by Mary E. Lowd
An excerpt from Discovery of the Wanderlust. If you’d prefer to read in e-book or paperback form, learn more here. Or if you want, skip ahead to the next chapter.
A small ship armed to the teeth flew across the Tetra Galaxy, always aimed toward the Milky Way, like an arrow pointing home. The Wanderlust had been designed for a crew of twelve to eighteen, so theoretically, there was plenty of space for the eleven officers living there. But no one in the Tri-Galactic Union had ever predicted a crew like this one.
Lieutenant T’lia Diaz didn’t think much of the Tri-Galactic Union. She’d attended their academy, served on a ship — a different one, back before everything had gone wrong — and risen to the rank of lieutenant before. Then she’d quit, joined the Anti-Ra, and been labelled a terrorist. All for the crime of defending her homeworld. If she had her way, Lt. Diaz would have never worn a Tri-Galactic Union uniform again, but very little had gone her way in the last six months.
Even so, there was a time and place for rebellion, and this wasn’t it. The blended crew composed of Tri-Galactic Union officers, Anti-Ra freedom fighters, and a couple stray hitchhikers they’d picked up needed to work together to keep The Wanderlust running smoothly. They needed to work together if they ever wanted to make it back to the Milky Way. They needed to work together if they wanted to make it home.
So, every morning, Lt. T’lia Diaz pulled on a black and navy blue uniform that she didn’t want to wear over her short brown fur, and she played nice, following the rules set out by the uplifted Norwegian Forest cat who was ostensibly her captain. She tolerated the fact that the commandeering feline had clearly made a point of separating her from her fellow Anti-Ra when assigning officers to the two different barracks rooms, meaning that she had to share her semi-private space with a milquetoast uplifted Papillon, an overly gregarious white tomcat, and a downright weird caterpillar-like alien who they’d picked up off the back of a giant world turtle.
Things could have been worse. Lt. Diaz could have been sharing a barracks room with the hedgehog-like alien who saw himself as a caretaker to the caterpillar. That guy never stopped talking, and his voice couldn’t have been squeakier. He made the white tomcat seem almost tolerable in comparison.
Captain Carroway had clearly been purposely dividing Korvax the hedgehog and Lys the caterpillar when they’d been assigned to different barracks rooms too. That cat was super controlling. It was a Tri-Galactic Union thing. Everyone in the union liked their rules followed obsessively. Though, Captain Carroway seemed especially focused on it. Lt. Diaz supposed that was why the giant, fluffy cat had risen to the rank of captain, while someone more reasonable — like herself — had decided to drop right out of the fascistic organization.
Lt. Diaz found little ways to rebel though, even now. For instance, she’d taken to accidentally ripping her uniform every chance she got. You know, carelessly catching her claws on the fabric as she took it off and then begging forgiveness because — of course — a canine like her didn’t have retractable claws like a cat does. At first, Captain Carroway had gritted her fang-like teeth and allowed the Xolo-Lupinian to revert to her Anti-Ra uniform rather than keep wearing a garment with a big rip in it.
Given that they’d begun conserving supplies — limiting the use of synthesizers to essentials — after the first week or so of this unexpected voyage, it wasn’t like the captain could just have Lt. Diaz replace her uniform over and over again if she was clearly going to keep accidentally ripping it. However, the Norwegian Forest cat did synthesize a small sewing kit, look up instructions on the shipboard computer, and learn to mend the rips in Lt. Diaz’s uniform herself.
Lt. Diaz had to grant that the cat was stubborn, and she stood by her word. Once Captain Carroway insisted that everyone had to wear regulation union uniforms while on duty, she made it happen, even if it involved repeatedly mending new tears in Lt. Diaz’s uniform with her own paws. It was a particularly brilliant stroke on her part to mend the uniform herself. If Captain Carroway had forced Lt. Diaz to mend it, the Xolo-Lupinian would have found ways to mess it up or drag it out. Instead, she was forced to live with the captain of the ship sitting in the multi-purpose room, thread and needle in paw, carefully tending to her apparent carelessness over and over during her limited free time until Lt. Diaz simply couldn’t stand the guilt tripping of it all. She didn’t mind wasting the captain’s time… But she did mind doing it in front of her Anti-Ra crewmates who weren’t playing such simple mind games with the captain. It felt beneath her somehow.
