Otters In Space 4 – Chapter 24: Sequoia

by Mary E. Lowd

An excerpt from Otters In Space 4: First Moustronaut.  If you’d prefer, you can start with Chapter 1, return to the previous chapter, or skip ahead.

“They’d turned toward each other like orbiting stars, like they were held together by each other’s gravity.”

Sequoia woke up from a sleep so deep that it was as if she’d disappeared from the universe for a while, blinked out of existence into an entirely separate realm of blissful unconsciousness.

The universe she woke up into felt like an alternate reality.  Sure, she’d been the first one to flirt with Amelia by braiding the curly fur on the dog’s face, and she’d been the first one to fall asleep in the dog’s bed, innocently sharing a pillow…  But now, she’d woken up with her red-furred arms tangled up with the mop dog’s blonde curls, and the dog’s arms wrapped tightly around her.  It was more.  It was different.  It felt like the beginning of something and not just a playful flirtation.  They’d come to each other when tired and overwhelmed.  They’d turned toward each other like orbiting stars, like they were held together by each other’s gravity.  Like they were building a relationship. Continue reading “Otters In Space 4 – Chapter 24: Sequoia”

Otters In Space 4 – Chapter 23: Yvette

by Mary E. Lowd

An excerpt from Otters In Space 4: First Moustronaut.  If you’d prefer, you can start with Chapter 1, return to the previous chapter, or skip ahead.

“So… it’s like, what, an alien sitcom?” Trugger asked, tilting his head to the side, staring at the screen.

With Sequoia away from the bridge, the squirrel’s pilot station was empty — except for the mouse perched on the edge of its computer console.  Yvette felt a thrill down to the tip of her tail as she realized that she might be able to take over the station.  The cat captain hadn’t objected to her staying on the bridge yet.  And while messing with the squirrel’s computer console might draw attention to her and get her kicked off the bridge and back to engineering, it seemed like a risk worth taking.

There was so much information flashing and streaming over the computer screen beneath her paws! Continue reading “Otters In Space 4 – Chapter 23: Yvette”

Otters In Space 4 – Chapter 22: Amelia

by Mary E. Lowd

An excerpt from Otters In Space 4: First Moustronaut.  If you’d prefer, you can start with Chapter 1, return to the previous chapter, or skip ahead.

“She had no power here. Captain Kipper had made that clear. All she could do was wait until the cat in charge — such an oxymoron — chose to bring the ship in closer.”

Amelia’s heart jumped inside her chest, and instead of returning to a normal rhythm after the jump, it just kept racing, beating so fast that it felt like it was trying to break free from her body and run toward the humans — her gods! — that she was suddenly certain they’d found.

They shouldn’t have been looking.

She was a Bad Dog for being here.  A Bad Dog for letting this happen.  They were supposed to Wait. Continue reading “Otters In Space 4 – Chapter 22: Amelia”

Otters In Space 4 – Chapter 21: Sequoia

by Mary E. Lowd

An excerpt from Otters In Space 4: First Moustronaut.  If you’d prefer, you can start with Chapter 1, return to the previous chapter, or skip ahead.

“It looks like we found your grand central station, galactic edition, Captain…”

The Lucky Boomerang arrived at the far edge of Sequoia’s chosen star system, and suddenly, the viewscreen under her paws lit up like a Christmas tree.  The empty vacuum around them became a cacophonous soup of radio waves.  The silence of space that she’d grown used to was shattered and gone, replaced with so many signals bouncing in every which direction that looking at them made the squirrel feel like a country mouse who’d arrived in the big city for the first time, dazzled by the tall buildings and neon signs, unsure if she even spoke the local language. Continue reading “Otters In Space 4 – Chapter 21: Sequoia”

Otters In Space 4 – Chapter 20: Yvette

by Mary E. Lowd

An excerpt from Otters In Space 4: First Moustronaut.  If you’d prefer, you can start with Chapter 1, return to the previous chapter, or skip ahead.

“Perhaps her true home was up here, among the stars.”

Epsilon jumping through space made Yvette feel like the universe was doing gymnastic flips around her, while she held her own mouse body perfectly still.  It was like the inverse of doing gymnastics herself, and it gave her such a sense of stillness and peace.  She couldn’t tell if she loved the sensation… or if it just felt normal, like the way the universe was always supposed to be, but refused to be until she’d found her way onto this madhouse of a spaceship. Continue reading “Otters In Space 4 – Chapter 20: Yvette”

Otters In Space 4 – Chapter 19: Kipper

by Mary E. Lowd

An excerpt from Otters In Space 4: First Moustronaut.  If you’d prefer, you can start with Chapter 1, return to the previous chapter, or skip ahead.

