

# Jovian

By Michael G. Long

Copyright 2018 Michael G. Long

Smashwords Edition

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your favorite ebook retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Table of Contents

Preface

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

About the Author

# Preface

There's never enough time to explore it all. For millennia humans have looked to the stars, watched their movements, named them, and worshipped them. I believe human beings hold a deep desire to explore the far reaches of space, not only for the sake of exploration, but to discover a part of ourselves that seems to call us from those far reaches. In doing so it may help us, for better or worse, understand our place in the vastness of the universe. We, as a species, are on the cusp of reaching out into that unknown. Within the next century non terrestrial habitation and exploration could become common place. This idea has always captured my imagination. There is no telling what we may find as we began our journey beyond the confines of this planet. Life takes many forms. One thing is certain, we must move into that time with open minds and full awareness of the incredible discoveries that await us.

For my family, you know who you are. Thank you for all the support and encouragement.

## 1

" **COMING** about." The helmsman voiced over the com.

"Targets spotted on deep radar, mag-imaging, and x-ray. Solo target, three kilometers in length, we got a big one!"

Corbin Bishop entered the launch tube. Rather, he fitted himself to the narrow chamber like a bullet in a gun. The gauntleted hands of his dive suit slid into notches on the sides of the chamber connecting him to his Lance. He felt the apparatus engage him, locking on to his hands and arms, and coming alive with a slight vibration. The heads-up display in his helmet showed this connection as well. A new display with a diagram of the minimalistic vehicle appeared, along with its operating functions.

Though Corbin couldn't see his hands within the structure of the Lance, he could feel the controls at his fingertips. He pulled his arms toward himself, activating the central support of the craft which unfolded from under the belly of the conical vehicle in front of him. The strut connected to the chest plate of his armored diving suit with a _whirr_ and _click_ that told him it was locked in place. Corbin then pushed his arms forward, positioning himself into the firing position.

The vehicle understood the movement and pulled him into a mechanical embrace. The Lance moved forward slightly in the chamber while continuing to orient itself around Corbin, binding and shifting, adding subtle connections that integrated further with his suit in a symphony of _hisses_ and _snaps_ , _whirrs_ and _clicks_. The pilot and machine became one.

Corbin placed his feet into stirrups that extended from the body of his craft. These too acted as hard points latching Diver to machine. Once he was fully captured, the whole apparatus shifted, and Corbin was situated into a sitting position and held aloft by the interface of his diving suit and flying machine. He looked out over the nose through a protective but translucent piece of material that allowed him good visibility while shielding him from wind and atmosphere. A Diver and their Lance had to operate as a single entity to perform effectively.

"Firing position in forty-five seconds," came the helmsman's voice again, "Divers, check in for launch."

"Diver zero _-_ two _-_ seven, ready for launch."

"Diver one-four-two is set, let's go already!"

"Diver one-zero-eight, confirmed for launch."

"Diver zero-one-three is ready," Corbin recognized this voice, though he hadn't heard it in years.

"Diver prime zero-zero is ready for launch." Corbin said checking in last.

"Well if it isn't the man, the myth, the legend," said the familiar voice, "I heard a rumor you were aboard this boat, but I thought it was just that."

Corbin smiled to himself, "nope, I'm here in the flesh," he responded.

"You haven't retired yet? You should have quite the sizeable credit stash after all these years, or you should be dead by now. Is this Corbin Bishop's ghost I'm speaking to?" Diver zero-one-three harassed,

Corbin chuckled aloud, "Kora you know damn well I'm never going to retire. What do you think I would do in my spare time? Read? Learn how to cook? Take up gardening?"

"You'd make a good a Captain. You must have enough saved by now to buy your own ship." Diver zero-one-three, or Kora, as Corbin knew her, suggested.

"And miss out on the action sitting on the bridge? No thank you my dear." Corbin laughed again.

"Firing position in fifteen seconds." Announced the helmsman.

Byron heard the _thrum_ of pumps, then the _hiss_ of air, then silence, as his launch chamber was drained of its atmosphere. His Lanced seemed to quiver with excitement as launch time approached.

"It's good to jump with you again Corbin." Kora said.

"And you," he replied, "Dive fast, dive deep, kill quick."

"Dive fast, dive deep, kill quick," she repeated back to him.

"Launch in five." The helmsman announced.

Corbin saw the remaining few digits wind down in his heads up display.

Five...

Four...

Three...

Two...

One...

The massive forces of acceleration that threatened to crush Corbin were just within the tolerable limits for a human being. Even with the aid of his diving suit, which doubled as a g-suit, the added gravities were nearly unbearable. The mass driver that shot out its ballistic human payloads, expended gigajoules of energy as it catapulted the five person team into the waiting vacuum, as it reached a peak load of twenty-five g's. Thanks to his rigorous training and the force-fluid that was injected into him before each launch to protect his internal organs, his body could withstand the abuse.

The illuminated tunnel of the launch tube was a blur of speed as Corbin and his Lance continued to accelerate down its length at a constant rate. His vision tunneled and every sinew of his body strained under the extreme forces the launch imposed on him. Most Divers had their eyes and other soft tissues surgically altered to withstand the repetitive abuse of the launches alone.

The orange-brown dot that was the open end of the launch tube grew rapidly brighter and larger as Corbin shot toward his exit point. Then he was free. The g-load began to taper off as the acceleration dropped away to be replaced by constant speed. The broiling mass of the planet below him engulfed his view.

Coiling banks of clouds shifted with rapidly moving air currents. Corbin could see the enormous jet stream running like a river as it pulled along vaporous contents in a beautiful display of fluid dynamics. Opposite flowing jet streams shifted along just as quickly on either side of the band he was aiming for. Eddies spun off the edges where two ribbons of gas interacted, creating whirlpools with diameters larger than some of the small moons that orbited the planet.

Corbin hurtled forward. The limb of the Jovian world was still just visible if Corbin looked left, right, or up, as a multicolored arc splashed against the obsidian pallet of space. Mismatched bands of orange, crimson, white, and brown layered themselves with respect to latitude, like the layers of a cake made by a color blind baker. Even a peculiar ribbon of teal banded the gas giant at some upper latitude that he would not visit on this dive.

Some of the more narrow slip steams on the planet below would merge, wrap themselves together like coiling snakes, then separate in a dance of air currents. Others, over time, would tangle themselves into a knot, disrupting other flows around them, and grow into a cyclone that would last for months, and sometimes years.

Around him, in a star pattern, were his fellow Divers. Corbin was the lead. He would give orders to the team during the hunt.

Divers had relatively short lifespans most not making it to their late twenties. To say that the risk for this job was high was an understatement. It was extreme. But the reward was great. If a Diver made it to the ripe old age of twenty-five they would generally have amassed a small fortune and most likely a bit of fame.

Corbin was thirty-seven years old. No other Diver, living or deceased, had operated or survived as long. He was a living legend among his peers. With 254 dives no one had more experience than him.

_And no one had been as lucky either,_ he often thought. Like most in this business he had started diving at the age of eighteen. It had been second nature to him since day one. He had claimed an immediate feel for navigating the turbulent atmosphere of the unforgiving Jovian worlds and possessed, what seemed like, a telepathic connection to the machine he operated. This combination made him a more than capable Diver from the start. Once he had gained some experience, he was soon one of the most skilled and sought after Divers in the federated systems.

Kora was right. He could have retired many years ago. The problem was he didn't want to. He was addicted to the adrenaline, the rush, the danger. Most Divers were. Even those who did make it to retirement, and chose to do so, suffered from adrenaline withdrawals, stress induced mental illness, and other adrenal problems, often politely labeled as "Diver's fatigue." What it was, was addiction. Daily life was not the same when you didn't have the high of imminent danger and near certain death to keep your brain chemistry on the ragged edge. It took years of psychotherapy and medication to successfully recover from the job, if you lived through it.

Corbin had been Kora's mentor, and like her teacher, she was a natural. She had already surpassed the average life expectancy for a Diver by three years, and was on her way to becoming one of the most senior Divers in the business. The next oldest Diver to Corbin was only thirty. Before him, the oldest serving Diver had been thirty-two. Corbin had dove with this man on more than a few occasions. The Diver in question had been highly skilled but arrogant, and it was this that had killed him in the end.

His first advice to Kora had been to rid herself of arrogance, to be humble when plunging head long into the ripping turbulence of the largest planets in the galaxy. Corbin's second piece of advice was to be lucky. If that failed, "then you better be damn good at your job," he had told her when she asked for further advice. Fortunately for Kora she was all of these things.

They had dove together for nearly a third of the time Corbin had been in the game, and for Kora it had been almost half of her career before they had gone separate ways. This dive was the first time they had been in contact in five years. Kora had been like a little sister to him. He had valued her friendship as much as her ability as a Diver during the time they had spent together. Corbin felt happy that she was accompanying him today. Maybe they would be able to team up for a couple more dives like the old days. Maybe, but first they had to survive the day.

The giant planet in front of him took precedence and now consumed his view. The orange broth of clouds bubbled beneath him ominously, a soup of poisonous gas, crushing pressures, sudden weather changes, massive electrical storms, and nearly supersonic winds. His Lance was still in the compact blunted cone/wedge shape that would help him penetrate the atmosphere effectively. Corbin could make out the small burst of thrusters on the nose of his vehicle that kept him in the proper alignment for entry.

His team of five Divers was clustered close together, still following the same trajectory they had been launched with. They were separated by no more than ten meters of distance and Corbin, if he looked down, could see between his knees, two Divers below him and one each to his left and right.

Divers rarely met before a mission. It was not uncommon for Divers to jump into system mere hours before a launch on a chartered transport or—in the case of the more wealthy—aboard their own personal ship. Some, like Corbin, preferred to serve with a given hunting vessel for a time as they made their rounds through a set of systems. Divers would come and go but, sometimes, a few would form temporary teams that they worked well with in order to improve their odds of success. In this respect alone, Kora had been a welcome surprise to the outfit today. With her present their odds of success were much higher.

Each Diver assumed multiple roles at any given time during a hunt and lent their expertise accordingly. Each dive was led by the highest ranking or most senior Diver of the group. Once an operation had commenced, the final word was given to the lead Diver. Though the prevailing temperaments in this profession did not tend to favor humility or the adherence to a strict command structure, usually the respect held for those in the position of command was such as to not incur too much insubordination.

When Corbin looked left the Diver there gave a small nod of their helmet. Corbin could make out the suit's detailing and shape well enough to tell that it was his former apprentice.

On a private channel Corbin hailed her. "You think you'll be able to keep up today?"

"I was about to ask you the same thing," she responded, "I'm hoping your old age hasn't slowed you down too much."

Corbin laughed, "I always have been and always will be faster than you my dear, not to mention twice as pretty."

"Ha! I've seen more attractive Verillian slugs," she goaded, "plus we both know I'm the pretty one."

"Hmm, I guess I do have more puss sacks," Corbin said with a chuckle while forming a mental picture of the bulbously grotesque extraterrestrial animal at home in its sulfurous swamps. "You know, I find being ugly helps to intimidate our prey," he added.

"No wonder why you're so good at your job," Kora retorted.

Corbin laughed again, "I didn't know you were in system, is there a cantina here that you haven't drained of all its fluids?"

It was Kora's turn to laugh, "if such a place does exist I'll surely find it. First round is one me when we get back."

"I'll hold you to that," Corbin replied, then after a moment asked, "what does bring you to this system?"

There was silence for a few seconds before she responded. "Well, the pay mostly, I've been around long enough now that I'm highly desirable," she explained with her usual sardonic haughty tone.

Corbin shook his head and smiled to himself at this, remembering her sarcastic adoption of the, holier-than-thou-attitude, of many Divers. It pleased him to see that she seemed to be very much the same person he had known.

"Also," she continued, "other hunting grounds are turning up dry. This sector is currently paying the most, and that must be true if the famous Corbin Bishop is here."

This was true. Corbin had his pick of the litter when it came to jobs. As for the fame, that was also true, but he didn't enjoy that aspect as much. His job was as much extreme sport as it was a real harvest of goods. It was as revered and celebrated by the general public as the high risk sport of belt racing for the danger and skill it involved, not to mention the product it supplied.

Most Divers were celebrities in their own right and had large followings of fans from all over the inhabited systems. Corbin did indeed have a large following but tended to avoid the spotlight. Kora was better at handling the publicity, but still, she did not encourage the attention like many of her peers did. Corbin, however, was more concerned with the former part of her comment.

"Dry, huh. Over hunting?" he asked.

"Probably, many of the Captains have been less concerned about leaving a viable population intact than they have been about their paychecks." Kora explained.

_Not surprising,_ Corbin thought. "How many worlds are empty now?"

"At least a dozen that I know of, probably more though, but it's stranger than that," she continued, "planets with high herd counts seemed to suddenly be empty in the space of a year or less. No one's ever seen anything like it before."

"Well the herd counts aren't accurate, there's yet been no way to completely assess the total population of a planet. Maybe there's just much fewer than we think." Corbin suggested.

"Could be," Kora agreed, "but that doesn't explain what happened on Ttorl IV."

Corbin was now genuinely curious, "and what happened there exactly?"

"The story goes that a large herd was spotted, ten to be exact, one of the largest ever reported, anywhere. Of course Divers were on their tail as soon as it was confirmed. Six dives were authorized and carried out, of the six, four were successful, all yielding a single catch. Then the rest were just...gone." She explained.

"That doesn't sound too unusual Kora, I mean the herd genuinely breaks up after a time and they submerge deeper into the atmosphere on their own, though, ten is an unusually large herd," Corbin countered.

"That's not the strange part," Kora rebuffed, "This herd had been tracked for months by multiple boats, and multiple Divers confirmed their numbers. They were still being tracked from orbit even after the last dive—it was a good opportunity to monitor herd behavior, you know, some egghead study thing—but while they were being tracked, there was a sensor anomaly, and then they vanished. They didn't dive, they didn't break up, and before you ask, there was no sensor malfunction or equipment failure when they checked the orbital arrays."

"Strange, how can things that big just vanish?" Corbin asked skeptical of her story, "I think you've been listening to too many tall tales at the cantinas."

"Ha! I'm usually too busy _telling_ tales about out diving the legendary Corbin Bishop, not wasting my time on cantina folklore, besides there may be something to that story." She paused for a moment, apparently formulating her thoughts before she recounted the information.

"I dove Ttorl IV two months before I got word of this story. It was a good hunting ground—crowded with green Divers, plus the pay was better elsewhere, but usually it was a good haul—now it's barren. All the boats have pulled out of that system for good and no monitoring station has spotted more than shifting clouds for two cycles. Other systems are reporting similar occurrences, check the reports for yourself," She explained.

Corbin considered this information. It was strange but maybe not as strange as his once-apprentice was making it out to be. Hunting had surely culled population numbers but there had been measures taken to prevent overhunting, though sometimes these measures were over looked.

"Maybe they got wise," Corbin suggested, "maybe they're diving deeper and not surfacing as frequently."

"Yeah maybe," Kora replied, not sounding convinced, "but if it keeps going like this we'll be out of jobs either way."

"Are they migrating?" Corbin asked.

"Are you serious?" Kora said flatly, "you know as well as I do that's never been witnessed."

"I wasn't sure if you'd heard any more stories." He prodded.

"I'm not that gullible, besides I think we'd notice a herd suddenly breaking atmosphere and jetting away," She stated.

"So that's how they do it," Corbin said sarcastically, poking fun at her theory and smiling to himself.

"Shut up, you know what I'm getting at. If we did know how they did it— _do_ it—everyone would have heard about it, even washed up Divers in back water systems." She said throwing out more verbal abuse.

"Very true, but I think you mean experienced, highly paid, and handsome Divers in new and exciting frontier systems," Corbin corrected.

Kora laughed. "Did I not say that? Well, at least you know it was implied."

"I figured as much," Corbin smiled again beneath the containment of his helmet, then said, "well my dear, it's time I address the rest of these misguided fools, we're about to prep for entry."

## 2

" **DIVERS** , my name is Corbin Bishop, I'm your lead today. Do as I say and all will be well. Don't and...well...you'll probably die." Corbin said to the four other Divers accompanying him.

"Yes sir," came Kora's voice over the com followed subsequently by Divers zero-two-seven, one-zero-eight, and one-four-two.

"You got it."

"Sure."

"Cheery as always Bishop!"

"That's my pep talk, other than that prep for entry. Get a sensor lock on my position and follow my lead once we breach atmosphere. Until then, fan out, 100 meters of separation." Corbin instructed, then he added, "it's time to hunt."

"Ha-ha! Here we go! The immortal Bishop gave an order you sonsabitches! Get to it!" announced the ever exuberant Diver one-four-two.

"We heard him," replied one-zero-eight.

"See ya' in the soup," said zero-two-seven.

"What was that about?" Kora asked Corbin on a private channel, chuckling slightly.

"What?" Corbin asked, "You mean Laz? He just gets over excited, competent Diver though."

"Oh no, you mean thee Laz Rosijak? Laz the Spaz? The most infamous whore monger in all the systems? Kora clarified.

"The one and only," Corbin responded, "he's not that bad, he follows orders, he's good under pressure, and like I said, he's a good Diver."

"The teams he dives with also have extremely low survival rates," Kora informed.

"He also has a seventy-seven percent catch rate. That's higher than mine." Corbin added.

"That's because he's reckless and doesn't back off when he should, then people end up dead."

"Don't worry about him, under the right guidance he's very useful." Corbin reassured.

Kora gave a snort, "whatever you say, 'mighty immortal Bishop.'"

The five person team expanded the radius of its formation giving each other room for entry into the atmosphere. All adjusted their position away from Corbin who stayed stationary giving him a slight lead in the formation. This is exactly what he intended. He would be the first in and the rest would follow.

They would burn into the J-class world's atmosphere at around fifteen g's, eyeballs out, for ten seconds. In the process they would shed large amounts of their vacuum velocity to a manageable Mach 2.5 inside the atmosphere then continue to descend for close to a minute before leveling off into sustained flight. Corbin braced for entry.

His Lance was designed to give him as clean an entrance as possible, but the ride was still less than smooth. Sensor data displayed inside his helmet gave him projected details of the environment around him. The intuitive, but restricted, AI that governed his Lance and diving suit provided him with detailed readouts in real time on everything in his view, wherever he looked, almost instantaneously.

The data was projected in the form of graphs, symbols, equations, and sometimes verbal warnings. Corbin didn't just interpret where the atmosphere of the gas giant planet in front of him was looming, he saw a virtual representation of it that gave him a definitive boundary where the vacuum ended and the envelope of atmosphere began.

He had grown accustomed to that onslaught of information, but sometimes it was too much, all that input, constantly and unrelentingly bombarding his senses. Some Divers used implants that showed them what the helmet displayed through their own eyes. Corbin didn't know how they could stand it. It was more popular with the younger Divers, the new generation, but a new generation in the diving world came around about every five years. At times Corbin would use minimal aid from his tech and fly as much as possible on his own, feeling the air through the vibration of his hands, or reading the shift of the clouds with the wind to know what move to make next.

Corbin was ancient by the industry standards. Various mods had been common even when he was younger but not as widely used. He had always preferred to use as little enhancements as possible. But then again Corbin was different. His natural ability was his enhancement, so maybe the mods just seemed unnecessary. Maybe he already saw or felt what the enhancements provided for others.

The boundary approached, the virtual representation displaying a very real thing. Corbin and the four other team members dove towards it, dark specks against the orange-brown cloud bank below them. The turbulence started as the virtual boundary dissolved around Corbin into a field of dots that displayed the density of gasses in the surrounding region. The dot field was sparse at first then grew crowded as he descended. Corbin didn't need this bit of virtual reality to tell him he was breaching the planets upper atmosphere, his Lance jolting and lurching in the presence of the invisible pockets of matter as they began affecting his craft.

