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.
The Anti-Ra officers exchanged troubled, confused glances like they weren’t sure how to react to their new captain asking for their input. Ensign Melbourne adjusted one of his hearing aides while chewing on his lower lip with one of his fangs, seemingly deep in thought, very interested in impressing this captain who was finally giving him a chance to prove himself. But it was Lt. Lee — who looked out of place and discombobulated, like he felt it was wrong for a whole throng of off-duty officers to be hanging out at the back of a starship’s bridge unasked — who spoke first.
The Papillon opened his narrow muzzle hesitantly a few times before biting off actual words and saying them. “We should try talking to the Zakonraptors,” Lt. Lee woofed, his butterfly-like ears flagging as all the eyes on the bridge turned toward him. But with every word he spoke, Lt. Lee gained more confidence, bolstered by how encouragingly his captain was looking at him. “I mean, maybe the Zakonraptors can be reasoned with… We don’t know why they’re attacking the, uh, Waykeeper, or what it is they want. If the Ollallans really are such a naturalistic people, do they even have the necessary communications technology to try communicating with the Zakonraptors?”
The Papillon’s suggestion sounded reasonable and well-thought out to everyone on The Wanderlust, if perhaps overly peaceable to some of the fiercer Anti-Ra officers. It sounded like utter nonsense, though, to the alien hedgehog on their viewscreen.
“You can’t reason with Zakonraptors!” Korvax burbled in the highest pitch of his voice yet. “Why do you think I’ve been living on the back of this turtle with the Ollallans in the first place? I mean, obviously, the Ollallans are lovely people, but I would never have even come here if the Zakonraptors hadn’t, oh, I don’t know, destroyed my whole homeworld!”
The hedgehog alien pulled a scrap of colorful fabric from where it had been impaled on the sharp tip of one of his quills and used it to dab tears away from the corners of his bright, beady eyes. Resolutely pulling himself back together, Korvax sniffled, “Besides, if the Zakonraptors could be dealt with by talking to them, I’d have talked to them on the Ollallans behalf. You don’t think I’d do that for them? Then you don’t know me! I obviously have the necessary technology, as you can see for yourself.” The hedgehog did a shuffling little dance, spreading his short arms wide as if to show off the fanciness of the fact that he was currently talking to the crew of The Wanderlust over those very pieces of communications technology. He was clearly proud of his little ship, which sensors suggested was more of a short-range shuttlecraft than a full-fledged spaceship.
Captain Carroway’s ears flattened in irritation at the hedgehog’s irrelevant interruptions. “We’re brainstorming ideas, Mr. Korvax,” the Norwegian Forest cat hissed. “If you have suggestions, I’m happy to hear them, but it does no good for you to take offense when one of my officers puts forward an idea, whether you like the idea or not.”
On the viewscreen, Korvax sputtered but didn’t actually say anything. He was a brave little hedgehog alien, standing up for an entire world that was under attack, but he wasn’t used to facing someone quite as fearsome as Captain Carroway when she was annoyed.
“Thank you for your suggestion, Lt. Lee,” Captain Carroway continued. “I’ll keep it under advisement, but I think we need more ideas…” Her green eyes scanned over the rest of the officers in her crew, looking for someone with an idea that they weren’t quite brave enough to put forward. She saw that Ensign Risqua was clacking her beak in a pensive way, and so she stared at the reptile-bird, narrowing her eyes in an inquisitive way.
Ensign Risqua glanced around, uncertain of herself, but then she squawked, “When I was manning the ops station earlier, I noticed that The Wanderlust is still armed with a vacuum bomb…” She shrugged her wing-like arms. “Perhaps, we could use that? They’re very powerful; it might even the field a little bit.”
“Your ship was armed with multiple vacuum bombs?” Commander Chestnut chirruped in horror. The little golden-mantled squirrel was usually so even-keeled, but right now, his brushy reed of a tail was flipping about wildly and his eyes were burning. He looked like if he were a sailing ship, his mast would crack in half, his sails would float away into the sky, and his prow would flip over. “What in the name of root-rot and bark beetles is wrong with the Tri-Galactic Union?”
Before Captain Carroway could say anything in defense of her beloved Tri-Galactic Union, Lt. Cmdr. Vossie spoke up.
“No, we only had one,” the Morphican corrected, always precise, always accurate, but still strangely dispassionate, even without a computer implant evening out his hormones. “We had exactly the number we needed for the mission we’d been sent on. So, if we still have one… then logically, it must be the same vacuum bomb. It must have… unexploded… and returned to us during the time-blip.”
Commander Chestnut still looked aghast. It couldn’t have helped that he was now thinking about the fact that the vacuum bomb currently stowed away aboard The Wanderlust had already killed him once and killed two of his crew members permanently.
