Discovery of the Wanderlust – Chapter 11: Lunacy

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.

“Korvax’s paws clutched together under his chin like he was praying to the gigantic, moon-sized egg hatching in the starry night sky over their heads.”

On the surface of the planet below, huddled beside a dwindling campfire, Korvax took his turn watching the sky and waiting for his comm-pin to chime to life with the voice of his beloved Ollallan daughter — or one of the other Wanderlust crewmembers who was still on the ship when it flew into a hatch in the side of the craggy moon — telling him everything was better now and to prepare to be teleported back aboard.

Korvax had stuffed bits of moss that he’d gathered between his quills to keep him warmer, and he could hear the various other officers, curled around the campfire, snoring softly as they slept.  But he kept his eyes on the sky.  He kept watching the craggy moon.  In fact, he almost missed the first cracks when they appeared on the surface of the larger, rounder, silvery moon, because his beady eyes were so focused on the moon where his caterpillar daughter had been taken. Continue reading “Discovery of the Wanderlust – Chapter 11: Lunacy”

Discovery of the Wanderlust – Chapter 10: Reconfiguring with Minimal Options

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.

“You should choose your allies more carefully,” Lt. Diaz woofed coldly.

The Zakonraptor brought Risqua, Diaz, and Lee to a quiet area with chairs and tables.  Several other Zakonraptors were sitting at tables in small groups, each with a tray of food in front of them.  It seemed to be some sort of cafeteria.  The tour guide showed Risqua, Diaz, and Lee how to get trays for themselves and fill them with food from a covered buffet.  None of the food was recognizable, of course, since Lt. Diaz knew nothing at all about Zakonraptor cuisine.

There were tureens of thick stews and pots of strange casseroles, everything smelled spicy and gamy.  Lt. Diaz hoped it would taste alright, but also, she wasn’t sure how much she could eat right now anyway.  Her body felt like it had switched permanently into fight-or-flight mode, and the idea of eating seemed like a dangerous distraction that might cause her to miss the exact moment when she should swipe out with her claws or dash away on all fours.  Except neither of those behaviors would actually save her or the Wanderlust from this situation. Continue reading “Discovery of the Wanderlust – Chapter 10: Reconfiguring with Minimal Options”

Discovery of the Wanderlust – Chapter 9: Into the Proverbial Lion’s Den

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.

“She might understand much of what the various Zakonraptor scientists were explaining to her, but she couldn’t figure out how it all fit together.”

The interior of the asteroid had been hollowed out and reinforced with beams and latticework that broke it into a honeycomb-like structure with several large bays.  The Zakonraptor piloting the Wanderlust flew the small ship into one of those bays, and docking clamps locked it in place.  Trapped.  Ready to be stripped for parts.  Lt. Diaz didn’t know how she and Lt. Lee — assuming he ever realized they should be working together — would ever get their ship out of here.

Two of the other bays inside the asteroid housed Zakonraptor vessels, familiar in form from when the Wanderlust had squared off against them to protect the Waykeeper.  If it came to a firefight between the Wanderlust and two Zakonraptor vessels, Lt. Diaz would bet on the Wanderlust.  Though, even if the Wanderlust did win such a fight, they’d probably sustain heavy damage. Continue reading “Discovery of the Wanderlust – Chapter 9: Into the Proverbial Lion’s Den”

Discovery of the Wanderlust – Chapter 8: Spectators in Their Own Story

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.

“None of them on the planet’s surface knew what was happening in the sky.”

Down below on the planet’s surface, Captain Carroway had been trying to contact anyone aboard the Wanderlust for hours.  The Norwegian Forest cat had gathered up all seven of her crew on the planet’s surface — thanking her lucky stars that they’d decided today to all teleport to locations close enough together to reach each other by foot — and they’d set up something of an improvised camp for handling the dark night rapidly descending upon them.  Her emotions had looped from confusion to irritation through anger and right back to confusion several times over by now.

