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.
Over the course of her day on the alien world, Lt. Diaz hunted down three more of the crystal-horned ungulates, something similar to a small bear, and a half dozen or so small animals that looked uncomfortably like Lt. Cmdr. Vossie if he were small and feral. Tiny, pre-sentient, alien rabbits. They would most likely be delicious. But Lt. Diaz was glad that she didn’t have Werik hunting by her side. Sure, she might enjoy teasing him later about how much these small, prey animals had in common physically with Morphicans — long ears, strong hind legs designed for jumping, and a demure little nose like two sides of a triangle. But there would have been something weird about shooting them while her Morphican friend watched.
Lt. Diaz returned to the Wanderlust tired but feeling better than she had in ages. She should have taken Captain Carroway up on her offers to send her hunting on the previous worlds they’d visited for restocking purposes. Maybe they’d have had more meat for her, since she was clearly better at hunting than any of the other officers on the Wanderlust, and even if it had turned out those other worlds simply weren’t as flush with game… She still would have experienced forests, meadows, or tundras that she’d simply never have another opportunity to see.
Maybe… maybe there was some kind of upside to this horrible voyage. She had hunted under the blessings of a new moon, and she’d learned the feel of a new forest. Nothing could take that experience away from her. She felt the memory of the forest around her like a gem inside her, something bright and beautiful that she could hold onto, and it helped her to stave off the depression that tried to turn everything gray and remind her of Wilder’s death.
Wilder would have loved that forest. He couldn’t be there, but she could experience it for him.
The Wanderlust would continue to orbit the alien planet for another two days while most of the other officers took turns hunting and gathering supplies on its surface. While Lt. Diaz had been hunting in the forest and Lt. Cmdr. Vossie and Ensign Mike had been gathering plants in the field, another team had been doing similar work in a different region. Captain Carroway had the shifts set up to leave only a rotating skeleton crew aboard the Wanderlust, keeping the ship under control and responding to teleportation requests, while almost everyone else worked as fast as they could to restock the ship’s larders.
A ship like the Wanderlust wasn’t even supposed to have larders. They’d had to improvise flash freezing and storage of the fresh meat in a refrigeration compartment Lt. Cmdr. Vossie had devised months back in the engine room. Plant matter was stored in a less powerful refrigeration unit in the multi-purpose room or kept alive — as much as possible — in the growing arboretum which was kept… everywhere. Anywhere a potted plant could be kept, there was a potted plant. Lt. Diaz wouldn’t be surprised if Lys soon recommended that they simply cover the metal floors with dirt and forgo the pots entirely. Honestly, she was surprised it hadn’t happened already.
Maybe… Lt. Diaz would make the recommendation herself. She was uncomfortable with how such an idea reflected a certain, well, attitude inside herself. An acceptance of the situation. A willingness to admit the futility of pretending that this voyage wasn’t happening, that somehow fighting it constantly could make it stop happening or at least get a lot shorter.
They were on the other side of the universe from home, and that was going to continue for, possibly, a very long time. For this part of her life, at least, maybe the Wanderlust really was her home, and maybe — since there didn’t seem to be anything Lt. Diaz could do to change that — she needed to start finding ways to actually live with it. To make it more tolerable. To maybe even find a few ways to be… happy.
The final shift before the Wanderlust planned to continue along its way, leaving this system with its disappointing lack of a hyperspatial slipstream behind, was a big push for gathering supplies: almost everyone was down on the planet. Only Lt. Diaz, Ensign Lee, and Lys stayed aboard the ship.
The Papillon was still cocooned in his bed, butterfly-like ears stuffed under a pillow, and the actual caterpillar was in her bunk in their barracks too. She’d been struck by some sort of strange illness that Ensign Mike — their quasi-doctor — hadn’t managed to make sense of. Though, it didn’t seem too life-threatening it had left Lys easily tired out and confused. For the moment, Ensign Mike recommended bed rest and monitoring.
That left Lt. Diaz alone on the bridge, sitting in the captain’s chair, because why not? If she was running the ship, she might as well find out how Captain Carroway’s precious chair in the middle of the bridge like some kind of throne felt. It was okay. Not really very different from any of the other post’s seats, except for its positioning that made it clearly more important because of how the rest of the room was warped around it.
The captain’s chair did have a nice view of the main viewscreen though. Lt. Diaz had to grant that: perfect distance to see the whole screen at once, centered right in the middle of it. And right now, the view of the silvery, round moon rising over the purple and blue planet below was breathtaking. And she had it all to herself. All she had to do was use the controls in the arm of the captain’s chair to teleport up any supplies that got tagged as ready, and then jog down to the teleporter pad to start packing those supplies away where they actually belonged.