“The two octopi continued to gossip in sign language whenever they thought the mammals on the bridge weren’t watching…”

The EDV-pocket orbiting the simple, lonely yellow sun turned out to be contained inside a partly melted lump of metal — a derelict spaceship, abandoned many, many years before, spiraling slowly inward toward the sun.  Whoever had been inside the spaceship had escaped, been rescued, or died in there long ago, and the heat radiation from the sun meant there’d be nothing useful the crew of The Lucky Boomerang could find inside, even if they were able to tow the vehicle far enough away from the sun to safely examine it. Continue reading “Otters In Space 4 – Chapter 19: Kipper”

Otters In Space 4 – Chapter 18: Kipper

by Mary E. Lowd

An excerpt from Otters In Space 4: First Moustronaut.  If you’d prefer, you can start with Chapter 1, return to the previous chapter, or skip ahead.

“Have you picked a star system?” Kipper asked gently.

Kipper stared at the viewscreen in complete wonder and awe.  She had assembled this team, dragged them into the middle of nowhere on a wild goose chase, and yet, there they were:  wild geese.  The viewscreen was filled with pockets and clusters of pockets of extra-dimensional vacuums (EDV).  The scan was overlaid on top of a star map, showing that the vacuum pockets grouped around yellow stars, the exact kind of stars Sequoia had kept The Lucky Boomerang chasing after all week.

Not all of the yellow stars were surrounded by the pockets.  Most of the yellow stars were single, lonely points of light.  Like the stars they’d been jumping between all week. Continue reading “Otters In Space 4 – Chapter 18: Kipper”

Otters In Space 4 – Chapter 17: Amelia

by Mary E. Lowd

An excerpt from Otters In Space 4: First Moustronaut.  If you’d prefer, you can start with Chapter 1, return to the previous chapter, or skip ahead.

“She wondered what squirrels dreamed about.”

Amelia tried to ignore the racket coming from the rest of the ship, but she feared all the hooting and hollering would wake Sequoia.  The squirrel had only just fallen asleep, and she needed her sleep.  So, the small dog unstrapped from her bunk, floated over to the door to the barracks, and gently but firmly closed it, blocking out the noise.  When she looked back, the squirrel was still sleeping, breathing slowly.

Amelia wondered what all the fuss was about — and also the strange blip of gravity she’d felt a few minutes earlier — but the crew here had proven to be very excitable and unpredictable.  If it were really important, Amelia was sure she’d find out eventually. Continue reading “Otters In Space 4 – Chapter 17: Amelia”

Otters In Space 4 – Chapter 16: Kipper

by Mary E. Lowd

An excerpt from Otters In Space 4: First Moustronaut.  If you’d prefer, you can start with Chapter 1, return to the previous chapter, or skip ahead.

“…pretending to understand something that you actually don’t is very, very foolish. Especially on a spaceship.”

Kipper knew that it was canonically hard to herd cats, and there were in fact two cats among her engineers…  However, she thought that overall it was harder to herd engineers.  And as a cat herself, instead of some kind of herd dog, she wasn’t at all sure that she was well suited to the task.

The gray tabby grumbled to herself about the difficulty of leadership as she floated through the halls of her ship, mostly as a way to console herself over the fact that she’d missed something as important as three-quarters of her engineering team going rogue and building an untested artificial gravity generator in deep space. Continue reading “Otters In Space 4 – Chapter 16: Kipper”

Otters In Space 4 – Chapter 15: Sequoia

by Mary E. Lowd

An excerpt from Otters In Space 4: First Moustronaut.  If you’d prefer, you can start with Chapter 1, return to the previous chapter, or skip ahead.

“She was starting to realize — and this should have been obvious, but somehow it hadn’t been — that the stars didn’t love her back.”

“You need to sleep,” Captain Kipper insisted to the bleary-eyed, scraggle-tailed squirrel, mere minutes after the latest epsilon jump.  “I can make that an order if you’d like.  And it doesn’t have to be more than a nap, but if you don’t lie down in the barracks and close those eyes for a while, you’re not allowed on the bridge anymore.”

Sequoia glared at the screen of data in front of her, flooding with new numbers in this new location that represented stars she hadn’t had time to get to know well yet.  She didn’t dare look up at the captain.  She knew she’d keep glaring, and she figured that glaring at her captain was a bad idea.  She’d probably end up ordered to sleep for a solid eight hours instead of just catching a nap. Continue reading “Otters In Space 4 – Chapter 15: Sequoia”