Scavenger to Savior:

~Nobody can hear a scream in the vacuum of space, or so they say. Sadly, I know different.

The year was 3015 and space travel was already as common as hopping a plane at the airport. Back then I was not known as Karter, I was Kar captain of the scavenger ship BOB, which stood for “Bag of Bolts,” fitting since it was a pieced together junkyard Zoomia5000. My crew and I were from right here on Earth, and when I say crew I mean the twins, Molly and Maddy Hemble. Molly was our navigator and Maddy was our engineer. We had been best friends since our third year of school when we discovered our shared wanderlust for the universe. It was then the three of us began building BOB. By our ninth year of school, we had completed BOB. Finally, we could become scavengers, see the universe, and help bring resources to our township.

You must understand Earth was a different place then. We were three fifteen-year-old girls on a planet where people were so harsh and crude that it was lonely. Water was running low, air quality was not good, people had stripped most natural resources to excel humans into the universe, but worst of all there were only a few animals left and they were kept in a secret location for their safety. Earth had also converted to the universal currency, metal. Each metal from each planet had its own value and those values varied from planet to planet. The same was true when it came to resources, each planet had unique things, all that cost metal and metal was getting harder to find. Unless you had a plan, and I did.

While in school I was not the best student, and by that, I mean I was a solid “C” student with an occasional “B” but never a “F.” I was not fond of math and history bored me. Science and reading on the other hand, were my favorites. I read as much as I could about space and the universe. I also paid close attention in science, because in an old leather journal I had found in the junkyard, I had written the details of every metal we learned about and wrote the coordinates for each space station as they were built.

My plan was to use my journal as a guide. We would fly BOB in one direction for a year stopping at each abandoned space station to gather all the metal we could. I never understood why more people did not scavenge. There were several space stations that were left empty once the space port was complete on the closest habited planet. After we had traveled out into the universe for a year scavenging metal we would turn around and head back to Earth stopping at each space port to trade. The goal, get all the supplies as we could for as little metal as possible on each planet. I figured every two years we would return to Earth with supplies and metal for our township, West-Amica.

I had planned on being a scavenger for as long as I could remember. My family and I were never close and when I became friends with Molly and Maddy their family took me in. Back then their family was said to have a deep trade well, which translates to their family was rich. The junkyard saw lots of trade, probably because you could find everything from auto fossils of the 2000s to star cruise ship parts. I thought when I became a scavenger all my dreams would come true. I was right.

The first four trips flew by. I remember Molly, Maddy, and I would often joke that we could stay in space forever. Space was beautiful, exciting, and quiet. It was just the three of us, we got along well, and unlike most planets we didn’t run out of supplies often. We were also lucky enough to have BOB. Thankfully, BOB was ours, we owned equal shares of him thanks to Mr. Hemble. For our fifteen birthday’s he traded the Galactic Syndicate enough metal to pay for the ownership fees and taxes, scavenger license fees, and flight license fees for all three of us. Not to mention we had built BOB, so we knew how to fix every milli-inch of him if we ever needed to.

We made sure to follow the universal scavenging laws set by the Galactic Syndicate and enforced by the Universal Mountie Divisions. No way were we going to end up being a “dead digger.” That is what we called the law breakers after they were arrested, because they were sentenced to work until they died. No matter your age, race, gender, or home planet if you broke a law and got caught you knew you were going directly to the nearest planet with a metal mine. There were no trials or prisons on any planet, the Universal Mounties had to catch you in the act, which was easy for them to do since they were naturally clear. They would just appear out of nowhere, arrest someone, take them to a mine, and leave them to work with miniscule amounts of water, food, and sleep until they died.