So far, Lt. Diaz had stuffed several baskets worth of marine creatures that Ensign Melbourne’s fishing expedition had caught into the refrigeration unit in the engine room. The basket had exuded a strong, fishy smell which seemed promising to her. She’d also shoved a fair number of armfuls of plants into the multi-purpose room for later sorting.
Then suddenly, her comm-pin chimed, alerting her to one of her crewmates from the planet trying to contact her. When the Xolo-Lupinian tapped the golden insignia on the breast of her uniform, Ensign Risqua’s voice came through whistling in hushed tones, “T’lia, this is Risqua — could you teleport me up right away?”
“Sure,” Lt. Diaz answered without hesitation, using the controls in the arm of the captain’s chair to begin the teleportation process. Once it had begun, the Xolo-Lupinian jumped out of the captain’s seat and immediately trotted down the length of the ship to the teleporter pad, where she was just in time to see the reptile-bird shimmering into existence on the pad in a glittering haze of quantum energy. Golden and silvery sparkles coalesced into purple scales and red-and-blue feathers. When the quantum haze settled down, Ensign Risqua stood on the teleporter pad, wings folded tightly around herself, and feathered plumes on her head splayed. She didn’t stand still for long, instead stepping off the pad and around to the computer panel that controlled it.
“What’s going on?” Lt. Diaz asked. Her friend had a hurried, rushed quality to her behavior that worried the Xolo-Lupinian. “Is something wrong? Has Werik or Chestnut been hurt?” After a moment, she added, “Or someone else? I know there were some bear-like predators in the forest I was hunting in day before yesterday…”
“No, they’re all fine,” Risqua snapped, her beak clacking. Her scaly, talon-like hands rapidly worked the controls for the teleporter, and suddenly, three shimmering blurs of sparkling quantum energy appeared above the teleporter pad.
Lt. Diaz turned to watch the figures resolve, hoping that when they did, one of them might explain what was going on. She expected Captain Carroway or Commander Chestnut to be among the group. All three figures seemed to be standing upright, so combined with Risqua’s assurance that everyone was fine, it seemed like a safe bet that everything was okay, in spite of her friend’s hassled, hurried, harried demeanor.
Maybe they’d found something valuable? Something that could change the course of their mission?
…maybe… something that could get them home?
But as the figures on the teleporter pad began to resolve, the shimmering, sparkling energy dissipating around them, Lt. Diaz found her tentative, rising sense of hope replaced with utter confusion.
All three of the figures were strangers — feathery, scaly, dinosaur-like aliens, similar to Ensign Risqua but much larger and with snouts instead of beaks. Each one of the brightly colored beings stood as tall as Lt. Diaz, even though the Xolo-Lupinian was the largest officer in the Wanderlust’s crew, and each one of them held a weapon in one of its talons, aimed indiscriminately in her general direction.
Lt. Diaz had seen aliens like these before when the Wanderlust had been defending Lys and Korvax’s homeworld — the giant world turtle known as the Waykeeper — from their vicious, violent, unprompted attacks.
These were Zakonraptors. And the entire crew had counted their blessings every day that had passed without running into them again since then. Or had they? A sneaking suspicion wormed its way deep into Lt. Diaz’s heart, but she wouldn’t — couldn’t — believe it. Ensign Risqua was her friend. Ensign Risqua was writing an opera to honor Wilder. They talked together every day, and they shared everything with each other.
At least…
Lt. Diaz shared everything with her.
A great hollowness filled the Xolo-Lupinian as she halted every thought and process inside her, because she couldn’t stand reaching the inescapable conclusion. She had watched Risqua beam these Zakonraptors with their weapons aboard the Wanderlust, but there had to be a better explanation than that her friend — Wilder’s friend — had betrayed her and the rest of their Anti-Ra crewmates.
“What’s going on?” Lt. Diaz started to ask, but no one was listening to her.
Risqua squawked in a foreign tongue, and one of the three Zakonraptors squawked back, then directed the other two down the central corridor of the ship. The comm-pin on Lt. Diaz’s breast which had already encountered the Zakonraptor language automatically translated, echoing their words:
“There are two other officers aboard the ship, but they’re in the barracks room on the left as you head down the central hallway,” Risqua had said. “They shouldn’t give you much trouble.”
The Zakonraptor had responded, “Secure the other officers, and then take control of the bridge and await further orders. I’ll handle the situation here myself.”
