by Mary E. Lowd
An excerpt from Voyage of the Wanderlust. If you’d prefer, you can start with Chapter 1, return to the previous chapter, or skip ahead.
Only a few days ago, Janessa Carroway had despaired of ever reaching the rank of captain. Her canine superior officer had been holding her back, and there’d been nothing she could do about it. She’d thought she would never have her own ship or crew, and the weight of her desire for that leadership role had felt like it would crush her. She had craved captaincy like a newborn kitten craves milk.
Now she was in the captain’s quarters of her own vessel, and the size of her crew had just doubled. She had no admirals nearby enough to look over her shoulder and order her to lead her crew differently. She had more power and freedom than she’d even imagined. And it had come at such a high cost.
Yet deep in her feline heart, she couldn’t help recognizing: this was exactly what she’d always wanted.
The freedom was dizzying.
“How shall we begin?” Captain Carroway asked her new first officer. This squirrel was almost a stranger to her, but they needed to find a way to lead together. “We need to break the news of our… situation to the crew.”
“The crew,” Commander Chestnut repeated wonderingly. “How quickly you’ve come to refer to a ragtag group of enemies under one banner.”
Captain Carroway shrugged. “I’m a union officer. We’re trained to handle adversity with grace and flexibility.”
“Adversity like suicide missions?” the golden-mantled squirrel asked drily, tilting his head ever so slightly. “I don’t understand how you still have such loyalty to a bloated, overgrown institution that was ready to throw you away.”
“Every institution has problems,” Captain Carroway snapped. “But the Tri-Galactic Union isn’t just an institution. It’s a philosophy of life and a set of principles. Ideals to aspire toward. Sure, individual officers — or sometimes entire segments of the union — may fail to live up to those principles, but the point isn’t always to succeed. Sometimes, it’s merely to strive, to always keep trying. To reach for the stars and keep reaching, even when you fall.”
The golden-mantled squirrel who Captain Carroway had just recruited to step in above her best friend as her new first officer stared at her intensely, like he was measuring her up. “We should address the crew together,” he said, surprising her. “You’re offering temporary Tri-Galactic Union ranks to my crew, right? And presumably, you’ll back them if they apply to the union when we get home. So essentially, we’re functioning as a Tri-Galactic Union ship. We should act like one.”
Captain Carroway wasn’t sure exactly what it was about her words that had won Commander Chestnut over. He had seemed so thoroughly against the Tri-Galactic Union. But she wasn’t going to fight his change of heart. Better to run with it, for now, and ask questions later, when the crew was more under control. “You should wear a union uniform,” Captain Carroway meowed. “I can synthesize one for you. We’ll just need to take a few measurements to make sure it will fit right.”
Commander Chestnut nodded, jangling his earrings with the bobbing of his head. Then in spite of his obvious weariness, he flashed a genuine smile the captain’s way and almost laughed. “I never in a million years would have guessed I’d end today wearing a Tri-Galactic Union uniform.”
Captain Carroway smirked, caught by the infectious nature of his levity. Also, she realized that she might be on the edge of cracking into hysterical hilarity. Exhaustion and extreme pressure can do that to a cat. Kind of like a black hole, except really, not at all. But when you’re as tired as Captain Carroway felt in that moment, suddenly everything is like everything else, and the whole universe is composed of bad metaphors.
“That’s the most unexpected thing about today?” Captain Carroway asked as she unstrapped the standard issue uni-meter at her hip and used it to run a quick scan of the golden-mantled squirrel in front of her.
“No,” Commander Chestnut said. “But it’s the funniest. The other ones weren’t funny.”
Perversely, Captain Carroway found herself wishing that she’d needed to take measurements of her first officer in the old-fashioned way with a measuring tape held up against his tiny body, pressed against his narrow chest first vertically and then wrapped all the way around him like a hug. It was a completely inappropriate thought, but maybe not more inappropriate than comparing her own exhaustion to the crushing weight of a black hole that she’d created and then watched kill two of Commander Chestnut’s officers.
Maybe it was asking too much for her thoughts to stay appropriate on a wholly unaccountable day like today. Maybe acting appropriately was good enough, and she could worry about getting her mind in order later.
The Norwegian Forest cat transmitted her uni-meter’s readings to the synthesizer in the corner of her quarters and ordered it to generate a standard Tri-Galactic Union uniform, complete with a commander’s rank pin for the collar. The carefully folded fabric garment appeared in the synthesizer with a shimmer of quantum light. She grabbed it with her paws and then held it out to the golden-mantled squirrel. The bundle of clothes was much smaller than one of her own uniforms would be when folded up.
Commander Chestnut grabbed the garment by its shoulders, shook it out, and held it up against himself. “What do you think?” he asked, staring down at it critically. “It’s not really my color.”
