Beneath the storm

Nobody can hear a scream in the vacuum of space, or so they say. Serin tested that theory thoroughly as she yelped and scrambled backwards, nearly tripping from the edge of their ship. There was something moving beneath the clouds, something titanic. She was sure of it.

She had been sat on the edge of the flat underside of the ship staring at the planet above her. The ships artificial gravity held her to the hull as if she was stood on the ground and she had been lying on her back watching the whirling currents in the cloud layer. They were in high orbit and the ship was a speck against the planet. She imagined them as a tiny sailboat floating in a vast violet ocean. She and her Mother came out here to watch the stars so often during their journey that they had taken to calling it the balcony. Now she watched alone. Serin frowned at the world below, worry creasing her youthful face.

The planet, Elatus, that they were orbiting was entirely covered in vibrant storm clouds in a layer so thick that nobody had ever managed to see the planets surface. It swirled in an endless vortex punctuated by slashes of lightning. Their scans and the scans of ships that came before them had shown that the planet definitely had a solid surface layer. The problem was that anytime anyone had tried to send down probes they had lost contact almost immediately. After a week in orbit Serin had felt their Mum’s frustration as they experienced the same. Her mood was palpable in the ships close confines. Serin had often caught her swearing under her breath as she went around angrily fixing things. Eventually, having grumbled herself into a corner and seeing no other option their Mother had put on her drop suit, kissed them both goodbye and launched herself down through the clouds.

Serin could still remember the excited gleam in her Mothers eye as she dropped from the ship. She had fallen out backwards pretending to hold her nose like an old Scuba diver from back on earth. She had been trying to cheer Serin and her brother Ox up; it had worked at the time. They had both laughed and waved as she plummeted from sight. That laughter felt hollow now. It had been too long since their last contact and now Serin was seeing things.

She climbed to her feet gingerly, as if the artificial gravity could fail at any moment. She used a gloved hand to wipe non existent smudges from the suits visor. An almost subconscious effort to convince herself that she had been mistaken. She stood looking straight up at the cloud layer of Elatus. It looked no different than it had before. Purple clouds mixing with green and yellow to give the whole surface the look of bruised flesh. It was hard to tell what she had seen, it could have been a trick of the light, an unusual cloud. Perhaps it had been the reflection of her own dark features in the glass of her visor. But she knew it wasn’t, she knew there had been something moving down there. It had disturbed the smooth flow of the cloud layer, thrown off the natural patterns she had been watching for the last week.

Shaken, she hurried over to the nearest window with long strides. Leaning close as she peered through the glare shielding and saw her brother. He was sat sideways in one of their two giant armchairs, his legs draped over the arm as he read a dogeared book. As usual he was wearing one of their dads old t shirts. It was enormous on the small boy and becoming ragged. The print, showing an old rock band from Earth, was faded and peeling but he insisted it still smelt like their Father. Serin had teased him about it so often it had become tiresome even for her. She banged a gloved hand on the window, Ox looked up sharply, his eyes were red and puffy. His expression rapidly flicked from worry to confusion when he saw her peering inside. Serin began to point towards her ear and then towards the command room. Ox was many things but he was not stupid and so he quickly scuttled off, climbing the ladder and disappearing from her sight. Moments later she heard his quiet voice through the radio in her suit and saw his head peeking through the command rooms window.

“What’s going on? Is it Mum?” his voice was hopeful which only annoyed Serin.

“No twerp, I think I saw something moving in the clouds. It’s probably nothing but I want a better look so I need you to drop us into a lower orbit.” She spoke confidently, trying her best to mimic their Mothers authoritative tone.

“I don’t know,” clearly she hadn’t pulled off the impression as Ox continued nervously, “Mum told us to stay up here in the ship and wait for her.”

“That was two days ago!” she threw her arms into the air in exasperation. “I might be wrong, it might be her,” she lied. “Just for once listen to me, please.”

He went quiet for a long moment then nodded slowly, his mop of dark hair falling into his eyes.

“Alright, hold on.”

Serin moved to the side of the ship and looped her tether around the nearest anchor. She tied it off using one of the dozens of knots her Dad had insisted she know. If her Mum had been there she would have yelled at her for being careless and not staying tethered the whole time. But she wasn’t there, that was the problem. Secured, Serin sent her brother a quick confirmation and a moment later she felt the ship sink. She was still on the underside of the ship so from her perspective it looked as though she was rising up towards the cloud layer above. Her stomach lurched but she refused to take her eyes off the clouds, her gut told her something wasn’t right.

As they settled into their new orbital path, a dozen miles or so above the soup of storm clouds below Ox’s voice cut into her radio once more.

“So what did you see?” he still sounded nervous but she could tell he was trying to use her as a distraction.

“A shadow, around there I think,” she said pointing at a particularly dense swirl of deep green cloud. They both stared silently over the left fin of the ship. Minutes went by as Serin stared at those clouds as if they held the answers to the Universe’s secrets. Ox on the other hand quickly lost interest. As he turned away, heading back to his book no doubt, the ship tilted to one side as the churning atmospheric gases were hurled upwards. Serin was thrown from her feet her arms wheeled and she clawed for the tether that held her to the ship. The rope caught and she was pulled to an abrupt stop before hitting the deck of the ship hard. Her teeth clashed together and she tasted blood where her tongue had been caught. Dazed she sat up and screamed in horror.

