Drifting through the storm-churned atmosphere of Gliese-412c, Delra adjusted the thermal seals on her exosuit. As a stormchaser for the Helios Institute, her job was to harvest data from the gas giant’s lightning cores—an unpredictable, beautiful peril.
Her drone, Lumen, blinked red. “Core stability degrading,” it warned. The collector was failing. She could abort, return to safety—or dive deeper for crucial samples.
She pushed forward. The pressure claw latched onto a rogue ion surge, but the winds howled, twisting her pod sideways. Sensors flickered. If she lost the data now, the last eight months would mean nothing.
Lumen’s voice softened. “Delra, let go.”
She hesitated. Then, with trembling fingers, she ejected the failing collector, watching priceless data disintegrate into the storm. Her pod stabilized. She breathed out.
Sometimes, survival itself was the real discovery.
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