When Diaz wasted the captain’s time like that, she was simply wasting the time of a goodhearted — albeit misguided — Norwegian Forest cat who’d been good enough to blend their crews rather than try to keep the Anti-Ra prisoner on this journey after their own ship was destroyed. She wasn’t fighting the union anymore. It was hard to remember that, because when they did all get back to the Tetra Galaxy, well… That would be a different story.
When they got home, Captain Carroway would be the cat who had murdered her best friend Wilder and crewmate Maple while trying to destroy the defenses of her homeworld. But for now? Lupinia was a galaxy away, and their only chances of getting home involved working together.
Working together. Lt. Diaz chanted those words in her head day after day, reminding herself that rebellion needed to wait. For now, she needed to live in this seemingly endless liminal space. It always felt like twilight or the small hours of the morning just before dawn on The Wanderlust. With such a small crew, trying to keep the ship in transit for months on end, Captain Carroway had them all on rotating shifts, so that the bridge was always manned, and at all times, about a third of the crew was in the middle of their sleep cycle.
Lt. Diaz’s days rotated in and out of synch with her Anti-Ra compatriots. So, some of her days, she got to serve with Commander Chestnut — the uplifted golden-mantled squirrel who had originally been her captain, before this hellish nightmare had begun and he’d taken a role beneath Captain Carroway. Some days, she got to serve with Ensign Werik, the rabbit-like Morphican, and others she got to see Ensign Risqua, the Reptassan-Avioran hybrid who she’d grown closest to over these last few months. She essentially never got to see all three of them at the same time because, again, Captain Carroway liked to keep the crew as fully blended as possible at all times.
Lt. Diaz’s favorite days were the ones when her free time overlapped with Ensign Risqua’s. Serving on the bridge with the reptile-bird was good too, but sharing free time was better.
Cmdr. Chestnut had cozied up to the Norwegian Forest cat captain more than Lt. Diaz liked, and Werik had begun to bond really closely with Lt. Cmdr. Vossie — another Morphican, but also, an actual Tri-Galactic Union officer who had apparently been best friends with the captain for years. Lt. Diaz could understand why Werik and Vossie had become close — the other Morphican had been from a different subculture that depended on electronic implants to help them regulate their strong emotions, and his implants had been destroyed. Or, well, sort of lost — that was a whole story unto itself. But the practical effect was that Lt. Cmdr. Vossie suddenly had to rely on his own natural skills to handle his emotions, since they were stranded out here on the far side of the universe where he couldn’t get replacements and there wasn’t anyone who could do the brain surgery necessary to implant them, even if he could get replacements.
Lt. Diaz had sympathy for Werik taking on Vossie, trying to teach him the coping mechanisms that Morphicans who didn’t rely on the implants used. It was only natural that they’d get close. But it still felt a little like a betrayal. Cozying up to the enemy and all.
Whereas, Risqua? She kept to herself, holding her feathers down flat, and focusing on a Lupinian opera she was writing in honor of Wilder. Lt. Diaz found that deeply touching. She’d known that Wilder had gotten close to Risqua before he’d talked Diaz into joining the resistance with them, but she hadn’t realized just how close they’d been. It must have been pretty close if Wilder told her the plans he had for an opera he wanted to write, and now, in his honor, she was trying to write it for him.
Since he never could. He would never write an opera, and he’d never get to hear the opera Risqua was writing for him. And it was all that damned Norwegian Forest cat’s fault.
But Risqua was writing the opera, and Diaz would listen to it for him when it was done. And then they’d get home to Lupinia, and they’d play it for his family. And no one would ever forget what a sweet, introspective, imaginative, and wonderful Lupinian Wilder had been, because there would be an opera based on his thoughts.
