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.
Captain Carroway liked to give every officer the chance to visit each planet the Wanderlust made a stop at, if they wanted to. In fact, the Norwegian Forest cat downright pressured her officers — each and every one of them — to take the opportunity to get their paws off the metal floor of the ship and onto some good, solid, real, natural dirt, rock, sand, grass, or mud, depending on what kind of planet they’d found. She firmly believed it was good for their mental health and sanity to touch the ground on an actual planet every chance they got.
Lt. Diaz wanted to stomp her paw down and insist that visiting this random world was a waste of her time, but she knew in heart of hearts that the only reason she wanted to do that was to be contrary. Captain Carroway was right. They wouldn’t get home if they all fell apart, and putting your paws on the natural earth of a real world was good for the soul.
The Xolo-Lupinian might not like or respect the colleagues who had been forced on her — like the sniveling Papillon — but she was relying on them to keep the ship running while she slept, ate, and took needed breaks. A ship like the Wanderlust simply couldn’t be run for months on end with a much smaller crew than they had. If Lt. Diaz were trying to fly the Wanderlust entirely on her own, she would never make it back to the Milky Way at all. So she was dependent on officers like Lt. Lee, and he was clearly in profound need of a dose of the kind of sanity that a bit of shore leave — even just a short fishing trip — could provide.
So, in spite of Lt. Diaz’s new resolution to become an even bigger thorn in Captain Carroway’s side, she volunteered for one of the first shifts down to the planet, and she encouraged everyone else to volunteer for a shift as well. Most of her fellow officers looked at the Xolo-Lupinian strangely when she expressed anything like a positive attitude about anything. It was the first time in a while. But also, they weren’t going to argue with it. Except for Lt. Lee. The Papillon just groaned and curled up more tightly under his blankets, pressing his pillow down over his head. Not the most articulate argument, but very effective at communicating his feelings.
The teleporter pad aboard the Wanderlust was tucked to the side of the storage space beside the main airlock, opposite the lockers filled with emergency spacesuits. It was only large enough to be used by three people at a time. Of course, the teleporter was powerful enough that it could also do direct spot-to-spot teleportation without use of the pad, but that took more energy. And the Wanderlust was conserving energy.
So, when it came time to begin teleporting down to the planet, Lt. Diaz stepped upon the teleporter pad with Lt. Cmdr Vossie and Ensign Mike. While Captain Carroway had gone out of her way to separate the Anti-Ra officers from each other as much as possible, and she did the same with Lys and Korvax, the Norwegian Forest cat showed undeniable favoritism to Lt. Cmdr. Vossie and Ensign Mike by letting them stay together as much as possible.
The tawny furred rabbit and pinkish-gray, bearded mushroom had a deep bond, since the mushroom had grown out of a blending of the mycelial matter that composed the Wanderlust’s computer systems and an emotion-regulating implant that had been in Lt. Cmdr. Vossie’s brain since he’d been a young kit… until the disaster that threw them all to this far end of the universe.
The Xolo-Lupinian stood beside the smaller rabbit-like alien and toadstool being as quantum energy sparkled through their bodies, taking them apart at a deep, sub-atomic level, reconfiguring them into pure energy and information that then folded through space and reformed on the surface of the planet below.
Lt. Diaz always felt a little funny for a few minutes after teleporting, like little squirmy bits of light crawled across her vision and there was an echoey, almost underwater sound in her wide bat-like ears. She’d seen a doctor about it when she was a freshman in the Tri-Galactic Union academy and had been told that while it was a unusual condition, it wasn’t anything to worry about. Although, it might mean she’d have a predilection toward migraine headaches later in life.
As the visual and audio disturbances cleared up, Lt. Diaz found herself looking at a wide, open field edged by a thick forest with mountains beyond it, stretching into the pale, pink sky. All of the light was reddish. Since the star they were orbiting was blue, the shade of the sky and the color of the light had to be a trick caused by particles in the atmosphere. The trees of the forest had deep purple leaves, and the field was filled with a lavender moss, dotted with yellow flowers that made Lt. Diaz think of buttercups. Scattered across the field were small pools of crystal clear water, reflecting the pink sky as if they were pools of blood. It was beautiful.
The best part, though, was the pair of moons hanging in the sky above the distant snow-capped mountains. One of the moons was dark and craggy with an oblong shape. It looked like an asteroid that had been captured by the planet’s gravity. The other one was smooth, silvery, and round like one of the crystal pools that dotted the meadow. It reminded Lt. Diaz of Earth’s moon, except smoother and rounder. Whatever process had formed this moon had left a gemstone floating in the world’s pale pink sky. It looked like a pearl or an opal, and just seeing it made Lt. Diaz want to let loose in a primal howl, torn from her throat by lunar command.
“If you want to howl at the moons,” Lt. Cmdr. Vossie said primly, his long rabbity ears standing very tall, “don’t let our presence stop you.”
Lt. Diaz shuffled uncomfortably, shifting the weight of her paws on the soft lavender moss. She didn’t like it when other officers could read her so easily.
