Mimic Raises an Army by James David Victor

Author:James David Victor [Victor, James David]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Fairfield Publishing
Published: 2017-12-16T05:00:00+00:00

9

Somewhat Hostile Take Over

“Do you have the stuff?” I asked, regaining my composure enough to remember the next step of the mission.

“No,” Ciangi answered and I could almost hear her roll her eyes. “I totally forgot and left them on the ship. I guess we’ve got to go back!”

“Very cute,” Gonzales said in a way that clearly said she thought it wasn’t cute at all. “Can you pull out the mini-shield generator and the splicer, or do you wanna continue with the sarcasm when we’ve already burned through, oh, I would say about half of our oxygen?”

“Right. Good point.” She knelt down and the mimic on her back clambered off, skittering around the rest of us. I guess Meridyna had enjoyed the whole nearly-dying adventure, judging by her rippling form and spikes waving this way and that. At least one of us had had a good time. “I think I’m just off. It feels weird to not have Bahn here.”

“I can imagine,” Eske said. “I’ve never seen one of you without the other, even on the net.”

“Yeah, we’ve basically been inseparable since college. We turned down a lot of jobs that weren’t willing to pay both of our salaries or let us work on the same project. That’s how we ended up on a mining vessel when we really were always lab-heads. In retrospect, I guess our pickiness was a good thing.”

“Huh, it certainly is weird to think about the paths that brought us here, isn’t it?” I asked.

“Yeah, a real chin-scratcher,” Gonzales interrupted. “Field, now please.”

“Right, right, I got it.” Ciangi finished pulling the small, metal cylinders from her pack and placed them on the surface of the station. I could hear them hiss as they attached, then their tops deployed a series of emitters. After a brief buzz and then a crackle, they did indeed manage to generate a very small atmosphere field.

“There,” Ciangi murmured. “Now we don’t have to worry about our entrance causing the interior to violently depressurize.”

Gonzales nodded. “Good. Now, if you don’t mind, hand me the ionic welder.”

“If you insist. But wouldn’t Higgens have more experience with that sort of thing, you know, being a maintenance worker and all?”

“Probably,” Gonzales admitted, taking the instrument and lighting it up. “But I think I just need to break in somewhere.”

I didn’t need to argue with that reasoning. “By all means, weld away.”

“Thank you, I will.”

Ciangi stepped away, giving Gonzales room to kneel down and press the torch to the metal. Sparks flew up, illuminating our forms and the rest of the mimics as they proceeded to clamber down from all of us.

Except for Mimic, of course. She stayed tightly curled against my back, all of her spikes pointed outward. I appreciated the contact, to be honest. Although I put on a brave face, my knees were still a bit weak and my heart was still pounding from how close to death I had been. Sure, we’d had tough scrapes before, but nothing like what I had just survived.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.