Voyage of the wanderlust, p.6
Voyage of the Wanderlust, page 6
As a kitten, one of Captain Carroway’s littermate’s had tried to interest her in watching sports games together, but she’d never understood the appeal. If you waited until a game was over—doing something else while it was happening—you could just look up the score and skip past all that unnecessary drama. It saved so much time.
Captain Carroway wanted to look up the score after this was over, but the only way out was through...
The white dwarf star’s light continued to stretch out and swirl around the dark patch where the black hole must be. It was eerie and beautiful, and it didn’t feel like it was getting any smaller on the viewscreen. Of course, it was growing... so maybe that was an optical illusion? But Captain Carroway didn’t think The Wanderlust was pulling away from the black hole.
“We are stuck in the black hole’s gravity well,” Lt. Cmdr. Vossie announced. His long ears had both drooped forward hopelessly. He’d never looked more defeated. “We cannot escape by flying forward.”
“Could we...” Captain Carroway felt like an idiot saying it, but this wasn’t a time to let dignity get in the way of brainstorming. “...I don’t know, turn around and fly through it?”
“It’s a black hole,” Lt. Cmdr. Vossie said bleakly. “It’s not a worm hole. It doesn’t go anywhere.”
“Are you sure?” Captain Carroway hissed.
“One hundred percent,” Lt. Cmdr. Vossie replied primly. Even this close to death, he could still find room for annoyance.
“Not a thousand percent?” Mr. Melbourne quipped. The white tom cat’s narrow tail was lashing frantically behind him. “I dunno. Only one hundred percent seems low to me right now for basing decisions on.”
“No, Mr. Melbourne, that would be hyperbole,” Lt. Cmdr. Vossie said, tall ears perking back up a bit now that he had a chance to defend clear communication and the pursuit of reason. “Neither hyperbole nor flights of fancy will help us here.”
“I’d take a flight of fancy over nothing right now,” Ensign Lee woofed.
Captain Carroway looked at the young, pretty dog. He was staring at the viewscreen like it would swallow him up, and he wasn’t wrong. Ensign Lee might have spoken out of despair, but he had a valid point. Whether a plan would work right now might be less relevant than whether it would give The Wanderlust’s crew something to do with their final minutes...
There wasn’t time to do anything meaningful like share a last meal that had more substance than protein bars and coffee or record final messages to send to the loved ones they would be leaving behind—something that Captain Carroway should have thought to do the night before. But her brain had been in a fog, ever since Lt. Cmdr. Vossie had said the word “suicide” to her. And at this point, nothing The Wanderlust sent would escape the growing black hole’s rapidly expanding gravity well anyway. They were lost. They might as well embrace it.
“To hell with probabilities,” Captain Carroway announced with as much bravado as she could muster. “Turn this ship around and take us straight into the black hole.”
“To hell with logic, science, and reason too, then, I suppose,” Lt. Cmdr. Vossie muttered, but he didn’t argue more than that. He understood what his captain was doing. He didn’t have to like it or agree with it, but he did understand. And even though his body was perfectly regulated to keep himself from panicking at the imminent prospect of his death, the rabbit-like alien understood that the other three crew members of The Wanderlust didn’t have that advantage. Terror would be coursing through their veins in the form of all kinds of stress hormones. They couldn’t help letting fear of mortality unbalance them.
“Aye, Captain!” Mr. Melbourne meowed in delight. If he was going to die, at least, he was going to die doing what he loved, what he was best at, and doing it in the most extreme way possible.
What other cat could say they’d flown a top-of-the-line starship straight into a rapidly expanding baby black hole? None that he knew of! Of course, he might not get much of a chance to brag about it after the fact either, but that was a problem for later. Right now, his paws were doing the driving, and it was time to let them dance over The Wanderlust’s controls.
Toward the back of the bridge at his station, Ensign Lee was facing his own mortality for the first time in his young life. He was a young enough dog who’d lived a blessed, privileged enough life that—while he’d faced his father’s death as a young puppy—he’d never really considered the idea that he would someday die. Not really. He knew it academically, of course, in a sort of abstract way, but it had never been a real, serious concern, staring him right in the face, unblinking, unflinching, coming for him.
