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 stared at the computer console in the engine room, unbelieving. She’d written the program that had detected the hyperspatial slipstream herself. She hadn’t been especially careful, but it also hadn’t been especially hard. She had no reason to doubt the results.
Except for one.
Why in the hell was there a hyperspatial slipstream inside the Tetra Galaxy?
The entire concept of hyperspatial slipstreams had been mostly theoretical or extremely small scale and experimental until the Wanderlust had encountered the Waykeeper which seemed to exude the time-space warping field from its shell like some sort of biological process. As far as Lt. Diaz knew, there wasn’t a single hyperspatial slipstream large enough to show up on the scan she’d just performed anywhere in the entirety of the three galaxies that had been explored by the Tri-Galactic Union.
But apparently, there was one here.
And it wasn’t too far out of the way from the course the Wanderlust was already following.
“What in the hell,” Lt. Diaz muttered to herself, but the little caterpillar beside her, as small as a puppy, seemed to take her exclamation as an invitation to converse on the strange circumstances.
“You found one?” Lys asked. “A hyperspatial slipstream?” The words sounded less carefully pronounced this time, but there was still a slowness to them, almost like they were a magical incantation. Maybe they were. Lys’s reverence at the idea of hyperspatial slipstreams seemed to be contagious. The emotions of telepaths often are, intentional or not.
Suddenly, Lt. Diaz grew skeptical, wary. The Xolo-Lupinian wasn’t used to feeling in synch with anybody aboard the Wanderlust other than Ensign Risqua, and somehow, this all just seemed too convenient. “Did you know I would find that?” Lt. Diaz woofed distrustfully. “Did you know there was… something… out here? And you’re leading us toward it?” Her bat-like ears skewed and her head tilted questioningly.
“No,” Lys answered. “I mean… Maybe? I hoped.” Not only was the caterpillar small like a child, she sounded lost and confused like a child. “I thought… I might hear something calling to me from a great distance. Something like the Wayfarer’s voice.”
Lt. Diaz’s muzzle tightened into a frown. Like everyone aboard the Wanderlust, she’d heard Lys talk about her experience of communing with the Wayfarer and hearing the giant world turtle’s voice inside her head while she almost began metamorphosing early into her adult, butterfly form. Somehow, until now, Lt. Diaz had always assumed the story was some kind of metaphor. Now she wondered if she should have taken the caterpillar’s words more literally, and she wished she’d listened more closely when Lys had talked about it. “Do you think it’s another world turtle?”
“How could it be?” Lys asked, and Lt. Diaz didn’t have anything like an answer for her.
However, the Xolo-Lupinian did know that she’d need to take the information from her scan to the captain. Whatever it was that her scan had found, it had the potential to be important. Very important.
Lt. Diaz hated bringing information to the captain. That Norwegian Forest cat was always so enthusiastic and encouraging. She got excited about the smallest, most mundane things. Why, she’d already promoted Lt. Diaz once — from her starting rank as ensign — and made her technically the chief engineer, even though the Xolo-Lupinian had made a point of doing nothing above the minimum possible work and nothing below the maximum amount of unpleasantness that she could get away with. At least, since her insight that had allowed the Wanderlust to save the Waykeeper and Lupinia in a single stroke of impossibly improbable physics. Lt. Diaz didn’t think she’d deserved a promotion for that. Maybe physics itself had deserved the promotion. Sadly, Lt. Diaz could absolutely picture Captain Carroway getting carried away and awarding honorary promotions to abstract concepts of science.
This was going to be terrible. But Lt. Diaz did want to know what was causing the hyperspatial slipstream, so she would have to face the captain’s happiness about her having actually done something productive. Well, nominally productive. Whether this ultimately turned out to be useful remained to be seen, but the captain would surely be excited about it either way.
“What’s happening to the reading?” Lys asked, moving closer to the computer console. Her pudgy, worm-like body wasn’t really large enough to make Lt. Diaz feel crowded, but the Xolo-Lupinian still didn’t like someone else encroaching on her space.
As if Lys had read her mind, the caterpillar backed away, giving Lt. Diaz more room. She gruffly moved her body between Lys and the screen, possessively controlling the view of the readout.
The reading was flickering. Flashing in and out of existence, at least according to the slapdash scan Lt. Diaz had thrown together.
How could a hyperspatial slipstream flicker?
Lt. Diaz hadn’t been aware of any natural causes of hyperspatial slipstreams before encountering the Wayfarer, so the chances were good that it was artificially generated. Although, she wasn’t sure what useful purpose such a large hyperspatial slipstream might serve. One thing that Lt. Diaz was sure about was this: it would take a very technologically advanced civilization to construct a hyperspatial slipstream large enough to read on the Wanderlust’s scans at this distance. And if it were flickering…
Was it dying? Was it serving some purpose where it was useful to have it flicker? Was it an experiment gone wrong?
