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.
Lt. Diaz chased after Captain Carroway as the Norwegian Forest cat strutted down the central corridor of the Wanderlust toward the bridge. A dog chasing a cat. Tale as old as time. Except this time, the dog really wanted to know what in the world the cat could possibly be thinking. The dog didn’t just want to catch the cat; she wanted to change her mind.
Captain Carroway’s tufted ears flicked just enough as she walked to show that she could hear Lt. Diaz following her, but she didn’t stop. She strutted all the way to the bridge and took her seat in the captain’s chair, paws immediately working the control panel in the arm to pull up status readings about the state of various systems on the ship. So even though she only beat Lt. Diaz to the bridge by about three strides, the Norwegian Forest cat already managed to look busy and like the Xolo-Lupinian was interrupting her.
“Do you need something, Lieutenant?” Captain Carroway meowed, glancing up from the readings.
“Yes,” Lt. Diaz woofed sharply. “I need you to change your mind about Lt. Lee’s plan.”
“Lt. Lee’s plan?” Captain Carroway asked leadingly. “I thought it was both of your plan? You presented it to me together.”
The Xolo-Lupinian’s muzzle tightened into a frown. She’d hoped that by emphasizing how much the plan was Lt. Lee’s — the golden dog who Captain Carroway clearly treasured — she could manipulate the cat into seeing it more favorably. Clearly, the captain had seen right through that ruse. “Yes, it was also my plan,” Lt. Diaz admitted. “And it’s a good plan. Why did you dismiss it so quickly?”
“Do you want to know why I dismissed it, or why I dismissed it quickly?” the cat asked sharply, tufted ears folding to half-mast in a sign of displeasure. “Don’t beat around the bush with me, Diaz. You’re not that kind of dog, and I’m not that kind of cat. I’m also a cat who hasn’t changed her clothes or properly brushed out her fur in too many hours. So, say what you mean, or get back to work.”
“Fine, you’re right,” Lt. Diaz barked, narrowing her eyes and baring her teeth. “I don’t want to know why you dismissed the plan or why you dismissed it quickly. I want you to change your mind and let me and that annoyingly brilliant Papillon carry out the genius plan we came up with together. Because it is genius, and I don’t think we could have come up with it without working together. And finally, for once, I was doing exactly what you’ve wanted of me — working cooperatively with other members of this crew, striving towards your stupid Tri-Galactic Union ideals, and you should acknowledge that. You should reward it. You should recognize good work when you see it, and you shouldn’t stand in the way.”
“Fish-giblets,” the captain spat. “This isn’t a kindergarten class, and you’re not a puppy. I don’t give out gold stars for participation. I choose courses of action that give my crew and ship the best chance at survival and success in our mission.”
“Like you just said,” Lt. Diaz echoed, “fish-giblets. I’ve seen how you do things around here, and you absolutely do reward participation. Well, I’m participating, and I’m telling you that this is the best plan: we’ll be able to tap the power from the explosion to top off all our energy stores, and we’ll be able to ride the momentum we gain for possibly the span of half a galaxy. Maybe more. We could halve the rest of our travel time in one blow, and leave ourselves in a position where you can synthesize that hideous coffee you love so much instead of being forced to drink Korvax’s attempts at simulating it.”
The captain’s tufted ears had flattened by the end of this speech, and her whiskers turned down. Her green eyes sparked in a way that made Lt. Diaz very nervous, like something deep in her body believed the Norwegian Forest cat in front of her was preparing to raise a paw and slash with claws, even if that was something the painfully civilized captain would never do.
After a moment, Captain Carroway seemed to shake off her anger, and the harshness melted out of her face as if it had never been there in the first place. Just a flash of anger; sudden and then gone. All that was left was an impatient twitch at the end of the Norwegian Forest cat’s fluffy tail.
“And if we get stuck at the size of a…” The captain peddled a front paw in the air like she was trying to summon the memory of words that currently escaped her.
“A grain of salt,” the Xolo-Lupinian offered helpfully.
“Right, yes, what if we get stuck the size of a grain of salt?” Captain Carroway asked, her tail lashing tempestuously behind her. “Could we even survive that way? Our very fabric down to the nature of the atoms we’re composed from would be changed, so it’s not like we could simply land on a planet and survive. All we’d have would be aboard this ship, and the rest of the universe would be a hostile, inhospitable wasteland, existing on a scale we couldn’t interface with at all.”
“With all due respect, Captain,” Lt. Diaz woofed, trying to hold her voice as steady and reasonable-sounding as possible, knowing that her frustration and desperation wanted to creep into her tone. “We’re already stuck in a hostile, inhospitable wasteland. No one on this ship wants to simply land on a planet and survive.” Lt. Diaz reconsidered her words — she wanted to be as truthful as possible. It was her best shot at convincing the captain. “Well… except for maybe Ensign Melbourne. But all of the rest of us? We want to get home, and this plan could bring us so much closer.”
