Petrolea spread under them, a cloth of black silk embroidered in silver, gray, and red. Windmill leaves churned beyond the wings of the Dragon they rode, creatures walked and flew and attacked each other. Victor made a nauseated swallowing noise and his arms tightened around her waist.
"If you don't like the view," Feroza told him, "don't look."
Their mount flew with outspread wings, feather-like control surfaces splayed. Every few minutes, the long body would clench and surge upward with a burst from its jet engines.
"Can't we make this thing go any faster?" asked Victor.
"You know exactly how fast we can go," Feroza said. This trip to Xanadu might well kill the mother Dragon and, by extension, the two Dragonlets that remained in the hangar. Perhaps, Feroza allowed herself to think, there would be time to help the mother Dragon after they had arrived at Xanadu Base. And she, Feroza, had left it.
"How many people do you think made it back from the jungle?" asked Victor.
Feroza winced. "Most, I hope. We are all trained in wilderness survival and we had enough oxygen to walk back, I made sure of that. But once you brought that harvester into the jungle and attracted all those large predators..."
"Why?" asked Victor. "I wasn't the first person to drive a harvester into the jungle."
"You were, however, the first to do so without any support from the biologists and our tame mechanoids to drive away the wildlife," said Feroza. "Wildlife which has been growing steadily more aggressive since we've begun intruding into their habitat."
Victor nodded grimly. "I had to overwrite the Dragons' perceptions of us again this morning, did you know? This 'eat humans' command springs up whenever they look at us."
"We are covered in slabs of delicious raw materials." Feroza patted the thigh of her suit. "It should be no surprise when mechanoids target human equipment. We've been tracking that behavioral change since almost the beginning. Adopting ever-more expensive countermeasures."
"We engineers always thought you were exaggerating about that."
"I trust you understand better now," said Feroza dryly. "Perhaps we should have taken more of you on field trips like this one." Well, perhaps not exactly like this one. Feroza could hardly expect to individually seduce the entire staff of Xanadu Base.
Is that what she had done? Was seduction even possible when the seductee all but melts into a puddle of willing ardor at the mere sight of one's face? Feroza smirked, remembering the blush that had pinked his face under the stubble on his cheeks and head. Victor had resembled a pink-fleshed kiwi with a nose.
Still, whatever animal instincts that had put them both in such need of release, Feroza couldn't think of a single other person at the base who would have made a more enjoyable partner than the eager and unexpectedly skilled Victor. Which would make her certain arrest at Xanadu Base that much worse.
Below them, flying creatures congregated around the column of an enormous Rocket-seed, a bigger flock than Feroza had ever seen. And there...she squinted and the visor of her helmet zoomed in on the direction of her gaze.
Odd. Three Leviathans flying together. That shouldn't happen; there was no concentration of food on Titan high enough to support more than one of the massive mechanoids. And yet there they were, great articulated paddles flapping along their sides, proboscises coiled, skimming over the jungle like segmented metal zeppelins. Also odd that they were heading in the same direction as Feroza and Victor, toward Xanadu Base.
"Don't worry about what happens when we get back," Victor said, who had not been distracted by the wildlife. "Even if." He swallowed. "Even if nobody else has made it back, I'll tell them that what happened in the jungle was an accident. A natural disaster. They happen on Earth, too."
Feroza watched the Leviathans. Flying mechanoids sported like dolphins around the colossal scavengers, jetting around their patiently beating air-paddles, cork-screwing around each other as if in anticipation of a coming feast.
"Why do you think Al-Onazy will believe you?"
"Huh?"
"Look at it from his perspective," Feroza said. "The most outspoken member of a faction of environmentalists is one of only two survivors of a deadly and extremely expensive fiasco. The other survivor is someone who knows how to control mechanoids and make them, for example kill everyone else."
"Never! That would be..." Victor sputtered, "evil. Al-Onazy can't think you'd kill people!"
"Al-Onazy might very well have lost two thirds of his workforce. We know he lost his precious harvester. I've accomplished exactly my stated purpose: stop human exploitation of Petrolea." Feroza stared into the distance, where the cleared land was already visible. An ugly scar in the forest perpetrated by people like Victor. "Al-Onazy will need someone to blame."
"I'll tell them it was my mistake that got everyone killed. You don't have to be punished for all this…" Victor's gloved hands shifted over her armored waist. "All of Petrolea."
"Someone must atone," said Feroza. "Why not me?"
"Atone?" Victor repeated as if searching his mental dictionary. "Why?"
"Why? We slaughtered a family of Dragons to give ourselves a place to have sex."
"Asu!" He said, "You and your guilt! No pleasure without pain, hey? What are you, a nun?"
"And you are a chimpanzee," she said, "or a spoiled child. Never considering the consequences — "
"And what would be the consequences of you dying alone in the woods, huh? Is there some karmic scale here you think you're balancing?"
"Not karma," said Feroza, "martyrdom. Maybe my incarceration will send a message."
"What message? In God's name, animals on this planet literally have gasoline for blood. People won't stay away from Titan even if one of those Leviathans eats Xanadu Base!"
They swooped over the line of logging, nothing below them but methane streams running between broken debris and self-assembler weeds.
Feroza remembered the speech she had prepared for the strike's last stand. How grand she had thought herself, how noble and self-sacrificing. Except she had sacrificed everything except herself. Her life stretched before her, cold and lonely as the greasy wasteland below.
Victor stayed silent until the habitat was in sight. "Look," he said. "I'm...not happy about how we met each other, but what happened after that...I am glad to know you." He patted her, gloves thumping against the belly of her suit.
Feroza didn't answer. She stared, dry-eyed and thin-lipped at the dome and tower of Xanadu base in the center of a broad circle of chewed-up battleground.
"What on Earth?" she squinted. Commanded her visor to enhance the image.
And saw the full magnitude of the disaster before them.
The enormous mechanoid squatted atop the remains of Xanadu base like a vulture on the carcass of an elephant. Its huge wings were folded, its proboscis flexed, wormlike, through a crack in the dome. Even from here, Feroza could see the white smear of the habitat's outgassed and frozen air.
"Victor," she said, "turn us around."
"What?" he said, "I don't…I can't — "
"Turn us around!" Feedback squealed against Feroza's scream as the feeding tube curved up, turned. Cage-like teeth spread and a red searchlight stabbed up at the clouds.
Across all the meters of murky frigid air, Feroza felt the weight of the Leviathan's regard.