[b]Space, Orbiting the Gas Giant Indra, ~15 AU From Brahma[/b]

Indra glowed like a jewel set in the black. Its angry radiance drowned out the stars behind it, making it the only source of light save for the floodlights that dotted the solar sail frames and washed the copper-colored sails in bright, white light. This was the first time Laz had laid eyes on it. He had seen images of Indra, and watched videos that showed the violent dance of clouds that rushed across its surface. Like all school children on Brahma, he knew the Indus system in a trivial, artificial way. By the time he was six he could name all of the planets, place them in order, both on distance from the main star and on biggest to smallest. Discounting the brown dwarfs Shiva and Kali that lumbered along the farthest edges of the system, Indra was the largest object orbiting Indus. It had four times the mass of Jupiter, the biggest gas planet in the old Earth system. More relevant, and hard to fathom for Laz, Indra was somewhere around seventy five times the mass of Brahmapura. It was big, Laz could see, but there was nothing next to it that allowed him to visually understand how truly big it was. 

Indra wasn't known for its size. Sharing a system with Shiva and Kali, it was only considered the biggest when they were taken out of the running. Indra was known for it's savage surface. A swirl of fast moving brown, yellow, and red bands, Indra stewed with millions of immortal storms. Unlike Jupiter, who's Great Red Spot still played a part in the collective memory of humanity, Indra had seven such storm eyes. They differed in size, some mere pimples while others were large enough to swallow all the moons of Brahmapura seven times. 

"That is why I chose to get into this field." Eury said, excited and awestruck. He could see it in her eyes. She looked at the planet below like a teenager in love. 

"It is incredible." Laz agreed. "I always wanted to visit the planets, but I never imagined them like this. There is nothing that captures the experience of actually being there." He looked at Eury and smiled fondly.

The cloudy bands of the planet were as scattered and violent as the storms that occupied them. They mixed with each other, zig-zagging and stirring into one another until their boundaries were no longer easy to see. Every few moments, pinpricks of light flashed on the surface, dancing just beneath the surface of the clouds.

"Is that lightning?" Laz asked.

Eury nodded. "Indra produces a lot of lightning. They look small, but in reality they are so big that a single strike would cover the entirety of Brahma twice over." A sudden sense of self-awareness washed over her face, and she blushed ans smiled shyly. "I'm sounding like your teacher or something now, aren't I?" 

"Not at all." Laz answered. "This sort of thing is fascinating." he looked out the window as another point of white light flashed on the surface. "What causes it to be so stormy?"

"That's very interesting." Eury replied excitedly. "Indra has a moon that is also a Gas Giant. The only time that has ever been seen in human space, as far as I know at least. Aindri. You can't see it from here, it's somewhere above us right now, but the tidal force Aindri's exerts on Indra disturbs its atmosphere."

//[i]"Corporals Oils, Marx, and Paladino to the landing bay. Corporals Oils, Marx, and Paladino to the landing bay."[/i]// a soothing voice called out over the PA. 

"What's that?" Eury asked.

Laz stood up and straightened his uniform. "Arrivals. The passengers we picked up at Indra Station." he grinned. "I will be back soon. There isn't anything dangerous down there."

She nodded and looked out toward the planet.

Laz rubbed the grip of his grandfather's Ultrasonic Pistol as he walked. It was instinctive, a small reminder of home while he was this far away. He figured that it looked authoritative, like a reminder to everyone around him that he was armed and ready. This was a IU ship, and its crew was made of naval personnel, but most weren't armed. This was a simple supply ship after all. They had no need of marines.

The hallways of the Aro were long passages with few abrupt turns. Rather, they curved slightly until they reached their destinations. Laz wasn't sure if they did this for some structural reason, or if it was just another attempt by the designers to soften the design so it hid the reality that they were in a nuclear missile hurdling at painful speeds through the radioactive nothingness of space. Space travel was, at its root, a terrifying prospect. There were safety's guaranteed to them by being on a habitable planet. When stranded on Brahma, you could breath the air and walk across a surface thanks to the presence of gravity and friction. In space, you stayed in your vessel or you died. Help, two, was millions if not billions of kilometers away. There were plenty of people with genuine phobias of space travel, much more than there were of planetary forms of transportation. Designers fought this with controlled lighting built into the wall panels, favoring soft glows to harsher alternatives. The surfaces were variations of "Off-white", light enough without being glaringly bright. 

Crewmen and women passed him by, busy with their own tasks. On this level of the vessel, they were all on duty. Laz watched as a plastic-plated white porterbot ambled by, causing everyone to give it a wide birth. It moved mechanically, its two-legged strides sudden, shaky, and inorganic. He loved to watch their arms. No matter how awkward their gaits might be, every porterbot held its arms so still that, if programmed correctly and given precise enough hands, they would make excellent surgeons. It was the work of gyroscopic joints at the shoulder and elbow. This model lacked a head, but instead had a single eye in the middle of its chest placed on a strip that could rotate three-hundred and sixty degrees around its torso. 

Laz arrived in the landing bay as a couple of shuttles entered. They came from a massive airlock on the far end, which allowed for crewmen to move freely along the bay without being forced to evacuate with the entrance of every average-sized shuttle. Overlooking the scene from a catwalk, Captain Kgosi watched keenly as the new arrivals came to a stop.

"Is there something bad about this one, boss?" Laz grinned. Kgosi did not look up, and his expression remained one of military sternness.

"We got a violent criminal on this one." Laz watched as two guards dragged a man in a straight-jacket out of a shuttle. He was fighting them every step of the way, move as if he was punching them despite his restraints, and as if he was biting them despite a muzzle covering his face. His hair was a grey bush of uncombed knots and rats, and his skin was discolored and bruised.

"What's this one?" Laz asked. 

"Orbital Madness." Kgosi suggested. "He was an eccentric, but there was no sign of insanity until last week."

"What happened?"

"He ate his roommate." Kgosi said coldly. 

Laz looked back down at the man and winced. "That's an extreme case for Orbital." he said. Orbital Madness was a term given to the breakdown of mental facilities that happened to some people when they spent too much time in space. It had been compared to cabin fever in the past, though it was much more than that. Stuck in a small environment, isolated by an extreme distance from the rest of human civilization and poorly socialized, some people started to lose their senses. It was more common among sensitive people who felt isolated from those they shared their space with. Depression and paranoia were the most common symptoms, and hallucinations were not unheard of. Murderous cannibalism, however... that was something from a horror story.

"They talk to me!" Laz heard the madman shout. He screamed under his breath, like a loud demonic mutter. His voice sounded forced and strained. "They're out there."

The guards ignored him. Laz fell in line, trailing them as they led him through the halls. The two other guards fell in with the captain and took the lead, clearing the halls as they dragged their unwilling prisoner to the brig.

"Obsidian extinction!" he cackled nonsensically. "They know! They know you! They know!"

Laz was legitimately frightened. He had seen plenty in his time, but this type of deranged psychopathy was a new experience. He had spent his career in Nai Kolkatta patrolling the safe zone for pirates and Mayura, but insanity and crime were not in his area of knowledge or training. He watched nervously, ready to jump into action at any moment. 

The muzzle his most of the man's face. His skin was thick and wrinkled, and his eyes were partially obscured by a jutting brow. Everything underneath the muzzle was left to imagination. Laz imagined needle-sharp teeth, like some sort of predator.

"They see!" the convict shouted on the top of his lungs. A wall panel flickered to the side as he spoke. It was subtle, but it caused Laz's heart to jump into his throat. That was silly. Laz cursed himself for being so weak minded.