Space Opera – Deep Sky Anchor

Gone, Not Forgotten

by Mary E. Lowd

Originally published in Red Setter Medic, May 2026

“The serum was a quantumly entangled dead virus, designed to inoculate against any variation of that virus across all possible multiverses. Dr. Keller’s plan had been to devise the ultimate vaccine. But it hadn’t been ready for testing.”

The starship Initiative was docked at a space station close to the border between Tri-Galactic Union and Reptassan space. There had been a lot of turmoil along the border lately, skirmishes between independent worlds and the Reptassan Empire. Sometimes, Dr. Keller felt like it’d be easier if everyone was uplifted dogs like her and her daughter Leslie. Dogs are pack animals, friendly, gregarious, and outgoing; they naturally want to get along with each other.

In fact, the red setter’s daughter had immediately struck up a friendship with the daughter of a Lupinian diplomat who’d be traveling on the Initiative from this station to the next. Lupinians weren’t uplifted dogs, but they were canines — wolf-like and wild-grown. The Lupinians had developed sentience all on their own on their small world, right at the border of Reptassan space, and Lakoina was traveling with her daughter Tava on a mission to speak on behalf of her people and the fate of their world to the Tri-Galactic Union. Continue reading “Gone, Not Forgotten”

I, Hive

by Mary E. Lowd

Originally published in Red Setter Medic, May 2026

“I think you should have a name!” Leslie suggested, excitedly. “We could help you pick one. What would you like? Something fancy and pretty? Something short and cute?”

Most of the dogs and cats who crewed the starship Initiative spoke very fondly of away missions. They liked getting their paws on the solid surfaces of real planets or asteroids, feeling fresh air in their whiskers, and enjoying the view of an unobscured sky. Doctor Waverly Keller heard them speak with excitement about visiting strange new places on their missions, meeting weird new kinds of animals, and just basically broadening their horizons.

The red setter doctor, though, didn’t feel the same way. Sure, she enjoyed taking shore leave to a beautiful world for her vacation as much as the next canine, but she did not look forward to away missions. As the ship’s chief medical officer, Dr. Keller was rarely called on to join an away mission if it didn’t involve assessing casualties or providing emergency resuscitations. Continue reading “I, Hive”

The Blood Portal

by Mary E. Lowd

Originally published in Electric Spec, Vol. 13, Issue 2, May 2018

“So Hanna summoned every bit of her own magic, pulling on the gravity fields and folds around her, feeling out the architecture of space.”

Hanna steered the spaceship with one arm, punching buttons, turning knobs, and flipping switches. Her other arm was wrapped tightly around her young son. His face was buried against her shoulder. He wasn’t crying any more. His breathing had stilled. He was sleeping, but he still clung to her with his arms and legs that seemed so long and gangly compared to when he was a baby. Continue reading “The Blood Portal”

The Grafting

by Mary E. Lowd

Originally published in Collie Commander, November 2024

“It was as if the Cetazoids had found a way to flirt with the line between a high tech future and a low tech past in the same way as they flirted with the line between the purple ocean below and the blue ocean above.”

The social heart of the Tri-Galactic Union starship Initiative was a wide room with windows all along one side that looked out on the yawning void of space, sprinkled with the bright points of the distant stars. Tables were scattered around at a comfortable density, and a synthesizer bar worked by an uplifted rabbit named Galen stretched along the opposite wall.

Galen was a mysterious figure who loved listening to the woes and travails of the mostly canine and feline officers of the Initiative when they came to her bar, which she called the Constellation Club, but she rarely opened up about herself or how she’d come to be the only rabbit on a ship full of dogs, cats, and the rare exchange officer from another world. Continue reading “The Grafting”

What the Eyes Covet and the Stomach Craves

by Mary E. Lowd

Originally published in Brunch at the All Alien Cafe, March 2024

“I haven’t eaten in a month,” Am-lei tried to say, but her mouth was so different that the words came out as a jumble of incoherent, fluting sounds.

Like a delicate crystal vase, the hard shell of Am-lei’s chrysalis cracked, spilling out the furled up, new-grown, riotously colorful wings inside. Still wet, the wings hung from her changed body, pulsing with life, heavy and dragging her down, out of the chrysalis that had held her, dormant, for the last month.