None of them on the planet’s surface knew what was happening in the sky.  They only knew that Ensign Risqua had disappeared from her foraging party in the woods with Commander Chestnut and Korvax without explanation, and Lt. Diaz had stopped answering calls for her to teleport up supplies.  And then everyone aboard the Wanderlust had stopped responding to comm-pin calls entirely.  And Ensign Risqua was still gone. Continue reading “Discovery of the Wanderlust – Chapter 8: Spectators in Their Own Story”

Discovery of the Wanderlust – Chapter 7: Playing the Part Required of Her

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 shrugged as casually as she could manage, as if she really didn’t care at all whether the Papillon lived or died.”

The Zakonraptor stood in the hallway, staring inquisitively at Risqua and Lt. Diaz.  If the Xolo-Lupinian had to guess, it was wondering about the wisdom of Risqua holstering her weapon, leaving herself vulnerable.

Apparently, the Zakonraptor was smarter than Risqua.  Lt. Diaz would have to pay attention to that.

“You’ve come to an understanding with the mammal?” the Zakonraptor hissed in its own tongue, translated almost immediately by Lt. Diaz’s comm-pin.

“Yes,” Risqua squawked.  “She sees the value of our arrangement here, and she’ll prove very valuable to us.  She’s much more knowledgeable about this ship’s systems and technology than I am.  She trained with the Tri-Galactic Union which built the vessel.” Continue reading “Discovery of the Wanderlust – Chapter 7: Playing the Part Required of Her”

Discovery of the Wanderlust – Chapter 6: The Changing Winds of Fate

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.

“She felt the memory of the forest around her like a gem inside her, something bright and beautiful that she could hold onto…”

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. Continue reading “Discovery of the Wanderlust – Chapter 6: The Changing Winds of Fate”

Discovery of the Wanderlust – Chapter 5: Hunting Beneath New Moons

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.

“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… “

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. Continue reading “Discovery of the Wanderlust – Chapter 5: Hunting Beneath New Moons”

Discovery of the Wanderlust – Chapter 4: Two Different Flavors of Discontent

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.

“If you despise them all so much, then how come you’d endanger the one thing you and I can agree on—that we both want to get back—by entrusting the safety of your return voyage to a bunch of fools?”

Lt. Diaz didn’t schedule a counseling session with Ensign Mike, and she did manage to — mostly — avoid Captain Carroway as the Wanderlust flew toward the intriguingly flickering hyperspatial slipstream.  The strange reading turned out to be coming from a binary star system with a dozen or so planets orbiting the larger of the two stars.

Unfortunately, before the Wanderlust came close enough to the binary star system to pinpoint the hyperspatial slipstream’s exact location, the reading fizzled out.  Entirely.  No more flickering.  Just gone.

No one aboard the Wanderlust seemed to know how to react to the change in circumstances.  It had never been clear whether the hyperspatial slipstream was a scientific curiosity or a potential aide in their journey home, so it wasn’t clear exactly what they’d lost when it disappeared without a trace. Continue reading “Discovery of the Wanderlust – Chapter 4: Two Different Flavors of Discontent”

Discovery of the Wanderlust – Chapter 3: A New Direction

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.

“You found one?” Lys asked. “A hyperspatial slipstream?”

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. Continue reading “Discovery of the Wanderlust – Chapter 3: A New Direction”

Discovery of the Wanderlust – Chapter 2: A New Idea

by Mary E. Lowd

An excerpt from Discovery of the Wanderlust.  If you’d prefer, you can start with Chapter 1, or skip ahead to the next chapter.

“I wanted to experience a wider universe than I would have been exposed to under the Waykeeper’s protection,” Lys said.

The most useful thing that Lt. Diaz could think of to do with her time was research every aspect of the engines and computers aboard the Wanderlust that she didn’t already thoroughly understand.  That way, when she did finally get home to the Milky Way, she’d be able to take her knowledge and use it to upgrade technology on Lupinia.  Hopefully, there wasn’t going to be a need for an Anti-Ra force protecting Lupinia anymore, now that the planet was safely located in neutral territory.  But it couldn’t hurt to be prepared.

As long as Lt. Diaz was being forced to play the part of a Tri-Galactic Union officer, she might as well make the most of it.  She would become an expert on the latest discoveries and advancements in Tri-Galactic Union technology, and then she could carry that knowledge with her when she was allowed to finally be free from ridiculous union strictures again. Continue reading “Discovery of the Wanderlust – Chapter 2: A New Idea”