The g-forces began to pile on under the friction. The blunted cone of his vehicle began shifting colors from a matte black, to red, to glowing orange. Soon a white blossom of excited particles began igniting from the heat and flaring into a starburst that enveloped the nose of the craft. But its shape, as minimal as it was, protected him from the extreme temperatures and forces.

His suit of silver graphene and inconel-seven plating protected him just as much as the machine that he piloted. The diving suits also enhanced the wearer's physical abilities by a factor of ten. Most of the suits had the specific Diver's personal touch—an insignia, custom plating, preferred sensor and function upgrades, etc.—and cost a small fortune unto themselves. New Divers usually took out a loan to purchase their first suit or bought a used one from another Diver. But After a few dives, even a green pilot could afford considerable upgrades for their current suit or a new one altogether. At the moment, Corbin's suit was fighting back against the ever mounting gravities that applied themselves mercilessly to his body.

He watched the altimeter drop away in a blur. Tendrils of cloud were just beginning to reach up to him from below, but there were hundreds of kilometers yet before he was submerged into the sea of vapor. Quite suddenly, four blue jets of light flared to life on the nose of his Lance. The breaking thrusters abruptly slamming three more body weights of force onto his frame.

Training for this job was not required but necessary if one wanted to survive for any length. Hyper gravity fitness regiments were often utilized by Divers. This was accessible either through simulated means or by visiting more massive planets. If there was any secret Corbin could claim to his longevity, it was his training. He had always trained more and harder than any Diver he knew. When he had acquired enough capital, he had built his own private training facility on a world with nearly twice the gravity of Earth prime. This, coupled with the nanocytes present in his body, allowed him to train and recover from absurdly grueling fitness regimes.

Nanocytes, as they had been dubbed, had become a standard addition to human physiology since the expansion hundreds of years ago in order to help the species cope with the physical demands of space travel. These molecule sized machines helped repair his muscles, bones, nerves, and vessels, more efficiently than his body could on its own. All human beings took advantage this technology but most only used them for their basic utilities such as general health functions and disease prevention.

Like most Divers, Corbin's bone and muscle density was much higher than that of the average federation citizen. This made him heavier but much stronger and better able to combat the accelerative forces they experienced. Because of the hyper gravity training his heart could pump blood more efficiently to his brain under those extreme conditions. His sturdier vessels could remain dilated to transport the blood flow, and his internal tissues had developed more resilience to and from the constant g-force abuse. Corbin thought about none of this while flying, but he did not take it for granted none the less.

All of this abuse did come with its disadvantages. Divers were more susceptible to the impacts of long term exposure to low gravity environments, they experienced frequent fractures, and hardening of blood vessels, and the calcification of other soft tissues. Even though this presented health issues, most of these problems were usually remedied easily enough with modern medical tech. These inconveniences were minor concerns compared with the bodily harm a Diver risked during an operation.

The altimeter plunged and the clouds rose. Soon Corbin was passing through thin vapors in the upper atmosphere when an indicator in his display flashed a ruby colored warning to him. A small display of his team formation showed the flashing icon to be associate with Diver one-zero-eight.

"Status?" Corbin said to his AI.

"Entry angle too shallow, breakup imminent." The AI announced.

"One-oh-eight correct your trajectory you're too shallow." Corbin radioed to his team member.

"Should be fine lead, I've done this before." Came the response.

The indicator continued to flash. Corbin checked atmospheric density, turbulence variables, and wind speeds against the other Divers approach.

"Correct now or you will break up!" Corbin urged. "You are too shallow for this atmosphere!"

"I'll say again, I've got it," said the other Diver.

"In ten seconds you will be dead if you do not correct! Do so now!" Corbin exclaimed.

There were a few moments of silence before the Diver answered again, "Respectfully lead please fu-" a burst of static cut out the rest of the transmission.

The indicator in Corbin's head's up display showed the icon blink once more then go dark. Corbin checked for the Diver's vitals on his display. Aside from random brainwave activity all other vital signs were nonexistent. He toggled a camera mounted on the back of his suit that showed him only streamers of smoke trailing the burning pieces of debris that used to be Diver one-zero-eight and his Lance.

"Stupid sonofabitch," Laz announced gracefully over the com.

"He should have listened," said Kora with only slightly more remorse. The other Diver remained silent.

"Goddamit." Corbin swore, but only too himself. He didn't need to be a man down already.

"Stay focused, we still have a job to do," he broadcast to the remaining members of the small team.

"Aye Bishop, we're right behind you," Laz reassured.

"Hotaru Maru, we're splash one. Do you read?" Corbin broadcast to the vessel they had departed, now thousands of kilometers behind them.

"We copy lead, stay on course, good hunting." The helmsman answered.

Corbin and his small vehicle plowed ahead. The bulk of the deceleration was now pressing into him and it would last for several long seconds before it began to taper. The lighting had shifted from a burnt umber to a deeper orange now that they were inside the upper atmosphere of the planet. Thin wisps of cloud that looked like bronze mist dissolved in the wake of his violent decent. Then he was through the thin vapor and into an expansive gulf of open air.

While it looked calm in the expanse of emptiness, an incredible wind tore at his small craft, relentlessly buffeting him about like a kite in a hurricane. Despite this, the small vehicle, aided by Corbin, kept a straight line. Ahead—or rather below—a storm cell surged and boiled, the bank of clouds whipped into peaks by the wind that thrashed him. It was an ocean of orange waves, constantly rising and falling, surging only to sink back into the cloud mass agian. A thrashing vapor sea of chaos.

One sun sat just above the horizon to Corbin's left, a massive orb that glowed almost the same color as the clouds it appeared to sink into far on the horizon. Another sat higher in the sky and was following the same path as the other, but it was wrapped in the mist he had previously descended through. Inside the storm cell below, pulses of lightning flashed then faded, illuminating the ominous wall of clouds in bursts of blue or arcing in jagged streamers between cloud peaks and across the top of the thunder head. The thunder rumbled below the roar of the wind, reverberating with an ominous bass tone in Corbin's chest, yet another assaulting force in this dangerous environment.

The enormous scale of the cloudscape provided an optical illusion that made the awaiting mass of clouds below appear much closer than they were. Even at the high speed he was traveling, Corbin plunged toward the storm that brewed beneath him and his remaining team members for a very long forty-two seconds. As he approached, the rumble of thunder became louder and deeper, penetrating his bones, while the lightning traced out fractal branches hundreds of kilometers long as if challenging his approach.

For a few seconds, Corbin felt frozen in place, his decent made relatively motionless against the immensity of the atmospheric landscape of the world before him. The rushing of the wind filled his ears, his heart seemed to echo through the confines of his diving suit, and his Lance shook and jolted in place as he appeared to remain stationary before the ominous wall of electrically charged and thrashing clouds. No one spoke. The radio channels remained silent, generating a strange peace despite the ever present howl of wind.

The peaks that looked like cresting waves from above were more akin to mountains, each one kilometers high. The faces of these that caught the light of the large orange star sinking on the horizon, burned in a similar color. On their backsides the light was scattered into reds and deepening ocher and violets toward their base. Corbin aimed for a gap between two of the moving mountains and was swallowed a second later by their cover.

"Everyone get ready for a bumpy ride." He radioed to his team.

"Copy," replied Diver zero-two-seven.

"Got it," Kora responded.

"Just how I like it!" Laz laughed into the com.

Each transmission was tinny and abraded by the steel wool scrape of static present from the electrical storm that glowed all around him as he continued downward into the darkening orange soup. The visibility really was zero now. The only thing that gave him any sense of depth was his helmet's heads up display dictated by his accompanying AI.

A flurry of information blinked, shifted, and flowed on the projection inside his helmet. Temperature readings, pressure gauges, wind speeds, the clouds chemical composition, radiation levels, altimeter, pitch, yaw, time, and probably, if he wanted, it could tell him what he had for breakfast that morning. On top of that, virtual lines representing force vectors for wind, colored blobs that showed the size, shape, and position of changes in air density, and a virtual path that would guide him to his target's position should he wish it, were present. All of this helped him navigate the difficult aerial terrain of a Jovian world's atmosphere.

Corbin had reached a critical altitude as indicated by his Lance's AI. The atmosphere was thick enough for him to change the craft's shape. He manipulated several functions at his finger tips and watched as the small flying machine transformed from atmosphere entry vehicle to a sleeker delta wing craft. The body paneling reoriented, telescoped, unfolded, and remodeled itself into a multifaceted spear point of a machine that looked as deadly as it was designed to be. Corbin's position remained largely the same but he now rode in the center of the Lance's mass, instead of mostly behind it. Newly formed, matte black graphene composite wings, extended slightly behind him and now the blue white pulse of eight small jets—four on either side of him arranged on the rear of the wing edge—burst to life propelling him forward.

Gradually, Corbin pulled out of the headlong dive until he leveled off. The other Divers would have made the same transition after being notified automatically of his craft's transformation through their own sensors and AI systems. The only way they would know where he was—and he them—was through electronic communication and the sensor tags that gave away his otherwise hidden position within the clouds.

Still there was no visibility. The orange storm raged around him and the turbulence of the cell sought desperately to tear man and machine apart. Corbin changed from the visible light spectrum to radar imaging. His surroundings immediately transitioned from orange to blue, but the clouds encasing him vanished. Now he was flying through a much different landscape. The radar was calibrated to show him changes in cloud density at varying distances giving him some sense of depth to his surroundings.

Above he could make out the edges of the thunderhead he had flown into, a blue outline of bubbling celling where it bordered the upper atmosphere and open air. Ahead he could see the outline of the cloud mass as a wall, and beyond that boundary more open air where the storm had not yet reached. There, existed a large expanse of rising helium pushing back the edges of the storm. It formed a large breach where a canyon of vapor formed around the up swell in deep cliff walls. The higher pressure area of gas traced a branching network of ravines through the clouds around it.

Within the thunderhead Corbin now navigated, were the bulbous cauliflower growths of vapor that would otherwise have been indistinguishable in the visible light spectrum. With the radar imaging, Corbin could see the turbulent boiling of these forms appear and disappear, grow from, then dissolve back into, their surroundings. If he turned his head he could see slightly behind him and catch a glimpse of his fellow Divers following closely.

"Lead this is the Hotaru, we lost sight of the target, uploading last known coordinates, good luck." Stated the Helmsman.

"Copy Hotaru, proceeding to coordinates." Corbin responded. His navigation lit a virtual beacon on his heads up display. He relayed the information to his team.

"Hotaru lost sensor conformation, but we have the last known position. We'll investigate there. Spread out, five klicks of separation, wedge formation off of my lead."

They all confirmed his orders and set off. It was time to hunt. They were approximately 600 kilometers from their target's last known location and closing quickly. Corbin felt adrenaline light his system like a match thrown on oil soaked rags. He let this excitement burn through him. He had to be absolutely focused, absolutely aware of his surroundings, conscious of his every movement.

He pushed forward, the blue plasma flaring away from the small jets on either side of him. The wings of his Lance flexed slightly in the turbulent air in an almost expectant and excited manner, the craft itself seeming to be excited at the prospect of the hunt. With the wind at their backs they would reach their destination in just a few minutes.

The virtual buoy blinked to his left and above him still many kilometers distant. He decided he would circle around the projected beacon and arc high, aiming his Lance back toward the direction he had come, and use the jet stream to cancel out most of his own velocity. This would allow him to better observe the area. He aimed for the open chasm of air beyond the storm wishing to have an unobstructed natural view of his surroundings.

Corbin burst through the cloud wall into open air. He deactivated his radar imaging, returning to the raw, visible light spectrum, to view the immense cliff walls of vapor that towered above him as they shifted against the high pressure canyon of helium. The massive orange tidal waves of ammonia and hydrosulfates waiting to crash once the vein of rising gas dissipated.

The upper reaches of the clouds had begun to go slightly crimson as the planet began to rotate away from the stars' combined glare. The upper atmosphere was a paler hue, almost peach and gave some contrast between the background and the steep banks of clouds. Rays of sun lit some of the higher peaks in golden light putting to shame the orange soup that lay beneath. This multicolored expanse reached away in all directions from him like the delta of a massive river comprised of open air, eroding gullies and fissures into the cloud banks kilometers high through a hundred different channels. It was a spectacular view but Corbin didn't have time to admire it.

He navigated the open channels avoiding, for now, the steeply carved cloud fjords. His Lance cut through the violent atmosphere like a scalpel, the machine assisting his own abilities adjusting for turbulent air and sudden shifts in the wind. Corbin slashed his way down different channels winding his way closer to the beacon blinking away in his helmet. As he neared it, he rose sharply, gaining altitude, and executing the maneuver that would allow him to better survey the area.

The wind was a muffled howl, a baying animal in constant agony. Corbin steadied himself against the constant force, matching his speed with the wind's and holding himself motionless, in what was otherwise a torrent of rushing atmosphere. The channels of open air below were remolding themselves, the clouds winning the battle against the momentary ravine formed by the rising helium. The storm cell Corbin and his team had exited was still raging from the direction they had come, but was already dissipating, being pulled apart by the constantly changing weather patterns. The virtual buoy blinked some five kilometers below him, suspended in the midst of a break in the clouds. Corbin used his optical enhancement to examine the area. There was no sign.

"Fan out I want a ten by ten kilometer net. They must still be feeding. Where's the next helium up swell?"

Diver zero-two-seven, or Brix, answered, "200 kilometers East-Northeast, but we need to cross into the next belt zone to get there."

"Let's move, that's the best chance we have of finding it," Corbin said, "Laz, Brix, go deep, Kora and I will go high. I'll buy drinks for the first person to make contact."

"You're on!" Kora exclaimed.

"Bishop, ya' sonofabitch! You know how thirsty I get after a hunt!" Laz said with a laugh then plummeted straight down, taking his position ten kilometers below Corbin.

Brix said nothing but also dove into formation.

"You know, I think he's growing on me," Kora said as she sped off to distance herself from Corbin.

"Yeah, charming isn't he?" Corbin responded and he heard Kora laugh over the com.

Corbin aimed his Lance in their new direction and set off. Ten kilometers apart, in a vertical flying square, their formation created a virtual net of intermingling sensor data that would detect anything between them. Their relatively close proximity allowed them to coalesce quickly if anyone spotted or detected their prey.

The new heading they were traveling caused them to cut through the wind at a difficult angle and it tried hard to push them off course, but the well adapted machines and their pilots took no notice of its efforts. At Corbin's altitude small wisps of clouds whisked by above him like smoke, but the air was mostly clear. The vaporous terrain below, were he had sent Laz and Brix, was a different story. They were again enveloped in the ammonia and ammonia sulfide vapors that made up the stratosphere.

There were of course many layers to the atmosphere of any Jovian world, and each planet was unique. Their proximity to their star—or stars—their mass, their rotation, and their chemical makeup, all played a part to produce the environments present inside their atmospheres. What most did have in common was a high percentage of hydrogen, large amounts of helium, very strong magnetic fields, and extreme weather. All of these factors made the exploration of these giants very difficult those few hundred years ago when humans first reached out into the stars.

In the old Sol system of Earth prime, Jupiter had been the first of these planets to be explored. Like Jupiter, the planet Corbin currently navigated, was mostly comprised of hydrogen and helium. This planet was a bit smaller and as a result only exhibited 1.6 standard earth gravities on his body. Similarly again to Jupiter, it had a strong magnetic field and a relatively fast rotation speed. A day here was only about 13 hours long. But unlike that first explored gas giant, it was much closer to the star it orbited.

This planet was not close enough to its star to be considered—what had been labeled centuries ago by astronomers—a "Hot Jupiter," but it was still much warmer. It was roughly the same distance from the star that it orbited in this binary system, as mars was from Sol in humanity's home system. This made the upper atmosphere chilly, roughly 160 K where Corbin now flew, but the lower reaches jumped in temperature rapidly as one descended, both from the greenhouse effect of its atmosphere, the heat from the star, and the internal heat given off by the planet itself. Oddly, the complex atmosphere then jumped in temperature as one went higher into the thermosphere to nearly 1000 K. Then the exosphere again dipped to frigid depths as atmosphere transitioned to vacuum, as was the case with most Jovian planets.

The resulting temperature differences with in the atmosphere caused large and violent thunderstorms and cyclones to develop at any given time, all across the surface. The troposphere of this planet—the depth at which, on a gas giant, the pressure was equal to one Earth atmosphere—was a toasty 620 K, and climbed rapidly from there. Probes, deployed by the Hotaru into the atmosphere upon their arrival in system, recorded temperatures around 1200 K only several kilometers deeper. At that depth, vaporized elements like iron, copper, potassium, and magnesium had been found. Other elements in smaller quantities such as gold, silver, oxygen, nitrogen, neon, xenon, phosphorus, and carbon, peppered the atmosphere of this world. This made for a complex combination of possible chemical structures within the variable temperature and pressure ranges.

This planet in particular was located in the Capella system and designated as Aurigae Beta One. The system where it resided, approximately forty-three light years from Earth, was, for the moment, at the edge of the inhabited sphere of systems governed by the First Galactic Federation. Corbin had seen many planets over the years, each as challenging and unique as the one before it. Each inhabited by their mysterious quarry.

Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, they had been found on all of Sol's gas and ice giants. Soon humankind dispersed itself farther into the galaxy. The first system, the closest, and the next to be explored, was Alpha Centauri. Already there was knowledge of the existence of a gas giant within that binary system, a tidally locked Hot Jupiter that roasted in an extremely close orbit to its star. Several terrestrial planets, and planetesimals, were located there as well, but none suitable to human life. Amazingly, when the gas giant was explored, even with its more than extreme temperatures and weather patterns, they were found again, as at home in that violent hell as they were in the relative calm of Jupiter.

It had long been realized that Jovian worlds were common in many star systems, in fact they outnumbered all other types of planets combined by a three-to-one ratio. As more systems were explored a common trend developed on the large gaseous worlds, they were all inhabited, every single one. Even mars—while having liquid water at one point—ultimately had never been home to life.

Terrestrial planets were eventually discovered suitable to human habitation, and most of these had their own complex life, but this was, to some degree, expected. A first encounter had not been conceivable at the time within the atmosphere of Jupiter. Maybe on its moon Europa, or even Io, but surely not within the chaotic broth of gasses that made up the planet itself. And what an encounter it was. An encounter that would change humanity forever.

Twisting eddies of clouds spun in large vortices where the two opposing bands of wind met. A daunting sight no matter when it was encountered. Crossing used to be tricky, even deadly. Early Divers were unable to cope with these violent sections of twisting air and had to avoid them altogether. But that was over 150 years ago. Now, better technology and superior knowledge of how the weather patterns worked made this action a routine process.

"Ramming speed?" Kora broadcast over the common channel.

"That's the plan," Corbin replied.

"That's the only speed I have, girly!" Laz added enthusiastically. Kora audibly snorted over the com.

Brix, as she most often did, remained silent.

Corbin accelerated, breaking formation and aiming upstream into the next belt, he would take the full force of the wind in the next zone head on. Four subsequent booms, one after another, cracked through the atmosphere as all four Divers broke the sound barrier and pushed beyond. Corbin was the first through the zonal wall. He ploughed through the spiraling boundary of vapors in an instant, not allowing himself to be caught in the turbulent eddies there. As soon as he hit the opposite flowing channel of air, he banked downstream to lessen the impact of forces on his body and his craft, then he kept turning, gaining altitude and turning back into the wind, even as the this region of atmosphere attempted to drag him down.

The sensor tags of the other Divers told him they had all made it through easily, and they quickly reformed their formation. Again, Corbin and kora positioned themselves high while Brix and Laz descended into the cloud masses.

"Brix where are we?" Corbin inquired.

"Only 150 klicks to the vein, but it's upstream and hasn't risen as high in this belt. We'll have to dive into the troposphere," She said calmly.

"Brix, I love it when you talk dirty," Laz interjected, "what are we waiting for? Let's get down there!"

