Author's Note:

Kudos to my awesome editor: Whisperwings

You truly are the greatest...

Chapter 6: Space Whales

"Yer both are on the first watch."

Silver chuckled as he looked at the lengthy list of sailors assigned to evening watches that was posted on the notice board just inside the RLS Legacy's galley. He rubbed his jowls suspiciously.

"Keep yer eyes on the stars an', perhaps we won't shipwreck." He laughed at himself, leaving Ariah and Jim to pout.

"Great." Ariah smirked playfully. "Now we're guaranteed to wreck."

She turned to walk on deck, while her fellow crewmates happily ate their large portions of dinner. Both Morph and Jim followed her into the chilling air.

"He just jinxed us!" Ariah hissed; though Jim could tell that she wasn't truly angry.

They walked across the length of the deck; Morph took the bow of the ship, Jim took the port side and Ariah took the starboard side.

All of them peered through the dark night, keeping watch for asteroids or any other creatures that could do harm to them or the Legacy.

"What's that?" Jim eventually called, referring to something on his side of the ship. Ariah hurried over and followed his pointing finger's direction.

"Why…" Ariah squinted hard. "It's a pod of Orcus Galactacus." She spotted the massive expanse of turquoise-blue blobs.

"Of… what?" Jim asked quizzically.

"Space Whales." Ariah stated, leaning over the portside railing to get a better view of the creatures as they floated closer to the ship. "I've haven't seen a pod this numerous in quite some time." She mused.

Out from the lower deck came Captain Amelia and Doctor Doppler. The Captain was switching shifts with Mister Turnbuckle at the helm of her ship and apparently Doctor Doppler's sensitive ears must've picked up Ariah's observation.

"Orcus Galactacus." Doppler repeated in astonishment, pulling out a camera from the innards of his space suit and he began climbing aloft. "They're one of the most endangered species…" He pondered quietly to himself; "This must be their feeding grounds." He silently began counting them all, snapping many pictures of them.

"You want to get closer?" Ariah offered the ship's cabin boy.

"What?" Jim yelped in shock.

"To the whales of course!" Ariah stated as if it were obvious with a flat expression. She then walked out onto the net at the bow of the ship. "C'mon Jim!" Ariah beckoned, clipping her bungee cord to the edge of the ship and walking outwards.

Jim sighed. "Guess you're on watch Morph…" He said glumly.

"Aye-aye!" Morph squeaked, making his whole body into a pair of giant telescopic eyes and surveying the deck.

Jim walked out into the net, knotting a lifeline around his waist for safety. The Space Whales were barely brushing the bow of the ship as it moved forward through the galaxy.

A playful young whale spun happily around the base of the bow, dipping under the boat and returning to stare curiously at the two teenagers.

Ariah smiled leaning past the netting to gently brush the whale's side. "He's a healthy one." She murmured to herself.

"How can you tell?" Jim asked, cautiously reaching his hand out to pet the baby whale.

"Well… you see." Ariah flattened herself against the netting to examine the baby whale's white-blue eyes closely. "Its eyes aren't red with green rims, that would indicate that it was suffering from a sickness."

Ariah stroked the length of the whale's stomach, the baby whale cooed softly from this.

"And it has a light blue stomach and deep turquoise pattern on its back; which means its healthy, because the stomach turns pale yellow and the pattern on its back turns grey-green when it gets sick." The female sailor stated as the whale flipped over.

"How do you know all of this?" He asked looking back at her as the young whale retreated to its migrating mother.

Ariah smiled. "Silver taught me." She looked at Jim. "He also said that the space whales' eyes change from white-blue to a deep blue as it ages."

"Wow." Jim stared at the tiny whale, noticing the difference between its eyes and it's mother's eyes.

Up above them they saw a large bull whale circling around Doctor Doppler. "Say cheese!" The dog-human hybrid called to the space whale.

"Uh Doctor, you should be careful about that end-" Captain Amelia warned sharply, but it was too late.

The bull whale ejected a fountain of snot at the shutterbug through his blowhole, just after the doctor had snapped a photo of his back.

Thankfully Doctor Doppler was wearing his ridiculous space suit, giving everyone a valid excuse to dispose of it... plus the doctor managed to get a decent snapshot of the bull space whale before it sprayed him.

Cautiously Ariah and Jim exited the bow's net as the pod of Space Whales left, they untied themselves from the bow and quietly resumed their watch positions.

Captain Amelia smiled lightly. Meanwhile Doctor Doppler was trying to get his suit off and Morph, Jim and Ariah were trying to force back their chorus of laughter.

When Doctor Doppler went below deck to remove his suit, the trio of watchmen finally had a chance to relieve their laughter.

Then they subtly began cracking jokes about the poor shutterbug.

The teenaged cabin boy was just about to open his mouth for a witty comment to Ariah's joke when the Legacy suddenly tilted on its starboard side.

Jim slide down the width of the deck, nearly toppling over the edge. Ariah rapidly grabbed Jim by the back of his jacket, grasping the railing of the Legacy tightly herself.

When the deck returned to its level position they both steadied each other. Then Ariah ran to the helm of the RLS Legacy.

"Captain, your orders?" She called up.