Lt. Diaz strongly suspected that she was the “situation” the lead Zakonraptor was talking about handling, and she didn’t like that idea at all. However, the Xolo-Lupinian had some sort of blazor-like weapon pointed directly at her, and she didn’t like her odds on disarming the Zakonraptor holding it without finding herself vaporized first.
So, Lt. Diaz turned to her friend with pleading eyes and a bleeding heart. She couldn’t see herself in that moment, and she didn’t have emotional energy to waste on interpreting her own expressions as they’d been seen from the outside. But if she had, she’d have realized she was giving Risqua the biggest puppy-dog eyes that she’d ever given anyone in her entire life. She wanted Risqua to make it make sense. She wanted Risqua to explain how this wasn’t a fundamental betrayal, and every inch of her skin under her thin fur was itching, crawling with a twitchy certainty that she wasn’t going to get what she wanted.
Ensign Risqua held her scaly, talon-like hands up, spread wide and said with a clacking beak, “This mammal is my friend, but given how small the ship is, I couldn’t risk telling her our plans before now. Please, give me a minute to explain to her.”
Lt. Diaz’s heart wanted to turn cold, but she wouldn’t let it, holding back the ice from freezing over, keeping a slushy warmth inside, holding onto hope that Risqua was delaying for time here.
The Zakonraptor looked Lt. Diaz up and down, sizing the canine up. “The mammal’s bigger than you. Do you have a weapon?” it asked Risqua, tilting its spade-shaped head to the side inquisitively.
Ensign Risqua nodded and then unholstered the blazor at her waist. “Yes, I do.”
Lt. Diaz wished she still had a blazor strapped to her waist. But she hadn’t thought she’d need one manning the bridge and the teleporter, safe aboard a vessel that hadn’t encountered any Zakonraptors in half a year. They’d grown complacent.
The Zakonraptor nodded, shrugged, and said in its raspy voice, “Keep the weapon trained on the mammal until you’re sure. I’ll be on the bridge.”
Ensign Risqua raised her blazor until it was aimed squarely at Lt. Diaz’s chest. The Zakonraptor nodded sharply in approval before turning to leave.
Lt. Diaz seethed inside that taking over the Wanderlust had been so easy. Three Zakonraptors. That’s all it had taken. And she’d simply stood here and watched. She should have fought. She should have thrown her body against them and fought for her ship, her freedom. But all she had done was watch.
And realistically, it was all she could do. Wasting her body on a fight she couldn’t win wouldn’t have helped anyone. The Xolo-Lupinian began shaking with repressed rage, given no outlet, all the adrenaline coursing through her body could do was begin ripping herself apart from the inside.
The Zakonraptor strode down the hall, and Lt. Diaz realized she could hear Lt. Lee yipping in alarm in the distance. If she’d the presence of mind to cry out a warning to him, could the Papillon have done anything with the minute or two she might have bought him? Could he have locked the door to the barracks and crafted a weapon out of any of the supplies inside?
There were no weapons stored in the barracks. Only blankets, pillows, recreational computer pads, changes of clothes, and potted plants…
Can you retake a hijacked vessel using only potted plants? Lt. Diaz didn’t think so.
But she was going to have to figure out some way to retake the Wanderlust. Hopefully, she’d be doing it with Risqua by her side. Hopefully, as soon as the Zakonraptor was out of earshot, Risqua would explain to her in rushed, hushed tones why she’d been forced to go along with teleporting these villains onboard.
Maybe… Maybe they weren’t villains. Maybe they had a faster way home… It was the only explanation Diaz could think of to explain Risqua’s behavior.
It would be worth betraying Captain Carroway and her precious Tri-Galactic Union ideals if it got them home. That had to be what was happening. And for a moment, Lt. Diaz could feel her paws beneath her again, like maybe there was solid ground somewhere in the universe, because she had figured out the answer to this riddle.
“Okay, you can lower your blazor,” Lt. Diaz woofed. “I figured it out. They have a faster way home for us, right? And the captain would never have gone for it, because it breaches some aspect of her precious Tri-Galactic Union ethics, so you went over her tufted ears? Right?”
Ensign Risqua kept holding the blazor in her talon. The weapon kept pointing at Lt. Diaz’s chest. The Xolo-Lupinian felt her heart rate rising and her vision narrowing. Sound began to echo like she was underwater. She was starting to panic.
Why wasn’t Risqua lowering the weapon?
“They don’t have a faster way back to the Milky Way,” Ensign Risqua squawked.