Captain Carroway sighed deeply, shifting in her seat. But Lt. Diaz noticed that he fluffy tail had stopped lashing quite so violently.
“Walk me through the plan again,” Captain Carroway meowed begrudgingly. “And go over every detail, every single thing that you and Lt. Lee know about this technology. Don’t leave anything out.”
Lt. Diaz was still annoyed by the way that Captain Carroway had so quickly and completely dismissed their plan, but she felt a little thrill anyway in response to how seriously the cat was listening to her now. And the Xolo-Lupinian also knew — in spite of what the captain might say — that this bold cat would never turn down a good plan simply for being dangerous. Captain Carroway thrived on adventure, and as long as Lt. Diaz could convince her the risks were worth taking, the Xolo-Lupinian was sure she’d eventually get the answer she was seeking.
After quite a while of going back and forth, hammering down every detail, the captain nodded. A single, curt bob of her head. “Alright,” Captain Carroway rumbled. “We’ll give it a shot.”
Lt. Diaz’s bat-like ears couldn’t have stood up any taller, and her whip of a tail was almost tentative to give a celebratory wag. But there was too much to do for her to really take in the feeling. The Xolo-Lupinian had just won an argument with her cantankerous but weirdly friendly Norwegian Forest cat captain, and now, she needed to turn that win into a ride halfway home.
Lt. Diaz took her station on the bridge while Captain Carroway spoke to the rest of the crew over the ship’s comm-system, explaining the change in plans and what everyone needed to do.
Lt. Diaz wished she could hear Lt. Lee’s reaction to the news. She was sure he would be happy, and just a half hour or so ago, she would’ve been able to share that happiness across Lys’s mind-link. Oh well, she’d have to settle for telling him about how she’d won the captain over to their plan later when they both crashed in their barracks after this endlessly long day. Or maybe they could actually eat together in the multi-purpose room sometime. She wouldn’t be eating all her meals with Risqua anymore…
With a crew this small, packed into a ship with so few rooms, of course Lt. Diaz had shared meals with everyone else in the crew many times already. But she’d never really talked with any of them. She’d always been sullen and reclusive unless Risqua was with her, and then she’d only talked to the reptile-bird. She was going to need to make some new friends… and make up with some of her old friends who she’d been freezing out. Hopefully, Chestnut and Werik could forgive her.
They both knew she’d been going through a lot, but then, they’d been going through a lot too. And she hadn’t been there for either of them. They’d have both been there for her if she’d just been willing to talk to them.
All of these thoughts rolled through Lt. Diaz’s mind like steamrollers and bulldozers, trying to destroy her concentration as she used the control panels at her station to write the programs necessary to ensure the Wanderlust could fire an electron torpedo with a timer on its detonator such that they’d have time to shrink themselves before it destroyed the moon base they were in. While she worked, Lt. Lee came up quietly beside her and began working at the neighboring computer station. From just a quick glance at his screen, she could see he was writing a program to trigger the hyperspatial slipstream generator that the Zakonraptors had showed them during their tour. She found his presence beside her strangely calming.
Lt. Diaz had enjoyed working with Lt. Lee. She could imagine actually being sorry when they made it back to the Milky Way and went their very separate ways — him staying loyal to the Tri-Galactic Union, and her getting as far away from it as she could while still sharing the same galaxy. However, even if their plan worked, that could still be many months away.
“This isn’t working,” Lt. Lee woofed, softly enough for Lt. Diaz to hear next to him but not loud enough to carry to Captain Carroway in her captain’s chair in the center of the bridge. “I can trigger the artificial hyperspatial slipstream for long enough to protect us as we shrink, but even if we were to steal the generator and bring it with us, we won’t have the power to keep it running for long after the initial explosion. So, we’d have to return to full size before making any sort of effective use of our heightened momentum.”
The fur between Lt. Diaz’s eyebrows creased with concern. “There’s no point to bothering with shrinking ourselves at all if we can’t maintain the hyperspatial slipstream.”
“I know,” the Papillon woofed, looking as upset about the idea as she felt.
“What about the Waykeeper’s child?” Lt. Diaz asked. “We promised to bring them along, right? And they have their own, naturally generated hyperspatial slipstream…”
“True,” Lt. Lee agreed, his butterfly-like ears standing taller as he considered this possibility. “If the Waykeeper’s child could extend their hyperspatial slipstream around us… and we could stay close enough to them…”
Lt. Diaz shrugged. “It might work. It’s worth trying.”
“We’d have to shrink them too,” Lt. Lee pointed out. “I don’t know if they’d be up for that.”
“We need to ask Lys,” Lt. Diaz woofed. “She can ask the baby world-turtle. And I think, if she’s asking, there’s a good chance they’ll say yes.”
“I hope so.” There was a fervency in the Papillon’s voice that made complete sense to Lt. Diaz.
Neither of the dogs wanted to be stuck in this galaxy for any longer than they had to be. And yet, the Xolo-Lupinian was starting to think that they might become pretty good friends for the rest of the time while they were here.
Continue on to Chapter 17…