrong.

I would say it took me about ten minutes to do as I was asked, using both my welder and a little insta-hard sealant that I always kept stocked on my belt. The stuff was fantastic. It could even repair a cracked hull for a short time, given a large enough supply.

I returned to my cart, whistling a bit as I slung my bag into it, only to cut off the tune abruptly.

Where had the other bag—aka Mimic—gone?

“Uh, hey Bahn, you got anything else you need done?”

“No. That should be good.”

“Um, I’m just gonna take a look around.”

“That’s not necessary.”

“No such thing as being too careful! I’ll be back in a jiffy!” I rushed away, my heart going a mile a minute. Why hadn’t I put a leash on Mimic, or something? Not that a leash would work against a shapeshifter, but I supposed it was the thought that counts.

“Mimic,” I hissed, ducking under some tubing. “Mimic!”

I heard a chittering and looked up to see a flash of black spike retreating over one of the refinery tanks. “Dammit, how did you get all the way up there?”

I looked around to see how I would shimmy up. I spotted a ladder leading up to the mid-level catwalks and rushed toward it, climbing as quickly as I could in my jumpsuit. Once I was up on the landing, I could see Mimic making a beeline for the radiation dampener.

“Oh no…” If anything happened to the radiation dampener, that could cause a radiation leak, and a radiation leak could cause a whole lot of radiation sickness. “That’s bad.”

I ran down the catwalk, hoping I wasn’t making too much noise. I caught up with it and jumped over to the gangway that lead to the radiation dampener. There was a walkway to take, but it was far too slow.

I stuck the landing then looked around, but the little critter was fast. I couldn’t spot it anywhere! Panic was setting in, making my forehead break out in a cold sweat. Had I just doomed the entire ship by releasing some sort of malevolent alien creature in the bowels of our ship? How could I be so stupid?

I heard a crumpling sound and dashed toward it, praying as I ran. I arrived at the edge of the dampener just in time to see a long, thin piece of cording force its way into one of the welding divots.

“No!” I groaned, rushing forward and trying to catch the tail end. But it was too late, the last of it slipped in and I could only watch as Mimic popped into its natural form and trundled toward the radiation core.

My stomach dropped out of my feet and I pressed myself to the dampener. I felt like I was watching my death happen in slow motion… probably because I was watching my death happen in slow motion. How was this gonna go? Was it going to blow up the entire ship in revenge for destroying its home? Squeeze its way through the other side of the radiation core and into the actual lightyear drive, sending us hurtling out of control through the subspace streams? The possibilities were practically countless, each one more gruesome than the last.

Mimic reached the center of the blinding, shielded mass and my eyes flicked to the readout panel. But instead of seeing an energy spike, or some other form of alert, I saw the radiation output go down.

I blinked, rubbed my eyes, then looked again. Sure enough, the meter was going lower and lower and lower. Which was great. Ships had long since moved away from their nuclear-powered engines, moving onto anti-matter propulsion. However, the process most often used generated massive amounts of radiation. Naturally something needed to be done about all that hazardous material being generated, hence the radiation core that gathered the harmful rays and stored them for use as discharges and weapon blasts. Overloading the core was always an issue, leading to emergency dumping procedures, so the quickly dropping reading was a good thing.

Granted, we didn’t want it to get too low. Having no nuclear energy meant no back-up weapon’s system and wasn’t exactly the best set up for traveling through uncharted space. I watched as the reading dove and dove until finally it was about to drop to dangerous levels.

“Hey, Mimic,” I called, knocking in the dampener. “You need to stop now.” I pressed my face against the barrier, trying to see what was happening within the semi-translucent material. I couldn’t be sure, but I was fairly certain it stopped.

It made a happy chittering sound and began walking back toward me. As it approached, I realized that my little companion was not so little anymore. The closer it got, the bigger and bigger it grew, until it was now in the large dog/tiny pony territory.

“Oh geeze, Mimic.” I groaned. “Why do I get the feeling that this is a very bad thing?”

“What’s going on here?”

I whipped around, letting out another startled screech, to see Ciangi standing at the foot of the ladder, eyeing me curiously. “W-what do you m-mean?” I sputtered.

“I got an alert of low radiation. You notice anything?”

I looked behind me and instead of seeing my ever-growing friend, there wasn’t anything at all. “Uh… no. I spied the reading on my walk around and thought it was super odd but I don’t really know what that means.”

“Normally it means a radiation leak.” She held up some sort of device that made several beeping sounds before a steady ring. “But I’m not detecting anything. Huh.” She hit a button on her own comm. “Bahn, have you been testing your radiation scrubber?”

“No. I’m still in prototype phase.”

“Huh.” The blond woman pulled at one of her curls, her eyes narrowing as she regarded the entire set up. “Do you mind clearing out? This is important and I want to run some tests.”

“Uh, y-yeah. Sure. I will clear out and go about my maintenance duties, like a good worker is supposed to. That’s me.”

“…okay?”

I rushed back to my cart, feeling like the world was crashing around me. Somehow, someway, I had to find a way to find a shapeshifting alien who was loose on the ship without alerting anyone else in the entire crew.

This day was not going how I had envisioned it at all.