Pictured are Cannonballs, mechanoid organisms from Petrolea. Fired by railgun from their parents, the larvae unfurl in mid-air to snag passing fliers. A Cannonball has no factors of its own, but packs a a powerful transmitter in its central coil, allowing it to hack and redeploy the factors of its prey. These build the adult form: an ectoparasite on a gigantic, flying, leviathan. [https://64.media.tumblr.com/fc98b240abecfff2580121939582a96d/0ee06a88d120bdc1-0d/s640x960/a60ccbe21098cf24c706afc0ec677bc22fa8a848.jpg]

The Leviathan munched greedily on the dome of Xanadu Base, a grub the size of a sperm whale. The hose at the front snuffled up another wad of irreplaceable equipment, and flocks of smaller creatures wheeled like crows around the wreckage of human settlement on Petrolea.

"Maybe it didn't kill everyone," Victor said. "Maybe they escaped. Evacuated. They could be waiting on the Orbital Station. We can…" Victor swallowed. "We can still go home. We can find a radio down there. Contact them. We can…"

"It sees us," said Feroza. "We have to get out of here," Feroza reached out to stroke the Dragon's back.

She was right. The habitat was a hulk, a relic, as dead as a sunken ship. Torn open by monsters of the abyss, self-assemblers spreading windmill branches out of portholes and airlocks. Victor didn't want to see that, hear the clicking of the scavengers down the dark corridors of his workplace. But… "if we want to contact the Orbital Station, we have to access the communication equipment down there, before something eats it."

The hose of the Leviathan swung below them, red light stabbing up at them from between its gaping jaws.

"It's eaten everything already," said Feroza. "And now it's targeting us."

"Why would it target us? Nothing that big can get airborne in time to..."

Sparks flashed along its flank. Victor was reminded of fireworks, muzzle flash, a cannonade.

Feroza was beating on the Dragon now. "Faster! Turn us around, Victor. Get us out of here get us — "

The Dragon dove out from under them.

Victor commanded the factors of the animal's hide to grip him and Feroza more tightly. Wind and acceleration clawed at them as it banked and swerved, the devastated ground wheeling. The Dragon had gone insane. It was going to kill them all.

Victor wiggled his fingers safe in their gauntlet.

"Trying to establish handshake..."

"Don't," said Feroza, and something like a lead watermelon barreled past them. "We have to trust her instincts."

"Her instincts almost got you eaten yesterday," said Victor. "What the hell was that thing that flew — oof!"

The Dragon's wings flared and Feroza's back smashed into Victor's chest as their dive flattened out. Victor caught the gleaming curve of another cannonball sizzling under them before the Dragon rolled sideways and he was upside-down. A lurch, and the third cannonball passed. This one was close enough for Victor to count its coiled segments, see his helmet reflected in a dozen black, swiveling lenses. The Leviathan was firing some kind of living munitions at them.

The ground loomed out from behind the Dragon's thrashing wings, a great deal closer now. Victor blinked and it was gone, replaced by a gray sky. That should have been an improvement, except for the hundreds of black dots curving in toward them. The closest cannon-ball creature popped open like an umbrella, slowing, swerving toward them, reaching out with folds of barbed netting.

Victor wanted to hijack the Dragon's behavior processor to fly them out of range of the cannonball creatures, but Feroza was right. Victor was no crack Dragon-pilot, and anything he could do would just interfere with their mount's own efforts to get away. The Dragon dodged and dove, but now the attacks were coming from all sides, and it had no way to avoid them all.

This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.

"Fire," Feroza yelled, "fire." And, yes, the Leviathan was firing. More flashes. More Cannonballs. Why was the giant beast bothering? Why waste so much effort on two measly humans when it had a whole giant habitat to devour?

Victor was just opening his mouth to ask Feroza when the Dragon spun him into another black umbrella.

There was sudden weight, clinging and amorphous, like a sack of cornmeal had been dropped on his head. The Cannonball collapsed around Victor like a metal-and-plastic jellyfish. The factors that made up its body dissolved into a roiling swarm that coated him, pressed him down, and started to chew.

Alarms rang. Whatever protective coating Victor's suit retained made no impression on the little robots as they dug in. Victor scrabbled frantically over his chest, trying to find the Cannonball's organs by feel. If he could find and destroy the somatic or behavioral processors, if he could get his own slave factors to fight off the Cannonballs, he might not end up digested by his own field of expertise.

"Fire," Feroza commanded again.

"I don't have any damn fire!" Victor brushed and scratched uselessly at the river of voracious robots. Points of heat bloomed on his neck, shoulders, and elbows. Then needles of cold as his atmosphere escaped.

"I'm not talking to you," shouted Feroza. "Come now, my darling! Fire!"

And there was fire.

Victor's visor was already red, his ears already rung with alarms, but the new alarms were louder. "Heat Flux," they said, "Coolant System Malfunction."

The crawling mass over his face plate evaporated and Victor found himself staring past Feroza down a cone of flame ending in the kerosene gullet-spewing of their Dragon.

How had she done that? With no handshake gauntlet to command the creature to attack, she just told it what to do? What if —

His ears popped. Victor could see the little geysers of steam where his suit was leaking into the Petrolean atmosphere. No. Some of that steam was from the bubbling remains of the Cannonball's factors. He smeared his left hand through the still-half-molten plastic, tried to plug as many holes as he could. The alarms quieted.

Another cannonball hit the Dragon.

This time the Dragon wasted no time in blasting it with fire. And the next attacker that got too close, it fried right out of the air. They weren't going to be swamped and digested by long-range ballistic octopuses, at least not until the Dragon's fuel held out.

The Dragon snapped up the tarry remains of the cannonball it had just roasted. Feroza said, "Hmm."

"What?" said Victor. "Did you think of a way to escape? Because I — "

"No," she said. "Escape is impossible. Forward is the only way. Downward."

"To the habitat?"

"To the Leviathan."

Victor looked at the blimp of bloated malevolence squatting on the ruins of human life on Petrolea. "Uh…"

She made an impatient noise. "The cannons cannot fire straight up. The Fusillade Wyrms would hit the hot air cowlings."

"What kind of worms? You mean the cannon-ball creatures?" Victor glanced at his readouts. He didn't have enough oxygen to make it back to the hangar, even if they could escape. "No. I get it. Okay. But what then? We can't just hover over the damn Leviathan's back."

"We can land on it."

"Are you kidding? What if there are worse things riding it? Cannon-ball creatures. Other kinds of epiphytes?"

"The word is 'symbionts,'" she said, "or 'parasites.' Or just 'commensals.' And yes. I plan to feed them to her." She patted the Dragon's side. "You hear that? I will feed you. Good food."

"I don't think talking to it will make any difference. It's as likely to eat you as anything."

The Dragon ducked under another volley of high-velocity death.

"She will only eat me if you let her. Does the code in her behavioral processor show any tendency to regard me as food?"

"You mean her runtime environment, or active processes, or behavior cue?"

"What?"

"Never mind. The answer is no, and I can delete or overwrite the command when it appears," said Victor. "But I can't tell her where to land."

"I can tell her where to land."

"How?" He still did not want to go anywhere near that horrible Leviathan.

"By example. Make it let go of me," Feroza said. "Victor, the factors. Make them let go."

"But you'll fall."

Feroza turned to meet his eyes. "The Dragon will catch me."