"After you." Brix said flatly, obviously used to the Laz's course mannerisms.

Corbin heard Kora give another snort of indignation then he said, "Keep a tight formation. Let's dive. Laz you're in the lead."

"Aye, it's about time! I'll show you how it's done Bishop!" he announced.

They dropped quickly, maintaining their sensor net as the added gravity and the downward pressure of the belt assisted the speed of their descent. The orange deepened to a dirty copper hue as less light filtered through the clouds. Visibility again moved to zero for a time, then they were through the ammonia layer into a swath of clear air. More clouds lay below, this time an ammonia hydrosulfide layer. They crossed the open air in between quickly, then were immersed again in vapor.

Here large droplets of liquid ammonia rapped against the plating of both their suits and vehicles. The temperature here was still well below freezing but climbing rapidly. Puffy masses of cloud were intermixed with open air and it was easily navigable in the copper lighting. Then they emerged below this cloud deck and into another cloudless layer. A larger expanse of open air existed here as temperatures began to shift out of the sub-freezing range. Another layer of clouds, this time carbon dioxide and water vapor, rushed up at them from below.

"Fifty klicks," Brix reported.

They pushed on, still nosed down, diving deeper into the atmosphere. Lightning branched its way between cloud decks and occasionally spread its crooked fingers through the base or ceiling of the clouds above and below in a brilliant electrical display. The coloring of the world was deepening. There was crimson now and darker bruised shadows of magenta and purple forming in the folds of vapor below and to the east as the copper hue above dimmed.

"We're gonna be flying in the dark here soon." Kora remarked.

"Don't worry, love, I'll protect you." Laz offered.

"Oh, no thank you, from what I hear protection isn't one of your strong suits," she retorted.

Laz let out a boisterous laugh, "you've heard true, girly, you've heard true enough, but-" he stopped suddenly.

"But what? Nothing clever to say?" Kora chided.

"Raaaaaik!" Laz Bellowed suddenly.

Corbin's head snapped down to look in the proximity of where Laz was flying. He saw nothing. Laz had already dropped into the next layer of clouds as had Brix.

"Don't lose it!" Corbin snapped. "Get a sensor lock, were coming to your position!"

"It's about time," Kora said excitedly.

"I agree," Corbin replied, then added, "Laz do you have visual?"

"Gotta give me a minute bishop, she's in the clouds, I'm only gettin' brief glimpses, but radar says she's there, hold on."

Corbin angled his Lance down in a steep dive and accelerated, closing quickly on Laz's position with Kora close behind. The cloud deck blotted out his vision for a moment as he entered. There was enough separation between vapor formations to give him clear visibility from time to time as he continued forward. It was not unlike flying through the atmosphere of any habitable planet with large billowing clouds spaced far enough apart to give some depth of field.

Corbin spotted Laz, highlighted by his virtual marker, but also close enough to make out. Then he was gone again, disappearing from view into a cloud bank. Kora dropped in next to Corbin, flying in close formation. He still didn't have a visual on Brix.

"There you are ya' magnificent sonofabitch!" Laz exclaimed, "I've got sensor lock!"

A moment later an immense virtual rectangle on Corbin's HUD surrounded a form still hidden in cloud cover.

"There you are," Corbin said quietly.

"Wow, that's a big one." Kora said on a private channel.

"They're all that big out here," Corbin responded.

"Explains why the pay is so high." Kora added quietly.

"Brix where are you?" Corbin wondered, trying to figure out what happened to his other team member, hoping he hadn't already lost another Diver. He checked his heads up display. The small diagram said she was still operational.

"Below deck, it's going to be headed this way," She answered.

"Good point, we'll join you down there," Corbin offered, "Laz you stay high, drive it down if need be."

"Aye, holding position," he replied, suddenly much more serious.

Corbin adjusted his trajectory, again nosing down, slipping through and between the more familiar water vapor pillars that surrounded him. As he dipped lower, Brix's virtual ID tag came into his field of view. Once he dropped below the layer of cloud cover he could see her clearly a few hundred meters away, the delta wing of her craft drifting almost calmly against the persistent wind. He joined up with her, followed momentarily by Kora. They flew abreast, up stream, staying just under the ceiling of clouds.

Lightning still rippled from time to time in jagged tendrils from above or caused the internal structure of the clouds to glow momentarily. The thunderous byproduct rattled through Corbin's suit, through his chest, and down through his bones. At this depth inside the atmosphere the pressure was almost equivalent to one Earth atmosphere at sea level. Below it only became more and more oppressive until, eventually, it would overwhelm even the most well equipped Diver.

Corbin gLanced down between his knees. They were in another gulf of open air but below he could make out yet another cloud layer. This atmosphere seemed to be abnormally stratified. The position of the planet in relation to its star, and its varying temperatures, made it one of the more Diverse environments he had seen.

Crimson, darker ocher, and purple clouds broiled in the deepening light toward the direction they were traveling as the suns set at their backs. Above, copper and orange light filtered downward, but the undersides of the clouds were becoming creased with shadows, lending better contrast to their edges. The light was having to penetrate farther and farther through the multiple cloud levels, but, occasionally, the cover would part and allow more light to penetrate and reveal the internal vistas of the bubbling mountain ranges and valleys in between.

For several long minutes the three sat in silent formation, chugging their way slowly up stream against the wind. It was almost peaceful aside from the persistent roar of rushing air beyond the armor of their suits. Corbin felt like he was motionless except from the somewhat gentle sway and shake of his craft as he watched the multicolored clouds race by. The giant planets were truly as beautiful as they were dangerous.

A virtual red corner slowly crept into his view. Then another a short distance above it, then two more that formed a large rectangle, framing a section of sky within the clouds, or rather, what was hidden inside the clouds. A sudden bolt of lightning in the distance illuminated the sky creating an iridescent glow that backlit an enormous shadow of the entity that lurked there.

"It's here." Brix said quietly.

"Reduce your speed, give it a ten kilometer perimeter." Corbin ordered, not wanting to take any chances just yet.

"How far are we from the helium vein?" he asked.

"We're just about to enter the pocket" Brix replied.

"Okay everyone hold tight. No one make a move until I say." Corbin commanded.

"Yeah," said Kora somewhat absently, sounding a bit dazed.

"Got it," said Brix.

"Aye, Bishop," replied Laz from somewhere in the clouds.

The Raik emerged then, slowly, patiently, lazily from the clouds. The wind pulled streamers of vapor away from the gargantuan creature in a multitude of contrails that swirled and coiled in its wake. The air it displaced caused spinning eddies of turbulence that rippled at the clouds above, creating miniature cyclones that twisted away from its length. The Raiks of the Jovian worlds were truly a sight to behold. There monumental size dwarfed any other living species so far encountered by human beings. The discovery of this first, non-terrestrial species, had been a complete shock. Most biologists had assumed alien life, if it existed in the Sol system, would be single celled microbes. What they had found had been the exact opposite.

## 3

**AN** adult Raik grew to astonishing sizes, usually between two and three kilometers long. Some were bigger. The one that had just lowered itself from the clouds was one of the largest Corbin had ever seen. He consulted his heads up display for its dimensions. 3,243 meters. Absolutely massive. The silver-gold sheen of its long body glittered and sparkled, even in the diffuse light. Underneath that sheen it was mostly a pale white. The gold-silver glitter effect of its body was literally due to the gold and silver it filtered from the composition of the Jovian atmosphere. Its body used the elements as a conductive layer for electricity and as protective shielding from harmful radiation.

The massive beast was shaped somewhat like an oversized eel. The back two thirds were a streamlined tail that undulated slowly back and forth to stabilize it in the intense winds. But that's where the similarities to its much smaller terrestrial cousin, ended. The head, or at least the front of the creature, was a long vertical crest, 600 meters in length that protruded beyond the height of the body, like the blades of a double headed ax. Behind this, the body flattened and fanned out horizontally into expansive wings, similar to a sting ray, then narrowed as it tapered into the long tail. A bulge ran the length of the tail on either side of the creature. The long honey combed chambers that comprised the interior of this section of flesh, were similar to air bladders in fish except these where filled with helium, but used in a similar fashion to facilitate buoyancy. Above and below this bulge ran a thin line of neon blue bioluminescent tissue that detected disturbances in the atmosphere. Divers learned early on that these sensory stripes were very sensitive and easily allowed the creature to locate an individual Diver some distance off.

Emanating from the back of its head, where the beak stopped, and running to the tip of the tail, were scarlet feathery projections comprised of long, extremely fine, hollow filaments that tapered to only several microns at their end. The function of these fibers wasn't fully understood, but scientist thought they might be some sort of filter feeding apparatus.

Directly behind the stingray-like front third, at the very front of the tail, were two more bulbous cylindrical growths that hugged the long bulge of the helium chamber, one above and one below, on either side. These were about 200 meters in length. From the fifty meter oval openings of these chambers, blue jets of fire glowed. The monstrous beast literally propelled itself by combusting hydrogen mixed with oxygen.

The indigo bioluminescent lateral lines of tissue bordered these areas respectively, and ran all the way to the enormous axe shaped beak, outlining this feature along its forward vertical edge by joining together in one line. Behind the large crest, what one could call the neck, before the sting ray wings fanned out for almost 500 meters on either side, was a matte black semi sphere on either side of the head. These were the Raik's eyes. These huge organs, scientists had discovered were, more precisely, light sensor nodes than actual eyes, able to detect all known wavelengths of light.

These gargantuan creatures, were a perfect biological representation of the planets they inhabited, beautiful, dangerous, immense, powerful, and mysterious. Adding to their beauty in an almost mystical way, was the rainbow aura of charged particles that danced around the creature, vanished, then reappeared as the ions in the atmosphere interacted with the creatures own powerful magnetic field. Sparks and streamers of static electricity could be seen discharging regularly from on or around its whole body due to the presence of this same electromagnetic field. The entire animal was alive with a crackling aura and energy.

Corbin understood why there where entire cults dedicated to the worship of these creatures that revered them as deities. Their more mysterious qualities added to this reverence. Even after years of study scientists still could not identify some of the Raik's more elusive properties, and the properties they could understand, defied everything they thought they knew about the adaptability and Diversity of life.

At their heart, what provided the incredible energy the creatures needed to live, was a miniature, biologically produced and contained, sun. Each Raik harbored a small fusion reactor inside of them. A small cyst on its underside contained this fusion reaction, located where its tail met the outstretched, semi-rigid ray wings. The cyst was devoid of air and the reaction housed in its center was contained magnetically. This process provided the electrical energy for the animal's body, which, in turn, lent to much of the powerful magnetic field that it produced. Among the many oddities of its physiology, this was the most amazing discovery of all: A creature that ran on nuclear power.

Raiks had no heart, no digestive system, no bones, and no brain. Various tissues and vessels throughout the body behaved like myocardial tissue and regulated the flow of the heavily metallic plasma that passed for its blood. Reproductive organs were only guessed at since they could not be definitively identified, and no one had ever seen two Raiks mate, though young offspring had been observed often enough. Ridges of cartilage took the place of bone, much like a shark or any boneless fish. A central nervous system had not yet been identified, only a vast and dense web of interconnected nervous tissue existed throughout its body.

Their bodies were akin to vast processing plants, perfect for the collection and manipulation of the raw materials of Jovian worlds. Complex organs produced helium-three and deuterium that they utilized for their internal fusion reaction. Others extracted carbon and supplied it to the super hard protective scales that bordered the hydrogen burning jets on their flanks and made up the enormous crest of the head. Iron, nickel, and traces of cobalt, were extracted and refined from the atmosphere and directed to the interstitial fluid and blood plasma. The circulation of this metallic and magnetic blood, along with the magnetic field produced by the fusion reaction, formed an accompanying electrical field that made the Raiks their own weather phenomena.

Helium and hydrogen were a staple for the Raiks, acting, more or less, as a primary food source. Both of these elements were more than abundant in gas giant atmospheres. With an almost unlimited supply of hydrogen, and just enough oxygen to power their propulsion systems, the creature remained constantly aloft, preferring to seek out concentrated pockets of helium that would accumulate from time to time.

Even now as this immense and elegant force of nature descended through the clouds, lines of charge snapped from on and around it. At ten kilometers away Corbin's equipment—shielded as it was from the creature's electromagnetic interference, as well as the planet's—flickered and danced, scrambling slightly then reforming, continually fighting the barrage of energy. The two kilometers of tail undulated slowly from side to side, stabilizing the huge form in the unrelenting current of 800 kilometer an hour winds.

A subsonic bone shaking rumble, more violent than the pervasive thunder, emanated from the Raik and reverberated through Corbin's body making his teeth chatter.

"We've reached the helium pocket," Brix informed, "it's about to feed."

"Spread out to capture distance, we're a man down so it'll have to be a little tighter formation than I'd like if we want to be effective," Corbin instructed, "Laz you're already high, stay there, Kora take the right flank, Brix you have the left, I'll take the underside. Maintain two klicks distance until it's time. Don't make a move until I give the word."

"Ah, you want to have all the glory, eh Bishop?" Laz chuckled over the com.

"I promise I'll let you have a little fun Laz, don't worry."

"Ya' damn well better," he said with another laugh.

"Alright get in formation, let's move," Corbin ordered and he set off.

He dipped the nose of his craft and accelerated forward and down, trying to avoid the brunt of the turbulence created by the Raik's extensive wake. The flying landmass sized animal above cast a purple shadow over Corbin that contrasted heavily with the deepening crimson and orange atmosphere. The underside of the Raik was a dark expanse of otherworldly flesh, a flying island unto itself. No other creature found anywhere throughout the explored galaxy exceeded the Raik's bulk. The interstellar QJD ships—enormous six kilometer long interstellar vessels—were the only man made mobile crafts that were larger than the beast now above Corbin, and those ships, because of their incredible mass, could not enter a planet's atmosphere.

Above, using his optical enhancement, Corbin could make out the dimly glowing cyst, only slightly bigger than himself and his Lance. There the fusion reaction burned. The pale glow it eminated outlined the ribbed cartilage structure of the ray-like expanse of the wings. The blue jets of flame, like massive welding torches, could also be seen spraying along the animals flanks as pressurized hydrogen and oxygen was sent there through the propulsion organs. All the while, shimmering arouras danced in a chromatic display of coalescing and evaporating color around the creature's perimeter.

At the Divers' approach, the cyst retracted behind protective scales of carbon. The creature had sensed their proximity and instinctively protected this most precious organ. There were only theories as to why the Raiks left the cyst exposed at all, considering it was a vulnerable area, but none had been proven accurate. There seemed to be no difference in their behavior when the nodule was exposed or retracted, the latter usually only happening in the presence of Divers. Either way, the trick was getting the Raik to again expose this vital spot.

"Get ready," Corbin announced, "wait until it starts feeding, it'll be more vulnerable then."

There was no response. He knew each of his fellow Divers was awaiting his order, their apprehension all building until the action commenced. Long seconds passed, but then, at last, the shadow above Corbin shifted. The beak split along its vertical axis down the middle, the mouth opening horizontally into a dark chasm as the Raik ingested billions upon billions of cubic meters of helium. The open maw ballooned and swelled to capture as much of the gas as was possible. The flesh alongside the enormous mouth expanding and bulging as the vast quantity of atmosphere rushed in. The creature slowed noticeably from the drag this created and Corbin matched its speed. It was time.

"Commence EM bursting, rotation counter clockwise," he ordered, "in three...two...one-"

"Corbin!" Kora shouted suddenly.

Corbin instinctively looked in the direction where he knew she would be positioned. He did not see her, but what he did see nearly caused him to void his bowels—an extremely unpleasant prospect when trapped in the confines of his suit. More concerning, however, was the gargantuan shape that had just plunged through the cloud cover above, arcs of blue energy snapping off its surface in all directions like neon whips, fluid tale snaking visibly, and wisps of vapor streaming away from, the half-kilometer-wide, open mouth, of a second Raik charging straight for him.

Corbin barely had time to react. The creature had dove from the clouds and aimed directly under the animal they had been stalking, heading straight at him. He jacked his throttled hard forward, acceleration piling onto his frame. The Raik was bearing down on him. In front of it was pushed a turbulent mass of air that tore at the structure of his Lance, the abusive forces threatening to tear it apart. The whole vehicle shuddered under the violent interaction, but Corbin urged it forward, he had to get out of the way of that mouth or be swallowed whole.

The edge of the open beak swept behind him, missing him by only several meters. The wash of the air it created in its passing buffeted him mercilessly and he fought desperately to keep his Lance stable. Then he was sucked into the absence of the atmosphere it displaced and was funneled down next to the creature's surface. He was past the bulging open mouth then streaking by the jet black eye. The edge of the ray-wing hurtled at him but he pulled up sharply, barrel rolled and righted his craft above the wing, nearly skipping off the glittering skin before again being caught in the disturbance of air that slipped him along the wing and in toward the burning jet of hydrogen located on the flank.

He fought the controls trying to steady himself, struggling to remain in command of his vehicle while shooting down to the roaring flame that singed a wing tip as he banked away from the plume of fire and down along the tail, again, just barely avoiding crashing into the creatures flesh. He continued to turn, still flying only meters above the silver-gold skin, the world had been tipped ninety degrees on its axis and was continuing to invert as he spiraled around to the underside of the tail and out of the way of its side to side motion. Now everything was upside down and Corbin sought to gain distance from the beast.

He pushed hard at his controls trying to dive upside down, away from the monster. He was gaining distance but not fast enough, the swirling eddies created by the creature's wake spun him like a paper airplane in a tornado and even he couldn't compensate. For a several heart pounding, muscle straining, breathless moments, the world was a blur of deep orange and crimson mixed with flashes of clouds.

"Corbin!" He heard Kora shout again, but he couldn't respond.

Up and down were only vague perceptions to him and he struggled to gain his bearings. _Clouds above sky below, or, wait, had there been another cloud bank below_? He thought rapidly, trying to regain his proper orientation.

His Lance was tumbling now, the propulsion had stalled but he still had electronic and mechanical stabilization as well as a functioning heads up display. The altimeter was dropping away in a steady cascade of numbers, he knew he was falling, but which way was up? Then he rolled and tilted slightly and saw two massive forms that, at first gLance, seemed to be below him. Were there two more down there? Realization sank in a moment later as he realized that was where he had been moments before.

Corbin gathered himself and reoriented his perceptions to the proper up and down alignment. His Lance rotated again and, for a moment, he knew he was now pointing down and was rapidly approaching another cloud bank. The temperature and pressure were climbing quickly here. He had to regain command of his craft. He battled with his controls to straighten himself, trying to use the wind to his advantage and steer out of his freefall. The wings of his Lance shuttered and flexed with the gusting wind. He didn't have enough speed to level out and glide.

Straight down. It was his only option. He had to restart his engines but he needed to break free of his haphazard tumbling or they would do him no good. The whole Lance chattered and shook, tangled by the invisible knot of turbulent air. Corbin again saw the two shapes of the Raiks above him, only dark shadows now and getting smaller.

_If that was up_ , he thought, _then down should be right...about...now!_

The mechanical and electronic flight controls at his disposal strained and vibrated in anger as Corbin used every ounce of his strength to force the craft into a nose dive straight down. It wanted to misbehave. It wanted to pull out of line and continue its effortless tumble, but Corbin held on, keeping the nose pointed directly toward the next cloud bank below him. His velocity increased, the turbulence smoothed, and the heavy vibration that numbed his hands and arms died away.

"Yes that's it!" he said to himself, "Come on!"

He tried to fire his engines. Nothing. Then again, nothing. Corbin continued to drop. Two more kilometers whipped past. He depressed his ignition button again and this time eight points of light erupted to life.

"Ha-ha!" he exclaimed and pulled the nose of his craft up, then he accelerated. The wind was at his back and he banked in a wide arc turning back into the forceful rush of air.