The golden-mantled squirrel’s current clothes were a muted combination of pale grays and tans that matched his soft golden fur with the pale accents around his eyes and the edges of his ears very well. The Tri-Galactic Union uniform was black with navy blue accents, much brighter and bolder than what he was wearing now. The flatness of the colors on the Tri-Galactic Union uniform made the organic shades of gold, copper, red, and tan in his fur look much sunnier and more nuanced, almost glowing like the flames of a flickering campfire.
“I don’t know,” Captain Carroway meowed. “I think it’ll look rather striking on you. I’ll step out and give you a minute to get changed. While you do, I’ll speak to my officers on the bridge about getting your officers–” Carroway frowned and corrected herself. “–the rest of our officers released from the barracks, so we can address everyone together.”
Captain Carroway started to turn away, toward the door to her quarters, but Commander Chestnut cleared his throat in a way that called her back to attention. A clever little trick. He hadn’t actually told her that something was wrong with her plan, but he’d already planted seeds of doubt between her ears with a simple cough.
“Do you have a problem with that plan?” Captain Carroway asked, looking down at the much shorter squirrel.
“We said that we would address the crew together. If you speak to the bridge officers first, then the rest of the crew will be playing catch-up from the get-go. Is that really what you want?”
Captain Carroway was impressed by how deftly the squirrel referred to both groups of officers, making them truly sound like one crew, if only through the trick of his words. More than anything that was why she decided to concede his point.
“Very well,” Captain Carroway said. She might have been about to say more, but the golden-mantled squirrel pulled his tan and gray shirt off revealing the striking black and white stripes that ran down his sides. He threw the discarded garment on the couch behind him, and began working his arms into the sleeves of his new uniform.
“Just turn around,” Commander Chestnut said, “and I can get these pants on.”
Captain Carroway felt the insides of her ears blushing, which didn’t seem very captain-like to her. But she turned around, letting her first officer order her around for at least this one moment. Only moments later, the golden-mantled squirrel stepped up beside her, looking absolutely official in his new uniform, as if he’d been a Tri-Galactic Union officer all along. Suddenly, the blushing inside Captain Carroway’s ears grew even brighter. She might have a soft spot for pretty little squirrel men, but she had even more of a soft spot for pretty little squirrel men in Tri-Galactic Union uniforms. And even if she knew this uniform was partly a facade, it was a damn good looking facade.
“Is something wrong?” Commander Chestnut asked, brushing his delicate paws down the front of his new uniform.
“No, you look fine,” Captain Carroway meowed, trying to curb the purr in the back of her throat.
“Alright, then,” Commander Chestnut said. “Shall we go talk to the crew? Or is there anything else we need to get straight first?”
A fair question. And almost certainly, the true answer was that they had a lot they needed to figure out first. But also, they had six crew members waiting to hear from them, and every minute that passed was one minute more of the Anti-Ra officers stewing in their imprisonment, growing resentment toward the union officers they were going to need to work with and become a part of. Meanwhile, Lt. Cmdr. Vossie was suffering, and Ensign Lee couldn’t run this entire ship on his own — no matter how competent the young Papillon was — while Mr. Melbourne tended to the injured Morphican.
“I think we’ll have to figure it out as we go,” Captain Carroway meowed.
“Bold,” Commander Chestnut chittered. “How do you know I won’t fight you at every turn, undermining your authority in front of our crew?”
Captain Carroway smiled as only a cat can, knowing and mysterious, superior and condescending, self-satisfied and always craving more. “You called them ‘our crew‘ just now, and you agreed to this harebrained scheme of blending our crews together in the first place. Somehow, we’re functioning on the same wavelength, and I’m just going to have trust in that.”
“I like you, Captain Carroway,” the squirrel chittered.
Captain Carroway smiled, feeling the warmth in her ears spread. “It’s going to be a long journey, Commander Chestnut. I don’t think I can handle keeping up that level of formality all the time. So, I think, maybe, when we’re alone, you can just call me Jan. It’s short for Janessa.”
“Okay, Jan, let’s go get our crew in order — we’ll need to start by updating them on our plan and get Risqua, Werik, and Diaz in uniforms like me.” His matter-of-fact voice turned grim as he added, “Then I want to hold memorial services for Maple and Wilder.”
Captain Carroway nodded. It made sense that the Anti-Ra officers would need to start by mourning their lost compatriots. She wished she could sweep those losses aside like they’d never happened, because they were her fault and reflected poorly on her. But trying to brush aside the Anti-Ras’ grief would be even worse. She was going to have to live with these people for months or longer. She would need to swallow her discomfort and let their feelings on this matter take center stage.