Ensign Lee found himself wondering about what he might have missed out on by spending his whole life so dedicated to the pursuit of his Tri-Galactic Union career. And yet, even with the seconds ticking down, he couldn’t think of anything wild or reckless he’d ever done, and he couldn’t think of anything glorious but foolish he wished he could do, if only there were time left. He couldn’t think of anything at all. Fear had frozen him. He’d never been brave and bold like the tomcat steering their vessel with dancing white paws.
Ensign Lee watched Mr. Melbourne, and maybe it was just the crazy, heady mix of hormones flooding his body, but he felt a little bit in love with that cat. Only half an hour ago, he’d wished Mr. Melbourne would shut his muzzle and stop telling silly stories about his exploits among the prisoners on the penal asteroid for the last three years, and yet, suddenly, those stories felt so vibrant, so full of life. Even life on a penal asteroid sounded wonderful and delightful when described by that charming tomcat.
If Mr. Melbourne could pull The Wanderlust out of this black hole, Ensign Lee swore to himself, he would try to become more like that tomcat. He would try to live life such that Mr. Melbourne could tell stories about him to pass the time. Nothing Ensign Lee had done in the last few months—or years, even—would make a good story. All he’d done was work, focus, study, and follow the rules. If he got a chance, Ensign Lee wanted to be more than just a Good Dog. He wanted to be a vibrant one.
On the viewscreen, the white dwarf’s stretched out strings of light blurred and blended together. The air aboard The Wanderlust’s bridge grew thick and heavy, like the officers on her bridge were breathing—or rather, choking on—molasses. Then the ceiling contorted, metal screaming as it bent inward, and the viewscreen cracked right down the middle. Liquid crystal fluid leaked down the cobweb cracks on the display like blood.
Flame licked its way onto the bridge from The Wanderlust’s central corridor, followed by billowing bursts of thick gray smoke, dotted with glowing red sparks that filled the air. All of the officers on the bridge began to cough and gag. Thick air was hard to breathe, but ember-filled smoke actually burned.
Captain Carroway tried to cry out—she wasn’t sure if the cry was the start of an order to Mr. Melbourne to turn the ship back around or simply a primal war cry meant instinctively, irrationally to scare the big, looming black hole away—but the roar returned to her throat before it could escape from between her fangs.
The smoke cleared, flowing backward to the corridor where it had come from.
The viewscreen repaired itself, cracks smoothing back together and liquid crystal fluid flowing back into place behind the smooth screen.
The ceiling screamed its way back to its original convexity, and the air began to thin, becoming easier to breathe again.
Everything was undoing itself.
Except the view on the viewscreen?
Blank darkness. An endless void. Nothing, nothing, nothing.
“Is the viewscreen broken?” Captain Carroway choked out from her lacerated throat, still burning from the smoke she’d breathed in.
Mr. Melbourne, with his fur fluffed out like an asterisk, turned back to look at his captain; the expression on his ghost-white face showed that he thought she was crazy. Clearly, the viewscreen had repaired itself. The cracks that had been there only moments before were entirely gone.
“Yes,” Captain Carroway snapped impatiently, her voice still rough and rumbly, “I know it’s not still broken... but... is it working? Where’s the star? Are we... inside a black hole?”
The Norwegian Forest cat captain looked over her shoulder at Ensign Lee, but the Papillon was staring at the controls on his console, paws hovering uselessly above it like he’d been about to do something but then forgotten what it was. He was far too absorbed and bewildered by whatever readings his console were showing him to notice anything as inconsequential as a question from his captain. The young dog was clearly stunned.
The white tomcat, on the other paw, looked like he’d been startled into action, ready to fight anything and everything that came his way. “What the hell was that?!?” he caterwauled.
“I believe,” Lt. Cmdr. Vossie said, voice shaking and ears flopped completely downward, “that we just experienced a blip in time.”