These questions were above Lt. Diaz’s paygrade. She really did have to take this to the captain. Part of her wanted to bring it to Cmdr. Chestnut instead — she knew he was awake right now. But with something this big, he’d just take it to the captain anyway.
“I don’t know what’s happening,” Lt. Diaz woofed belatedly in answer to Lys’s questions. “Do you know if the captain’s awake?”
Lt. Diaz rarely bothered with keeping track of anyone else’s sleep and shift schedules. Except for Risqua, of course. The Xolo-Lupinian always knew when her reptile-bird friend would be awake. But Lys seemed like she would stay aware of that stuff. Of course, as a telepathic entity, Lys could simply sense who was awake aboard the ship at any time, but Lt. Diaz didn’t know that. Other than Lys herself, the only one onboard the Wanderlust who knew that Ollallans were telepathic was Korvax. Though, Captain Carroway had started to guess it.
“The captain went off-shift when Cmdr. Chestnut woke up,” Lys answered. “But I think she’s still in the multi-purpose room working on one of her sewing projects.”
“Needlepoint,” Lt. Diaz grumbled scornfully. Such a waste of time. “Let’s go tell her about this.” Maybe if she dragged Lys along, then the caterpillar could bear the brunt of the captain’s enthusiasm and end up taking all the credit, allowing Lt. Diaz to slink off and get back to her very important sulking without having to tolerate very much useless praise.
By necessity, the multi-purpose room had become a weird mix of lounge, arboretum, and scullery. Korvax did his cooking there, and when he wasn’t actively busy cooking, his latest confections and monstrosities were laid out in an endless ad hoc buffet for hungry officers. Sometimes, one had to be very hungry indeed to try Korvax’s inventions which blended his questionable aesthetics with the dubious ingredients they were able to gather from whatever planet they’d stopped by most recently.
Right now, there was a vegetable stew, stacks of some sort of round, flat bread, and sticky, gummy-looking balls of something rice-like. The smell coming from the array of foods was somewhere between atrocious and… almost intriguing? Kind of pungent and spicy? But again, only if one were very hungry.
Perhaps it was easier for Cmdr. Chestnut, the two Morphicans, and maybe even Ensign Lee to enjoy food made by an omnivorous alien hedgehog. Cats and Lupinians lean more towards being full carnivores than dogs, squirrels, and rabbit-like aliens. When it came to Ensign Mike, Lt. Diaz realized that she hadn’t noticed if the toadstool ate, let alone what kind of food they ate.
As Lt. Diaz entered the multi-purpose room, clutching a computer pad with the results from her scan, Lys stayed close beside her.
The captain was sitting at one of the tables with a plate in front of her that had a carefully arranged selection of the foods from the buffet. A little of each of them. Not too much. Captain Carroway seemed to feel honor bound to try each and every one of Korvax’s culinary inventions. However, based on the way her nose crinkled and her ears flattened when Korvax wasn’t watching her try them, she seemed to hate his cooking even more than Lt. Diaz did.
At the moment, the Norwegian Forest cat was alone with her unappetizing plate of food and a sewing project. She seemed to be sewing strings onto the narrow end of a small, vaguely conical bulb of fabric.
“Is that… a catnip mouse?” Lt. Diaz woofed in bewilderment. She did not understand this cat at all.
Captain Carroway’s whiskers lifted in a smile, and she meowed in her deep, gruff voice, “Yes! It is! You’re familiar with them?”
“I know humans used to give them to cats as toys before uplift…” Lt. Diaz really didn’t know what to make of a full-grown Tri-Galactic Union officer sewing a pre-uplift cat toy.
“Yes, it’s a very traditional shape,” Captain Carroway meowed, sounding very pleased both with herself for sewing the strange little lump and with Lt. Diaz for recognizing it.
If Lt. Diaz could do it over again, when she’d walked into this room, she would have held her tongue regarding the mouse toy. But it was too late now, so she just charged right on: “Aren’t they kind of offensive to mice? And is it really such a good idea to be using catnip?”
Captain Carroway waved a paw dismissively. “Catnip is a very mild drug, but there isn’t any inside it anyway. Instead of catnip, I added some coffee grounds to give it a nice scent. I find the smell of coffee soothing.”
“I thought coffee was supposed to be… invigorating? Like it wakes you up?” Lt. Diaz had never drunk coffee. It smelled like something Korvax would cook. Most uplifted animals didn’t drink coffee. It had been a human vice, not an uplifted animal one. But the captain seemed to have some strangely traditional tastes.