But she did want to howl at the moon.
“Lt. Cmdr. Vossie and I studied Lupinian culture when he was a teenager,” Ensign Mike said mushily. The mushroom being looked more like they belonged in this alien landscape than aboard a spaceship. “For a while, Vossie even wanted to be a Lupinian.”
The tawny rabbit glared at the toadstool, but he didn’t seem really angry. More like the two of them were siblings, razzing each other with their good-natured over-familiarity. They made a strange pair of siblings — rabbit and mushroom. And it must be very strange, Lt. Diaz thought, to have your own personal assistant that’s been lodged in the privacy of your own brain for years suddenly become a person of its own, wandering around, talking to people, forming its own relationships with the people you know and telling them secret things about you, things that you’d thought were hidden inside yourself.
Without letting herself overthink it, Lt. Diaz suddenly let the howl she’d been holding back tear its way out of her, throwing her head back, and singing out in a cry of pain and longing for the beautiful god that hung in the sky. It wasn’t her god. But it was a god, at least by the Lupinian philosophy that all moons were the physical tokens of a god who had chosen to look over the world they orbited. Whoever these two gods were — and especially the one with round, silvery face — Lt. Diaz’s Lupinian side needed her to pay tribute to them and ask with her howling voice for their grace and protection.
And besides, how could Lt. Cmdr. Vossie or Ensign Mike really judge her now? After learning about Vossie’s embarrassing teenage phase where he’d essentially wanted to be her and Mike’s embarrassing transgression of oversharing, neither of them could hold anything over her. Not now. Now while the moons were above her and her voice rose to them like smoke spiraling into the sky from a warm campfire. She felt the moons answer her with a warmth that filled her chest. She knew it was only a psychological reaction, but also, she didn’t care. She could believe in the moons and still understand the science behind why her people felt this way about them.
On Lupinia, the phases of the moons determined so much about the weather and the seasons that understanding them properly had been essential to a clan’s survival. Relying on the moons had been hounded into Lupinians since before they’d fully evolved into sentience, and deep beliefs like that don’t dissipate just because you understand them. The moons spoke to Lt. Diaz, and she felt better than she’d felt in months.
For a moment — the barest glimmer of time — Lt. Diaz almost felt like maybe it wasn’t so bad exploring this far away galaxy, seeing different moons in different skies than she’d ever see in the Milky Way. But then the familiar impulse inside her returned: she wanted to show these moons to Wilder, and he wasn’t here. He would never howl at a moon again. His voice would never harmonize with hers as they fell into the ecstatic joy of this ancient ritual, and it was Captain Carroway’s fault. And also Lt. Cmdr. Vossie’s fault. And even a little bit, Ensign Mike’s fault, because the mushroom was half-born from a Tri-Galactic Union computer system, making them complicit with the rigid rules and structures that had placed Lupinia on the wrong side of an imaginary line through space, leading to Reptassan oppression, the need for an Anti-Ra rebellion, and finally Wilder’s death and her landing here.
No, she couldn’t be happy here. Not with this crew. Not travelling on the Wanderlust.
But to get home, Lt. Diaz would have to play along, at least for a while. Getting her bearings again after losing herself to the primal howl, Lt. Diaz saw that Lt. Cmdr. Vossie and Ensign Mike had set up the teleport-signal boosters they’d brought down with them. She was still holding hers — they looked like very high tech spears. Based on the distance apart that Vossie and Mike had arranged theirs, she took hers to the appropriate location to complete the triangle and stabbed it into the loamy ground. Once all three boosters were in place, Ensign Mike turned them all on and made sure they were working.
“Great, now we can bring everything valuable we find back here, and the Wanderlust can beam it all up,” Ensign Mike said.
“We’re going to methodically examine all of the plants in this field,” Lt. Cmdr. Vossie said, “and then work our way into the forest. You’re going to be hunting, right?”
Lt. Diaz grinned, bearing her sharp teeth. “That’s right. I’ll start in the forest–” She pointed towards a thick knot of purple-leafed trees. “–over there. So, keep your distance.”
Lt. Cmdr. Vossie nodded curtly, causing his long ears to bob above his head. He gestured vaguely in the direction of a different patch of forest. “We’ll go that way.”
Lt. Diaz was about to take off when Lt. Cmdr. Vossie added, “Wait–” The rabbit came up to her and held out a pawful of small, glowing discs. “If you catch anything big, anything you don’t want to drag back here, you can place one of these on the carcass and call for the Wanderlust to beam it up directly. It would be inefficient to use them on piles of plant matter, but if you succeed in slaughtering a large, edible animal, then it’s simply more logical to expend a little extra teleporter energy than to waste yours on hauling it through the forest back to here.”
“Thank you,” Lt. Diaz said, taking the glowing discs and slipping them securely into a pocket. “That could double my efficiency.”
“Exactly what I was thinking,” the rabbit agreed with another curt nod before flipping open a uni-meter and turning to the field around them. Ensign Mike was already busy scanning the lavender moss and yellow flowers with a uni-meter.