"I'm on my way!" Corbin announced over the com as he found the lurking shadows of the two Raiks and began, once again, to ascend to their position. He could also make out the virtual ID tags of his three teammates as they weaved and twisted around the two forms. No, four forms? Even from this distance he could see the two smaller shapes of several offspring that must have been accompanying the newly emerged adult Raik, keeping a close proximity to the larger of the two. The pups were maybe 500 meters long, small compared to the adults, but still dangerous. The Raik that had emerged must have been smaller and Corbin positioned himself to intercept the original larger one. But then he paused.

"Bishop you're alive!" Cackled Laz, "get a look at the size o' the thing that almost ate cha'!"

Corbin was astounded. He did a double take when he viewed the readout of his heads up display.

"Corbin, are you okay?" It was Kora.

"Yeah, yeah, I'm fine." He answered more stunned by what he was seeing than his near brush with death.

"Good because we could use a hand up here." She responded garishly, but sounded relieved all the same.

"Sir, this one's a record, we're in for one hell of a payday." Brix announced.

It was a record. The readout in Corbin's display showed that the newly emerged Raik was just over four kilometers long. No one had ever encountered any that size. He shook himself from his trance and refocused himself on his task.

"Focus on the larger one, I'm on my way." Corbin declared.

He accelerated, quickly gaining altitude and closing the distance between himself and his quarry, in a hurry to assist his team. As he neared he could see that there was something different about this second larger Raik. Its form, overall shape, and coloring were the same, but it seemed craggy with its greater number of thick carbon scales, the scarlet plumage along its dorsal surface more dense, the wings had more ridges and several spines that projected forward in a sharp pointed thorn of carbon, and then the eyes. Behind the usual one on either side was an extra sensory organ, a second eye, but slightly smaller. He had missed these details while trying to avoid being consumed by it, but now he used his optical enhancement to observe these differences.

Corbin saw a double, bioluminescent lateral line, instead of a single one. Then he noticed the other cyst. This particular Raik had two energy sources. Two fusion cysts.

"Have you ever seen another one like this?" Kora asked sounding as amazed as Corbin felt.

"Never," he responded then he hailed his whaling ship, "Hotaru Maru, do you copy?" There was more interference than usual. Corbin noticed his equipment was also being effected more than normal, it had to be the larger Raik's stronger electromagnetic field in conjunction with the other one.

"We copy lead, what's your status?" the helmsman replied.

"Hotaru we have multiple contacts, four total, two adults, and two pups. We uhh... also have a record here. Contact with a second adult over four kilometers in length." There was silence for a moment.

"Corbin, are you sure?" asked a different voice. It was the Captain.

"Positive, can you establish visual up link?" Corbin questioned.

"Negative, we can't even get sensor readings or target information, we're picking up heavy interference," answered the Captain.

"Corbin," continued the Captain, "you have to bring that in, prioritize the larger Raik, do you copy?"

"My thoughts exactly," Corbin answered, "resuming capture, lead out."

"Good hunting," came the static laced reply.

Corbin had now rejoined his team. "Reassume capture positions, were taking the larger one," he ordered.

"Copy"

"Let's do it."

"Hell yes, Bishop!"

Corbin assumed his position below the larger Raik. He studied the strange double cyst for a brief moment and the heavily ridged wings with their additional carbon scales before the two fusion blisters were retracted.

_This will not be easy_ , he thought.

"Commence EM pulse, maximum output counterclockwise, this thing has a high field density. On my mark, three, two, one, now!"

Corbin depressed a control and his Lance began generating its own strong electromagnetic field that pulsed at regular intervals. At the same time he banked to his right and began climbing, decreasing his radius to the creature and making for as tight of an arc as was possible. This tactic was used to throw off the Raik's magnetic field and disorient its ability to navigate. His other teammates, even though he couldn't see them, were doing the same thing, moving in the same direction around their prey. Already the interacting fields were taking affect.

Another subsonic rumble transmitted through his bones. The Raik swayed its mountain sized head more rapidly than usual, but still seemed to mostly ignore the sensation. If there were more Raiks of this size in these outer systems they may have to start hunting in larger teams, or come up with new tactics.

"Corbin I don't think this is working very well," Kora announced.

"Keep going, increase rotation speed, we need more movement," He replied, banking harder and climbing more quickly, now nearly level with the Raik's right flank.

He continued rotating and he could just make out Kora to his left beginning her decent around the other side. The Raik opened its mouth wide, taking in a huge gulp of helium but closed it quickly, weaving its head side to side, letting out another rumble.

_This better work_ , Corbin thought.

Suddenly the creature dipped down and turned left trying to get rid of the troublesome EM interference.

"Stay with it!" Corbin bellowed.

His team followed keeping as tight a formation as they could. Corbin was approaching his original position again. Time to switch tactics.

"Kora, Brix, begin your rotations in the opposite direction, Laz and I will continue our rotation as we have been," Corbin directed.

"Will do," Kora announced.

"Copy," Brix said flatly.

"I think we're startin' to piss it off, Bishop!" Laz informed with his usual excitement.

"That's the idea," Corbin affirmed.

Corbin continued his rotation under the belly of the beast. After a moment he saw Kora coming back his direction but displaced slightly behind him, then she passed to his right. As he again climbed around the right flank of his prey, Brix was soon in sight coming the opposite direction. The Raik was not amused.

The interfering and rotating electric fields were beginning to confuse and disorient it. Corbin imagined it was akin to having ones equilibrium distorted to the point of causing vertigo or dizziness. There was again that subsonic growl, a teeth rattling disturbance that shuddered through the atmosphere. The Raik's massive head suddenly bucked up, the resulting displacement of air causing alarms to chime in his helmet and his craft to pitch and swerve momentarily.

"Watch it!" Corbin warned, "it's getting agitated."

Then the Raik threw itself to the left again, away from Corbin, while banking hard. He narrowly avoided the wing and had to adjust rapidly to compensate.

"Whoa, that was a close one!" Laz cackled.

Corbin checked his readout of his other teammates, no one had been hit. "Keep at it, we're almost ready for capture," he assured.

The Raik was weaving back and forth now, trying to shake the bothersome sensation it was experiencing. Corbin and his fellow Divers struggled to hold their formation and keep up their efforts.

"Watch the wing!"

"The tail is shifting, keep clear!"

"Its field is in flux, we almost got the sonofabitch!"

"Don't get caught in the mane!"

They all shared in the warnings and instructions as the creature thrashed and its movements became more erratic. The Raik they were originally tracking was still only a few kilometers away but was avoiding the Divers EM disturbances. The pups hung close to this one, miniature copies of the adults but with only small tufts of plumage for manes and yet no fusion cysts.

"I think it's safe to say it knows we're here," Brix reported.

"What makes you think it didn't know from the beginning," said Corbin, "don't underestimate them."

"Just a big dumb cloud serpent if ya' ask me!" Laz announced.

"No one asked you," Kora countered.

Laz laughed in his usual raucous manner, "I like this one Bishop, she's got some bark."

"My bite is much worse," Kora offered.

Laz laughed again but did not remark.

"Stay focused, we can't make any mistakes with this one," Corbin reasserted, "Kora, Brix, get ready to deploy sails, Laz and I will prepare to rupture the cysts."

"Let's get this right," Brix stated.

"I agree," said Kora.

"Alright, initiate capture," Corbin ordered, "Laz let's keep its attention, come in tight to the head."

"Aye Bishop, on my way," the other man answered.

Corbin stopped his circling and navigated his way closer to the great crested head. His EM interference would be almost unbearable for the creature here, but the Raik could more easily kill him while he was in such close proximity. The jet black eyes seemed to watch Corbin as he neared, while the scarlet plume of fibers whipped violently in the wind just above the onyx sensory organs.

The huge head shifted away from Corbin to avoid the EM disturbance there, but Laz moved into place on the other side. The Raik jerked its head back toward Corbin, a surprisingly quick movement for its size. Corbin banked hard but did not disengage. Then it dove trying to move away from the discomfort the two Divers provided. Corbin and Laz followed.

"Anytime now ladies!" Laz called out.

"Getting into position," Brix announced.

"Drive it up," said Kora, "if it dives it'll be hard to get a good angle."

"Copy, let us know when you're in position," Corbin answered.

Brix and Kora had sped up, gaining several kilometers of distance ahead of the Raik. The maneuver had to be precise.

"We're in position," Kora announced.

"Okay Laz, let's get it up!" Corbin instructed.

"Never uh problem here bishop," he said with a chuckle.

Corbin and Laz dipped lower just below the head of the Raik. The creature responded just as they had intended it too. It pulled up, raising its head and angling back toward the cloud bank above.

"Kora, Brix, now!" Corbin yelled.

Corbin saw that the two had already circled back with the wind and were closing fast, making directly for the Raik. Their trajectory was aimed to take them skimming just above the expansive wings on either side. They screamed by at supersonic speed the explosion of the sonic booms thudding through Corbin's chest like he'd been struck in the sternum with a mallet. He saw the flashes of light but could not see the high velocity projectiles that he hoped had found their mark. The Raik rumbled again and twisted. Corbin dodged the swerving crested head, rolled, then banked to give himself some space.

"Hook in," reported Kora.

"Same here," Brix said a moment later.

"Well done," Corbin congratulated, "Laz let's get some space."

"Aye."

They backed off from the creature, distancing themselves from the swaying crested head.

"Kora, Brix, resume circling, keep it distracted, Laz we need to finish this," Corbin ordered.

"I'm ready, Bishop," Laz responded, now deadly serious.

"Follow my lead I'll rupture the second cyst on the first pass, you take the first when you follow."

"Right behind you," Laz replied.

Both Divers gained altitude rising high above the head and leveling out just below the cloud deck. Two kilometers below the Raik waited. The two adults, and the smaller but still enormous pups, seemed to float lazily like landmasses in an orange and now deepening crimson sea. These landmasses undulated and shifted like they were swimming slowly through the atmosphere that whipped by them; the larger of the two adults continued twisting and turning due to the nuisance provided by Brix and Kora.

The four thousand meter Raik was truly a sight Corbin had never witnessed. Besides the massive payoff they would all get for landing something this large, its presence would raise serious questions about how much they really knew about a Raik's life cycle and development. This one was in a new class altogether. Corbin shook himself from his moment of adoration for the magnificent creatures below him. Time to finish the job.

"Kora, Brix, deploy sails," Corbin ordered.

"Copy," and "rodger," came the replies from the two Divers still circling below.

Corbin watched the two black specks stop their circling and retreat a distance from the Raik. Long streamers suddenly began to appear off the Raik's wings. The barely visible, wire thin filaments twitched and flailed in the ferocious wind, looking like some absurd decorum that may be torn loose at any moment. The razor thin lines of fabric broadened, then flared in a silver grey blossom of material that spanned roughly two square kilometers each. As the carbon-silk nano-material billowed and trapped the wind, the Raik jolted violently. The sails slowed it greatly and pulled its head and body back and up, threatening to force the cysts out of the protective scaled flesh surrounding them. That vital area that housed its energy source, its life force, had to be exposed if they were to be successful, but something was wrong.

"Sonofabitch!" Laz exclaimed, seeing the problem as soon as Corbin had.

"My thoughts exactly," Corbin seconded the man.

"It's not enough," Brix reaffirmed over the com, "this ones too big we need to set another sail."

"I'm on it!" Kora called.

"Kora hold on, we don't know if that will work!" Corbin warned, but it was too late as he watched her black speck speed ahead of the slowed but fighting Raik below.

By now the creature was in a rage. It rolled from side to side, trying to displace the billowing fabric that was holding it back. The Sails were slowing it but the Raik was gradually regaining speed, putting on an impressive display of strength as it regained its composure. The creature released another bone shaking rumble that continued much longer than all the rest had. The sensation of the sound was almost painful and it grew worse as the pitch increased higher and higher, until it was no longer a deep tone, but a piercing whistle that climbed and disappeared into hyper sonic frequencies.

"What the hell was that?" Asked Laz.

"I don't know," said Corbin, "I've never heard a Raik make that noise before."

"This day is just full of surprises!" Laz chuckled.

Below Kora had climbed roughly half the distance between Laz and Corbin, and the struggling monster. Then she arced, turned over, and shot straight down, aiming for the axe shaped head. Kora always made flying look like a ballet, a feat that was more than difficult in the challenging weather of the Jovian atmospheres.

She twisted several times as she dropped toward her target. The movements were more than just a display of her talent, she was adjusting, correcting, and realigning as the Raik writhed below her. She had to line up her shot just right. A Diver in a similar position would have tried to place another sail maybe in the middle of the wings farther along the back. Kora knew better and had the ability to do otherwise. She was aiming for the back of its head. This would force the front part of its body to be pulled up almost vertically, stretching back the Raik's ventral surface and forcing the cysts to expose themselves.

The massive creature was surging against the inhibiting sails. Its already brightly flaring blue propulsion jets were burning more fiercely than ever, the lengths of the flame stretching twice the normal distance from the pressure applied to the organ.

Kora found her mark. Adjusting at the last second, she fired another sail-hook with a flash of light and a puff of vapor that disintegrated in a moment, into the Raik's flesh just behind its weaving head and into the scarlet mane. She swerved, dodging the moving bulk, spinning and rolling in the disturbance of turbulent air, she corrected her trajectory and was clear of the wing before she swooped back and below the creature's bulk. Corbin realized he had been holding his breath as she completed the maneuver.

"Ha-ha! She can fly too!" Laz exclaimed.

"She certainly can," Corbin replied.

"Whenever you're ready Corbin." Kora panted over the com.

"Do it," he replied.

After a moment another gossamer thin streamer appeared this time from the back of the Raik's head. Then it too expanded—more like exploded—to its full size as the wind did its work. This time the Raik's head and forward body section was hoisted back and up like a lasso had been thrown around its neck. The result of the added sail was enough to expose its underside. Corbin knew this was the best chance they would get.

"Now Laz!" he ordered and both men dove straight down for the now exposed underbelly and—Corbin hoped—the cysts. The air rattled his Lance as he dropped in for what would be the first of two killing blows. They were there. Corbin could make them out as he neared. The two bulging semi spheres that glowed dully with the contained fusion reactions.

Corbin streaked toward his target with Laz following only meters behind. The Raik's beak faced up at him. The carbon crusted ridge appearing like the dark rocky crest of a mountain peak in sharp contrast to the silver and gold-sheen of the skin. Flat black orb eyes—twice as many as normal—seemed to watch him as he descended, but then they always appeared to watch him, to see through him.

The descent toward the Raik took only moments. Corbin careened past the head careful to keep his distant should it decide to suddenly shift its position, and soon the body of the beast was flashing by. Corbin toggled several controls at his fingertips and his Lance morphed subtly. The left wing edge facing the beast thinned and flattened, deforming and reforming to a razor thin edge of graphene with a width measured in micrometers. At the same time, plasma, redirected from his engines, heated the ultrafine edge. The transformed wing glowed red like a sword blade fresh from a smith's forge. Corbin edged closer and closer to the Raik, still accelerating, still plummeting straight down, adjusting by mere centimeters to line up his target.

A wing-length away the first cyst was by him in a blurred second and Corbin adjusted ever so slightly to cut in and hit the second one, a maneuver he had never had to perform until this day, but he found his mark. The red hot edge disappeared for the a split second then reappeared, like a light had been flicked off then immediately back on, then he was past the bulk of the creature and his wing reformed to its previous flight stable shape. He pulled up, leveled off, and banked around to see if Laz had also accomplished his task. He had.

Another quaking rumble from the Raik vibrated through Corbin. Charges flashed and dissipated as the creature's electrical field fluctuated wildly now that its power source, its life, had started to dissipate. Rupturing the cysts would cause the fusion reaction contained there to become unbaLanced. Soon they would collapse.

"Whooooo-ha! That's how you take 'em down!" Cried Laz.

"Good work, now get clear before it goes critical." Corbin advised.

The remaining four Divers pulled back and regrouped slightly above and in front of the dying animal. It could no longer keep itself aloft in the whipping current of air and was beginning to sink down toward the ever thickening atmosphere below. Only the large sails kept it from dropping away entirely, acting as exaggerated parachutes to slow its descent.

The Raik twisted and writhed in colossal death throws, more tremoring land mass than living thing. At its center, the slashes in the cysts created by Corbin and Laz, reveled the two miniature stars that resided in the creatures flesh. Corbin's HUD gave readouts as he peered at the two bright pinpoints of light, information flashed through his field of view concerning the immense heat, magnetic and electrical fields, and the radiation generated there. How an animal had evolved these traits was beyond Corbin's understanding, hell it was still beyond most of the best biologists' theories; the environmental machination that had prompted this genetic pathway must have been extraordinary. Everything about the Raik was extraordinary, including its death.

All of the flesh tremored and twitched, pulsing with the last of its remaining life. Then the last its magnetic field died away, taking the snapping charge lines with it. The hydrogen jets flickered, cutting out, then flaring back to life in erratic bursts. The rainbow of auroras around it vanished right before the stars within its chest went critical.

The fusion reactions collapsed in the blink of an eye, causing a brief implosion that visibly pulled the entire underside of the Raik inward as air rushed into the voids, then a flash of light burst forth from the first cyst, accompanied by a _crack_ and a shock wave that rocked the four Divers and their small crafts. Then it happened again as the second power source followed suit.

The Raik gave one final shudder, a pitiful rumble, then went still as death over took it. The plumes of blue flame along its flanks died away completely, and it was now at the mercy of the wind, held aloft only by the sails, like an inert marionette.

"It's gonna sink fast," Brix declared. "We need to get some lifts on it."

"I agree," Corbin said, "we can't lose this one."

The team of Divers approached their drifting kill and circled toward its back. The mass of the Raik's body made a sort of wind break that provided a pocket of almost still air. They entered this pocket and continued to descend until they were hovering just above the creatures back between the wings.

The suns were now truly beginning to set and the world around them was growing darker. Much of the orange glow had faded to crimson and was deepening to violet and blues in the distance. The clouds had taken on a more familiar white to the east but still burned orange with the last rays of sun to the west.

"Deploy all of the balloons, we need as much lift as we can get," Corbin ordered. They affirmed his command and set about their work.

Corbin aimed his Lance toward the Raik's back and selected the proper command with his hands, then fired. Like usual, a flash of light and a puff of smoke followed. A cylindrical canister embedded itself into the Raik's flesh. Out of the top a sphere began to grow. Expanding larger and larger it filled with, well, nearly nothing. The orbs employed the use of the once only theoretical idea of the vacuum balloon. As material science caught up to the theory and the manipulation of the involved physics became more controllable, its application was found usable. Though primarily employed for novel uses like airships, it had a useful application for Divers hunting Raiks.

The balloons provided significantly more lift than their gas filled counterparts while taking up less area. Corbin and his team each had twenty of the apparatuses to deploy and for an average Raik it took about fifty to sixty of the large ridged balloons to provide lift to the massive creatures. Corbin would use every one at his disposal to ensure he did not lose the specimen he and his team had bagged. The balloons would take them to the upper atmosphere where a tug would be waiting to haul the Raik the rest of the way to the whaling ship for processing.

Brix, Kora, Laz, and Corbin had placed all of their balloons in about fifteen minutes and to Corbin's relief, the mass was beginning to rise. Balloons attached to the tail leveled off the plane of the dead creature so it rose almost horizontally, except the front section, which was still pulled high by the attached sails. The sails still played a part, helping to add direction and stability to the ascent.

"Time to make land fall," Corbin said, hovering in close to the Raik's back where it blocked the wind.

A tether shot from the underside of his Lance anchoring it to the floating bulk. Corbin was a few meters above the surface of the Raik when he said, "release," and he slid from the confines of his Lance and dropped onto the gold-silver surface of the creature. His Lance stayed hovering above him, extending more length of the tether and stopping when it was approximately 100 meters distant.

