April

Issue 31

    When a black Zeppelin with a bloodshot eye on its nose suddenly shot from beneath his cloudwhale, Johnny Ferocious nearly cussed, but bit his tongue. Old habits died hard.

    "Yusuf Al-Mamoud, you old pirate, why can't you die like a decent old man?" he muttered, staring at the Zepp as it maneuvered to dock with the cloudwhale. Pressing his hand overhead against the energy bubble, Johnny sucked on his lower lip. The pharm twenty meters below him was a 2100 hectare patch of dirt on the back of a hundred kilometer long bag of semi-transparent, vacuum trapping cloudwhale flesh named Hercules. An immense fringe of feathery, hydrogen-filled tentacles swept the skies of the gas giant River for phytoplankton.

    Ace, the Artificial Idiot-Savant that ran the pharm, would allow the Zepp to dock, but lock Yusuf out until Johnny arrived. Johnny dropped quickly back to the ground. He'd let Yusuf sit and stew a bit. After all, he knew Johnny hated visitors.

    "Ace?"

    "Yes, Sir?"

    "Don't let Yusuf in, but be frustratingly polite about it."

    "Yes, Sir."

    "Also, send a couple of the humaniform robots over to the northwest quarter to spray the skinworm tomatoes with a fourteen percent cell wall enhancer."

    "Yes, Sir."

    Sunlight slanted from a late afternoon sky over a thick, dark cloud bank. Flashes of lightning played in the interior. It looked small until you considered the scale. River was a gas giant twice as massive as Jupiter with a radius four times greater. The storm could have easily swallowed Earth's old Moon. He wondered if Hercules would fly through it like usual or go around. He sighed. You never knew with 'whales. Smart as old Earth dogs, they were unpredictable when it came to bad weather.