“A… time-blip?” Korvax asked from the viewscreen, muzzle crinkled in confusion. The hedgehog alien was clearly having trouble keeping up with everything going on aboard The Wanderlust’s bridge. He simply didn’t have the background from the last few days necessary for keeping up. And no one showed any inclination towards trying to catch him up, least of all Captain Carroway whose green eyes were shining defiantly.
“We’re unlikely to experience another time-blip,” Captain Carroway meowed, chastising the golden-mantled squirrel for his interruption, “so time is something of a limited resource right now.” The Norwegian Forest cat’s tail whipped impatiently behind her as she wondered how much of the Waykeeper’s forests had burned down already during this conversation. But it couldn’t be helped. This was the way ideas were come up with. And as much as the time pressure was pushing down on her, Captain Carroway couldn’t help feeling invigorated and deeply alive.
The Norwegian Forest cat had never been in the center of a conversation like this one before, where ideas were flying, and everyone was working together towards a solution… and she’d get to make the final call.
“So, what can we do with one vacuum bomb?” Captain Carroway asked her crew.
“Nothing,” Ensign Diaz snapped from the pilot’s seat, where she was still stationed. The canine had twisted around in her seat to look at the captain as she spoke, delivering each word with a withering level of scorn. “Vacuum bombs are powerful — too powerful, much too powerful for this purpose — but even if using a vacuum bomb this close to an inhabited… uh… turtle… weren’t a ridiculously dangerous suggestion, we have no way of grouping the six Zakonraptor ships close enough together — and also far enough away from the turtle — to take the whole group of them out with one vacuum bomb.”
Ensign Melbourne stepped forward from the throng of officers at the back of the bridge. The white tomcat’s tail was swishing, and his ears were tall. “I have two ideas,” Ensign Melbourne meowed. “But neither of them are thought through very well.”
Captain Carroway sighed exasperatedly between her fangs and rolled her eyes, but she gestured with a paw for the other cat to continue on anyway.
“One,” Ensign Melbourne counted, raising a delicately extended claw, “what if we could cause another time blip? And two–” He extended a second perfectly manicured claw. “–maybe we could use the hyperspatial slipstream around the turtle’s shell to dissipate the vacuum bomb’s power somehow, protecting the turtle and also widening the bomb’s range so it can take out more Zakonraptor ship’s at once?”
Apparently, the white tomcat was better at being creative and thinking outside the box than at developing well-conceived plans. But then, that’s all part of brainstorming.
At the helm, Ensign Diaz suddenly got excited and started riffing off of the white tomcat’s second suggestion — the first one had been gibberish, as none of The Wanderlust’s officers knew how the time-blip had been caused in the first place, so they certainly wouldn’t know how to recreate it. Nor was it clear that a time-blip would be at all helpful here.
“That’s a really interesting idea, about using the hyperspatial slipstream–” The canine rattled off a lot of detailed parameters about exactly how it would need to be done, but then, looking downcast, bat-like ears flagging, she concluded, “Unfortunately, while I think it’s possible, it would still be very dangerous, and it would still require all of the Zakonraptor vessels to be in the same layer of the slipstream at the time when the vacuum bomb went off. So, we’d still need a way to group them all together somehow, just not quite as tightly together.”
Captain Carroway was impressed. Ensign Diaz really did seem to be brilliant, just like Commander Chestnut had said she was. The Norwegian Forest cat hadn’t really doubted him; she’d just wanted to see the brilliance for herself. And to her delight, here it was. Now if it could just be harnessed into finding an actual solution…
Trying to push Ensign Diaz into making that final leap to a workable plan, Captain Carroway meowed, “And how could we do that, Ensign Diaz? What could we do to entice the Zakonraptors into grouping their ships together in a tight formation?”
The Xolo-Lupinian narrowed her eyes, deep in thought, but she didn’t say anything.
“A decoy?” Korvax squeaked from the viewscreen. “I could fly my ship out where they could see me…”
“No, no, no,” Captain Carroway objected. “We’re not putting you into danger like that! There has to be a better idea,” the Norwegian Forest cat snapped, looking her crew over challengingly, daring them to fail to give her a better suggestion.
Commander Chestnut hazarded, “We could use The Last Chance… put it on autopilot…”
“Or fling it forward using our tractor beams,” Ensign Werik suggested, finally participating and looking eager about his idea.
By now, everyone had participated in the discussion — union and Anti-Ra alike — except for Ensign Mike. The fungal officer was standing among the others at the back of the bridge like a useless lump. Captain Carroway wasn’t sure if they really didn’t have any ideas to suggest, or if they just couldn’t keep up with a conversation this complicated and fast-paced, having only been a living being for about a day now.
