I can’t lift it. I can barely move it.
She hurried over to the supply shed and grabbed her rescue sled, designed for dragging injured miners to safety, and placed it beside the creature. Getting him onto the sled was the hardest thing she’d ever done.
She rolled him first, using his own body weight to help shift position. The scales were cold and smooth under her gloves, and up close she could smell something strange—spice and copper and something else, something that made her think of lightning storms over open water.
The wings were the real problem. They kept getting in the way, tangling with the debris field, and catching on ice outcroppings. She had to fold them carefully against the creature’s back, trying not to cause more damage to the already-injured one.
“Come on. Work with me here,” she muttered.
She finally got his torso onto the sled, and part of his legs. He was simply too big for his entire body to fit. The lower part of his legs and his tail—he had an actual tail, covered in flexible spines—dragged behind, but it was the best she could do.
She grabbed the tow strap and started walking as the storm descended.
It was like dragging a small vehicle. The icy surface helped, but it couldn’t eliminate all the resistance, and every gust of wind threatened to tear the sled from her grip. Her muscles burned. Her lungs burned. The thermal suit couldn’t keep up with the energy she was expending, and she felt sweat freezing against her skin despite the heating elements.
Fifty meters to the habitat. I can do this.
The creature stirred, and her heart nearly stopped. She tightened her grip on the tow strap and kept moving, her eyes fixed on the distant shape of her habitat through the swirling ice. If he woke up now… If he decided she was a threat…
He didn’t wake. The movement must have been reflexive, maybe a response to being jostled. But his breathing had changed, become slightly more regular, slightly deeper. Somewhere in his unconscious mind, he knew he was being helped.
Or he’s dreaming about eating me.
Forty meters. Thirty. The wind was howling now, gusting hard enough to lift ice particles and fling them like projectiles. One struck her faceplate hard enough to leave a scratch.
Twenty meters. Fifteen.
The outer door was still open, and the airlock beyond was lit by red emergency lighting. She could see her boot prints in the ice leading towards it, already filling with new snow.
Ten meters. Five.
She hauled the sled through the outer door and slammed it shut behind her. The wind cut off mid-howl, leaving only the sound of her own ragged breathing and the creature’s shallow respiration.
I’m probably an absolute idiot, but I made it.
She managed to wedge her way past him and open the inner door. The frame complained about the additional mass as she dragged the sled through the inner door, the damaged structure protesting this new indignity, but she got it into the main living space and then collapsed against the wall as the door hissed closed.
Every muscle ached. Her hands were shaking from cold and exhaustion. Her helmet display was flashing warnings about thermal efficiency and oxygen reserves. But she was alive. And so was the creature.
The storm hit full force maybe thirty seconds later. She could hear it through the walls—a roaring fury that made the earlier winds seem gentle by comparison. The habitat shuddered and groaned, its damaged structure protesting the assault, but the seals held and everything else could wait.
She looked at the unconscious creature on her floor and tried to figure out what the hell she was supposed to do next.
Treat the injuries. Stabilize the patient. Then worry about everything else.
She started pulling off her suit, her hands moving automatically through the familiar motions while her mind raced. She had a basic medical kit, but it was designed for human injuries. She had no idea how to treat a wound on something that had scales instead of skin, let alone wings and blood that ran almost black.
Figure it out. Improvise. Adapt.
The fragment in its side was the most pressing concern. She’d have to extract it, stop the bleeding, and hope to hell that his biology was similar enough to human that her medical supplies would actually work.
She grabbed her kit and knelt beside the creature.
Up close, in proper lighting, he was even more impossible than he had seemed outside. The scales weren’t just decorative—they were arranged in overlapping patterns that clearly served as armor, thicker over vital areas and thinner at the joints for mobility. The wings, now that she could see them properly, were structured like enormous bat wings, with thin membranes stretched between elongated bones.
His face was almost human with a strong jaw, prominent brow, and high cheekbones, but the features were too angular and the proportions subtly wrong. And there were small horns sweeping back from his temples.
Dragon.