Kora flew in close to where Corbin had positioned his Lance, aligned it with his, attached her own tether, then she too dropped onto the back of the creature. Corbin knew Laz and Brix were doing the same thing on the other side of the dense scarlet mane, even though it impeded his view of them. Soon he saw their Lances drift up in the same manner, anchored by their own tethers. The AI of the Lances would provide some direction so that they were not aimlessly adrift in the air currents. The combination of balloons, sails, and hovering machines made for the oddest airship ever conceived, but it was effective. Their ascent would take several hours. In the meantime he could catch up with Kora and enjoy the sunset which was now a deep bloody golden on the horizon, framed by flashes of lightning and set to the sound track of rushing wind and rolling thunder.

## 4

**KORA** woke drenched in sweat again. Her t-shirt was soaked through, her breath heavy in her chest, and her heart attacked her ribcage as if it were attempting to free itself from her breast. It was the same dream she had been having for the past week. She pushed the covers of her bed aside within the comfortable quarters aboard the Haturo Maru.

"Time," She said a loud. A display flashed over her retina. It was just after 0500. Her night of sleep—as brief as it had been—was over. She peeled off the t-shirt she had saturated, stepped out of her underwear and made for the shower.

She stood under the flow of hot water, letting the steam overtake the visibility in the glass and pseudo-marble enclosure. She leaned her forehead and forearms against the wall and tried to force out the lingering images of the dream and the memories of the last week. At least in the dream she was the one falling.

"Off." she told the shower, stepping out of its confines, she dried herself, then dressed.

She made her own coffee in her quarters, not wanting the sorry excuse of brown bitter liquid that was available to her in the mess. Corbin had introduced her to this beverage all those years ago.

***

"No, no, no, what the hell is that?" he had asked her during their first meeting. "You're gonna poison yourself with that."

She had been waiting for him in the mess aboard that whaling ship in one of the inner systems, a place where many green Divers did their training. That was now a decade ago. She remembered how nervous she had been. Already Corbin was famous for his talent as a Diver. Kora had applied to be his understudy because she wanted to learn from the best. When she found out he had chosen her from all the applicants, she had been overjoyed and terrified at the same time.

"First rule," he said sitting opposite from her at the table, "don't drink that shit." he grabbed her a fresh cup and poured some of the steaming liquid from his own thermos. "I don't want you falling out of the sky today because you were drinking that garbage."

Kora, who had taken a sip of the beverage, nearly choked, "We're flying today?"

"Well we're not going to just talk about it my dear," He answered with a smile, "that's what you signed up for isn't it?"

"Yes, but... I mean," eighteen year old Kora stumbled over her words, "I thought most Divers started with simulation training."

"You seemed to have logged plenty of simulation time, in fact more than any other applicant I reviewed. Besides, nothing compares to the real thing. Just like coffee," he answered, lifting his mug.

She was stunned. No one dove on their first day.

"Finish that," Corbin said nodding to the cup then asked, "did you eat?"

"No, I...I wasn't hungry," She replied.

"Good, that's probably for the best since it's your first time," he said standing, "meet me in the equipment locker in fifteen minutes we'll find you a suit."

She nodded and took another sip of the rich black liquid finding it only slightly less offensive than what she had been drinking before, "okay," She said.

Corbin started to walk away, then turned back, "oh, second rule, no dying on your first day, it makes me look bad." he smiled then turned away again, leaving the stunned but determined young girl to finish her coffee.

***

Kora smiled to herself now, reflecting on the memory. She sat in a padded arm chair with her legs drawn to her chest, the coffee sending steam wafting in slow curls in front of her face.

"Kora, to the bridge please," The com page pulled her fully back to reality.

_This early?_ She thought. Her dive wasn't scheduled for another four hours, unless... they found it.

She put down her coffee on a table, pulled her shoes on, pulled her dark hair back into a long ponytail, and slipped a light weight grey cotton jacket over her shoulders and the black tank top she wore, then reported to the bridge.

***

"We're tracking movement in this quadrant," the Captain said pointing to the holographic projection of the planet. "Our sensors are detecting a Raik in proportion with what you said you encountered."

Kora stared at the projection, "do you have an image?" she asked calmly.

"Only x-ray, but it's not very detailed, mag imaging seems to be worse," The Captain said.

"Show me," Kora said.

A small square blinked on the surface of the projection, then expanded as the picture reoriented to a zoomed view of the x-ray photo. A large pixelated out line was contained in the square. Kora looked at the size calculation.

"I told you it was real," she said.

"You, did," the Captain replied, "I owe you an apology for not believing you, but no one has ever seen one that large."

"It's okay, I'm still not sure I believe it myself," Kora said.

"You don't have to do this Kora, we don't even know how to go about capturing one that size. What you found down there may force us to rewrite our methods."

"Are the teams ready?" Kora asked, ignoring the man's concerns.

"The last two Divers jumped into system a day ago." The Captain paused, then added, "we all liked him Kora, he was a good man, but he knew the risks, probably better than all of us. We all lose friends in this business."

"This is personal," Kora responded.

"I'm sorry, but it's not," the Captain replied, "they're animals Kora, it was protecting itself."

"It's personal to me, I have to try, he would do the same."

"I just don't want to see a good Diver throw away their life for some kind of misguided...revenge."

"This isn't revenge, I have a job to finish," she countered, "let me see the roster."

An image of ten faces appeared on the holographic projection.

"I'll organize them into two teams," Kora said, "please wake the Divers Captain, we launch at 0630."

## 5

**THEY** had dropped in nearly on top of its last known position. Ten Divers battled their way through the atmosphere with Kora at the lead. Storm cell after storm cell surged throughout the planet's vast skies. It seemed like as soon they rid themselves of one, another formed. Their very presence seeming to offend the planet this day. The orange cloudscape folded and shifted around them in an ever changing array of vistas.

"We need to go deeper," Kora ordered over the com to the two teams she had assembled, "follow my lead."

They did. Kora was a top ranking federation Diver and had enough pull in the community to amass a talented and highly regarded group. It had been difficult enough to convince the high ranking Divers she wanted on this hunt to join her, given the strange story she had relayed. Not all had accepted her invitation, but she had managed to pull together a talented team of ten others to assist her in the end. If some had still been skeptical of the information she had told them upon their arrival in system, they had all been convinced after her presentation in the, almost unheard of, pre-launch briefing. Their meeting had revealed the size of the creature they would be hunting. None had hesitated to accompany her.

She was wary though. If they did encounter what they were looking for, she hoped ten Divers would be enough. Kora tried not to think about the last encounter, but it was difficult to push from her mind.

***

It emerged after an hour. Darkness was creeping over the planet quickly, descending from the clouds like inky rain. The oranges and reds of sunset had all but disappeared and had been replaced by purples, blues, and black. Corbin and Kora had been reminiscing about some of their earlier dives, and joining in conversation with Brix and Laz about all sorts of adventures. Another hour or so and they would be in range of the tug which would allow them to complete the transport of their catch.

Brix had looked up suddenly into an approaching cloud bank.

"Corbin, I've got movement," she reported.

"Are you sure?" he asked, scanning the curtain of violet and black folds above them.

"I'm picking it up too," Kora said, her HUD showing her intermittent blips on the radar.

"How far away?" Corbin asked.

"About twenty-five klicks, but getting closer," Brix reported.

"Probably just a lost one, I'm sure it'll miss us," Laz remarked.

"Let's hope," Corbin said, "why didn't we detect it sooner?"

"I'm not sure, I don't quite understand this reading," Brix said. "It looks like there might be two or three in close formation, but I can't seem to get a good read."

"I'm not getting anything," Corbin replied, "what about you Kora?"

"I've got a similar reading as Brix, hold on." she answered and switched to her radar imaging that changed the darkness into a light blue cloudscape. She didn't see anything, or did she?

"I think my equipment is malfunctioning, there's a ripple like my radar is being distorted, but, wait," Kora adjusted her instruments, trying to recalibrate their settings.

"I'm seeing the same thing," said Brix.

"What do you make of it?" asked Kora.

"I'm not sure, it's like the radar is being bent around something, almost like a lensing effect."

"How close is it?" Corbin asked

"Ten klicks and closing, it's headed straight for us," Brix reported.

"Everyone just needs to relax," Laz said calmly, seeming to have no concerns about the present situation, stretched as he was on his back, even looking somewhat comical laying down on the creatures flesh with his hands behind his head and his feet crossed, like an armored knight enjoying a day at the beach.

Kora, Brix, and Corbin continued to scan the sky for several minutes, unable to spot their approaching guest.

"It'll probably jus' pass us by. There's no need to worry, nothing will-" he started but sat bolt upright staring at the cloud ceiling.

Kora turned her attention to where he was looking, "what are you looking at?" Kora asked seeing nothing through her radar enhanced vision.

"You don't see _that_?" he said, sounding incredulous. "Try turning your radar off, girly."

Kora sighed, but did as he suggested, ignoring the pet name. She froze. Brix was staring transfixed in the same direction. Corbin had turned scanning the sky in another direction. Kora shot an arm out and grabbed his armor plated shoulder.

"Corbin," she whispered, not able to raise her voice any higher out of pure shock.

"What are we looking—" he said turning their direction, "Oh my god."

What was emerging from the clouds was not three kilometers long, or four kilometers, or even five.

"How...how big is that?" Laz asked.

"I don't know," Brix replied, "all of my sensors are going ballistic."

Their coms were tinged with heavy static now, and Kora's display had started flickering violently, but that was the least of her concern. Above them a true monster was emerging. Something utterly titanic was pushing through the clouds. The forked tongues of lightning lashed out from the creature or sought its surface from the clouds. It crackled constantly with energy, almost glowing with the continual discharges. Its auroras twitched and flickered in long multicolored ribbons that painted the sky around it in rainbow luminescence. Then its rumble shook the planet. The lower frequencies caused real physical pain in the four Divers. The sound continued, and, like the cry the now dead Raik had emitted earlier, this one too continued into the hypersonic realm, causing them all to clutch at their helmeted heads in pain.

"What the hell is that?" Kora asked.

"That there is the granddaddy I believe," said Laz.

"Two record breakers in one day," said Corbin, "this is very unusual."

"Except that doesn't just break our new record," Brix remarked, "it smashes it."

"Where have these things been hiding?" Kora asked quietly, still unconsciously gripping at her helmet.

"That's a good question my dear," he replied, "let's hope it keeps its distance."

"No such luck," Brix said, "it's still coming straight for us."

"What the hell...is around it?" Laz asked.

Kora used her optical enhancement to get a closer look. "It's some kind of debris field, I've never seen anything like it."

That was the truth. Like the Raik they had killed, and were now transporting, the enormous monster that they had come upon was slightly different in appearance. Mostly it seemed to have more of all the usual features. Multiple black eyes dotted its head in varying sizes. It had grown an extra hydrogen jet on either side of its body and even subsets of smaller wings that ran part way down the length of its tail. Bioluminescent lines traced its mass in pinstripes, and in the flashes of lightning around it, Kora thought she could make out large splashes of gold extending back from the beak, like entire refineries worth of the melted metal had been poured onto the creature's skin. Underneath the wings, down its center, ran a row of cysts. Kora thought she could make out five of the dimly glowing bumps.

"Those particulates might be iron or nickel trapped in its magnetic field," said Brix.

"It's also distorting my radar to the point of being invisible," Kora remarked in amazement, toggling on and off the enhancement.

"Something isn't right," Corbin said quietly.

"What do you mean?" Kora asked.

"It didn't find us by accident, it came looking," Corbin explained

"What are you trying to say Bishop, that this thing is _hunting_ us?" Laz asked.

"Something like that, this one, when we attacked it," he said, pointing to the creature under his feet, "made the same noise that this one just did. It's not a coincidence."

"How can you be sure?" Kora asked not taking her eyes from the creature that was still getting closer as it hugged the cloud ceiling, sometimes breaching that barrier, half submerging itself there, before again dipping below the bank of vapor.

"I just... have... a feeling," Corbin explained, then added after a moment, "we need to abandon this one, abort this hunt."

"What? You're joking," Laz said.

"I'm not. It's still coming straight for us and we don't have much time. Let's get back to our Lances, untether, and get out of here before-"

"No way, Bishop, we jus' landed the biggest catch in history, I'm not givin' it up that easy," Laz objected.

"Listen, we need to move now! In another minute that thing will be on us and I guarantee we won't live to tell about it if we stay! If we move now we can comeback with more Divers and hunt for that!" Corbin said pointing at the enormous creature who was taking up more and more of the darkening sky before them.

"I'm not leavin' it!" Laz said adamantly and had now found his feet, looking like he had positioned himself to fight Corbin if necessary.

"Come on Laz, he's probably right," said Brix.

"I don't buy it!" Laz said, hostility apparent in his voice.

"We don't have time to argue, Brix, how far away is it?" Corbin asked

"Less than three klicks," she stated as the Raik continued to close the distance, now obviously making directly for them and their kill.

"Alright, everyone back to their Lances and untether, we can outrun this thing. I'll set a tag so we can track it. I want everyone else to pull back, we'll rendezvous then break atmosphere."

"I'm not leavin' it," Laz said calmly.

The three Divers turned to look at him, Kora with incredulity, both at the man's stubbornness and stupidity, Corbin in frustration that his order was not being followed, even the ever unflappable Brix seemed agitated.

"Laz, I give you a lot of freedom under my command, but you _are_ under my command," Corbin said sternly.

"It's almost on top of us." Brix announced.

"Maybe it's time I took ov-" Laz never finished the sentence. A hail of shrapnel whipped into their protective armor at incredible velocity. The sharp _clack_ of the small projectiles against their suits was deafening and Kora instinctively crouched and covered her head along with her fellow Divers. When the shower stopped, she rose her head to see Laz still standing, if only for a moment. Slowly, like a statue tipped from its pedestal, he rocked backward not even trying to catch himself. The less protective faceplate of his helmet had been shattered by multiple iron and nickel slugs.

"Move now!" Corbin yelled, "Back to your Lances!"

"What about-" Brix started.

"He's dead," Corbin said bluntly, "and we will be too if we don't move!"

Kora made for the tether keeping her Lance in place. As she neared she gestured with her hand toward the craft and it begun to descend. She could hear Corbin over the common band trying to contact the Hotaru in orbit but he couldn't seem to get through.

"Did it just attack us with the debris trapped in its magnetic field?" Kora asked only now comprehending what had just happened.

Brix was the one who answered, "I detected a fluctuation in the field right before we were hit, it seems that it did."

"Have you ever heard of anything like this?" Kora questioned.

"Never, we're dealing with something totally new." Corbin answered her

Lightning divided the sky into jagged fragments as a bolt lashed from the clouds and actually struck the approaching Raik causing a shower of a thousand streamers to jump from its surface and back into the clouds and down onto the Raik they were still standing on, sending leaping sparks crackling over its conductive skin. The darkening clouds, lit by the blue light, reveled the enormity of the creature that was now nearly directly above them.

Six cysts glowed down the center of its ventral surface, the wings blotted out nearly all of the clouds above it and the head weaved patiently, almost expectantly back and forth. The many eyes stood out, eerily black in the sudden flash of light. The scale of the battle ax head was staggering and kora was sure now of the large splashes of gold on its head and neck as well as other parts of its body. The tangle of scarlet mane thrashed in the wind as if trying to capture the air as it passed.

It again let out a low bellow that reverberated painfully through Kora and ended in a high scream that rose out of the range of her hearing.

"How big is it?" Kora asked quietly.

"Seven, eight kilometers maybe," Corbin answered, "where have you been hiding?" he whispered quietly, glancing up at the creature.

Kora's Lance was nearly to her as it followed the guideline of the tether back toward her. Corbin's was close behind. When it was a few meters above her she jumped, aided by the suit, she cleared the distance easily, an outstretched hand was engulfed by the machine, locking her in place. She quickly found the stirrups then inserted her other free hand into the waiting machine.

At the same moment the Raik dove. Kora released her tether just as the island sized avalanche of flesh dropped toward them.

Corbin was still waiting for his Lance and Brix was even farther behind having to cover more distance before she was in position. It was too late. A cascade of electricity arced between the live and dead animal. They're suits would protect them from the rain of charges but not from being crushed under the massive bulk.

"Brix! Corbin!" Kora screamed, but the carbon scaled beak of the Raik crashed into the wing where Brix's Lance was attached. The other woman never made a sound. Her Lance disappeared under the bulk of its massive head, and so did she. Corbin dove for the tether of his Lance that was still sunken into the flesh of the dead Raik.

"No," Kora whispered to herself but she didn't have time to think, only act. The entire mass of the creature she had just been standing on tipped, the semi-rigid wing of the animal slashed up at her in a great arc and she had to move quickly out of the way to avoid being swatted out of the sky like the gnat she felt like. Corbin disappeared in the chaos, trapped in the tangle of crashing giants. The larger Raik kept dropping, pulling their catch down with it. Its jets of hydrogen blazed away, pushing it forward in what seemed like an attempt to drag the dead Raik down to the core of the planet.

"Kora!" Corbin's voice called out from somewhere through heavy static as the two massive bodies dropped away, the interaction nearly pulling her along in the sudden vacancy of air.

She searched the navy-blue-black sky around her to see if he had made it clear. The flickering of her HUD was too violent to make out his virtual ID tag.

"Corbin, where are you!?" she called out.

"Falling...couldn't get free...Lance destroyed..." came the static laced reply.

Kora dove. The blue flare of the Raik's jets glared up at her, the very end of its tail not more than a kilometer below.

"Hold on I'm coming!" she called out.

"No...don't...too dangerous." She heard his response through a heavy blanket of static, but ignored the warning. She wouldn't leave her mentor, her friend, not without a fight.

***

"We have contact," she barely heard the words in her ear.

"Kora, do you copy? We have contact. Damn, this thing is as big as you said it was." The second hail snapped her back to the present.

"Don't engage, we'll be right there," she said and gave the word for her team to join up with the other Divers already in close proximity with their target.

Only three minutes had elapsed before she began to see glimpses of the beast through the clouds. They had dove deep within the atmosphere of the giant planet and were now below the troposphere. The temperature had risen drastically and the pressure was already exceeding three atmospheres.

There wasn't the usual excitement that flooded through her, only trepidation, only fear.

She remembered too well how dangerous this animal was. She hoped this time would be different. She had ordered that one team be fit with high explosive projectiles and EMP charges in an attempt to wound the creature as much as possible before they attempted capture. She didn't want to take any chances this time.

As she neared the Raik's location, she instructed both her teams to get into their positions. Their tactics would be somewhat different this time. They would for-go the usual dance around the creature using the EM pulsing of their own crafts to disorient it. Instead, the fire team would try a different method, disorientation using EM charges attached to projectiles, in the hope that this would cause a more harmful disruption of its electrical field. After that they would employ explosive ballistics to wound it further while Kora and her team set up a capture position ahead.

She had instructed the engineers aboard the Hotaru to construct more massive sails and this time vacuum balloons also equipped with small propulsion systems to facilitate lift more quickly. They would place the balloons under the creature then anchor all of the Lances to its corpse and tow it as quickly as possible to the upper atmosphere, in case there happened to be more of this new class of giant Raiks lurking in the planets depths.

_Giant Raiks,_ she thought and almost laughed to herself. That statement formerly would have been redundant, but not now. It seemed they still had much to learn about these creatures even after all this time.

Kora and her team sped ahead, keeping a sizeable distance between themselves and the Raik. The other team hung back behind it, spread out above, below, and to the sides of the massive animal. Kora clipped beneath the cloud deck, following the path of descent that the Raik was on. It was moving deeper still into the atmosphere. She turned her head to look over her shoulder to view the Raik behind her, the mountain of crested beak shifting from side to side with a slow swimming motion. Lightning rippled all around Kora and her Divers and down here, in the denser atmosphere, the thunder traveled faster and boomed louder. The pulses of light gave off a white snap in the contrasting angry red-orange soup that surrounded them.

"Fire team, now." Kora ordered.