The rabbit-like alien’s brow was bleeding, fur matted and red above his left eye. His computer implant was gone. At least, with horror, that’s what Captain Carroway thought at first. Then she saw the implant had been yanked out somehow and was lying on the console beside her stunned first officer, still plugged in by way of a mycelial cord to the ship’s computer system, but no longer serving any purpose now that it’s connection to Vossie’s brain had been severed.
“Oh, Vossie!” Captain Carroway yowled. How would her friend get by without his implant? She needed to get him to a doctor immediately so the implant could be reinstalled in his brow and the connections restored to his brain.
“Actually...” Ensign Lee’s voice was halting and hesitative. He was still staring at his paws, hovering just above his console. “We’ve moved in space as well... A long way in space...”
“Well, where are we?” Captain Carroway asked distractedly. She had gotten up and was trying to help Vossie, but there wasn’t much she knew how to do for him. She was afraid to touch the displaced implant. She didn’t know how delicate it was or if she might break it further by trying to unplug it from The Wanderlust’s computers. So, she let the implant be and settled for checking Lt. Cmdr. Vossie’s brow directly. The wound was mostly shallow, but like head wounds do, it was bleeding profusely.
“I believe, based on these readings, that we’re in the empty expanse between galaxies.” The Papillon’s butterfly ears had splayed and were hanging low. His bright eyes had a frantic shine to them. “Unless I’m mistaken, we’re on the far outer reaches of the fringe of... the Tetra Galaxy.”
Captain Carroway whirled around, exclaiming, “The Tetra Galaxy!” Mr. Melbourne reacted much the same way, and the two cats’ exclamations coincided.
“A blip in space-time...” Lt. Cmdr. Vossie muttered. “Intriguing.” They were the words he would normally say, but his voice was weak and his whole body shook like his heart was racing with fear and probably a plethora of other emotions that his implant would usually be keeping in check.
“Mr. Melbourne, could you see if you can scare up a med kit, please?” Captain Carroway meowed, trying to gather her wits together. Then she added, “And Ensign Lee, could you please calculate the quickest route home?”
The Tri-Galactic Union was centered in three galaxies—The Milky Way, Twilight Spiral, and Ursa Dentatus. Those galaxies were thoroughly explored and interconnected by various hyperspace jump points that made it possible to navigate through them and between them fairly quickly.
The Tetra Galaxy, however, was much farther away. And while a nexus did exist that bridged between the far outer reaches of Ursa Dentatus—the galaxy where the bear-like Ursine aliens had come from—and the Tetra Galaxy, the Tetra Galaxy itself was still almost entirely unexplored. There were no maps of hyperspace jump points that would make it quick or safe to navigate. And at a rough estimate, a direct course from the outer edge of the Tetra Galaxy back home to the Milky Way, without any hyperspace jump points, would take many months at top speed. At best. At worst? It could be years.
Four Tri-Galactic Union officers, all alone, trying to crew a ship of this size for months on end without any help or support would be untenable. Even if it were a crew who had been carefully picked to get along with each other. That wasn’t the case here. Sure, Captain Carroway and Lt. Cmdr. Vossie had been best friends for years, and Mr. Melbourne might prefer a long voyage to his incarceration... but Ensign Lee had been betrayed by the Tri-Galactic Union he believed in when he was sent on this mission. The bright, young Papillon had every right to be angry.
None of them were prepared for what they might be facing.
“Uh... Captain...” Ensign Lee was now looking at his computer console like it had turned into a snake and might bite him. “We’re being hailed?”
“Out here?” Captain Carroway meowed in bewilderment. “In the middle of nowhere?” The Norwegian Forest cat sighed and shrugged. Maybe this mission would involve scientific discovery and diplomatic first contact after all. “Put whoever it is on the viewscreen, I guess.”
Mr. Melbourne returned with a med kit and began cleaning up Lt. Cmdr. Vossie’s head wound. Meanwhile, Captain Carroway returned to her captain’s seat and composed herself for whatever might appear on the viewscreen, whatever strange, new, alien race might live out here in the dark between galaxies.