Lt. Diaz was glad she wouldn’t be joining them in such a tedious task. Though, the two of them seemed perfectly happy with it.
Once the Xolo-Lupinian was sure the toadstool and rabbit weren’t paying any more attention to her, she dropped to all fours so she could run across the field the way a Lupinian was meant to run during a hunt. She had a blazor rifle strapped to her back and another hand blazor in a holster at her hip. Those were perhaps less traditional, but she wasn’t doing this for the sheer ritualistic ecstasy of it. She was hunting for food. She was hunting so there’d be real, solid, fresh meat that she and the other carnivore-leaning members of the crew could sink their sharp teeth into during the next part of their voyage. It wasn’t worth making that any harder than it needed to be.
Lt. Diaz covered the ground between the teleporter boosters and the edge of the forest quite quickly, and then she slowed as the trees closed in around her, their branches closing over her, hiding away the faces of the two moons. The dark, craggy, asteroid-like moon entirely disappeared, obscured too much by the dark purple leaves to be seen anymore, but the large, silvery moon’s face continued to peek out between the gaps in the leaves above, watching the visiting canine as she familiarized herself with the shape and feel of this foreign forest.
Lt. Diaz put her muzzle close to the ground and smelled the unfamiliar scents of loam, moss, dirt, and creatures she’d never yet laid eyes upon. According to the ship’s scans, there would be some decently sized game in this forest, and she knew she could find it more efficiently using the tracking skills she’d practiced with her mother on Lupinia as a child than by trying to follow the clunky, uncertain readings from scanning her surroundings with a uni-meter.
So, she ran between the trees with swift, quiet paws. Her nose began to pick up patterns among the scents, notice a latticework of different trails, until she was able to zero in on the ones that seemed to move through the underbrush, leaving traces, in a way most likely to indicate they came from an animal worth hunting. She discovered tracks under the fern-like shrubbery — crescent-shaped indentations most likely left by a hoofed-animal.
Lt. Diaz chose a fresh trail to follow and traced the hoof prints and gamy scent of her target as they wended through the forest, all of it tinted a soft, bloody red by the pale pink light that filtered down from the sky above. When the Xolo-Lupinian got close enough to hear her mark rustling its way carefully through the underbrush ahead, she slowed down, pulled the blazor rifle off her back, and rose to her hind legs, preparing to confront the animal.
Stepping extra-cautiously, Lt. Diaz moved towards the gentle, rustling sounds ahead of her. Her wide bat-like ears picked up the munching sounds so clearly that she knew the animal was eating one of the fern-like shrubs even before she saw it. When her gaze finally did fall on the creature, its fur was mottled dark brown and purple with patches of red, blending in with the trunks, leaves, and ruddy light. Its face was long and narrow with crystalline horns rising from its head. And its eyes were opalescent. A beautiful, haunting creature.
Lt. Diaz stood perfectly still, staring at the alien ungulate as it blithely chewed away at the fern-like leaves. It didn’t see or smell her. Or if it did, it didn’t recognize her as a threat, because she was something entirely new to this forest. Something it could never have encountered before.
Lt. Diaz knew from the scans that the Wanderlust had done that there were no signs of civilization on this world. No cities. No technology. Not even anything that looked like villages or agriculture. Even so, she realized that she wanted to be sure. She couldn’t kill this creature without knowing for sure that it wasn’t sentient. So moving as slowly as she could, the Xolo-Lupinian unholstered the uni-meter at her waist, opened it, and scanned.
The readings were clear. This creature’s brain wasn’t complex enough to support sentience. But that didn’t take away from its beauty. It had as much of a right to live as she had a right to eat. Arguably, more. But the scan also suggested that based on the animal’s composition, it had a good chance of being truly delicious, and Lupinians were hunters. More carnivorous than uplifted dogs. And the restrictions on synthesizing complex materials like fresh meat had been pressing against Lt. Diaz for months, leaving her hungry even when her belly was full. Always wanting something more, something she couldn’t quite get from the foods Korvax cooked when left to his own devices.
So, Lt. Diaz re-holstered the uni-meter, took her blazor rifle into both paws, and aimed levelly at the beast. The poor creature never even flinched. It had no idea what had hit it. The beam of red energy that shot out of the blazor took the ungulate down too fast for it to have any awareness that its life had come to an end. It simply crumpled, graceful legs folding beneath it as it fell to the forest floor.
Lt. Diaz swallowed the words to a Lupinian prayer, giving thanks for a clean kill. She didn’t voice them, because she didn’t want to scare away any more game that might be close by. Instead, she moved swiftly to the creature’s side. It wasn’t breathing. Blazor beams work fast when they’re set to kill. Lt. Diaz pulled one of the glowing teleport booster discs out of her pocket, placed it on the beast’s side. She could feel the warmth of its skin under its fur. It might not be breathing, but it had very recently been alive.
As soon as the disc was properly affixed to the ungulate’s fur, Lt. Diaz triggered it, and moments later, the beast disappeared in a sparkling shimmer of quantum energy.
One target down. How many more could she kill?
Continue on to Chapter 6…