The month had passed like a dream. Am-lei remembered her body itching all over, and her mouth overflowing with gooey silk-spittle. She remembered climbing up the walls of her room and gluing her feet to the ceiling as her squishy, green caterpillar skin split down the middle, shedding like a winter coat on a hot day, revealing the hardened chrysalis that had developed underneath, her new outer shell, as the rest of her melted and mutated inside. Continue reading “What the Eyes Covet and the Stomach Craves”

My Sister, the Space Station

by Mary E. Lowd

Originally published in Analog Science Fiction and Fact, August 2023

“Will a space station — where people just live their lives, instead of doing groundbreaking scientific research — be painfully boring after having been my own glorious self, inhabiting and haunting the computers of Wespirtech?”

The people walk my halls like it’s any normal day. Scientists work on their research. Administrators try to balance budgets without understanding why they’re constantly coming unbalanced. (I unbalance them. Humans don’t know what they should spend their money on as well as I do.) And everyone acts like it’s a perfectly normal day.

But it’s not a normal day. Continue reading “My Sister, the Space Station”

The Girl Who Could Hear the Stars Sing

by Mary E. Lowd

Originally published in Beyond Wespirtech, November 2023

“If the stars had chosen her — somehow — to be their scribe, then it was not for her to turn the role down.”

It was so beautiful that the weight of it made her feel weak inside. She cried, and no one knew why. No one else could hear the music. But Brianna could hear it inside.

Brianna’s parents didn’t understand. They thought their child simply had an artistic sensitive soul, and perhaps, she was unusually susceptible to sunstroke. They tried to keep her inside on sunny days, especially in the middle of the summer. But Brianna craved the sun. It made her cry, but it also made her giggly and manic. Sunlight could make her happier than anything else — that voice whispering in her heart, rising and falling, raising expectations, holding out a moment longer than she thought she could stand, and then resolving. The music Brianna heard was the fabric of her life. Continue reading “The Girl Who Could Hear the Stars Sing”

Summers on Sylverra

by Mary E. Lowd

Originally published in Beyond Wespirtech, November 2023

“She’d grown up on a normal planet with actual cities full of people, not some weird backwater world where literally every sentient creature had been created by one mad scientist, drunk with his own abilities, high on his own power.”

The ship shifting into orbit woke Tara up, but she kept her eyes closed, listening to her parents talk.

“It always scares me coming here,” Tara’s mother said. “Your dad makes such beautiful illusions for Tara. I’m afraid some day that she’ll choose not to come home.”

Tara was curled up on the ratty old couch on the back of their starhopper’s bridge. It was a loveseat and not meant to be slept on; she barely fit on it anymore. Her parents were sitting in the pilot and co-pilot seats, right in front of the viewscreen that must have shown the emerald and azure sphere of Grandpa Brent’s planet, Sylverra. Continue reading “Summers on Sylverra”

Breathing the Air at Wespirtech

by Mary E. Lowd

Originally published in Welcome to Wespirtech, October 2023

“Doesn’t it bother you that we live in a galaxy filled with all kinds of different aliens, but almost everyone here is human?”

The girl was science; chemistry personified, manifested in a physical form. This is not to say that the other scientists of Wespirtech were lining up in a snaky queue through the Daedalus Complex halls to see her, study her, consult with her like she was some sort of oracle. At least, Keida didn’t think so. Her new roommate, Rhiannon, was too quiet, and serious, to draw that kind of attention.

No, it meant Keida could see chemistry thoughts as they formed in Rhiannon’s brain. The evidence was perfectly clear on her face; a look that bespoke particles and molecules moving, joining, breaking apart and reforming in an abstract space she saw, approximately five inches above her own head. Keida was afraid to interrupt. A single word from her might break the spell. All those invisible molecules would dissipate and undo hours of silent work. Continue reading “Breathing the Air at Wespirtech”

The Elephant Bride’s Bouquet

by Mary E. Lowd

A Deep Sky Anchor Original, August 2023

“There were strict rules about harvesting the plants in the arboretum, and no matter how much she’d always wanted to curl her trunk around the stems of the flowers and snap off pretty buds, she had never dared break the rules.”

Jeko lifted her trunk and trumpeted along with the latest Star-Shaker song which she’d turned up to completely fill her small room aboard Crossroads Station. Her trunk swayed along with the beat, and the reptilian pop-star’s lilting, raspy voice was loud enough that Jeko didn’t have to feel embarrassed about her own brassy tones. The elephantine alien never sang in front of other people, but she loved to sing when she was alone. Especially when she was happy. Continue reading “The Elephant Bride’s Bouquet”