CHAPTER 8
TWO CREWS ON ONE SHIP
Captain Carroway could not have been more surprised when the face that appeared on The Wanderlust’s viewscreen was the very familiar golden-furred face of Captain Chestnut. “What the hell?” she spat. “We watched your ship explode!”
“And I felt it explode,” Captain Chestnut said, shuddering. The reptile-bird behind him had a haunted look in her eyes, and Captain Carroway noticed that the other Anti-Ra officers—the Morphican and other squirrel—were no longer on the ship’s bridge. “But more importantly, my engineer tells me that our ship has sustained enough damages from that first explosion that unless we power down immediately, it might very well explode again. And believe me, I do not want to experience that twice. None of my crew do...” His voice went hollow in a way that suggested to Carroway that maybe not all of his crew had survived the return from that first explosion. “Especially when I expect the second time might be... well... more final. It’s not often that you get a reprieve from your ship exploding around you.” He smiled weakly.
“What can we do to help?” Captain Carroway asked. Minutes ago, she’d been responsible for the Anti-Ra ship’s total and complete destruction. Now she was asking how she could help the survivors...
Of course, minutes ago, she was facing the prospect of her own death. And now... Now she didn’t know what she was facing at all.
This day was dizzying.
“If your ship has room and is in a more stable condition,” Captain Chestnut said, “could my crew evacuate to it?”
“Yes,” Captain Carroway agreed without hesitation. “We can bring you all onboard. Power your ship down, and we can tow it... well... wherever we end up going.”
“We’ll figure it out when we get there,” Captain Chestnut said. The lights on his bridge flickered. He looked over his shoulder and shouted, “All paws prepare for immediate evacuation. And Diaz? Power it all down. Everything.” Looking back at the screen, he said, “Thank you, Captain—?”
“Carroway,” the Norwegian Forest cat provided. Then she said to Ensign Lee, “Please teleport all life signs on The Last Chance into The Wanderlust’s second barracks room.” Then turning so her face couldn’t be seen by Captain Chestnut through the viewscreen, she quietly hissed, “Make sure our teleporter disables any weaponry they might have on them, and set up a force shield across the barracks’ door.” She wanted to help the Anti-Ra crew, but she didn’t want to give them the opportunity to take over her ship.
Ensign Lee nodded in acknowledgement and then woofed, “I’m reading four life signs.” Then lowering his voice, the Papillon added, “That’s two fewer than showed on the ship before...” He waved a paw loosely, indicating the bewildering space-time blip they’d all just experienced. “...before all this happened.”
Captain Carroway drew a deep breath between her fangs to steady herself.
The Anti-Ra officers would be mourning their lost crewmates. Individuals who had died because of an order she’d given and a vacuum bomb her ship had fired. She hadn’t expected to have to look survivors in the face after committing the atrocity she’d been ordered to commit.
She hadn’t expected to look at anything at all.
No matter how hard and confusing all of this was... it was better than being squeezed to death inside a baby black hole, which was what she and Vossie had expected would happen.
There was a certain freeing quality to having expected her own death so completely and to have come out the other side alive. Freeing and a little unreal. Surreal, even. Like she was floating through an impossible dream.
Captain Carroway had faced the certainty of her own death and survived; anything else could be figured out.
First off, Captain Carroway needed to deal with her new guests. If she had a proper crew for her ship, she’d be able to send an underling to deal with the Anti-Ra refugees while she stayed on the bridge, figuring out what was going on. As it stood, there were now as many Anti-Ra on her vessel as Tri-Galactic Union officers. That was not a good balance.
Captain Carroway made her way to the back of the bridge and opened a supply cupboard filled with hand weapons—half a dozen blazors and two blazor rifles. She hoped she wouldn’t need one. But in case she did... It was better to be armed and not need it than the alternative. Captain Carroway hooked a blazor onto her uniform’s belt, took down another two blazors which she handed to Ensign Lee and Mr. Melbourne, and then locked the cupboard. She didn’t offer a blazor to Lt. Cmdr. Vossie.
The injured Morphican was in no shape to wield a weapon. He was still shaking uncontrollably. Though, Mr. Melbourne had bandaged the wound on his brow.
