by Mary E. Lowd
An excerpt from Prodigy of the Wanderlust. If you’d prefer, you can start with Chapter 1, or skip ahead to the next chapter.
As the Wanderlust approached the alien space station, the entire crew crowded onto the bridge, eagerly watching the viewscreen. Captain Carroway grumbled quietly in her captain’s chair about disrupting sleep schedules and the importance of keeping to work shifts, but the grumpy Norwegian Forest cat knew better than to actually order any of her officers back to their barracks. They’d just watch the approach remotely on computer pads in their barracks if she did.
Ensign Mike wished there was a way to assure the captain that events like this one — events that pulled the crew together — were worth far more in terms of morale than any disruption to their schedules would cost. But Ensign Mike knew the captain wouldn’t listen to them. They didn’t know how to get through to her. Perhaps a carefully placed word in Cmdr. Chestnut’s pointed ears would work its way back to the fluffy feline.
Ensign Mike knew that Captain Carroway actually listened to the golden-mantled squirrel. And to Vossie… Even Korvax, when it came down to it. Maybe Mike was doing something wrong, if the cat listened to everyone but them.
Perhaps more self-reflection would help Mike figure out exactly what they should be doing to earn the captain’s respect. Everyone respected her, and she respected everyone… but them. So they had to be the problem.
Except, deep down, Ensign Mike had more self-respect than that. They knew they were doing the best job they could, and they worked as hard as everyone else aboard the ship. So, as much as the rest of the crew respected her, Captain Carroway had to be in the wrong.
Distracted by their own musings, Ensign Mike almost missed the moment that the space station became visible in the distance, surrounded by the stars of deep space. Windows gleamed with blue light on twisting, turning branches of rich mahogany brown; the space station had a thick central cluster with those branches twisting in a vague, asymmetrical spiral outward. Along the slender, outer tips of the branches, many metal spaceships were docked, hooked on like mechanical barnacles. Overall, the space station looked more natural than any of the space stations in Ensign Mike’s extensive memory — non-Euclidean, non-angular, non-machine-logic. It looked less like something that had been built than something that had been grown. Almost like an avant-garde piece of found art floating in space, constructed from a beautiful piece of driftwood.
Lt. Lee and Lt. Diaz — the pretty little Papillon dog and the imposing Xolo-Lupinian hybrid — were already woofing quietly at each other about the station’s architecture, conjecturing exactly what Mike had been thinking: this station followed naturalistic growth patterns rather than blueprinted plans.
Captain Carroway’s triangular ears twisted around to listen to the quietly woofing canine engineers. “I suppose if planets hatch from eggs in this sector of the universe,” she meowed wryly, “then it only figures that space stations would be grown from seeds.”
“We don’t know that it came from a seed,” Lt. Diaz barked, her flatly serious tone completely missing the hint of whimsy that had colored the captain’s voice.
“But if it did,” Korvax squeaked jovially, “maybe we should pick up a few of them!”
“What would we do with several space station seeds?” Lt. Cmdr. Vossie asked the hedgehog crossly. Ensign Mike’s heart — metaphorically speaking, of course — ached to hear the bleakness in the rabbit’s tone. (Though, arguably, the closest thing Ensign Mike had to a heart was Vossie’s hijacked neural implant, buried deep in their mycelial flesh.) The toadstool wanted more than anything to be nestled safely back on Vossie’s brow, singing words of encouragement and levity straight into the rabbit’s brain.
Instead, Mike did the next best thing available and said out loud in a voice like raindrops falling in the forest, “If there really were such seeds, I’m sure they’d be fascinating to study.”
Vossie’s naturally mild rabbit-like face twisted up in an expression of frustration, and Ensign Mike wished they could melt right back into the Wanderlust’s computer systems, unconscious and unaware, nothing more than a body of flesh used to make calculations.
If only there weren’t so many other animals crowded around the bridge, Ensign Mike knew they could make Vossie feel better… but it would only be temporary, because the rabbit still had to make it through every day without their aid. Vossie and Mike had never been meant to be separate beings like this. Every bit of Mike’s individuality came at a cost to Vossie, who had to get by without the carefully tailored electrical and chemical interventions that his brain had benefited from for his entire life up until this voyage.
While Mike wrestled with their own internal demons, Captain Carroway hailed the space station and negotiated safe terms for the crew to visit by teleporter. She declined to actually dock the Wanderlust, clearly wanting to keep greater flexibility in case any trouble arose. Sojourner had already slipped away from her usual position, following in the Wanderlust’s wake like a faithful duckling following her mama. Captain Carroway and Lys had agreed it would be safer for the baby world turtle to take up an opposite orbit of the system’s sun, keeping her distance from the space station. World turtles were rare commodities, as shown by how the Wanderlust had needed to rescue Sojourner from the cruel experiments of Zakonraptors shortly after she’d hatched. No one — including the world turtle herself — wanted to risk Sojourner falling into the wrong talons again.
Of course, Solace had stayed at home on Sojourner’s back, tending its clutch of eggs. Lys had been reluctant to leave the brooding tardigrade and baby world behind at first, but ultimately, the caterpillar had realized that her telepathic connection to Sojourner meant the Wanderlust would be more responsive to the turtle’s needs with her aboard than relying on comm-pins for communication. Technological signals were more likely to be scrambled by interference than her strong telepathic bond.
The Wanderlust settled into an orbit beside the space station, apparently called Spindle Reef, and Captain Carroway began doling out the order of shifts for visiting the station. The first group included Cmdr. Chestnut, Lt. Lee, and Korvax — a mix that didn’t surprise Ensign Mike at all. The toadstool knew that Captain Carroway trusted Cmdr. Chestnut and Lt. Lee implicitly, and Korvax had more knowledge of the Tetra Galaxy than anyone else aboard. The second group would include the captain herself, Lt. Diaz, and Ensign Werik. This also made sense to Mike — these were the two officers who the captain trusted least and thus wanted to keep a close eye on.
Mike would be in the final group with Lt. Cmdr. Vossie, Ensign Melbourne, and Lys. Captain Carroway always put Mike and Vossie together, given a choice. The mushroom simply wasn’t sure if it was something she was doing because Vossie had asked her to, if it was because she’d seen how effectively they worked together, or if it was some sort of pre-rational prejudice that still involved seeing Mike as less than a whole person and instead as some sort of wayward extension of Vossie.
Mike feared it was the third option. But they liked to imagine it was the first. They liked to imagine that Vossie still wanted them, even if the toadstool wasn’t able to play the same role in the rabbit’s life as they had before becoming a separate person.
The first two shifts passed successfully with each team of crewmembers returning excited by what they’d seen, refreshed by the time away from their small ship, and bearing useful goods they’d managed to trade for. Korvax, especially, came back with all kinds of foods that he hadn’t eaten in many, many years and was thrilled to be able to share with the rest of the crew soon… even if the rest of the crew seemed less thrilled by the prospect.
Lt. Diaz managed to acquire several mechanical components she’d been needing to fix some irregularities in the ship’s engine room, and Captain Carroway negotiated a non-aggression pact with the primary species in this sector of the Tetra Galaxy that would ensure the ship’s safe passage for much of the rest of the way to the nexus wormhole that would finally take them home. All in all, a very, very successful outing.
So, when it came time for Mike, Vossie, Melbourne, and Lys to take their turn visiting the station, the toadstool found themself swept up in the sense of excitement and adventure, keenly curious about what they would see aboard Spindle Reef.
Continue on to Chapter 3…