Trip number five was the trip that changed everything me included. Day number three hundred and sixty-five had just ended, we were halfway done with this trip, meaning it was time to turn around and make for Earth. We had a full load of metal to trade along the way. I had just started to turn BOB right so we could use a nearby moon’s gravity like cruise-control for the whole turn when I thought I heard something. All the sudden, the hairs on the back of my neck stood up and I felt a little sick in my stomach. Something felt wrong, before I could figure out what it was Molly came skipping toward me. I knew where Maddy was because the air smelled delicious and that meant Maddy was in the kitchen. She was the only one of us that knew how to cook.

Dinner was great, like always. The three of us sat around eating, laughing, and making a list of supplies we wanted to try to get. I kept the weird feeling I’d had to myself, mostly because I felt a little crazy. There was nothing wrong with BOB, the three of us were healthy, and from what I could see out the window everything was normal. I chalked it up to being alone at the wheel for so long. Once we had finished with clean up and the nightly safety checks we headed off to sleep for a few hours, safely on gravities cruise-control.

It felt as if I had just laid down when my eyes shot open. I laid there in my bed listening carefully. None of the warnings were going off, Maddy was snoring, but something had woken me. After a while I rolled over to get comfortable, and I must have dozed off because the next thing I knew Molly was diving under my blankets. We sat huddled under my blanket looking back and forth between my bedroom door and the window when something happened. It sounded like something hit us, but we did not feel anything.

Seconds later we both jumped up and took off. Molly ran to check on Maddy and I took off toward BOB's control room. I was taken back by what I saw as I entered the control room, everything was exactly as I had left it. Confusion took over. I began checking everything. Molly and Maddy appeared a few moments later, I could see they were even more confused than I was. When we were satisfied that the control room was safe, we checked every crevasse of BOB, but we found nothing. Not one thing was out of place, we were not leaking air, and there were no other ships in sight.

At least an hour went by while we sat in the control room debating what had happened. Maddy kept insisting that Molly and I were crazy but then it happened again. We all froze, both Molly and Maddy were searching around with their eyes, but I could not move anything at all. Once the shock wore off, I realized the hairs on my neck were standing on end again and I had goosebumps everywhere.

Moments later it happened again. Now I could clearly tell that whatever was happening was outside and we were not crazy. By this point BOB had rounded the moon and caught the gravity of the uninhabited planet below. I sent Maddy and Molly to look out in the other directions. There was no way it was coming from the nearby moon or planet because both were lifeless. My fear was that we had cruised into a meteor shower but there was no sign of meteors.

Before I could have another thought a low scream of misery engulfed BOB. The windows shook and BOB began to make an awful noise, almost like a tuba being flattened. Then without warning the scream of misery stopped and something worse began. A toe curling, ear piercing, horrific scream seemed to fill the galaxy. Maddy and Molly came running with their ears covered. They were yelling about a cluster of ships off in the distance.

I did not even take a breath before bellowing as loud as I could for the twins to get to their stations. BOB leaped out of cruise-control as I pulled away from the desolate planet’s gravity. For some reason, like an unknown force was controlling me, I pressed BOB’s boosters and shot toward the cluster of ships and the horrific scream.

The volume of the scream sounded like it should have been right outside and visible, but there was nothing close to us. I could see the cluster of ships slowly growing on the horizon. I also noticed an old space station coming into view. The scream slowed and gave way to a growling rumble. It was not until after we passed the space station that we could see the evil taking place.

In front of us was a real-life, huge, colorful space whale! And attacking it were five large poaching ships. My blood started to boil. Galactic poachers had already come to Earth and poached our animals. How dare they! It was bad enough that poachers had almost eradicated planet animals now they were attacking poor space animals. That is when I snapped.

My eyes were blurry from tears and my voice full of rage. I began yelling that I had to save the whale. Frantically, I started to think aloud about what to do. That is when Maddy reminded me that BOB is a scavenger ship not a battleship. We had no weapons, and the poaching ships were super-sized compared to BOB.