Even so, a spark of rage flared up in the Norwegian Forest cat that the Anti-Ra had forced her into such an uncomfortable position. If they hadn’t been executing terrorist acts against the Reptassan colonies on Lupinia, she wouldn’t have been sent to destroy them. She wouldn’t have these deaths on her conscience.
And she wouldn’t be captaining a ship in the middle of unexplored space with a handsome squirrel at her side.
The universe is a mixed up place.
Captain Carroway stepped right up to the door out of her quarters, but then she paused before opening it. “Tell me those names again,” Captain Carroway meowed. “I want to know all my officers by name. I think it will help smooth this transition if they see that I’m invested in including them.” And ideally, by being included in a Tri-Galactic Union crew over the coming months, they would start to see the error of their ways before. They would see that life could be better when aspiring to Tri-Galactic Union ideals instead of resorting to chaotic warfare. Captain Carroway would convert them from terrorists to good citizens.
“Risqua is–” Commander Chestnut stopped himself, corrected his word choice, and continued. “Risqua was my first officer on The Last Chance. She’s a half-Avioran, half-Reptassan refugee who wasn’t wanted on either Avia or Reptiss, so she moved to Lupinia. T’lia Diaz was The Last Chance’s engineer. She’s absolutely brilliant, and she already was a Tri-Galactic Union officer. However, she left the union when her homeworld was abandoned by them. See, she’s half-uplifted Xolo from Earth, but her other heritage is Lupinian. Then there’s Werik — he’s from a splinter colony of Morphicans on Lupinia who reject computer implants and want to live naturally.”
“What about the officers who died?” Captain Carroway asked, trying to keep a mental list of the living officers in her head, rehearsing their names and backgrounds so she wouldn’t forget.
Commander Chestnut looked surprised and touched that Captain Carroway had thought to ask after the crew members he’d lost that morning. “Maple was another uplifted squirrel, an Arborealist — like me. She and Risqua were very close. And Wilder was Lupinian. He’d grown up with Diaz before she left Lupinia to join the Tri-Galactic Union, and when she left the union, he was the one who recruited her onto The Last Chance.”
The golden-mantled squirrel’s voice grew very quiet and solemn as he spoke about the connections his deceased officers had shared with his living ones. It made Captain Carroway wonder about what exactly his connections had been to them. He’d lost a lot today. His friends, his ship, his command. And depending on what had happened with the baby black hole after it had torn up space-time and blipped them both here, he may have lost his entire rebel fleet.
Of course, since The Last Chance had been the heart of that baby black hole — the original seed that started it — there was also a good chance that the space-time blip had stopped the black hole from ever beginning when it unexploded The Last Chance. Which would mean the Anti-Ra fleet was safe, and Captain Carroway had failed at her mission.
Captain Carroway wondered exactly how she’d be welcomed home — weeks, months, or years from now — if the Anti-Ra fleet had survived her attack and then she brought back a crew filled with converted Anti-Ra officers who’d been halfway promised Tri-Galactic Union commissions. Probably not well. But then, she hadn’t been faring all that well in the union before today anyway.
It was better to worry about performing this windfall of a mission well than to worry about what would happen after it.
In return for Commander Chestnut’s rundown on his Anti-Ra officers, Captain Carroway gave him a quick rundown on her three officers. He looked surprised when the list was so short — only three officers, one of whom was injured and another who was a paroled criminal. She’d said that she didn’t have enough officers to properly crew The Wanderlust, but he’d still probably been expecting twice or three times as many. At least. The Wanderlust was a bigger ship than The Last Chance. And honestly, it had been downright irresponsible to try crewing her with only four people. Except for the part where each extra person would have meant one more life lost…
Maybe Captain Carroway imagined it, but she thought she saw a note of respect in Commander Chestnut’s eyes as it sank in for the squirrel that her crew was so ridiculously small because she’d been trying to save lives. It was probably just what she wanted to see and not a real thing. But sometimes, it’s good enough to imagine something, and it’s better not to work too hard at seeing the truth about how other people see you.
Does it matter how other people see you? She was the captain. She needed to act like the captain. And her crew — including Commander Chestnut — would need to follow her lead, whether they liked her or not, so long as she did a good job of leading them. Leadership isn’t about being liked. It’s about doing what’s right.
But…
Earlier today she’d tried to create a black hole.
Had that been right?
Captain Carroway’s ears flattened, and she had to work to stand them back up. When she got the whole crew together, perhaps their first order of business should be a meal. A big, celebratory meal where the Anti-Ra officers could reminisce about the friends they’d lost, and everyone could try to get to know each other, so they’d hopefully get started on the right paw for the long voyage ahead of them.
Continue on to Chapter 11…