Read The Year’s Best Military SF & Space Opera for Free Online

power leaks. The colonistes called all these irritating maintenance problems bebbits , after the little biting flies of Québec’s wilderness.
    She leaned on the wing of her plane, just for a quick break from the life of cramped factory to cramped habitat. The fast, empty wind caressing her suit was a doubtful thing, an experience at a remove, a ghostly touch that froze the bones. The colonistes did not touch Venus. They experienced the idea of her through their suits. Venus wrapped herself in clouds deeper and heavier than an ocean. Marie-Claude could only stand on the shores they’d built and watch Venus, as she might watch a movie, something to be left behind when she returned to the floating habitats. Venus isolated them from everything except the violence with which she touched them, bathing them in hotly cancerous solar radiation, suffocating them with thin, anoxic air, reaching up for them with tongues of sulfuric acid, delighting in marking them with acid scars where she gnawed through environmental suits and protective films.
    Her battery toggled from green to yellow again. She whacked the bebbit . Back to green. She opened her plane and climbed in.
    “Renaud,” she radioed her supervisor, “Marie-Claude here. I’m taking off from plant six.”
    Take-off from a factory was a bit like the short and long seconds at the peak of a roller coaster. A ramp simply led off a lip and into the yawning atmosphere. She started her engine, taxied to the top of the ramp and rolled down, faster and faster.
    At the edge, a loud snap shook the plane, and a shrieking hole opened in the side. The plane spun. A glimpse of the factory spun by, showing, at the edge of the ramp, a cleaning drone, with a part of Marie-Claude’s wing in its grabbing claw.
    It shouldn’t have been there. It shouldn’t have grabbed at her plane.
    She spun away. Dashboard darkened. She plunged toward the yellowed cloud deck. Marie-Claude’s heart thumped too loudly. Thoughts loud, useless. Pilot training dragged her fingers to scrabble under her seat for the ejection switch, but the cockpit floor had bent, jamming itself against her seat. She couldn’t reach it.
    “ Merde, merde, merde ,” she whispered.
    “Marie-Claude! What’s going on?” Renaud’s voice crackled in her helmet. “You’re losing altitude!”
    No ejection seat. Busted plane. Flat spin. Sulfuric acid clouds. “ Câlisse! ” she swore.
    “Marie-Claude! Do you read me?”
    Terror froze her lungs with cold fingers. Jerk harness free. Plane shuddering. Move to gaping hole in the cockpit. Too loud. Fingers gripping seat. Jump. Thin air whipped. Clouds below, racing up. Scream. Tumble away. Small parachute yanked lightly at her. Voice in her ears. Hands searching for parachute cords. Parachute above her. Parachute above her. Breathe. Breathe. Answer.
    “Plane blown. I’m on my secondary chute.” The small parachute barely slowed her. Only a fraction of an atmosphere resisted her descent. The air would not thicken to a full atmosphere for about ten kilometers. By then, it might be too late for rescue.
    “I’m coming your way,” Renaud said.
    He radioed orders to the rest of the team, to the habitat platform five kilometers higher.
    Marie-Claude tasted black on her tongue. She gritted her teeth, willing herself not to puke in her helmet. Shock. Probably shock. Her stomach churned harder. Do something.
    She patted her suit. Adrenaline might mask leaks or injuries. Seals and fabric and coatings okay. Heater and heat exchanger running. Oxygen pressure a bit low, but green. Main battery still green. Sealed pockets on the arms and legs of her suit contained bits of her tool kit. Breathe. Renaud was on his way. Be calm.
    The plane dragged a trail of smoke through the haze. About five kilometers below, the smoke column bent sharply. In that moment, in the vast clouds, relative movement was born. She and the habitats and factories lived in the super-rotating layer of the upper