Finisterra by David Moles

"Finisterra" is a 2007 science fiction novelette by David Moles. It is about an engineer from Earth who contracts out to help poachers on a distant world make their biggest kill yet. Non-Spoiler Summary In A Nutshell: Bianca Nazario grew up on post-singularity Earth as a minority Christian living under an Islamic government. For generations the members of her family have been aeronautical engineers, but when her parents die and her brothers marry she is left with very few professional or marriage prospects. She consequently takes a risky but lucrative contract to go to Sky, a strange gas giant world where beasts the size of mountain ranges float in the sky and support the small population living there. Her assignment, however, is to help poachers bring down the biggest animal of all. Hmm... will she do it or will she feel too guilty about helping the poachers? It was only a handful of years later that Bianca's father died, leaving a teenaged Pablo at the helm of his engineering…