Incoherently, inconsequentially, and almost giddily, Lt. Diaz realized that Risqua wasn’t an ensign anymore. Over the last half year, Diaz had been trained so thoroughly into properly referring to her fellow officers by using their rank titles that it was dizzying, unmooring to realize that rank no longer applied to her best friend. Risqua had betrayed Captain Carroway and all the other officers of the Wanderlust the moment she’d beamed those Zakonraptors aboard… if not, apparently, long before. Her rank was defunct. No longer relevant. Risqua wasn’t an officer here. She was a hijacker.
And Lt. Diaz wanted a reason — any reason — to join her. The Xolo-Lupinian wanted nothing more than for her reptile-bird friend to make this all make sense, so they could work together again. Work towards getting home.
“Okay,” Lt. Diaz woofed, her mouth speaking on autopilot for her. There was a blazor — probably set to kill — aimed right at her. She couldn’t afford to anger Risqua, no matter how much she wanted to grab the reptile-bird by her scrawny shoulders and shake her. “So, what is the play here then?” Lt. Diaz’s voice sounded hollow to herself, like she was playing a part she didn’t believe in. Would Risqua hear the difference?
If she needed to, could Lt. Diaz trick Risqua into believing she was playing along?
She didn’t know.
Diaz had never tried to be anything but her most authentic self with Risqua. She wasn’t sure if she even knew how to be something else, something pretend, something guarded and holding back a secret.
“We can be kings in this galaxy,” Risqua squawked, still holding the blazor eerily steady. She wasn’t fazed by this conflict at all. She’d prepared for it. She’d been ready to confront Lt. Diaz in this way.
Lt. Diaz wasn’t at all prepared, and she wasn’t comfortable with how she was having to improvise. Lying and pretending had never been her strong suits.
“Kings, you say?” The words tasted like ash in Lt. Diaz’s mouth. She hoped she’d said them well enough for Risqua to believe she was intrigued.
Of course, if Risqua could believe that Lt. Diaz cared about being a king of the Tetra Galaxy, then the reptile-bird had never known her at all. Not at all.
“Yes!” Risqua squawked excitedly, her tone causing all the hope in Lt. Diaz’s heart to wither and die.
Diaz didn’t live in the universe where Risqua returned the friendship she’d been extending. Risqua didn’t see her at all.
Had she even been writing an opera for Wilder? Or had that only been a cover? A way to buy herself time and keep everyone else from bothering her while she communicated with the Zakonraptors, learning their language and keeping them updated on the Wanderlust’s movements?
“It’s a good thing all the others fell for your lie about Wilder’s opera,” Lt. Diaz woofed experimentally, testing to see how deep the rottenness inside Risqua ran. The Xolo-Lupinian hoped dearly that the reptile-bird would contradict her and tell her the opera had never been a lie. If she did, then maybe Risqua was only misguided, confused, and mistaken. Not truly indifferent to everything that Diaz cared about.
Instead the feathers at the sides of Risqua’s face spread, and the scaly folds around her beak wrinkled, forming her version of a smile. “I was worried you’d be disappointed about that.”
It took everything that Lt. Diaz had in her to shrug nonchalantly and woof, “Chestnut will be disappointed,” as if it were only him who would care. As if she weren’t dying inside right now, being forced to harden herself into a tougher person who could handle this kind of disappointment and betrayal. It felt like the last glimmer of softness left inside her was being stamped out, and she didn’t know how she’d ever find another one again. She’d be as hard-hearted a stone for the rest of her life. It was the only way to never have her heart broken like this again.
Lt. Diaz screwed her muzzle up into the best imitation of a smile that she could manage and barked, “But who cares about him, right? Chestnut has tucked himself into that union cat’s pocket so thoroughly, he’d never see a good opportunity even if it walked up in front of him, spread its wings, and started dancing.”
Risqua laughed, and the sound was like birdsong — light, airy, and cheerful. She holstered her blazor at her waist, spread her wings, and did a little dance. “You get it,” she whistle-chirped.
Lt. Diaz smiled for real now, but it wasn’t because she agreed with the traitorous reptile-bird. It was because she was picturing tackling her, taking her blazor, and then retaking the Wanderlust. It was a vicious smile. A baring of teeth. Unfortunately, before the Xolo-Lupinian could throw herself claws and teeth first against her former friend, one of the Zakonraptors came click-clacking down the hall, talons echoing against the metal floors, and of course, weapon aimed steadily forward.
Lt. Diaz could tackle Risqua, but she wouldn’t stand a chance of surviving. The Zakonraptor would shoot her down. Unquestionably. Her only chance here was to play along. She had to play the part of a mercenary traitor for a while longer. She hoped not too long, because she could already feel the strain of it wearing her down.
Continue on to Chapter 7…