About that time, I remember I was hysterically yelling a plan to ram BOB into the poacher’s ships one at a time and that I did not care if I ended up a dead digger. That is when Molly brilliantly suggested that we go back to the space station we had passed and look for weapons. I tried to move as fast as I could, but everything seemed to be in slow motion. Suddenly I had a realization, BOB was weighed down with our load of metal. I reached over and smacked the right cargo release button. Now tons lighter we were quickly able to gain the speed needed to reach the space station in minutes.

Relic, that is the one word I would use to describe the space station. It was one of the first universal stations built back in 2053. It must have been knocked out of its orbit and drifted out here. Thankfully, being a super old station made it easy to get into. Once inside the three of us split up in search of weapons. It felt like I was running in circles looking in the same rooms again and again. It was so frustrating, there was metal to scavenge all over but not one weapon. I will never forget what happened next.

“LASER DRILL,” yelled Molly repeatedly until Maddy and I found her and the drill.

The laser drill rumbled and sputtered as I started it up. I remember being thankful that space stations run on solar power. I had Molly act as my spotter because laser drilling a planet from space was tricky and I was about to try to hit moving poacher ships. Maddy had two jobs, one, make sure the laser drill did not overheat and two, keep an eye out around us in case the poachers were not alone.

When the ready light flashed green, I planted my feet firmly and squeezed. Somehow, I managed to blow two poacher ships up before the other poachers realized our location. As soon as the poachers had our location Maddy went to get BOB ready for a quick exit. It took me a few shots, but I got two more of them. Sadly, right when I had the last poacher in sight he fled at hyper speed.

Molly and I hurried to BOB, I had to get to the whale. Even though I wanted to hyper skip to cut the flight time I did not. That poor space whale had just been attacked and I did not want to scare it, so I approached as cautiously as possible. As we got closer, we could see where the poachers had harpooned it. I turned off BOBs engine and coasted the last few hundred yards. The closer we got the more the whale tried to flee. After hours of watching over the space whale it passed out from writhing in pain.

I was not sure how long the whale would be passed out or if it was going survive but something inside me did not care. I had to help it. Maddy and Molly helped me tie together every net and rope we had on BOB. After that I suited up. I went out to the whale while Maddy and Molly fed me the net. Being as careful as I could I put the net around the whale, then went to secure the net to BOB, and start home.

Everything seemed to be alright. The whale was still passed out and we had enough net to surround it. Now all I had to do was slowly and carefully tow it across the universe. I started up BOB and tried to accelerate but all BOB did was a little jerk. That is when Maddy noticed the capacity light blinking. BOB did not have enough power to carry the half load of metal we still had in the left cargo hold and the whale. I looked out the window and to my surprise the whale’s eye was half open. It looked terrified. That was the moment I changed. The metal ceased to mean anything to me, all I wanted to do was save the whale, so I released the left cargo.

The trip back to Earth was a short five weeks from where we were, even towing a space whale at a lower rate of speed. It was a smooth trip for the first four weeks. We hardly saw another ship and I was purposely staying away from planets, so their gravity did not pull on the whale. However, that last week as we approached Earth, we noticed that ships were stopping, turning about, and following us. It was obvious that many in our region had never seen a wild space animal, some had never seen an animal of any kind.

I decided to put the space whale between the Earth and the moon so that their gravity would hold the whale still for recovery. When I looked up from taking the net off the whale I froze. Never in my life had I seen a crowd so big, and they were staring at me. Honestly, it was insane and made me more than a little uncomfortable.

Late that night the space whale awoke in pain only to find itself in a strange new place. Scared, lonely, and wounded it began to cry. I remember thinking that something had exploded when I first heard the whale tears hit the ground. Everyone thought that like rain from a storm it would pass in a few hours but no. That is when we learned that space whales will cry until they are healthy and happy in their surroundings.

Earth was cried on for two-hundred and forty-five days straight. In those days, not only did the whale heal but Earth began to transform. Water had become abundant once again, trade increased daily, but best of all the space whale had decided to stay… and so had I.