The clouds for miles in every direction had been torn asunder, hurled away as if by a cataclysmic eruption. No volcano caused this. At the epicentre, mere miles from their ship a leviathan breached the stratosphere. The gases of the atmosphere were tossed aside like a tsunami of cloud. Hail stones the size of fists hit the ship, practically bullets that slammed into them. Serin curled up defensively as they mercilessly hammered into her suit. Its reinforced outer layer protected her but she would be littered with bruises. Still, she could not pull her eyes from the creature even as she clung on the bucking ship for dear life. It looked like some sort of titanic stingray but it had tusks that extended from underneath a colossal maw. It rose from the depths of the storm like the peak of a mountain. Her brain struggled to comprehend the sheer size of the creature. It must have been dozens of miles long. As she watched more and more of the creature was revealed, its segmented body extended further still down into the furious cloud layer. Liquid fell from rocky skin in cascades that were larger than any waterfall back home. As the shockwave of air hit the ship it carried with it a terrible roar. The previously peaceful vacuum ruptured by the vibrating gases displaced by the behemoth. It climbed higher and higher in the air for what felt like an age. Eventually its momentum ran out. City sized tusks gleamed with frost and moisture as it hung, seemingly suspended in the light of the nearest star. Then it began to fall.

For a second she feared it had come for them but as it turned to one side, diving gracefully back into the storm she realised they were as insignificant to this creature as an ant was to her. It looked to move in slow motion but she knew this must be a trick of its size. It rolled to one side, splashing down through the storm layer. It crashed down like a whale breaching the ocean. Even still she stared. She saw its back, covered in a biomes worth of plant life. She saw its sinuous vermilion tail disturbing the clouds as it whipped around. To her horror she also saw, as the sheer mass of the creature displaced an area of the storm, dozens more of the creatures deep within the cloud layer. They vanished as the dense gas settled once more. Like a still pond the clouds returned to normal but Serin stared on horrified.

When the ship finally stopped bobbing up and down like a boat in a storm Serin staggered back to the airlock and tumbled inside the ship. She lay on the floor, her breaths short and ragged. Her eyes were glazed over as she relived that moment. He brother found her like that and with shaking hands coaxed her to her feet and pulled her to their living space. He pushed her onto a chair and she heard him speaking to her. The words meant nothing to her, she just stared on as he sat next to her and held his head in his hands. Finally, what he was saying broke through her shock. Ice flooded her veins as realisation hit.

“Mum’s down there.”

Serin jumped back to her feet, her shock crammed into some small corner of her mind. She marched back towards the airlock as Ox hurried after her.

“What are you doing?” her brother said. His voice shook and he sounded almost hysterical.

“Going after her. You stay here and keep the ship safe. Once I am gone take her up to a high orbit and don’t come down until we call you.” She couldn’t look him in the eyes as she spoke, she didn’t want to leave him alone up here, he was just a kid but her Mother needed her.

“No no no no no, please,” he grabbed onto her arm and pulled her around. He looked so afraid. He was pulling at their Dad’s t-shirt anxiously and tears started to fall down his cheeks.

“Please don’t leave me up here. Not after Dad… what if you don’t come back too? I don’t want to be alone.” He was sobbing now.

“Listen,” she bent down and put a hand on his shoulder to reassure him, “I am going to bring Mum back, she probably broke her coms or something.”

He saw through her lie straight away.

“No, please Serin. Lets just wait for her together.”

“Ox, she could be hurt. You know we are supposed to always drop in pairs. Since we lost Dad though she has been going alone. I need to go and help her.” She grit her teeth to hold herself together. Ox would only panic more if he knew her stomach was flipping over and her hands would not stop shaking.

“But,” his voice dropped to a whimpering whisper “What if neither of you come back?”

She met his eyes and felt herself begin to cry. She pulled him into an embrace. His clung on to her desperately, only up to her chest. She knew given a few more years he would tower over her. He looked just like their Dad.

“I wont let that happen. Trust me Ox, please.” Her voice shook but she saw the look on his face. He jutted his bottom jaw out and tried to hold in the tears. Acting brave so she wouldn’t worry. She smiled, he might look like Dad but he was just like Mum.

“OK. I will stay on the coms up here. If you lose contact, even for a minute, you have to promise to come straight back.”

“Of course, I'm not going exploring, I will go straight to the last place we had her signal.”

“Promise?” He asked trying to seem nonchalant and failing dramatically.

Serin chuckled and held out her hand. They shook, pretending for a second they were adults. Ox then helped Serin into their other drop suit. It was a bulky metal contraption. Somewhere between a classic space suit and a metal coffin. The days of landing capsules were long gone. The suits always felt too flimsy to Serin though. She had hated going through the training with Mum. Girls her age should be learning to drive not learning to drop through an atmosphere. Still, it paid dividends today.

Once inside she felt the suit come to life. Lights in the helmet flicked on, fans whirred to life and chemical smelling air started to circulate. Wasting no time she walked awkwardly over to the drop chute. It was connected to the airlock but looked like a high tech circle in the floor. She took a deep breath and looked at her brother. He was the other side of the steel door and she could see his forehead and eyes in the high window. He must be stood on his tiptoes to see her. She grinned at that and gave him a sharp nod, waiting for him to pull the lever. He hesitated a moment, worried no doubt. A split second before she stepped off the drop mark to check on him the floor beneath her was pulled away and she was hurled from the ship like a bullet from a gun. She swore loudly and flailed her arms as she spun end over end. Before the panic truly set in she thought back to her lessons and crossed her arms over her chest, letting the massive planet pull her in. She spun in the silence flipping end over end, the ship shrank away from her with every spin. Her last sight of it like a stick in the ocean as she plunged into the maw of the furious maelstrom below.

“I'm coming Mum.”