“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.
4
Friends in Unusual Places
I spent hours scouring the ship for any sign of Mimic. The hardest part was pretending that I was cleaning the entire time so I wouldn’t arouse any suspicion. I was sure at any moment the alarms would sound and the ship would be on high alert.
When I finally returned to my room, close to ten hours later, I was exhausted both physically and emotionally. I was sure that I had doomed the entire crew to their untimely deaths, and I was composing my confession over and over in my head. I could only hope that they would have mercy on me because I was just a stupid janitor when I was court-martialed. Could a civilian be court-martialed? I wasn’t really sure.
I slid my ID to open my door, only to have something massive and black rush at me. Once more I yelped and jumped backward before my brain was able to recognize my missing companion.
“Mimic!” I cried, recovering enough to shove it back into my room and slam the door behind us. “Do you know how long I’ve been searching for you?”
It trilled and shook what I thought might be its backside at me. If I didn’t know better, I would think that it was wagging its tail at me. Except for that part where it didn’t have a tail. It trilled at me again then jumped up and down several times before nudging at my thighs. It was insane how much bigger it was now that it had eaten again, which made me wonder what else it would need to chow down on and exactly how big it was going to get.
I collapsed on my bed, letting out a long sigh. What was I going to do?
Mimic seemed to pick up on my frustration and jumped onto my bed next to me. It weighed quite a bit more than last time, causing me to bounce up several inches. I flailed a bit, and I felt a spike slice across my hand.
“Ow!” I hissed, pulling my hand to me. I saw there was a slight, almost papercut-like slice on the back of my hand. “Whoops.” I remarked, wiping it on my jumpsuit.
Mimic let out a panicked warble and froze, multiple spikes shooting out from its surface.
“Whoa, calm down there fella,” I urged before laughing slightly. “I’m fine. I promise.” For being a faceless, featureless, multi-angled creature, it sure was cute.
I settled myself and Mimic scooted onto my lap, almost purring. The sound relaxed me and I soon found my eyelids growing heavy. It was so funny that after all the stress throughout the day, and utter certainty that I had just ruined my life, it melted away in the presence of my new friend. I guess that’s what I had been missing for so long.