Holding the small plush mouse up to her nose, Captain Carroway stared at it with nearly crossed green eyes. She frowned. “Do you really think they’re offensive to mice?” she asked. “I’ll have to research that.” Brightening, the Norwegian Forest cat asked, “Would you like me to make you one?” She didn’t wait for an answer from Lt. Diaz before rushing on to say, “I’ll look up some traditional Lupinian scents that might be nice in this form, and I’ll make one for you.”
“That’s quite alright,” Lt. Diaz woofed stiffly. “I don’t really want one.” It was bad enough that Captain Carroway insisted on being nice to her. Making her handsewn gifts was a step too far. “Look, I just…” Flustered, the Xolo-Lupinian shoved the computer pad she’d been holding toward the Norwegian Forest cat. The two of them were far and away the two largest animals aboard the ship. Even the Norwegian Forest cat was still substantially smaller than Lt. Diaz, she was clearly unusually large for a cat, and her great size seemed to correlate with her being calmer, less fazed by a large wolf-like canine standing over her than the Xolo-Lupinian would generally expect.
Lt. Diaz had been used to making cats nervous when she was in the Tri-Galactic Union academy. But nothing she ever did seemed like it could make Captain Carroway nervous, and that bothered her. She hadn’t liked making cats nervous, but it was the natural order of things. A cat who didn’t get nervous around her was just weird.
Though, for that matter, Ensign Melbourne was pretty unflappable too, but Lt. Diaz was able to chalk that up to his laissez faire attitude about life that seemed to stem from his having been thrown away in a penal colony before being recruited for this mission. That cat had nothing to lose.
This one? Captain Carroway? She just didn’t seem to be afraid of losing.
Lt. Diaz was afraid of losing. She’d already lost so much. She didn’t want to lose even more, but it felt like every day was another day of her life lost.
Captain Carroway hemmed and hawed over the computer pad for a while, and then she simply stated, “We should go check this out.”
Lt. Diaz blinked. She had expected excitement. Praise. Tail swishing and purring. Maybe another uncalled for promotion. Not this blase reaction. “Yes,” she woofed. “I think we should check it out.”
To her great chagrin, Lt. Diaz realized she was disappointed that the cat hadn’t praised her. Ugh. She could not be more disgusted with herself.
Reading the tension between the Xolo-Lupinian and the Norwegian Forest cat, Lys asked sweetly, “Should I go tell Lt. Lee at the helm that he should adjust our course?”
“Why, yes, Lys, that would be very helpful,” the captain agreed.
The caterpillar took the computer pad and crept her way out of the multi-purpose room toward the central hall that led down to the bridge moving like an inchworm. Once she was gone, Lt. Diaz couldn’t stop herself from blurting out at the captain: “Aren’t you at all excited about this? I saw you in raptures over some unusual space dust last week. But now, you’re… what? Just not interested?”
“Did you want me to be excited?” Captain Carroway asked, her gruff voice turning very nearly into a purr, like maybe she’d finally captured the attention of this aloof dog who she’d been trying to engage better in their mission for months on end now.
“Well… no,” Lt. Diaz admitted, even more befuddled now than she’d felt before. She was confused both by this cat’s behavior and by her own emotional responses. Maybe Cmdr. Chestnut was right, and she really should schedule a counseling session with Ensign Mike. The toadstool couldn’t be more confused by her emotions than she was herself right now. If nothing else, talking to a mushroom about her feelings would give her a really different, outside perspective.
Waning moons, this cat was trying to confuse her. And it was working.
“Well, there you go,” Captain Carroway meowed pleasantly. “I’m just trying to be agreeable, and I noticed you didn’t seem to like it when I got too excited. I just want to be friends, T’lia.”
Lt. Diaz felt the short fur on her neck raise, bristling in irritation at the captain’s familiarity. Only her fellow Anti-Ra should be calling her by her first name, and Cmdr. Chestnut didn’t even seem to do that anymore now that they were all trying to follow this cat’s stupid Tri-Galactic Union strictures and regulations.
This cat wasn’t just not Lt. Diaz’s friend. She had cost Lt. Diaz real friends. Like Wilder.
“If you don’t mind my saying so,” Lt. Diaz woofed, her bat-like ears twisted backward in a clear sign of aggression, “that’s not going to happen, Captain.”
The Norwegian Forest cat shrugged peaceably. “I hope you’ll change your mind.”
“I won’t.”
Captain Carroway didn’t argue, and Lt. Diaz didn’t press her point which left the cat and canine staring awkwardly at each other for long enough that the Xolo-Lupinian realized she’d have to be the first to look away. The Norwegian Forest cat was going to continue sitting there, staring at her, until she left.
And so she left.
The Wanderlust was too small of a space to have enemies in. You can’t really avoid someone on a ship with fewer rooms than most Lupinian pack-houses have. But Lt. Diaz couldn’t stop thinking of Captain Carroway as the villain in her life.
Continue on to Chapter 4…