And yet, looking at Ensign Mike gave Captain Carroway an idea of her own. She was about to put voice to the idea when Ensign Diaz beat her to it:
“A hologram,” the canine announced, proudly, clearly pleased with herself, bat-like ears standing tall again. “We don’t want to waste an entire ship when we could simply cast a hologram. You know, like the moon that Mike cast on the ceiling of the multi-purpose room during the memorial for…” Her voice broke before she could say the name of her childhood friend who’d only been gone for a day. Ensign Diaz had been friends with Wilder her whole life, and now he was gone. Forever. And her life would never be quite the same without him. They’d never howl together again, voices rising toward the full moon in harmony. “Could we do that?” Ensign Diaz asked, directing her question toward the fungal officer, rallying herself as well as she could, refusing to let memories of Wilder drag her down. His memory should be a buoy in her life, not an anchor.
All eyes on the bridge turned toward Ensign Mike, and the fungal officer’s pinky-gray flesh blushed crimson along the underside of their mushroom cap where their face was. Their row of slit eyes constricted, narrowing to mere lines, and their fleshy mouth opened and closed silently several times before they managed to summon a quiet, mushy voice: “I don’t know,” Ensign Mike murmured like whispering autumn leaves. “I can design a hologram, but the ship’s lumo-projectors aren’t configured to cast holographic projections outside. They’d need to be reconfigured… mounted on the hull… I… I… don’t know how to do any of that.”
The crimson blush on the underside of Ensign Mike’s mushroom cap deepened and spread until the fungal officer turned away and ran down the central corridor of The Wanderlust, fleshy feet making plopping, pattering sounds as they shuffled away.
Captain Carroway frowned, whiskers turning down. She wasn’t sure what to do with Ensign Mike. They didn’t seem to perform well under pressure. To be fair, they were composed of a computer implant designed to help a Morphican avoid feeling pressure in the first place and mycelial flesh that had been part of a spaceship computer system that didn’t have any emotions of its own at all. At least, as far as Captain Carroway knew. The Norwegian Forest cat suddenly found herself troubled by the idea of The Wanderlust having feelings of its own… She didn’t want to deal with a spaceship that had feelings about how it was used. It was bad enough how many feelings were sloshing around inside The Wanderlust just from all the members of the crew.
Maybe the mainstream Morphicans had the right of it — better to dampen down emotions, freeing yourself to focus on ideas. Captain Carroway shook off her annoyance at Ensign Mike’s poor performance under pressure and returned her focus to the matter at paw. She could deal with the fungal officer later.
Turning toward Ensign Diaz, the Norwegian Forest cat meowed, “Do you think you could install lumo-projectors on the hull, so we could cast external holograms?”
The Xolo-Lupinian was an engineer, and diversionary holograms had been her idea. It made sense to put her in charge of the project.
The canine officer looked taken aback, surprised that her new captain would place such an important project — one that could potentially damage their ship — into the paws of an officer that had been her enemy yesterday. “I.. don’t know. I’m not very familiar with this ship’s systems yet.”
Captain Carroway extended a paw toward the eager, young Papillon who was still standing at the back of the bridge and said, “Lt. Lee is the closest thing we have to an expert on the workings of this ship, so have him help you. I’ll talk to Ensign Mike and get them to work on designing the holograms you’ll use when the lumo-projectors are ready.”
Lt. Cmdr. Vossie stood up suddenly. Then sat again. Then stood up.
“Is there something wrong, Lt. Cmdr. Vossie?” Captain Carroway meowed, her ears skewing.
The Morphican stood up again. “I would like to help you with talking to Ensign Mike.”
Captain Carroway nodded and gestured for Lt. Cmdr. Vossie to follow her. To the rest of the bridge, she announced, “Commander Chestnut, you have the bridge; Ensign Melbourne to the helm; Ensign Risqua and Ensign Werik, please research the hyperspatial slipstream and gather data that might help widen our options here.” Then glancing back at the hedgehog on the viewscreen, she added as an afterthought, “Hold tight, Korvax. We’ll let you know when we’re ready to move forward and what role we need you to play. In the meantime, I’d like you to work with my ship’s pilot–” Captain Carroway gestured at the white tomcat, already taking his place at the helm. “–to transfer any files your ship’s computers have about Zakonraptors over to us.”
Before turning to leave, Captain Carroway placed a paw on Ensign Melbourne’s shoulder and said quietly, “Please see if you can get our computer prepared to translate the Zakonraptors’ language by using whatever files you can get from Korvax.”
The alien hedgehog made burbling noises, like he had a whole lot of things he wanted to say, more than could fit out of his pointy snout at once, but Captain Carroway paid them no mind. She led the way off the bridge and down the central corridor, looking for where Ensign Mike had hidden themself away.
Continue on to Chapter 20…