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.”