"Copy, commencing," her team leader responded.

There were a couple moments of delay then, in a rearview display inside her helmet, she saw the flashes of light she knew weren't caused by lightning. The dark specks of the fire team broke formation and began their aerial acrobatics.

Blue flashes of light emanated from the EM charges detonating near the Raik's head. It bellowed in that new way that the larger ones seemed to have in common, quaking rumble to piecing whistle, then angled itself into a steeper dive, away from the cloud deck above and into the blood-orange expanse below. There were no more clouds beneath them. Down there clouds gave way to heat and pressure and a denser mist of hydrogen and helium and some of the heavier elements present in the planets composition.

"Give it everything." Kora ordered.

There was another brief pause before the sky around the Raik erupted into fire and smoke as the explosive ballistic payloads detonated all around it and EM charges popped blue light into their midst. The light show was enhanced by the Raik's own snapping lines of charge and ribbons of chromatic aroura bands.

"Lead...uh...we can't hit it," said the leader of her fire team after nearly a full minute of the assault.

"What do you mean you 'can't hit it'?" Kora shot.

"It's protected by some kind of debris all around it that's intercepting our munitions," the Diver stated.

_Damn,_ Kora thought to herself, _it must still have the magnetic shrapnel field protecting it_.

She enhanced her reverse view camera, enlarging the image of the creature behind her. It was indeed still cocooned inside a bubble of pebble to fist sized fragments of iron and nickel.

"We're going to have to get in closer. If it sheds that debris it can't penetrate your armor but be sure to cover your face." Kora advised. The divots, chips, and scrapes on her suit were enough of a reminder of what the Raik was capable of doing, as was Laz's death.

"Copy, we'll try to get in closer."

"We'll get in position for capture," Kora said, "I'll notify you when we're coming in, watch your fire."

"Copy, good luck," came the reply.

Kora kept her team at a set distance in front of the Raik. She gained a small bit of altitude, readying herself to swoop in and plant the sails that would hopefully slow the Raik enough for capture. Her fire team approached closer and closer, some of the more daring Divers even breaching the bubble of magnetically locked debris. Then they began their second assault.

The Raik rumbled again and Kora examined the battle through her enhanced view. Some of the rounds were finding their mark. Gashes that flowed silvered blue plasma opened on the creature sides, but these where pinpricks compared to the overall size of the thing. It swerved and dipped, maneuvering its enormous bulk away from the onslaught, but the Divers were persistent, and the Raik plunged deeper.

"Let's go!" Kora signaled her team.

She banked and swooped towards the Raik wanting to take advantage of its distress. As she neared she saw shimmering convection currents rising from around the creature, the iron and nickel pellets had begun to glow slightly, a dull red. It was getting hot at this altitude. Kora pushed forward approaching the monster from above, aiming for the wing to her left. If they could get a few sails set they could slow it down greatly, hopefully enough to finish it off quickly.

"Kora, we're getting close to a dense pocket of particulates, it looks like phosphorus," announced her sensor specialist.

"Will it be a problem?" Kora asked

"Not currently. It has nothing to react with so it shouldn't be an issue. If the concentration rises it may pose a risk."

"Keep an eye on it. If anything changes let me know." Kora asserted.

The Raik emitted another bone shaking rumble and Kora closed. The golden splashes on its hide were bright, holding a glowing sheen in the burning light. Its many eyes watched, unblinking dark half orbs constantly alert, and the hydrogen jets flared.

Around it the metal debris was glowing slightly in the heat of the atmosphere. Wavering lines of convection currents wafted everywhere, making Kora feel like she was submerged in a mirage. Then the bubble of shrapnel that formed the large ovoid around the creature reoriented, compacting into long strands and tracing out coherent force lines, extending around the creatures bulk. These narrow bands glowed more brightly and they began to move, circulating in rapid rotation around the Raik in slashing arcs. Kora received a temperature reading from these metallic arcs and found the mass there was hot enough to be nearly liquid.

"Careful of those lines!" She warned, not wanting to find out what would happen if a Diver was hit by one.

She didn't have to wait long. One Diver on the fire team who had flown in close to the Raik to get a better firing position had banked away from their target and accidentally through the circulating metal. The semi molten material whipped into the Diver and craft at much higher velocity than Kora had expected, impacting with tons of force. The blow was enough to send the Diver crashing down ward like a leaf under a waterfall. A short scream issued then cut out.

"Don't get hit!" she warned again, but already another Diver had been caught in the slashing metal rings. Things were going bad quickly.

Her Divers persisted. They were doing some damage to the animal despite its efforts to fight back. Aqua and quicksilver plasma streamed down the creature's flanks in small flows, and still the Divers came, firing their explosive ballistics and EM pulse rounds all while the Raik rumbled and swayed its great mass from side to side. Another Diver went down, caught in the torrent of nickel-iron rain that whipped through the air with devastating ability.

"Get ready to plant the sails!" Kora announced to her team as they careened closer to their target.

Kora lined up her shot watching as two very real arcs of moving metal coalesced then Diverged. She fired. The projectile slipped through the gap she had found. Then she followed, tipping her Lance ninety degrees on its side and dodging between the gap, just before the lines snapped back together like the nightmarish jaws of some elemental beast. One of her team members was clipped by the rushing metal and sent spinning, righting themselves only to plow head long into the carbon scaled beak of the head in a small explosion. Kora swore under her breath but stayed focused.

She watched her sail hook strike the Raik's wing. It did not catch, but went tumbling away only to be ripped open by an arc of moving metal causing the sail to explode open and nearly envelope two other Divers in several kilometers of fabric. None of the hooks caught on the Raik's tough hide. Kora was beginning to feel hopeless. Had she been foolish to chase after this monstrosity?

The Raik's body whipped by her like an animate landscape then she found her way past the deadly metallic arcs and was clear.

"The phosphorus is becoming more abundant here." Her sensor specialist reported, but Kora had little time to concern herself with this as she thought desperately about what move to make next.

She had noticed a fine yellow powder had begun to accumulate on her armor and Lance. The small but visible particulates and begun to appear as a fine mist and added a paler hue to her surroundings. The substance popped and crackled in small bursts as it was ignited by her propulsion system but it did little more than this. Kora noticed the same effect around the Raik's hydrogen jets, but the element could not combust in large quantities inside this atmosphere, so she ignored its presence. Kora took a position above the Raik and was deciding how to deal with the creature when she heard the voice.

It was quiet, barely a whisper, wrapped in the heavy wool of static, but still it was there.

"Repeat," she said, swallowing hard, thinking she had misheard, "you're breaking up." There was silence.

"Who's broadcasting on this channel?" she asked, not believing she had actually heard what she thought she had. Again there was silence. She was about to give an order to the remaining Divers to regroup so they could reformulate their plan of attack when she heard it again, this time more clearly. It said one word.

"...Kora..." the ghostly whisper echoed through her helmet and her blood froze.

_I'm hallucinating,_ she thought, _it can't be_.

It spoke again.

"...Kora...I'm here..." A whisper, but just loud enough to make out.

"NO!" She yelled aloud, "I saw you fall!"

"Lead is everything Okay?" asked one of her Divers. She had unknowingly been broadcasting to her team.

"It's fine...I'm...fine," she answered, "We need a new plan, everyone..." she stopped. Coalescing around her and her team were other massive shapes. Two more Raiks had appeared below, then she noticed three above and to her right, another to her left, then more descending in front of her.

"We have multiple contacts! I'm counting five, no, seven, wait...there's...there's twelve, at least, and more closing!" Her sensor specialist reported.

"Uh, lead, any clue as to what's happening?" another Diver asked frantically.

Kora was silent. Cold shock had eroded all the feeling in her extremities, and solidified her synapses. She couldn't speak. What could she say?

Kora had just enough awareness of her surroundings to notice the Raik below her now looked different. The area behind its beak was engorged, swollen, like it had just inhaled a large mass of helium, but, its mouth remained closed. She stared for a moment unsure of what to make of it, then, somehow, across her frozen neural pathways, realization struck her. She quickly toggled her enhanced vision toward the other Raiks now in close proximity to her location. A quick gLance at two others was enough to confirm her theory. Each Raik was doing the same thing.

Time collapsed into slow motion. Kora observed the insignificant shapes of several Divers still attacking the immense form below, others were scattered in loose formation dotting the sky, tiny beings in the presence of giants. The blood-orange backdrop now bore resembLance to a shimmering blizzard as the heat climbed and the phosphorus became densely concentrated against the foreground of the black nose of her Lance. At least, it used to be black. The hull as well as her armor, was now coated in the chalky yellow powder.

High above there were pale clouds, left far behind some time ago, during the pursuit of their quarry. The newly emerged Raiks had drawn in further still, forming a neat cluster about their position. Dozens had appeared. Each one harboring an extensively engorged mouth. Kora had walked into a trap.

"...Don't worry...my dear..." the spectral voice reassured, then the world exploded into boiling white light.

***

"Corbin!" Kora screamed as she plunged headlong into the black, lit only by the blue fire of the Raik below.

"Turn back, Kora, that's an order," Corbin pleaded.

"I'm coming, hold on!" she called, ignoring his request.

She was gaining on the Raik, now level with the long tail. She battled the wind and turbulence, the twisting eddies formed by the air displacement, and the crosswinds provided by the planet. Down and down they plunged.

The readings on her display were scrambled and she couldn't pick out Corbin's virtual ID tag. She would find him. Skimming close to the Raik's surface, blue streamers of charge lept and danced between her craft and the creature. She twisted around its body, following the bio luminescent stripes as they traced the bulk of the Raik. She dodged around the hydrogen jets and then was under the wing.

Ahead of her the huge mass of the dead Raik was still being drug down into the dark abyss. The Animal pushing it down seemed intent on taking it as deep as possible, as if it sought to bury its fallen comrade in the planet's center. Trapped somewhere near that collision point was Corbin.

Kora switched through the various imaging enhancements available to her, radar, infrared, light amplification, x-ray, and ultraviolet, even a laser based imaging system that gave her extremely fine details but lacked sufficient projection distance to be of great use to her now. She settled for the infrared and proceeded forward, closer to the head of the enormous animal and the intersection point of the two creatures.

_Where are you?_ She thought.

The massive tangle of flesh did not make it easier to locate Corbin. The long tail of the dead Raik flailed helplessly and haphazardly to the side while the mane provided a thrashing snare of fibers that she desperately wanted to avoid. She could see a tear in the flank of the dead animal near its hydrogen propulsion organ which provided another threat of combustion if an open flame came too near. Still Kora searched desperately for any sign of Corbin.

Then she spotted it. His Lance, still attached to its tether, but smashed beyond repair, lashed and twisted in the rush of atmosphere. She accelerated moving closer to this position.

"Damnit Kora, I told you to turn back," Corbin said suddenly.

A surge of hope flooded through her. "Can you see me!? Where are you!?" she asked.

"Still at the base of the tether," he answered.

Kora searched the area. Because of the angle the wing had been bent to during the impact, the spot where the tether connected to the dead creature was hidden from her view. She shifted her position farther under the body of the descending Raik and he was there, just visible alongside the folded wing, one arm hooked on to the robust tether. He had been lucky. Had the wing bent a little more or had he been farther along its length, he would have been crushed against the side of the other Raik's body.

"I'm coming to get you!" Kora called to him.

"I would advise against that my dear," He answered.

"Too late," she replied.

Kora formulated a plan as quickly as she could given her limited options.

"Corbin, I'm going to attach my tether next to yours and you're going to climb to my Lance," she instructed.

After a moment of silence he replied, "okay, let's get this over with."

"If I didn't know any better I'd say you don't want to be rescued," Kora said trying to be as light hearted as possible in the present moment.

"You shouldn't have come back for me, I've been on borrowed time for a while now, but I guess since you made the effort, I'll humor you," he replied.

Kora positioned herself closer and closer trying to angle herself into the best possible spot. She could see him clearly now, looking the most helpless she had ever seen him, barely clinging to his narrow lifeline. She knew the man was anything but feeble, but in the presence of the beasts around him even the toughest Diver was little more than a speck of flesh in a tin can.

Holding her position at about ten meters from where he clung, she lined up her shot and fired. The tether sunk into the flesh and held less than a meter from Corbin's position.

"Good shot," he complimented.

"I know, now grab on," she said not wanting to be connected to this lifeless creature for any longer than was necessary.

Corbin, aided by his suit, swung himself around his own tether anchor, braced himself against the broken wing of the Raik, and heaved himself up to the connection she provided. He secured himself there and began hauling himself carefully up the line. Kora made sure to stay clear of the twitching line of his tether while she held her position steady as best as possible.

The Raik rumbled, almost gently, causing Kora to start but did nothing more to cause her worry. Still, she wanted to get away from its presence as quickly as possible. Corbin kept climbing, his progress slowed by the unrelenting wind. He stopped suddenly.

"Kora disconnect," he said sternly.

"Keep going, you're almost there," she urged.

"This things hydrogen chamber is ruptured and venting oxygen as well, you need to disconnect. I'll hang on." He insisted.

"It'll be harder for you to climb, just keep going," she said wondering why this mattered now.

"If you stay here too long you may provide a contact point for current to arc from, it's a miracle that it hasn't already," he said while resuming the climb.

"Just make it quick and we'll be out of here in no time," she said, more worried about his flailing and broken Lance that thrashed wildly somewhere behind her.

He had made it to within two meters of the nose of her Lance when he looked up.

"Kora disconnect!" he said suddenly.

"You're almost here keep-"

"Disconnect now!" he yelled.

Kora released the tether and out of the corner of her eye she saw the jagged blue streak racing toward her craft. It connected, then lept from her Lance like a living thing, connecting to the dead Raik's wing and branched out across the conductive skin in less than a second. The venting hydrogen organ erupted and the resulting flash washed out her vision. The explosion knocked her sideways. She clipped something hard and was sent spinning, the air forced from her lungs. She felt rather than heard the Raik rumble. Blind and breathless, she was tossed mercilessly by the ocean of air.

Fear tore her abdomen to bloody shreds, she fought to expand her lungs, and tried in vain to clear her vision from the visual echoes of light. Finally she pulled in a chocking gasp of air.

"Cor-Corbin!" she stammered, trying to catch her breath.

"Corbin!" she yelled again. There was no answer. Her Lance vibrated and chattered under the forces it had accumulated from whatever hapless movement it had incurred in the explosion. She heard another rumble but it sounded distant. She couldn't tell if it was thunder or the Raik.

"Corbin!"

The world was reforming, but slowly. Her grayscale infrared view had cut out, possibly damaged in the explosion, and darkness began to perforate the green halo of her burned out vision. First seeping in around the edges then slowly filling in the center. Her Lance gradually leveled itself and the vibration lessened. Blinking away the last of the burning retinal afterimage, she again flipped through the available imaging systems left to her. It didn't take long for her to find the radar system, but this was enough to reveal the extent of the damage.

Her Lance was battered and some of the transformable hull had been breached. Sparks issued from the left wing and her HUD had unscrambled enough to tell her that the craft was bleeding energy from a ruptured fuel cell. Three of the eight small but powerful engines where offline, as were some of her flight control systems. This caused her craft to weave drunkenly in the wind. Worst of all the tether was gone completely, sheared off in either the explosion or from the impacted she had incurred, taking Corbin with it.

The Raik was nowhere to be seen and it seemed all of her scanning systems were damaged or out completely. Kora called out Corbin's name several more times but heard only static in response. The night enveloped her entirely. The Lance's power source was rapidly fading, but Kora did not want to leave. It felt wrong to leave, like she was betraying her oldest friend if she did. In the end she was forced to. She sent out a distress signal and limped the damaged Lance into the upper atmosphere.

The wind continued to howl, it too lamenting the fallen man. The night sky was reveled piece by piece through gaps in the clouds until they finally faded altogether as she reached the upper atmosphere. On display above Kora was a field of diamonds and she counted at least three moons, whose passage she could easily perceive against the jeweled darkness. Tears streaked her face and blurred her vision but she could do nothing to rid herself of their presence.

Eventually the waiting tug had found her drifting in low orbit and collected her before she was pulled back to the planet. She had been unconscious when they found her, passed out from exhaustion. She had suffered multiple fractures and internal bleeding. When she came to, a numbness had settled over her. She reported that the rest of her team was dead and recounted the events she had witnessed. It was her day spent in the recovery tank, where she had time to think, that she decided on her course of action.

She talked to the Captain and convinced him to stay in system. She would recruit more Divers and find what she promised would be the most prestigious catch of all time. She promised the Captain he would be famous throughout the systems, that the payday alone would be enough to buy a fleet of ships if he allowed her to carry out her plan. Kora refrained from telling him that she wasn't interested in the money, that she didn't care if she even managed to capture the enormous Raik. One way or another she would see the creature dead. All she wanted was revenge.

## 6

**ORBITAL** sensors would later show that a sudden bloom of 10^12 cubic meters of pure oxygen had ignited nearly 1000 cubic kilometers of atmosphere almost instantly, in a phosphorus dense region below the troposphere. The Hotaru had watched live on video surveilLance provided by the Divers—when it wasn't cutting out from the electromagnetic interference—as the Raiks gathered _en masse_. Then the video burned out in a wash of pure white before cutting to the static snow storm then to black as they lost the feed.

Kora was dead. Pure light had enveloped her. All noise had been replaced by a single ringing tone. She felt weightless and adrift. There were no Raiks, no Divers, no battle for revenge, it had all ended. Or so she thought.

After what seemed like an eternity the world began to materialize before her once again. The blood orange environment returning, slowly, but returning none the less. Kora realized she was not dead, though she felt as though she ought to be. At some point she realized she was still connected to her Lance, still flying, and, amazingly, untouched by the combustion of the phosphorus. In fact the material still coated her Lance and her armor.

Slowly she examined her surroundings. One thing immediately became apparent. Her fellow Divers were gone, each one seemingly replaced by ten Raiks. Only Kora remained, surrounded by the largest herd ever encountered anywhere.

_Why am I not dead?_ She thought.

Below her, like a land mass rising from the sea, the enormous Raik ascended slowly, almost gently. She did not even try to move. She was too stunned by what she was witnessing.

"Is anyone there? This is Kora," she said quietly, "Come in, Hotaru are you there?" there was no response, at least, not the one she was expecting.

The ghost answered her, "...Kora...it's okay..."

"How...how is this happening? Is that really you? Where...where are you?" she questioned. Her voice was shaky but strong.

"...Land...on the Raik." Corbin's voice instructed.

"What? This...no, this can't be real, I...I can't"

"...it's okay, Kora..."

Kora hesitated for long moments, wildly unsure of what was happening or how she was hearing the voice of her dead friend. None of this made sense.

"...Please...Kora...we don't have...much time...they need to leave." Corbin's whisper sounded again.

She hesitated, but only for a moment, "this is crazy," she said aloud to herself but descended toward the Raik's back, now only fifty meters below her.

She landed to the right of the scarlet mane that thrashed in the wind like hundred meter long strands of hair, on the broad part of the Raik's back, where the wings stretched out over a huge length in either direction. Kora paused before touching down. She had no way of securing her craft to the surface without using the tether to anchor herself there.

_But that would mean..._ before she finished the thought she heard Corbin's voice again.

"...Use the tether...it will allow it."

Kora sighed, but did as she was told. The tether shot out, caught, and buried itself into the Raik's flesh, unlike the sails she and her team had launched at it earlier. As soon as she touched down, a mound of flesh began to form in front of her. A large blister grew out of the Raik's skin expanding several meters higher and wider than her and her craft. The part facing her flattened and formed an effective wind block.

"This just keeps getting weirder," she said aloud and she disengaged from her Lance. No human being had ever seen a sight quite like the one she was now viewing. Standing on the wing of a living Raik, the largest ever found, its body stretched away behind the wing for a great distance, a moving terrain, an animate mountain, a force of nature. They were spectacular animals.