A lot of the crewmembers of the Wanderlust had taken up hobbies during the last few months, ways to pass the interminable hours as they flew slowly — so painfully slowly — back toward home. The white tomcat, Ensign Melbourne, had taken up sketching, starting out with caricatures of everyone, mostly as a way to make them laugh. But over time, the sketches had evolved, becoming more serious and involved. Sometimes he sketched alien landscapes — either imaginary ones or places they visited searching for supplies to restock their dwindling stores. Other times, he drew intricate cartoons about life back in the Milky Way. If he kept it up, he’d have a whole graphic novel written soon.
Cmdr. Chestnut and the two Morphicans had both been swept into becoming amateur gardeners and botanists by Lys, the caterpillar alien. She kept the squirrel and rabbits busy helping her tend the cuttings they’d brought from trees on the back of the world turtle where she’d grown up and also new cuttings taken from every planet where they stopped along the way. The small spaceship was becoming a virtual arboretum on the inside, filled with potted plants everywhere, which even Lt. Diaz had to admit was kind of pleasant. It was soothing to have living, growing things everywhere, filling the sterile little vessel with the complex scents of life and loam.
Korvax the hedgehog alien had become an amateur chef, figuring out ways to cook the various fruits and vegetables they managed to collect from passing planets and would hopefully soon be harvesting from the potted plant garden filling up every empty inch of the ship. Lt. Diaz didn’t care much for his cooking — she didn’t think anyone really did — but there weren’t a lot of options while they were conserving power by rationing use of the synthesizers, so mostly, everyone knew better than to complain. If it was edible, they’d be thankful and eat it, and so far, flavor aside, the food Korvax cooked was generally edible.
Captain Carroway, of course, had taken to sewing in her spare time, probably to press harder on the guilt trip on Lt. Diaz. She’d been experimenting with both cross-stitch and embroidery, fastidiously sewing little scenes on scraps of fabric. And Ensign Mike — the weird toadstool-like officer who had apparently sprouted up around Lt. Cmdr. Vossie’s “lost” computer implant during the initial disaster that brought them all to this faraway blasted galaxy — had decided they wanted to be a doctor and spent every spare minute studying medicine and psychology.
That just left Lt. Lee — the pretty little Papillon man — and Lt. Diaz herself who refused to become well-adjusted enough to their situation to take up any sort of real hobby, instead preferring to sulk whenever off-shift, each in their own, separate way.
Lt. Diaz told herself that she was better than the Papillon, because at least she devoted as much of her spare time as possible to defending and supporting Ensign Risqua as the reptile-bird diligently worked on Wilder’s opera. It takes a lot of privacy to work on something as delicate and difficult as a Lupinian opera, especially if you’re trying to realize someone else’s vision and properly memorialize them for all time. So, she spent a lot of time quietly focused on a computer pad with headphones on, shyly protecting her work from anyone else’s sight. It wasn’t ready yet for judging eyes, Ensign Risqua insisted.
Lt. Diaz couldn’t wait to hear how the opera turned out.
But really, sulking is sulking, and the Xolo-Lupinian had been doing a lot of sulking for the last few months. She was angry about the turn her life had taken, and she was sad to have lost her best, longest friend in Wilder. They’d been pups together on Lupinia, and he’d never made her feel weird for being half uplifted Xolo and only half Lupinian, even when the other wolf-like pups had teased her for her wider set eyes, shorter fur, and vaguely bat-like ears. Wilder had been better than that. Being stuck out in here in the Tetra Galaxy on this endless voyage might not have been so bad if he’d been here.
This was the path Lt. Diaz’s thoughts followed over and over again, always leading to the same sulky circles, wearing a deeper and deeper groove in her mind. She wanted to break out of that pattern. Her life wasn’t going the way she wanted, but this was her life. She needed to live it, even if she was stuck in the Tetra Galaxy on this small, cramped ship filled with Tri-Galactic Union fools frittering their time away for now.
She simply needed to find a way to spend her time on the Wanderlust that could potentially be useful to her when she got back home. Or else… she needed to find a way to shorten the time it would take to get back home.
Continue on to Chapter 2…