“And using them,” Mimic continued. “It is…grossly uncomfortable how similar the creature’s story is to our own. After it crash landed on this planet, the crew tried desperately to get themselves back home. But between the predators and weather and entirely incompatible atmosphere, they all died out. Except for one.
“They knew that they would never survive as it was, so they began to make…alterations to their body.”
“Alterations? Alterations like what?”
“I… The little one doesn’t know how to describe it, nor can I decipher it from their fragmented memories.” She tilted her head as if listening harder, and it was uncanny considering she was still completely faceless. “But I do know the alien was a…engineer, of sorts. It fused parts of itself into the ship, changing, improving, re-forging, until it was able to eke out some sort of existence. But there was still the matter of the great beasts that wandered this planet, and how to fix its ship since it no longer was a mobile creature as it had been before.”
“What predators? All I could find on the scanners were lifeforms smaller than your standard human hand.”
“Exactly. From what I could tell, the alien captured one of this guy’s little ancestors and experimented on it. It was able to figure out the sub-harmonic frequency at which we communicate and exploit that. It developed a system where it could issue commands, commands that normally adults would issue and juveniles would follow until they were able to understand their own genetic memory and mimic ability.”
“And what did the adults do?”
A dark expression crossed her face. “They died. The first order the alien gave was for the juveniles to kill all of the adults. The adults didn’t try to resist, and were wiped out within a few weeks.”
“Oh my gosh, Mimi. I’m…I’m so sorry.”
She shook her head. “It…it’s fine. These are just memories; they cannot hurt me. They can’t…” She trailed off, her voice growing weaker until her words weren’t audible at all. Her human face slid into place and when it did, I could see fresh tear tracks down her cheeks. “I can see their pain. They could have easily beaten their children, but they couldn’t bring themselves to do it. They knew they would be murdered but they wouldn’t raise a hand against those they loved.”
I didn’t even have to think about it, I automatically stepped forward and gently pulled her into a hug. She clung to me, burying her head into my shoulder with very quiet sobs.
“The alien enslaved them. All of them. He murdered their parents so he would be the only voice for all their lives.”
“I really, really am taking this emotional moment seriously,” Ciangi said, sounding sheepish but curious. “But if they were juveniles centuries ago, wouldn’t they eventually grow up and stage some sort of rebellion?”
“Much like feral human children who have been denied the proper contact to become functioning adults, these children have all been suppressed. Both mentally and physically. They’re all starving, and their command of our language is…rudimentary at best. The alien uses them to collect the materials it needs to repair the ship and feed it. It is hard to say where one task ends and the other begins, but it’s an endless march.”
“So how do we free them?” I asked.
Mimic pulled away, looking at me with watery eyes. “You want to free them?”
“Of course. These are your people. We’re not just going to take off and try to find somewhere nicer to live when your entire race is being used as some sort of brainwashed slave labor.”
“But you could die.”
“Yeah, I suppose. But by this point, I feel like we could’ve died on about half of our endeavors.”
“You’re not wrong there,” Gonzales added. “Besides, I think if there’s one thing I’ve learned from ol’ Higgens here, it’s that he never passes up the chance to be a hero.”
“What?” I objected. “That’s not true.”
This time, it was everyone in the group except Mimic who gave me a look.
“Higgens, you are possibly the only person I’ve ever met who would find alien life that looks more like a spikey pincushion than an actual living thing and immediately care for it instead of informing the rest of the world that you just found proof of new life.”
“What? Come on, you guys wouldn’t have done the same?”
“I definitely would not have,” Bahn answered quickly. “My first instinct would have been to contain it, study it, and present it to the scientific community.”
“You know that ‘it’ you’re talking about is Mimi, right? Your friend?”
“But she wasn’t any of our friends then. And while I definitely would have tested for sentience, to me, science would have come first.” Bahn’s face was serious but not unkind as he continued. “You’re the only person on the ship that she could have met and had her story come out as it did. You’re one in a million, just like her.”
“I think we’re getting a little sidetracked here,” Gonzales said, coming up from behind us and clapping me on the back. I was grateful for the reprieve. I didn’t like thinking of myself as some reckless hero. I was just a janitor, after all.
…a janitor that made friends with aliens, hopped to the opposite side of the universe, planned mutinies, and now wanted to start a full-on rebellion. Oh, and was developing a knack for engineering grunt work.
“The point is,” the weapons engineer continued, “Higgens won’t let us leave with your people enslaved, so instead of hemming and hawing about what we’re going to do and how great our friend is, why don’t we jump to the part where we start planning what we’re going to do.”
The coin twins exchanged looks with each other for a long moment before their gazes finally moved to me. Mimic wasn’t paying attention to any of us. She removed herself from my arms and was staring at the mini-mimic again.
“Alright,” Ciangi said finally. “We’re in.”
“I knew it,” Gonzales said, holding up her hand in a high five. However, neither of the twins returned it. “Okay, we’ll just save that for later.”
I crossed my own arms and steeled myself for what might come. “So,” I said after a deep breath. “Who has the first idea to kick off this rebellion?”
The Plan in Action
I licked my lips as I looked nervously up at the same mountain we had clambered up before. The mini-mimics were moving again, on their relentless march for more supplies. I could tell it pained Mimic to look at them, now that she knew the true scope of their enslavement, and she kept her gaze to the horizon when not looking at one of us directly.
“Is everyone clear on the plan?” I asked, my hand resting on the hermetically sealed satchel I had hanging over my torso.
“Um, yeah,” Gonzales said, raising one of her eyebrows at me. “We’ve gone over it about a dozen times with a fine-tooth comb over the past three days. Why are you just bringing this up now?”
“Be nice, he’s just nervous,” Ciangi chided.
“I can’t imagine why. It’s not like we’re planning to overthrow an alien that’s managed to survive in this world for centuries and enslave or kill off the entire population with essentially a horde of babies.”
“Whoa, relax there with the big picture stuff,” Gonzales continued. “For now, we just get to the feeding canisters and work our way from there.”
“Right.” I took a deep breath to center myself.
“Be cautious,” Mimic warned. “I think that it might suspect it is no longer alone, and our journey into its ship will not be as easy as it was previously.”
“Now that part you probably should have mentioned during the whole fine-tooth combing the plan part. What if it already has a trap waiting for us on the way up? Or right inside the gate?”