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 Waykeeper’s child agreed to the plan as soon as Lys passed it along; in fact, they agreed so fast that the newly-hatched creature couldn’t possibly really understand what they were agreeing to, which caused Captain Carroway to make a much bigger deal about Lys explaining and re-explaining the whole situation and all the possible dangers involved far more thoroughly than would’ve been necessary if the baby world-turtle had just taken a little longer with their response. Or if Lys had passed their consent along with a slightly longer hesitation preceding it, Lt. Diaz thought rather cynically.
Regardless, all the pieces of the plan came together like a dream. And after one of the strangest days that had happened since they were first pulled into this galaxy, all of the Wanderlust crew were awake and working at the same time — some of them very tired, but none of them willing to miss what was about to happen next.
Usually, Lt. Diaz would take a station in the engine room when everyone was at their stations. However, since the plan they were about to put into effect had been half hers, the Xolo-Lupinian requested a station on the bridge. Captain Carroway agreed to the request and assigned both of the Morphicans to cover the stations in the engine room instead. Lt. Diaz stayed at the station right next to Lt. Lee on the bridge. And of course, Ensign Melbourne took the pilot’s seat.
The white tomcat had been training every other officer over the last few months, trying to make sure they were all competent at piloting the Wanderlust. With such a small crew, it was important to have redundancy in the officers’ abilities. However, for an operation like this, it was good to have their best pilot on point, and there was still no question about who was their best pilot.
Captain Carroway, of course, took the captain’s chair, and she sent Cmdr. Chestnut to the engine room so that there’d be a commanding officer there, ready to make fast decisions, if such a thing were called for. They both hoped it wouldn’t be called for.
Korvax and Ensign Mike had both been assigned the duty of checking on and monitoring all the potted plants shoved into every corner of the ship, but most especially the multi-purpose room and barracks. Captain Carroway had told them it was a very important job, because those plants were essential for the quality of the rest of their voyage — providing fresh-grown fruits and vegetables — and were the most important piece of scientific research that the Wanderlust had accomplished on this voyage. Bringing them back to the Milky Way in good shape was terribly, terribly important to her, so she needed both the hedgehog and mushroom monitoring them very closely during the upcoming maneuvers.
Lt. Diaz was pretty sure the Norwegian Forest cat actually just wanted Korvax and Ensign Mike out of her fur. Lys, however, was given a station on the bridge, since she was their connection to the Waykeeper’s child. Captain Carroway wanted the caterpillar immediately at paw if there was anything that needed to be communicated to the baby world turtle.
With everyone ready, the captain braced in her chair and said, “I’m going to ask one final time, are you sure that we can’t afford to warn the Zakonraptors that they need to evacuate?”
Lt. Diaz and Lt. Lee looked at each other. Each of the dogs had assured the Norwegian Forest cat captain multiple times that they couldn’t risk warning the Zakonraptors, because their electron torpedo would be too easily disabled if their plan were revealed. Their ability to destroy the moon base with a single, carefully aimed electron torpedo on a timer absolutely relied on stealth.
The two dogs had watched the Norwegian Forest cat debate the ethics of their plan with her golden-mantled squirrel first officer and Morphican best friend. All three of them had concluded that it wouldn’t be ethical to destroy the entire moon base while populated by totally innocent scientists, simply to expediate their trip home. However, the scientists here weren’t totally innocent. The Zakonraptors had been torturing the Waykeeper’s child before it hatched, and they’d intended to dissect Lys. Furthermore, Lt. Diaz had assured the captain that once the explosion began, it would be possible to parlay the energy the Wanderlust absorbed into enough power to teleport all of the Zakonraptors aboard the moon base down to the planet’s surface, right before they shot out of this sector of the Tetra Galaxy forever.
Captain Carroway was nervous about this plan, as a whole lot of lives hinged on it going right. Lt. Diaz had insisted it was something she could pull off. No one had contradicted her, which honestly, had really surprised the Xolo-Lupinian. Because it was a ridiculous, crazy plan that made every other aspect of the plan to shrink their ship seem very reasonable in comparison. Lt. Diaz had no idea if the Wanderlust would absorb enough power from the explosion fast enough to teleport a whole slew of Zakonraptors down to the planet before they were all killed by fire, vacuum, shrapnel, or other effects of the explosion.
And Lt. Lee, at the very least, had to know that. But the Papillon didn’t contradict her. He wanted to get home.
Lt. Cmdr. Vossie may not have been as quick at calculations since he’d become an unmodified Morphican without a computer implant in his brain, but he was still very sharp. And he didn’t contradict Lt. Diaz either. While arguing the ethics of the situation, Lt. Cmdr. Vossie had seemed far less convinced of the Zakonraptor scientists’ innocence.
And Cmdr. Chestnut? He believed in Lt. Diaz. He believed she could work miracles.
Maybe she could? Maybe she wasn’t lying when she told the captain she could do this.
Regardless, Captain Carroway had reluctantly agreed, and now, all that Lt. Diaz needed to do was bark one more time, “Captain, I have it under control. I will teleport every life sign aboard this base down to the surface of the planet as soon as our power reserves top off. It will take mere seconds, and I’ll be ready. It’s the only way.”
Captain Carroway stared at Lt. Diaz for a moment before shifting her gaze subtly from the Xolo-Lupinian to the Papillon beside her. Lt. Lee glanced nervously between the large dog beside him and the large cat in the captain’s chair, but then he nodded. It was such a subtle nod that he could’ve claimed it was nothing more than a twitch if he were pressed on the point. But he did nod. And the captain accepted the Papillon’s subtle nod as enough. She nodded back and meowed, “Alright, let’s put this plan in motion.”