Kora had always felt privileged to hunt them, and she respected their power and beauty, but that respect had soured of late. She knew it was irrational to want revenge, but still the anger she had felt was very real, the acrid taste of hatred had formed in her mouth after losing Corbin, but now that was gone. Her anger was deflated. It had been replaced with confusion, curiosity, fear, and amazement. A cocktail of emotions was running through her but she had little time to unpack what was there.

As she turned her focus to the flowing mane, she noticed another blister forming close to her behind the wind block. She took a step back, unsure of what to expect. The blister grew and expanded until it was slightly taller than Kora and about five meters in diameter, then it stopped. Kora's heart skipped a beat.

The blister was semi-translucent. Inside she could make out the shadow of a shape, a human form. Kora found her courage and approached the half sphere. The form inside moved. Kora took a step forward, her heart pounding wildly. She reached out and placed a hand on the membrane. It gave slightly under the pressure she applied, then it expanded, subtly enveloping her entire hand. She did not pull away. She pushed forward and at the same moment the bubble grew further, wrapping over her entire body while keeping a perfect seal intact. It engulfed her as if by osmosis, the way an amoeba devours its prey. Then she was through and the membrane closed completely around her as the last part of her passed through the blister.

Kora stood in stunned silence for a moment, not daring to breath. Then she rushed forward and embraced the figure. Corbin returned the grasp with one arm.

"Good to see you too," he said, his voice still coming through her com channel.

She pulled back trying to take in what she was seeing.

"Oh god, Corbin, you're...you're..." she didn't know what to say. She thought he was dead. He was supposed to be dead. A hand went to her helmet covered mouth instinctively as she looked him over. He still wore his armor but large segments had been breached and cracked, exposing the inner workings of the suit and even bare flesh. His protective faceplate was cracked and had a small hole in it. His right arm was missing just below the elbow. Yet, he was there, alive.

Then she saw the scarlet fibers stretching from the Raik's flesh, protruding from just behind his position. They reached up to connect with his armor as if supporting him where he stood. It gave her the odd notion of a puppet connected to strings.

"Are you...how are you...?" she tried to ask.

"Alive?" He finished the sentence for her and, reaching up to his helmet with his remaining hand, flipped a latch on the left then on the right side of his head just behind his jaw. Kora almost reached out to stop him but caught herself as she realized his helmet was already breached.

"It's okay, you can take yours off too," he said.

"What...how can that...?" Kora could not seem to formulate complete thoughts let alone transfer them to her tongue to speak. The bubble, she realized. There was breathable air and a comfortable pressure. She hadn't even noticed these readings on her HUD until now. The power in her suit was still working and she didn't need to use the manual releases to rid herself of the helmet's protective covering. She tapped the left side of her helmet near her temple, placed a hand on the top and front of her head, just above the faceplate, and drug her hand backward down to her neck. Small panels on her helmet released,—issuing a small hiss as pressure normalized completely—folded, and slid back over one another until the protective plating had all but disappeared behind her head.

She reached up and pulled off the tight cowl that wrapped her head, releasing the waves of long dark hair that were contained there. Corbin had simply dropped his helmet to his feet. Kora was speechless. So many thoughts and questions swirled through her head that she didn't know where to start. Corbin helped to break the silence.

"I don't know why I still had that on in the first place," he said with a bit of a wry smile, but it faded quickly and he sighed. "Kora, we've done something terrible."

She squinted at him. He looked tired, but considering what he'd probably been through over the last week, she thought he could look worse.

"I don't understand, what are you taking about, what is happening here? All of this is so...crazy." She said, sounding more annoyed than she actually was.

Corbin gave another small smile, "this is a little crazy I guess, but not so much if you had experienced what I have over the past few days. Kora, there's so much we have to learn, so much we didn't understand, I've... I've seen so much now, all of this, what we do, it has to stop."

"Slow down Corbin, I don't know what you're talking about. What have you seen? Stop what?" she asked as she approached him.

She gripped each of her wrists one at a time with the opposite hand, twisted a section of plating, and the gantlets covering her hands broke open, folded away, and shifted back, the armored paneling sliding along her forearms and stowing itself there. She looked him over for a moment her eyes falling on the half of an arm that hung at his right side.

"Are you in pain?" she asked "we should get you medical attention, you'll make a full recovery back in the tanks if we can get you there."

"No, there's no pain, and I'm not going back," He answered.

Kora was stunned and confused for a moment, "what are you talking about? Corbin, I can get you out of here, I can get us back to the Hotaru. You'll be fine."

Corbin shook his head slowly, "even if I wanted to go back I couldn't."

As he turned his head side to side she saw the scarlet filaments sprouting from his skull like some kind of cable connecting him to an alien power source.

"Oh god, Corbin, what did it do to you?" she asked, remembering suddenly that she had come here to kill this monster that had taken her friend from her.

"It saved me," he said simply, "I wouldn't be here without _it._ "

"Please, tell me what's happening," she said.

"I think that's the very reason I'm still alive Kora, to pass on information. Here, sit with me and I'll try to explain," he said.

Kora helped him find the silver and gold flesh beneath their feet, helping to support him as he sat, then taking a seat next to him. She briefly examined the scarlet filaments that protruded from his back, his head, and connected to his legs and arms, it made her shiver, but Corbin seemed to ignore their presence. He must have noticed her concerned look as she stared at them.

"I know, it was unnerving at first, but it's kind of like being hooked up to the leads in the recovery tanks." He commented.

"How... how do I know it's not...controlling you?" she asked.

Corbin thought for a moment, "I guess you don't, you'll just have to trust me. Besides, what would be the purpose of that? It could have just killed you if it wanted to. If anything I think I convinced it _not_ to kill you."

"That's comforting," She said shortly, "what about the others?"

He sighed. "Unfortunately I don't think I had that much bargaining power. You were trying to kill it after all. Besides, do you think the others would have listened to me? I'm dead, remember?"

"I suppose not, but what do you mean you _convinced_ it, you're talking about it like it's a sentient being."

He smiled at her but there was a pained expression there as well, "Kora, like I said, we've done something terrible."

"You'll have to give me a better explanation than that," she said, "for god sakes, we're both sitting on a live Raik that you're hard wired to, that apparently hunts Divers, changes it shape at will, and communicates with human beings, so please explain what the hell is going on here."

Corbin nodded, "I'll try, that's why you're here after all."

She examined him further. For all intents and purposes he still looked the same, the same freckled cheeks, the same white tattoo of a scar that ran in a vertical slash cutting across his left cheek and down across his jaw. The same intelligent and slightly mischievous green eyes that stood out from under sandy brown hair. The eyes that always looked like they were privy to some joke no one else was in on. His whole appearance was of a man who was much too calm and mild of demeanor for the high risk, high profile profession he took part in. It was this most of all that Kora appreciated about Corbin, his ability to make her feel calm and at ease in the most stressful of situations. In another lifetime, in another universe, she could see herself romantically attracted to him, but in this reality it was the love of friendship that they shared and she was beyond thankful for that.

"Tell me why I'm here," she said.

***

Corbin recounted his story.

"I fell with this Raik. The impact between your Lance and the Raik severed my arm along with the tether. Then everything was a blur. I struck its wing. Then I remember tumbling again alongside its body. There was only darkness, blue flame, and wind. I was blown up into its mane and, fortunately, as it turns out, I got stuck there. I thought I was dead for sure.

"After the adrenaline subsided I was in incredible pain. I could tell my back was broken. The medical system in my suit was offline so I had no painkillers. I blacked out several times and would come to, each time wondering if next time I would wake up at all, but mostly wishing I wouldn't. I woke again at some point. It was still dark, but somehow most of the pain had subsided. I thought I was finally dying at this point, but then I felt an odd sensation, pins and needles all along my body and the feeling of something crawling under my skin. With the arm I had left I felt around in the darkness and realized that there were thousands of these filaments reaching, burrowing, into my body.

"I won't lie, I was terrified. It was so intrusive and so repulsive I wanted to wretch. I tried pulling them out, tearing them away, but I couldn't. I stopped fighting after awhile and again just waited to die, sure that I was slowly being devoured in some way. Eventually exhaustion took over and I slept.

"When I woke I was not stuck in the mane anymore but in a bubble similar to the one we're in now. There was diffuse light filtering through, so I could see. Incredibly, most of the pain was gone. My back seemed to be largely healed though sore, and my arm wasn't bleeding, in fact, it was already healing. The wound had closed and, given enough time, I think the limb would regrow. There were fewer filaments attached to me and at that point I knew that the Raik had healed me. It had saved my life.

"Then it spoke, Kora. I can't explain exactly what it was like but I could, more or less, hear it in my head. Not only that, it projected pictures there, images, thousands upon thousands of scenes and events over millennia. I could understand everything it thought and knew, intuitively, as if these...experiences, had happened to me. I could see, hear, feel, taste, and interpret everything it could. It shared all of these things with me. In return it saw my entire life as well. A very unfair exchange for the Raik, if I can be honest.

"Kora, you said I spoke about it like it was sentient, well, it is. But not like you and me. It—they—are so much more conscious then we are that we could not even began to fathom what they know, what they feel, how they communicate. These are beings that are aware of a great multitude of levels to the universe we can only theorize about. Their physiology has adapted over millions of years of evolution, not just to these planets they inhabit and all their Diversity, but to the underpinnings of the universe itself.

"Think of it like this: what is present at all points in the universe? Space. Space itself. They evolved and adapted to interact with this medium that is present everywhere. It is the "universal environment" that exists at all points of reality.

"Kora, this is a fundamental eventuality of all sentient life given enough time. They know this. This is our distant, distant future. And what have we done? Hunt them, slaughtered them. We've been committing genocide against this race for over three centuries now. We think they're not sentient because they don't behave like us and because we haven't been able to locate their brain. But we can't find it because we've been looking for a compartmentalized locale for the organ, but it's not localized in any one spot, they're entire body is made up of brain cells. They are one enormous brain. Most cells in their body serve as both somatic cells and brain cells. The network of nerves throughout their bodies should have been the clue that gave it away, but we weren't looking at the whole picture.

"The larger ones, like this one that we've never seen before, exhibit extreme control over their physiology. The ability to produce this bubble of breathable atmosphere, forming a nodule to block the wind, being able to transmit a radio signal, which is how I initially contacted you, and the control over their magnetic field, which you have witnessed several times now, all if this is a matter of immense mental control, focus, and elevated consciousness. All the Raiks are capable of this on some level, but become more adept at it as they grow older and larger, and this one is by no means the largest or oldest. This one here has lived for over three millennia, it has seen hundreds of planets and migrated as many times.

"Their physical abilities are nothing compared to their perceptive senses. They can hear the symphony of starlight through radio waves, they can see all wavelengths of light, and taste and smell the very composition of the atmospheres of each world. They can sense subtle variations in gravity the way we might feel water currents rushing against our skin. They feel the fabric of space as if it were an ever present garment wrapping them. Time looks different for them. Events don't unfold like they do for you and me. Instead they live in a continuous present that spans their entire world line from birth to death, existing simultaneously across space, throughout time.

"God, we've made a terrible mistake, my dear. We hunt them, catch them, kill them, then the worst part happens. We harvest their bodies for the raw materials, gold, sliver, cobalt, iron, deuterium, helium three, hydrogen, and countless other compounds and elements. But their flesh, that's where the real money is.

"We eat them, kora. We use their flesh as a drug, to get high, or as a neural and intelligence enhancement. All we have accomplished, since that first time someone decided to eat their flesh, wouldn't have been possible otherwise. You know as well as I do that the Quantum Jump Drive was the result of a physicist who had used their flesh for mental enhancement. Without that factor, their stolen influence, it could have been hundreds, maybe even thousands of years before we advanced to that point on our own. We owe our ability to travel the stars to them.

"We didn't even know why consuming their flesh causes this mind altering effect, there were no compounds we could detect that should cause this experience, but still it did. Now I know, and it is unforgivable, kora. If ever there was a sin it is this. They do not die the way we do. We can kill them essentially, yes, but they're consciousness continues to exist, present in every centimeter of their flesh. When we ingest that flesh we experience, for a brief time, a sliver of what they experience through their consciousness that lingers there. Enhanced neural activity and elevated IQ, the sensation of complete connection to the universe, empathetic communication, euphoria, that sensation of seeing some deeper more subtle level of reality. We've both done it. We are both guilty of this horrible act. But do you know what's worse? They would have shared. They would have readily given up knowledge of the manipulation of space, gravity, quantum dynamics, even time, had we tried harder to actually communicate.

"We are so short sighted, so arrogant, in the face of all that is out here. Our race used to worship a myriad false idols. We left our planet and found that none were waiting there in the heavens. We slayed giants and thought we had become gods, but really we had only succeeded in destroying the closest thing we've ever found to true divinity. It's funny, the people who worship them, the Raiks, they had it more correct all along. They should be revered, respected, honored, and protected, but they are too different. Humans in all our touted wisdom, still ultimately fail to understand the unfamiliar and the different. We rarely even try.

"And now they've had enough. They're leaving. They are migrating far away from our reach and by the time we even began to understand what is happening they will be farther away still. If we stop hunting them now, if humanity can be made to understand what has been shared with me, and what I have shared with you, then we may be able salvage a relationship between our races, but this means overcoming generations of prevailing prejudice and thought about the true nature of these beings.

"Kora you must try. The human race stands much more to gain by forging a peaceful connection with the Raiks than we do by continuing to hunt them and eventually chasing them away forever. There is a way to open an initial line of communication, after that, the easiest way to talk to them is by...connecting. These filaments allow them to communicate and transfer information directly, like a hardline, with each other, and other beings.

"It is...uncomfortable at first, but not painful, and under normal circumstances disconnecting is possible. Unfortunately, I have been connected too long and can no longer survive if I am separated from my host here. Even if I could disconnect, I don't think I would want to go back.

"Here, take my suit's AI core. The core has all the information you'll need to initiate a first, _peaceful_ connection. After that it will be up to trust and then direct contact with them. Kora you have to be the voice for a new way of life. Humankind's true potential has yet to be seen, if you can facilitate change the leap forward for humanity will be tremendous. I would trust no one else with this task. Please, you must do this, you must try.

***

Kora could only stare for long moments at her palm where Corbin had placed the translucent pearl of his AI core. She was struggling to process all he had relayed to her. Could it be true? Had they been hunting, killing, and...eating, sentient beings all along? The thought made her sick. How could she know if it was really Corbin talking to her? How did she know he hadn't gone completely insane after all that had happened to him?

"Corbin, this is all so much to try and understand," she said, closing her hand around the pearl of semi-aware technology.

"I know," he nodded, "but I trust that you do, and that you'll do your best to see it through."

"You assume a lot of a person you haven't seen in five years. What if I've changed?" She asked, challenging his confidence in her.

"Have you?" He asked simply.

Kora didn't respond. She simply stared in silence at her closed fist.

"Do you remember what I asked you on your first day of training, when I took you on your first dive?" Corbin asked.

Kora thought for a moment then nodded.

"And do you remember what your answer was?" he asked.

"I do." Kora said.

"I believe that is still true today, you are still the person you've always been. If anything, you've only changed into a better version of who you were." Corbin said.

Kora shook her head and smiled, "And you are still ridiculously, stupidly, over optimistic about what I'm capable of. I've only tried to live up to the incredible feats of the mighty Corbin Bishop over all these years, and have still never come close."

"My 'optimism' for you is not misplaced, you are a good person, one of the best Divers I've ever had the privilege of flying with, and my only student. As for living up to me, I think with a little more time you would have easily surpassed me, but that hardly seems like a worthy goal anymore. I think you have much more important things to accomplish than simply being a great Diver. Besides look where it got me," he said turning to her slightly and gesturing at himself with his one good arm and flashing a quick grin.

"Well, I'm definitely the prettier one now," Kora said returning his smile.

They both chuckled at first then laughed for several minutes. Whether it was from the combined stress of the last week or the utterly surreal circumstance they found themselves in, or perhaps a combination of the two, Kora was not sure.

After a time she asked, "What next?"

"Now, I hope you'll do what I ask. Not just for me, not just for the Raiks, but for the human race, for both of our races." Corbin said without hesitation.

"I can't just leave you here," she said, "I couldn't live with myself if I did."

"It's not your choice anymore my dear, I can't leave, you are not responsible for this," Corbin reassured, "like I said, I never planned on retiring."

"You're sure there's no way you can leave?" she asked hopefully.

Corbin shook his head, "I'm afraid not, there-"

His back arched suddenly like he was being electrocuted and his good hand shot out to grab her wrist, his head torqued upper ward, eyes staring, mouth open slightly.

"Corbin!" Kora shouted, startled at the sudden spasm, "What's wrong!? What's happening!?"

He relaxed after a moment, taking several deep shuddering breaths, "It's okay, it's okay, I still haven't quite gotten used to that."

"Gotten used to what? What did it do?" she asked still somewhat alarmed.

"It spoke to me...it showed me what's next," Corbin said between breaths, "It's time to go, they're leaving."

"What? Now?" Kora asked, still not believing she was actually going to have to leave him here.

"Yes, they, can't wait any longer," he paused, "Kora, it asked me if it could share a small piece of itself with you, if you're willing, to further add to your message."

Kora swallowed and hesitated, "how?" She asked, even though she already knew the answer.

Corbin held out his remaining hand still encased in armor. The paneling of the armor moved, twisted, then fell away piece by piece, like the molting of an old layer of skin. The bare flesh of Corbin's hand emerged and from his palm and fingers extended the scarlet filaments.

Kora was frozen with fear and uncertainty.

"You don't have to," Corbin said, "but, I would recommend it. If I haven't convinced you, this surely will."

She stared at his hand for only a moment more, then nodded, "Okay."

Corbin's hand found the back of her head. He gently moved his fingers through her hair and found her scalp. The filaments found her skin as well. There was a prickling sensation followed by an uncomfortable crawling under her skin. She couldn't help shivering slightly, but soon the feeling faded. For a second nothing happened. But only for a second.

An immense energy charged her body. Her back arched, her head craned upward as Corbin's had, and all her limbs tensed. She felt strong and powerful like she had never felt before. It was exhilaration unlike anything she had ever experienced. The voice was there suddenly, a sensation beyond what she could have ever imagined. It was the low rumble of a Raik but strangely rich and patterned, and strangest of all she understood it, she could _feel_ what it was saying.

-SEE WHAT WE SEE-

-KNOW WHAT WE KNOW-

-SHOW YOUR PEOPLE WHAT IS POSSIBLE-

-YOU ARE OUR LINK-

-YOU ARE OUR HOPE-

-TAKE WITH YOU PART OF US-

The voice faded, then she was seeing through eyes that were not her own. She sensed the movement of worlds, heard the crackling life of stars, felt the gravity flow and spin and shift just like the clouds in vortices of wind, and everywhere, there was a presence, a discernable fabric that enveloped her inside and out.

Through infrared, visible, ultraviolet, all the way up to gamma wavelengths, she saw worlds flash by in colors, spectacular colors she had no name for. Each planet had its own taste and smell. Gold was bright on her tongue, silver sharp, iron savory, helium sweet, hydrogen like salt, cobalt and nickel tangy like vinegar, and the ammonia bitter. The depth and richness of the universe unfolded before her expanding away like a bottomless canyon. Distance and separation were an illusion. Time was a physical dimension she could traverse, matter only a shimmering surface atop an endless ocean of energy and quiet chaos.

She understood then inherently the truth in Corbin's words and the necessity of the message. A deep sense of knowing flowed from the Raik to her, and she felt the presence of pure intention and clarity of purpose, unburdened by ego. It was a more profound and beautiful sensation than she could have ever imagined.

Then it was over. She was back in her body. Corbin's hand pulled away from the back of her head. Kora panted, speechless from the experience. Tears rolled down her cheeks and she smiled at Corbin.

"Thank you," she said, "tell it thank you."

