"Alright, beasties," she said, "it is time for you to learn that Feroza Merchant shall be no one's breakfast."

The first order of business must be to unstick herself from the side of this Dragon. Toledo, if conscious, could simply command the factors holding her to let go. Since Feroza had not the means, the skills, nor the willingness to enslave the creatures' minds, however, she must set about to tame them.

She twisted her head, working with eyes, suit cameras, and software to get a glimpse of her surroundings. The nest, or possibly she should call it a "hangar," had floor, walls, and ceiling made of rusty, corrugated scrap iron. The place could almost have been cobbled together in some backwater village to house a Raj-era crop-duster, except for the curved walls and impossibly delicate welding. And the huge, gaping hole into the empty air would have given any human engineer heart palpitations. And there were the LED eyes twinkling from the shadows, not to mention the Dragons, themselves.

They sprawled on the floor of the hangar like beached orcas. Two adults and two man-sized juveniles snapped lazily at the vermin in the shadows, slid their noses across each other, or simply lay still except for the lung-like pumping of their bellows as they forged new tools inside their bodies. None seemed interested in her.

Feroza considered the nature of her hosts. Dragons were the apex predators of this latitude, flighted because nearly all pursuit predators flew in the high-density atmosphere of low-gravity Titan, their ecological niche something like tigers or great white sharks. Not much social behavior, but like the Punishers to which they were related, Dragons were viviparous. Their young were not constructed in factory-hives, but by fabricators tucked inside the body cavity. Surely that implied parental investment in young. And even tigers didn't live together as mated pairs. Assuming a mated pair with children was what she was seeing here.

Ting ting ting ting the oxygen warning drove upholstery tacks into her thoughts.

Warnings. Distress signals. With her gloves trapped in the skin of the Dragon, Feroza could only interface with her suit by means of eye movement tracking, a slow and frustrating process made no easier by the damn tinging of the alarm. Like the angel of death tapping her skull with his bony index finger...

There. Directing her radio to transmit at the Dragon she'd decided was the mother might get her some attention. It might get her ripped apart. The Dragon to whose side she was attached, the father, might decide to scratch her off his hide, but at what cost to the integrity of her suit? Feroza needed an example of what gentler instincts she could expect from these giant predators, and that meant child-rearing. She aimed her transmitter at the nearest sleeping Dragonlet, and flicked the device on at its narrowest beam and highest setting.

It was the equivalent of clapping her hands in front of the face of an infant. The Dragonlet's headlights flared on. It thrashed and reared up. And it cried.

Feroza double-checked that her receivers were recording as the Dragonlet woke up one of its parents. Fortunately, not the one to which Feroza was currently glued.

The mother mechanoid slid from the shadows like an enormous serpent, wings, engines, and landing gear tucked up on her back, sensors extended on a flexible neck-like tube of helically linked factors. She bumped her iron snout against the distressed baby, nuzzling it, feeling down its flanks for damage. Finding none, she began to turn away, but Feroza activated her transmitter and the baby cried again.

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Feroza could almost imagine the sigh of resignation as the mother Dragon pulled back her mouthparts and vomited a black stream of nourishing gasoline into her progeny's gaping maw. A pause and a muffled clank as machinery re-aligned within the mother's head, and the baby got a sip of the precious liquid oxygen needed to burn that petroleum.

The baby stopped crying and curled up. Carbon dioxide frost steamed off its belly as it began to distill its meal.

Feroza waited as long as she dared before rebroadcasting the signal. Wide beam, this time.

The father Dragon shifted under her and the mother came to investigate. Headlights focused on her. Antennae rose in what Feroza could only interpret as a quizzical gesture: What could such a strange creature be doing on my mate?

She broadcast the infant distress signal again.

A metallic probe bumped against her chest plate, hard enough to set off more warning claxons. Then, vibration along her sides as the two Dragons dragged their snouts around her.

A deeper vibration. A shiver and burst of heat she could feel even through her suit. Toledo wasn't the only one who could communicate with and control factors. The tiny robots clamped to her suit released all at once.

Feroza sprawled to the floor of the hangar. Behind her, the father Dragon reared, the edges of the hole in his skin zipping smoothly back together. He unhinged his mouthparts and gaped a threat at the tiny human who had invaded his domain.

Feroza pulled her legs and arms under her, making herself small, willing the Dragons to forget about her. They were just animals, after all, with no instincts regarding organisms like her. Her human outline should make no impact on their awareness, but if a Dragon decided to sample a bite of her environment suit…

Deal with that later. For now, she had more pressing concerns, such as breathing. Feroza could switch out her oxygen tank for the emergency spare, but that wouldn't give her enough time to fly back to the base. Even if she wouldn't be arrested there. Even if she could persuade Toledo to mind-rape one of these animals again.

She turned her head, daring a glance at the human body still glued to the back of the male. He was still there, still unconscious.

In the same way she was aware of the Earth, hurtling through space two billion kilometers away, Feroza knew that if she cannibalized Victor Toledo's suit, she would gain oxygen and electricity enough to keep her alive for another day. That was what the Dragons would do, were they in her position: reclaim the resources necessary to survival. It was what a tiger, if there were any tigers left alive on polluted, overpopulated Earth. But Feroza was a woman, not an animal, and she was not capable of murder, even to save her own life. She turned her attention from Toledo to the Dragons.

Feroza could almost see the question passing between the two animals: What could this thing be?

The father's head drew closer. Factors decoupled under the lenses of his eyes. Sheets of metal pulled back to expose the clamps, spikes, and torches of his feeding apparatus. Perhaps it will taste good.

The mother slithered between Feroza and the sleeping young. Or perhaps it is a threat.

The blunt tube of her flamethrower clicked into position. Liquid dribbled onto the rusted floor of the hangar-nest, where it boiled into vapor.

A warning flickered in Feroza's visor: oxygen. Exactly what she needed. And exactly what she knew how to request.

Feroza triggered the distress signal again and held her hands up before the mouth of the serpent.