The cat-woman gripped forcefully to the large, wooden wheel of her ship, her feet planted in a concrete stance. "Miss. Clarke, come up here and try to access the additional solar generators, we're losing power!"

"Aye Captain." Ariah skipped up the wooden steps two at a time until she was beside Captain Amelia. Ariah went straight for the main control panel, reading the variety of controls and the ship's status reports.

"Mister Hawkins!" Mr. Arrow's voice commanded, as he quickly exited the captain's quarters; "Get the rest of the crew out here immediately!"

"Aye, Mister Arrow." Jim was about to prove himself useful to the two alien superiors.

Or so he hoped…

Jim hurried into the mess hall, staring at the large group of feasting sailors; they didn't seem to notice the previous ship tilt.

It wasn't until the wooden mess hall door on the main deck slammed closed loudly behind Jim from the aftershock of the jolt that the sailors paid attention to him.

"The Captain wants all hands on deck, it's an emergency!" Jim stated.

The sailors hooted at the brunette teenager, disbelieving a mere cabin boy. Their horrendous laughter echoed through the mess hall's wooden walls.

Jim scowled at himself and at the sailors but another ship jolt tilted the mess hall topsy-turvy, telling the lazy sailors other wise.

The brunette cabin boy was about to join the herd of sailors back out on deck when suddenly a large hand pulled him into the galley section of the mess hall.

"Nice work Jimbo." Silver complemented; friendlily half-dragging half-leading Jim towards the shelves of tableware. "Now we'll need teh secure everything in 'ere." He rubbed his hands together.

Jim looked up at the towering piles of pots and plates. "Everything?" He groaned miserably at the mountainous task.

"Aye." Silver's mechanical eye glinted with determination. "Everything."

Meanwhile back up on the upper deck, things were becoming a bit chaotic.

"We're losing all power Captain!" Ariah reported to Captain Amelia, getting back up onto her feet after the most recent tip.

"Curses." Captain Amelia gripped the wheel securely with both gloved paws and turned to her first mate. "Mister Arrow, retrieve Doctor Doppler: we'll need his astronomy know-how on the currently situation."

"Aye, Captain." Mr. Arrow lumbered down into the Captain's Quarters to find Doctor Delbert Doppler.

"Close the solar sails!" Captain Amelia ordered, weaving the R.L.S. Legacy through the asteroid field.

"Planet ho!" Onus reported from the crow's nest.

Ariah rapidly tried to hack the Legacy's system through the control panel using all of the programming skills she knew off her head to fix the solar energy crisis. Error messages appeared after every command she entered, it wasn't the system's security that was a problem… it was the lack of power from the depleting solar generators.

She peered over the control panel, spotting the large planet off the port side of the Legacy. She smacked her fists against the control panel in frustration; the solar generators wouldn't be enough to replace the amount of energy needed to keep the ship hovering through space.

"Ma'am…" Ariah turned to her Captain. "We'll need to dock at the nearest space port; we're losing a tenth of a cell of the alternate solar generator power every second and at this altitude we're going to likely crash."

"I've retrieved Doctor Doppler, Captain." Mr. Arrow stated, escorting the dog-faced astrophysicist beside Captain Amelia; thankfully he had removed his space whale snot-covered space suit.

"Excellent Mister Arrow, as you were." Captain Amelia turned to Delbert. "Doctor, which planet are we approaching?"

"Well…" Doctor Delbert pushed up his round glasses up to his chocolate-brown eyes and peered through his gilded telescope. "Judging by the dark atmosphere, and its twenty orbiting moons, we're approach-"

"Winterchill!" Ariah gasped, interrupting Doctor Delbert's statement.

"Correct, we appear to be approaching it during its seasonal eclipse;" Doctor Doppler speculated rapidly as he collapsed his pocket telescope. "A time where all twenty moons block the light of the nearest star –Alpha Omega Seventeen- thus cloaking the entire planet in darkness, though only for twenty-four hours. At which time, the moons will return to their regular orbits."

"So we're going to have to dock there..." Ariah groaned, knowing of the planet's frigid weather and its extra-terrestrial inhabitants.

"Everyone, brace yourselves!" Mr. Arrow boomed to the sailors on deck as Captain Amelia turned the Legacy towards the shadowy atmosphere of Winterchill, plunging them through.

Then the entire ship was erased from their sights. The darkness was thick enough to cut with a butcher knife. Ariah tried to wave her hand in front of her face, only feeling the minute breeze of chilly air.

Suddenly the Legacy's solar powered hovering mechanisms faltered, and the ship tilted vertically, bow-first, towards the icy wasteland that was Winterchill. Ariah grabbed the control panel with one hand and felt around her waist with the other, she found her retracted bungee cord and one-handily lashed it around the railing of the ship.

A blast of freezing cold arm hit them like the darkness did. The strong whiplash of cold snowflakes battered everything and everyone on the upper deck.

Something hard collided with Ariah's forehead. She closed her copper-brown eyes, pain flashed through her skull as she saw the same darkness as the unknown atmosphere, and then she lost her consciousness. Her bungee cord became taut as she was pulled along parallel to the ship's deck.

Author's Note:

Enjoy!

MG#6