"I think it knows," he replied, "it's time to go Kora."

She nodded and understood now why Corbin couldn't and didn't want to leave, but why she must, and the monumental importance of her task.

Kora stood and helped Corbin to his feet. She pressed the AI core he had entrusted her with to the armor at her chest and the plating shifted, opening to accept the small sphere and capture it there.

"Are you going to witness the migration? You'd be the first to see it and from what I understand, it's quite spectacular," Corbin said.

Kora smiled, "I might as well," and she moved to embrace the man one last time.

"Dive fast," Corbin said.

"Dive deep," she replied.

Finally she pulled back, wiped the tears from her face, and reactivated her helmet. The gauntlets reformed around her hands and she was fully encased once again. She took one more look at her friend and mentor, trying as hard as she could to burn into her memory the readily offered grin, and perspicacious green eyes.

There was nothing left to do except turn away for the last time. Kora did so, pushing her way through the blister as before. The roar of the wind magnified as soon as her head was clear and the soft golden glow of the bubble's interior transitioned once again into the blood-orange expanse of the planet's viscera. Her Lance was waiting, still tethered to the spot where she had left it. She mounted the small craft and cast a last look at the blister as it began to shrink, or, more accurately, recede back into the Raik's flesh taking with it the single occupant. She released the tether and fired her engines as the last of the enclosure disappeared beneath the Raik's skin, like a vessel submerging under perfectly smooth water.

Kora disengaged with the creature, dropped below the wing, and banked away, but climbed back above the Raik, putting some distance between herself and the being. The other Raiks were still gathered close, their massive bodies adrift in the burnt atmosphere like a large atoll of floating islands. They were all waiting for the grand finale and so would she. She would be the first to witness the migration of the Raiks, but had no idea what to expect.

There seemed to be some mounting excitement, an almost perceivable static of energy in the air, and not just what was caused already by the Raiks, something more. She looked to her sensors to see if there was any real shift in energy. There was. The temperature around the massive Raik she had departed, was climbing, its energy output was increasing. Then its energy spiked, more than doubled in a second, then doubled again. Kora could only stare transfixed at the marvelous spectacle that was unraveling before her. The migration had begun.

***

Corbin watched her leave. Sadness was only a small part of the emotions he felt at her departure. Beyond all else there was excitement. There was hope. A new age was starting and he had been able to play a small part in it. Kora would do much more, was capable of much more.

How many of them had he killed? Too many. Corbin felt ashamed of this fact. If only he had known...but it didn't matter now. On some level he always suspected that the Raiks harbored some kind of intelligence, but he could never have fathomed the reach of that intelligence. The depth of the immense consciousness they carried.

Amazingly, despite his transgressions against these beings, the Raik had never emoted any hate or malevolence toward Corbin. Instead there had been only pity and sympathy for his limited understanding. Now he would have the chance to right the wrongs he had committed.

By Diver standards Corbin was ancient. By modern federation standards he was young—especially given the long lives humans now enjoyed—he was fit, and he was healthy, but he was, whether he had wanted to admit it or not, at the end of his career.

Death was something he had come to terms with long ago. It was something he had thought he would meet long before this time. Never had he dreamed that he would live to be the oldest serving Diver of all time. He had never considered becoming a living legend. The thought made him smile, not out of pride, but out of the sheer absurdity of it. He had been fortunate to do the thing he loved, that was it. He assumed that what he had been a part of in his final days with the Raik would not go untold by Kora in the weeks to come. This also made him smile. Of all his accomplishments as a Diver, this small deed, the tiny jewel of information he had been allowed to pass on, was now the only thing he considered worth celebrating. Hopefully it would make some difference.

Corbin imagined Kora telling of the "Immortal Corbin Bishop," who cheated death again, only to befriend the largest Raik ever seen. He laughed aloud at this, he hoped she would be more eloquent than that. He had not lied to the young woman when he told her that he had never planned to retire. At some point he figured he would go out alongside one of the mighty beasts. There was no other end he could imagine. It gave him great joy to know that he would be rewarded with just such an ending. His death, however, would be much more than the blunt meaningless finality most Divers experienced. The Raik had granted him a great honor in allowing him to be part of the migration. Corbin accepted this privilege with gratitude. He was ready.

The spherical blister of flesh moved Corbin through the Raik's body, closer and closer—he knew because of his connection—to the being's center. He reached out through his hardline connection of filaments and examined the world though the Raik's senses. The process had begun.

He saw, felt, and heard the large group that gathered around him. The entire planet's population had gathered here. Almost one hundred were present. The wind tore by him. He tasted all at once its many constituent parts, gravity flowed around and through him like a waterfall toward the center of the planet, he could see the magnetic and electrical field twisting and jumping from the present Raiks. He saw the same massive force fields of the planet far above pushing back against the hurricane of charged particles from the stars it orbited. The pop and crackle of these stars was loud and bright like sizzling oil in a pan, the stars beyond, a more distant echo. And she was there.

He could sense Kora. A tiny presence among the leviathans around her. She had stayed to watch. The Raik's sharp senses could see her clearly. Corbin could make out her shape like she was right in front of him. He could hear the whine of her engines, and feel her own small bioelectric field, but most of all he felt the omnipresent fabric that connected him and everything else across all distances. She was with him now and would be there until the end.

The Raik's energy jumped, surging through Corbin, heightening his awareness even further. The sensation was incredible. Then it doubled and doubled again. The Raik's temperature exceeding well beyond the ambient temperature of the atmosphere around it. The miniature stars at its center were at maximum energy output. Millions of tera-joules surged through every fiber of its being. Its magnetic field collapsed inward, fighting to hold these power sources stable.

Corbin detected the presence of three other large Raiks facilitating this effort as well. A massive rush of gratitude, happiness, hope, joy, and love flooded through him, extending from all the Raiks present to him and the amazing being housing him. They were thanking him and the giant for their ultimate sacrifice. Corbin let the emotion flood through him. Tears streamed from his eyes, he sobbed like a child. He had never felt love and gratitude so fully, so completely in all of his life.

"Thank you," he said aloud, "thank you, thank you, thank you." Instinctively he knew they heard him, that they understood him purely from the projection of his emotions.

The fusion cores of the Raik began to merge, growing into one point of raging energy. The creature concentrated its magnetic field inward as forcefully as it could, aided by three other Raiks to help control and condense the powerful fusion core into a tighter and tighter radius. A singularity was beginning to form.

The Raik reached out then, extending its consciousness beyond the planet, beyond the present star system, somewhere deep and unknown. Stars snapped into focus then rushed away, whipping into view then disappearing again like a video on fast forward. Then abruptly it stopped. There was a large red star accompanied by a beautifully banded azure and cream planet with wisps of ocher and violet in the denser cloud pockets. This was the one. The Raik secured some part of itself there. Then back, back, back, to its present location.

The fabric twisted, but the Raik held on, stitching and guiding the coiling section of space it was creating like a master tapestry weaver, bending it to the desired coordinates across an insane arc of time and distance. Its energy spiked again and the connection held firm. The Raik was somehow in both places, anchoring both worlds together, the massive energy output elevating its being into a higher dimension, its pure consciousness the high order tensor holding the separate locales in place through the deep ocean of chaos beyond space, beyond time.

Its body was now only needed for one more thing: adding mass to the singularity, feeding that infinite point in order to pin the worlds together. This would happen naturally, without effort. All the Raik had to do was give in, let go of the magnetic field, and give itself over to the newly formed event horizon. Corbin new it was time. He felt the Raik release as it turned its body over to the black hole at its core.

The three Raiks around the collapsed point of mass now used their magnetic fields to hold it stable and waited for the dramatic self-sacrifice to conclude. Corbin felt the pull of the singularity through what remained of the Raik. There was no pain or fear or sadness, only joy, only purpose. In the last few moments, while he still could, he reached out through the Raik and found Kora. He smiled, letting the last of the Raik's energy flow through him, then in a short burst of radio waves, said his final farewell.

The universe unfolded around him. Beyond the event horizon time sped up, everything was moving in fast forward. A shrinking display of the future of the universe flashed in front of him then that was eroded by white light. An incredible weight overtook him, pulling him inward, dissolving atom by atom both the Raik and Corbin, then there was peace. Perfect weightless peace.

## 7

**THE** rest of the creature collapsed, burning hot and bright then falling inward as a tightly compacting accretion disc of super-heated matter. Kora watched the spectacular event from a short distance. Only the readings of her HUD gave her an idea what was truly happening at the core of the being. The gravitational anomaly, the huge spike in energy, and the sudden appearance of hawking radiation, all pointed to the formation of a black hole.

Soon the accretion disc disappeared and a point of infinite darkness emerged, only perceptible to Kora's vision because of the light distortion it caused around it. Three massive Raiks, each as big as the one that had just sacrificed itself, poured out huge amounts of energy through their magnetic fields, keeping the singularity contained.

Kora watched as slowly, incredibly, their energy climbed farther and the new gravity field fluctuated. She examined the incoming stream of data trying to make sense of what was happening. Amazingly they were increasing the angular momentum, causing it spin faster and faster. The point of black was growing, the radius expanding. Kora looked at her readings. The mass wasn't changing, just...the shape? As it grew she watched in amazement. The dark sphere was deforming, flattening, extending. A Ring shape was forming and at its center appeared a different color, a rich aqua hue. Her instruments could no longer make sense of what was happening in the vicinity of the singularity.

The black hole-ring continued to expand, and with it, the azure disk at its center grew as well. Then Kora started to notice the new readings. The temperature and pressure inside the ring were completely different. The chemical make up there had changed, as had the gravity in relation to the planet she was on. Then understanding struck her. She was looking at a different atmosphere, a different planet, another world entirely. The disk grew and expanded until it was a perfect blue circle, nearly five kilometers in diameter, cut out of the orange background.

The three Raiks surrounding the spatial anomaly had retreated as the disk grew. Their magnetic fields had tapered off then died, they seemed to be drained of energy. For a fearful moment kora thought the disk was in danger of collapse, but amazingly, it held stable. A low rumble sounded, then another, and another, and soon the entire herd, the entire population of the planet had joined in. The sound resonated through Kora and seemed to shake the planet itself, even drowning out the roar of constant wind.

They all began to move. The pups went through first, followed by what kora guessed were the adolescent variety, then the rest preceded in order of size from smallest to largest. They crossed through the portal, traversing what was probably thousands of lightyears as easily as stepping through a doorway. Last, the immense Raiks that had aided the sacrificial creature made their way through. Possibly in their own time they would provide the same service.

Before she realized it, Kora was alone. All the Raiks had passed through the portal and only the burning orange atmosphere and howling wind kept her company. After that doorway closed, these Raiks would be unreachable well past Kora's lifetime. A strange nostalgia filled her. She felt as though part of her had left with them. Like some piece of her life had been relegated to the past forever.

It suddenly hit Kora that her days as a Diver were over, at least in the way that she had been familiar with for over a decade. She unconsciously drew a hand to her chest where the AI core Corbin had given her rested, stowed like an embryo in a womb. A new life for humanity.

A tremor through the atmosphere brought Kora back to the present. Her Lance bobbed as a gentle shockwave passed over her. Another followed shortly. A reading from her heads up display now told her that the anomaly in front of her was growing unstable, even if her sensors couldn't fully make out what it was. The portal was perceptibly shrinking, slowly at first, but as Kora watched, the rate of collapse began to increase. The structure of the warped singularity was becoming unstable. Spasms of energy discharged from the edges around its circumference and kora now felt gravity's tug toward its center. Instinctively she knew she had to leave, and quickly.

She laid on the throttle and banked away putting thousands of meters between her and the failing portal in just a few rapid seconds, but she wanted thousands more. She pushed her Lance to its full capabilities slashing through turbulent air, punching holes in cloud banks, and breaking the sound barrier three times over. Behind her an enormous boom sounded. A hundred atomic warheads detonating at once.

The shock wave hit her causing her craft to buck and twist wildly. The flash of light washed out everything in her view. Through the chaos she heard it. Nearly drowned by static and eroded by rushing atmosphere, it came to her with the blast. The radio signal, formally trapped by the distorted space of the singularity, finally reached her. The message was short and quiet, but hit Kora harder than any shockwave could.

"Good bye, my dear, and always remember."

The words filled her with some strange mixture of elation, sadness, hope, and grief. A broad smile shaped her mouth, tears again flowed freely from her eyes, and she laughed aloud. A wild energy over took her and she wrestled her Lance through the bombardment of energy and light, riding the wake of the shock wave, heedless of the swirling eddies and ripping currents. This planet would not stop her from keeping her promise to Corbin nor would the fallout from a collapsed black hole.

Alive. That was the only thing she remembered feeling after she had reunited with the Hotaru to share what she had learned. Completely alive. It was the same way she had felt after that first dive Corbin had taken her on ten years ago during her first training session.

***

They were pushing high into the stratosphere of a planet whose atmosphere was a rare purple with curling lines of green vapor near the different bands and zones. It was Kora's first dive. It was a more gentle gas giant, with winds in the 350 to 400 kilometer per hour range. It was also a cool planet, with temperatures ranging from a chilly twenty-three Kelvin in the stratosphere and only climbing to around fifty Kelvin at the depth of the troposphere. The blue giant star that bathed this system in energy was only a small ball of light from two and a half billion miles away.

They had seen no Raiks that day. Instead Corbin had taught her some basic navigation techniques and had her partake in some simple flying patterns and maneuvers. Kora had never enjoyed anything as much as she had flying for the first time. There was a very sharp contrast between using a simulator and flying in the real atmosphere of a real planet. She would never go back to the simulator. The feel of the wind through her hands as it vibrated, pushed, and pulled at her Lance, the varying atmospheric densities and all the nuance of flying through them, the larger gravity that pulled at her, making her movements strained and slow, but fantastically rewarding. All of this could be simulated, but it still was not the same as dealing with the real thing. There was no safety net, no do-over if she made a mistake.

Kora whooped, laughed, and called out as she chased her mentor through violet mist and white vapor, trying to keep up and match his movements turn for turn. Her nerves had been forgotten, replaced by pure elation and the ecstasy of flight. Corbin easily out maneuvered his young apprentice, forcing her to work to keep him in her line of sight through the dense cloud banks.

Eventually Corbin ascended above the cloud cover with Kora following until she pulled level with his craft.

"Are we done?" she panted.

Corbin chuckled, "For today we are, if we keep this up for much longer you won't be able to move tomorrow."

"I can... handle it." she said between breaths.

"Good we'll do more tomorrow," Corbin said, "unless you prefer the simulator?"

Kora felt embarrassed for suggesting its use earlier that day instead of actually flying. "No more simulator, you were right, this is better for training," she conceded.

"That reminds me of my third rule," Corbin informed, "I'm always right."

"How many more rules are there? Should I be writing these down?" Kora asked.

Corbin chuckled, "don't worry, there's no test, but I do need to know something."

"What's that?" she asked

"Why are you doing this? Why do you want to be a Diver?" Corbin questioned.

Kora was silent for a few seconds. The planet was bright even at such a great distance from its star, and the atmosphere glowed subtly a gentle violet, accented by an occasional vane of green. Above, arouras blossomed in shimmering ribbons of aqua, ruby, and a deep marine green. Corbin waited for her to respond. He hoped he had chosen correctly.

"To make a lot of money and retire early so I don't have to farm algae in an ag-colony like my parents. A little fame wouldn't hurt either." She answered with a short laugh.

"Bullshit," Corbin said bluntly.

"What?" She blinked, sounding confused but slightly amused at the same time.

"That's a bullshit answer," Corbin clarified. "Any average Diver can make a pile of credits in a couple years. If that's all you wanted you could have apprenticed under anyone."

"So? Maybe I'm ambitious?" Kora said feeling slightly more sheepish again.

"That's a start, but clearly not the whole story." Corbin pressed. "The amount of time you logged training, your in depth knowledge of Raik anatomy, and your application being sent to only to the best Divers, shows a clear to desire to do more than just accumulate a stash of credits."

"Did you just compliment yourself?" Kora said teasing her mentor, her shyness again abating for the moment.

Corbin smiled to himself but continued to press his point. "I'm well aware of my status as a Diver, but don't mistake the recognition of my own position as arrogance, you applied to study under only three Divers, all three of which, myself included, are ranked at the top. The chance of you being accepted by any of us as a first time applicant were extremely small."

"Well, why did you accept me then?" Kora asked, sounding somewhat indignant.

"All three of us accepted you, but since I have the highest ranking, I had the first choice," Corbin responded, "and that time I was bragging."

"You still didn't answer my question." Kora said.

"You didn't really answer mine," Corbin shot back, "how about this, I'll answer your question then you tell me why you really want to do this. Deal?"

"Deal."

"I chose you initially because of your apparent natural ability, as well as your simulator and test scores, you can obviously fly and you're smart. Half the applicants can barely stay attached to their Lance, let alone keep it in the air, and fewer still have in depth knowledge of Raik physiology. Plus, we come from a similar background, mostly poor families, struggling to make it in poor systems. You're ambitious, you _need_ to make it, but there's something else to. When I met you earlier, I knew then that I would take you on as my apprentice, call it an instinct."

"Okay," Kora said, "and have your instincts ever been wrong?"

"No, so don't make this a first," Corbin answered.

"That's a lot of pressure." She said, her voice again tinged with some of the nervousness of earlier.

"Now your turn, why are you doing this?" He asked.

Kora was silent again for a few seconds then gave a sigh before answering.

"I guess... I've always wanted to do what few others could do, you know? I want to be part of something bigger, something more important than just growing algae or hauling freight or mining belts. Most of all, I thought that maybe being a Diver would allow me a better chance of finding out what is _truly_ out here, a chance to see a bit more of what is possible in this universe."

Corbin listened to her statement, a small knowing grin forming on his face. The stars were bright that night even against the glow of the planet and the foreground of arouras that danced above. The small knot in his chest finally loosened then disappeared, Kora's answer suppling the necessary relief. He had chosen correctly.

"My dear," said Corbin, "you are exactly what I was looking for."

###

Thank you for reading my book! If you enjoyed this work please take a moment and leave a review at your favorite retailer. Look for more books in the near future!

Thanks,

Michael G. Long

# About the Author

Michael G. Long is a long time resident of the Pacific Northwest. Born in Alaska, raised by bears, then domesticated and finally relocated to the lower forty-eight. He now spends his time researching and writing about anything to do with science and the future of humanity.

Because of his early experience in the wild, his primal side lends to an adventurous nature that is often incorporated into the characters of his stories. With a disposition that originates from outside of the general human population, the idea of mundane and monotonous day to day activities is something of little interest to Michael. On the other hand, if there is a stimulating and intellectual conversation afoot about the development of new technologies, cutting edge physics, the expansion and evolution of consciousness, and the origins of humanity or its future, then he will be ready and willing to engage.

Though sometimes reluctant to be associated with his fellow humans, he enjoys socializing with good and interesting people, healthy doses of sarcasm, consuming gourmet foods, craft beer, and single malt whiskey. Something that was denied him when roaming the Alaskan wilderness as a young cub.

The wild still calls and Michael admits to feeling, at times, trapped by the confines of a society where freedom favors those with money and limits those without. A concept that deeply troubles him and that is not present in nature. Despite some of the more frustrating aspects of civilization, he admits, that being domesticated does come with some perks. In particular, hot showers, Netflix, and of course single malt whiskey (preferably at least 12 years old).

Ultimately Michael is an optimist. "If there's one thing we can all do to help each other succeed," he says, "it's to move forward together with kindness, understanding, and open hearts and minds." He also says that the world is dark, dangerous, and full of people ready to knock you down, but don't worry, that's what makes it an adventure.

***

This is Michael's first published work. There will be more to come in the near future so please keep an eye out if you enjoyed this piece. For now you can look for updates about any new work on his author profile at <https://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/mglong1> and please, remember to favorite and subscribe to author alerts. Thank you!
