Petrolea 2a

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Chapter 2

Consciousness came to Dr. Feroza Merchant like a hammer between the eyes.

Not a big hammer. More like one the little ones that upholsterers used.

Ting ting ting ting. And the sofa had a new pattern.

She opened her eyes. Focused on the blinking hazard lights in her visor.

Ting ting ting low oxygen.

Feroza tried to move and found that she couldn’t. The arms and legs of her spacesuit were welded into the fuselage of the Dragon. Toledo had done that, she remembered, hacking the somatic processor that controlled the way the factors built and maintained the mechanoid’s body, trying to grow a cockpit around them. Apparently he hadn’t gotten far before the acceleration had knocked him out, but that was better than being knocked off the Dragon entirely.

Feroza imagined Toledo tumbling through the nitrogen/methane atmosphere of Titan, screaming until he hit the ground or another Dragon snatched him in its jaws. She tried to enjoy the image and couldn’t. Contemplating his death wasn’t as satisfying when it was his skills that would keep her alive.

Ting ting ting.

Feroza twisted as much as she could. She couldn’t see much of Toledo, only that he was there behind her, welded to the Dragon’s fuselage just as she was. A few system messages directed into her microphone confirmed he was still alive, although unconscious. No doubt he had more oxygen in his tanks than she, and had no alarms to awaken him.

Ting ting.

She almost gave the radio call to summon her Punisher before she remembered.

She had captured its mother herself, watched with wonder as the aquiline creature had opened her abdominal cavity to discharge a gleaming collection of machine parts, as intricate and beautiful as the inside of a pocket-watch. The mother Punisher’s own factor swarm had split itself in two to seize those parts and assemble them into a new home and factory: the body of a baby mechanoid.

Now Feroza’s Punisher was dead, its armature abandoned to the scavengers of the jungle, its factor swarm stolen and assimilated into the Dragon under her.

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