Lt. Diaz’s stomach flipped with excitement as she executed the first step in the plan: firing with the ship’s blazors at the hatch where the Wanderlust had flow into the asteroid base in the first place. Those closed doors were the weakest point of the base’s hull, so they’d be the easiest part to blast open. The red energy beam of the ship’s blazors blasted against the closed doors, inundating them with heat and quantum frisson until they outright vaporized.
Lt. Lee announced, “We’re receiving several communications requests from the Zakonraptors.”
“Ignore them,” Captain Carroway ordered, under her whiskers she muttered something about hoping the Zakonraptors would take the hint and begin evacuating.
Of course, they didn’t. The Zakonraptors had no idea what they were up against and still believed they could contain the Wanderlust. Both of the other vessels that had been held in docking clamps like the Wanderlust began powering up their weapons. However, at the same time, a gigantic green face looked through the now open hatch in the asteroid base’s hull.
The Waykeeper’s child was too large to fly all the way through the opened hatch, but they were small enough to fit their head and two front flippers through before the edges of their domed shell got stuck. It was quite the sight to see on the Wanderlust’s main viewscreen. The line of the baby world-turtle’s mouth curved in a way that made it look like the giant creature was smiling, even though it probably didn’t express emotions in that way. There was an uncanniness to having a giant green face smile at them that made Lt. Diaz’s short fur stand up in a shiver.
“The Waykeeper’s child can’t get any closer to us,” Lys said. Her rows of arms were wrapped tightly around her middle, and her long, worm-like body was rocking, as if she were trying to soothe herself. Though more likely, the caterpillar was trying to soothe the world-turtle speaking in her mind.
“Okay, time for step two,” the captain growled through sharp fangs. “Begin shrinking us.”
Lt. Lee was in charge of the shrinking, so Lt. Diaz had nothing to do as the process began other than worry about whether she could see any change on the viewscreen, whether she could feel any change in herself, and simply whether it was working.
“The docking clamps have released us,” Ensign Melbourne meowed.
“Excellent,” Captain Carroway replied. “Exactly according to plan.”
Lt. Diaz hadn’t seen or felt any change, but if the docking clamps were no longer securing the Wanderlust, than the shrinking program had to be working. So far, the change was probably mostly imperceptible, just enough to loosen the docking clamps’ vice-like hold on them.
Without waiting for another order — he knew the plan and his place in it — the white tomcat powered up the engines and began flying the Wanderlust straight toward the Waykeeper’s child.
The giant green face blinked at them, and it felt like the universe skipped a beat during that long moment. Almost like if the baby world-turtle wasn’t looking at them, maybe they didn’t exist. But then those giant, liquid eyes opened again, and Lt. Diaz felt like a moon was smiling at her. It wasn’t so long ago she’d been praying to this world-turtle’s egg, believing it was a moon after all.
“Taking evasive maneuvers,” Ensign Melbourne meowed, approximately at the same time as Lt. Lee woofed, “The Zakonraptor ships are firing at us!”
The Wanderlust lurched left, then right, followed by a downward swoop, causing Lt. Diaz to dig her claws into the arms of the chair at her station to steady herself. The beams of energy fired by the Zakonraptor ships missed the Wanderlust, instead causing explosions in the laboratories built around and below them. Unsurprisingly, more blasts didn’t follow — the Zakonraptors didn’t want to further damage their own base.
The size of the baby world-turtle’s face grew uncannily fast on the main viewscreen as the Wanderlust both grew smaller and got closer to it. The face grew from a hillside with eyes like two lakes to an entire mountain with two small seas. Eyes large enough to get literally lost inside.
“Don’t shrink us too fast,” Captain Carroway warned. “The distance we have to travel to the Waykeeper’s child gets relatively longer the more we shrink.”
“I know,” Lt. Lee woofed through gritted teeth, his butterfly-like ears held splayed far out to the sides of his head. The Papillon was concentrating so hard on managing the calculations to control the ship’s shrinking that he barely had enough attention to spare for the captain’s warnings.
As they flew toward the turtle, Lt. Diaz scanned for the edge of its hyperspatial slipstream, and she practically howled in triumph when the ship finally reached it. “The slipstream is around us! I’ll fire the electron torpedo with its timer now.” Lt. Diaz’s paw shook as she pressed the right button. The Xolo-Lupinian knew her calculations were right, but there’s a difference between believing you’ve done a job right and being ready to press the button that means you can’t possibly go back and fix any mistakes. The electron torpedo barreled away from the Wanderlust, and Lt. Diaz felt a strange sense of relief, knowing that for better or worse, that part of the plan was beyond her paws now.
“Lt. Lee, can you extend our shrinking field to include the Waykeeper’s child now?” Captain Carroway asked. The Norwegian Forest cat leaned forward in her captain’s chair, showing an intense eagerness.
Lt. Diaz’s bat-like ears twisted back with the stress of waiting for Lt. Lee’s answer, and in fact, the Papillon never did manage to voice an answer with words. However, he must have successfully extended the field, because all of them on the bridge saw the Waykeeper’s child begin shrinking. The giant, smiling, green face began to look farther away, but it was only an illusion caused by the change in its size. This became clear when, suddenly, the Waykeeper’s child’s shell slipped easily through the open hatch in the side of the asteroid.
The baby world-turtle had so very little experience of life outside of an egg that they floundered about awkwardly as soon as they were moving again, unclear on how to maneuver their large — but now smaller! — body inside the asteroid base with its confusing patches of artificial gravity designed to keep the laboratories usable. All the Waykeeper’s child really knew was that they wanted to get closer to the tiny Ollallan mind they sensed inside the weird flying object hurtling toward their face. They wanted to get closer to Lys.
Continue on to Chapter 18…