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.
Once again, the vacuum bomb sailed away from The Wanderlust, looking like nothing more than a thin streak of light on the viewscreen. A shooting star. But this time, Captain Carroway didn’t try to wish on it. She wondered how many of the members of her crew did.
The bridge of The Wanderlust was much more crowded this time. Everyone aboard had gathered together to watch. And now, not only were there two crews melded together aboard The Wanderlust — Union and Anti-Ra — but also three newcomers, two guests from the Waykeeper’s back and the strange amalgamation of circuitry and mycelia who now insisted they were a doctor.
Captain Carroway could never have imagined what a strange crew she would find herself in charge of, nor the sheer scope of the mission they would be on.
The Norwegian Forest cat might have preferred a crew composed entirely of loyal, tested, Tri-Galactic Union officers, and she would definitely have preferred the safety and security of a voyage closer to home. But her best friend, Lt. Cmdr. Vossie was still with her, and the first officer who fate had thrown her way had proven a perfect compliment to her own leadership style so far. Everything she’d seen of the rest of their crew — Lt. Lee and Ensigns Melbourne, Diaz, Risqua, and Werik — suggested they were all extremely competent officers. Korvax, Lys, and Ensign Mike were all complete wildcards, as far as Captain Carroway was concerned, but she was sure her crew could find a way to manage them, some kind of way to integrate them in.
If a crew of Tri-Galactic Union officers and a crew of Anti-Ra officers could find a way to work together, fusing into one combined crew, then certainly, they could figure out how to handle a hedgehog alien, caterpillar flirting with metamorphosis, and a mushroom convinced they were a doctor.
The streak of light on the viewscreen intersected with the invisible barrier of the edge of the Waykeeper’s hyperspatial slipstream, and light spilled outward from its point of intersection. The slipstream lit up, glowing brightly, as the light from the vacuum bomb washed around the turtle, illuminating the oval shape of the hyperspace field. The brightness grew and grew, until the whole screen flashed with brilliant white light, causing every member of the crew to turn away.
Except for one.
Lys stared at the brightness with her eyespots, unflinching, knowing with complete certainty that this was the moment she’d always been meant to see. This was the brightness that kept the darkness at bay. Before Lys’s egg had even been laid, her mother had seen that this moment could stop the Zakonraptors.
The flash of light ended, and the crew blinked with sun-spotted eyes at the screen.
The Waykeeper looked the same — verdant forests, marred only in a few places by the work of the forest fires, covered the dome of the giant turtle’s back. Green and glowing. Profoundly alive.
“I’m glad you’re bringing some cuttings from the Waykeeper’s trees along on our journey,” Korvax squeaked, disrupting the gravity of the moment and presumptuously coopting ownership of The Wanderlust’s journey with the carelessly — or carefully? — chosen word ‘our’. “I’m going to miss those forests! Now what are you bringing the cuttings along for again?”
“Scientific study,” Lt. Cmdr. Vossie said drily, sounding more like himself than he had since losing his implant. Perhaps he was starting to adjust. Captain Carroway certainly hoped so.
“Did it work?” Captain Carroway asked, turning to look at Ensign Diaz who was manning one of the engineer’s consoles on the bridge. “Can you check?” The Norwegian Forest cat was too hyped up to sit in her captain’s chair and instead, paced the length of the bridge while waiting on her answer.
“Lupinia is on the other side of several galaxies,” Ensign Diaz woofed sarcastically. “I can check just as soon as you can get us within scanning range of it. But I guarantee you: my calculations were correct. I wouldn’t play with the safety of my homeworld.”
“So you’re sure it worked?” the Norwegian Forest cat pressed, even though she logically understood that none of the officers on her ship could give her the reassurance she was looking for.
Lt. Lee announced from his post, “The Zakonraptor fleet is entirely gone.”
“That’s an exaggeration,” Ensign Diaz woofed, looking annoyed. “It’s not like we killed them or anything. They just fell through a space-time hole that dropped them far enough away from the Waykeeper, back in the direction of the Tetra Galaxy, that they’ll never catch up to the world-turtle again.”
“But we might run into them again,” Captain Carroway concluded grimly.
“It’s a possibility,” Ensign Diaz admitted, seeming mostly untroubled by the idea. “But Lupinia is safe.” There was a profound peace and contentment in the Xolo-Lupinian’s words as she spoke them, like she was able to stop worrying for the first time about something that had been weighing her down for years, something she cared more about than her own personal circumstances.
“Assuming it worked,” Captain Carroway grumbled, under her breath, not wanting to upset the canine’s contentment but also unable to leave the loose thread alone.
But then Lys inched her way forward, farther onto the bridge, and said in a sing-song tone, “It worked. I know it did.” And she did know. Because the Waykeeper knew. And although their connection was about to be severed forever, when Captain Carroway gave the order for The Wanderlust to fly away only moments from now, at this moment, the Ollallan’s mind was still tied to the giant turtle’s. And because of her mild telepathy, somehow, when Lys said that it had worked, Captain Carroway believed her. The caterpillar’s mind reached out and soothed the feline mind, all jangled up with guilt and uncertainties, smoothing those feelings out until Captain Carroway could let go of the fear that she’d wasted their only way home for nothing.
It hadn’t been for nothing. Lupinia was safely circling a different sun, away from Reptassan space, and easily defended. The Waykeeper was on its way, deeper into the space between galaxies.
There would be a lot of anger and hurt feelings aboard The Wanderlust in days to come from officers who would have chosen to take the quicker path home, leaving Lupinia in its untenable state, fought over by Reptassans and Anti-Ra. Officers who wouldn’t have cared if the Waykeeper were left to fend for itself. But Ensign Diaz was happy, and so was Lys. And Captain Carroway thought that the large canine’s contentment probably mattered more for the stability of her crew than any other individual. The Norwegian Forest cat felt confident that she could handle the rest of them.
It might take a long time, but she would get them home. And she would hold them together until they got there.
“Commander Chestnut,” Captain Carroway meowed to her first officer, “could you clear the bridge of off-duty officers?” It was time to clear the crowd. It was time to begin their journey in earnest.
The golden-mantled squirrel nodded smartly and then shepherded everyone off the bridge except for Ensign Diaz, Ensign Melbourne, and the captain herself.
The Norwegian Forest cat settled comfortably into her captain’s chair, letting herself relish the way that it sat at the center of the bridge, giving her an optimal view of the screen that still showed the beautiful world turtle, flying away from them already.
Speaking to the white tom cat at the pilot’s console Captain Carroway meowed, “It’s time to start covering some distance. Ensign Melbourne, please set a course for home.”
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