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Titan

By Sovandar

This work contains swearing, transformation, science, character development and other things that could put some readers off, but you're probably here for the sex (see below), which I should point out isn't millipede sex.

There are contained within graphic depictions of some very gay, utterly homosexual sex, being intercourse between two male men and/or dragons (see above, but don't get trapped in an infinite recursive loop - I hate it when that happens). Hence, please make sure you're of legal age in your area, and if you're not, you shouldn't be reading it, and may this sentence strike utter TERROR into your underage heart, which is a necessary but regrettable step in order to SAVE you from CORRUPTION! RUN, YOU FOOL!

Right, that's the minors gone.

No copying without permission lest the wrath of the great god Copyrictus strike you down, all characters are fictional, no resemblances intended, and now on with the show, which really, really isn't millipede sex. Honest. Totally not.

No, really, I mean it - none at all.

* * *

"TITAN, [tahyt-n], -noun

1 Greek mythology; refers to any of the sons of Uranus and Gaea; daughters are TITANESS.

2 Greek mythology; in reference to the sun god Helios, also known as the TITAN

3 Lowercase; refers to a person, being, or entity of significant size or influence, e.g. 'the local team is a titan of sports'

4 - Rocket; codename of a US Military ICBM launch system designed in the 1950s, adapted as a space launch vehicle, and retired in the mid 2000s

5 Astronomy, refers to the moon of Saturn

6 - Event; in history, reference to the first contact event of 2263 (see First Contact)

7 - Situation; Slang, reference to a life-threatening situation, esp. if survivors are not expected; derived from the Titan Event (above)..."

_ -Free Saturn Colonial Dictionary, 2280 centennial edition_

The surface of Titan was deceptively earth-like, if you looked at a monochrome photograph. There were rocks; rivers; streams; lakes and oceans; clouds; rain; thunder and lightning.

Looking at it in person broke the illusion.

The sun, millions of miles distant, was barely more than a bright star in the sky from the massive Titan-orbiting Chronos Station. Since Titan's sky was always clouded over more thoroughly than any sky of Earth could have hoped to be, the sun's feeble light never reached the surface; everything was pitch dark. The rain was made from droplets of liquid methane streaked with a random mish-mash of hydrocarbon grime. This dirty rain fell constantly to feed the lakes and streams, and slowly bury anything left in the open in a thick hydrocarbon sludge.

The colours were wrong as well; the dark purplish and greenish hydrocarbon slush contrasted with the bright dirty-white of the few exposed rocks, which were in fact made of water frozen to ice in temperatures of 94 Kelvin - over a hundred and fifty degrees below zero on the Celsius scale. Even through a thickly insulated spacesuit, with suit heaters straining at their maximum setting, the cold was penetrating. Stays outside of more than an hour risked frostbite.

But for a young, freshly graduated chemical engineer like David Reynolds, it could almost be considered a professional paradise. Organic molecules layered the ground, and could be turned through the wonders of technology into almost anything - valuable spaceship parts, textiles, foodstuffs, plastics, polymers; the list was unbounded. Titan was a goldmine for the space age, and was the closest mankind yet had to a self-sustaining colony.

The only thing it lacked was metal; the continual rain rapidly buried any useful veins they uncovered. But, thankfully, metal wasn't something that was needed in large quantities, with advanced plastics taking up the slack. Any metal they needed for wiring, they imported from nearby moons.

The Saturn system itself was self-sustaining, and these days politically independent, after Earth's fall. A supervolcanic eruption at Yellowstone Park in the United States had laid waste to much of the Earth, ending its political tyranny over the distant colonies. There was no single body that could replace the cradle of humanity; the colonies lacked the ability to project military power against their rivals.

With Earth's population reduced to a few million, there were - by the latest estimates - only fifty thousand people living offworld, and over half of those were in Lunar Alpha, the city on Earth's moon established by the United Nations nearly two hundred years ago. Saturn and Jupiter held around ten thousand each, and were expanding; Mars another three thousand; with the remainder mining asteroids, establishing small outposts on Mercury or in Venusian orbit, or trying - unsuccessfully so far - to colonise the moons of Uranus and Neptune.

It was far from impossible that one of the colonial groups could yet seize power if they could develop their manufacturing base, and that was why the multitude of small mining outposts scattered across Titan's surface were so vital for the raw materials.

The outpost David shared with two colleagues - Reginald Brook and Anna Stakhanov - was Titan Organo-mineral Exploitation Centre 224, usually abbreviated to TOEC-224; 224 was the number that showed that their little habitat was the 224th to be constructed here.

The site was at the edge of the region known as Xanadu, and had originally been chosen due to its proximity to a 'statistically probable high value area' - a fancy way of saying, there was something there that someone might want to look at.

Specifically, it was only a hundred or so metres from a 'Tsar' - a TSA, or Titan Subsurface Anomaly, one of thousands scattered across the vast moon. Only a handful had ever been examined closely, and almost all were totally uninteresting.

This one was believed to be a deposit of metal-rich bedrock when first detected with ground-penetrating radar. Simple economic truth had dictated that it was not worth exploiting at its size and depth, for the moment; lone asteroids could provide megatons of metals at a fraction of the cost of planetary mining.

Another thing that lowered the cost of the operations was forcing young students studying more or less anything scientific to go down to the Titan Outposts for 'practical experience'. That was a fancy way of justifying paying an insultingly low wage for one of the most routine, boring, and lonely jobs in the Saturn system. It was supposed to be a favour to the newcomers on the career ladder.

The three-month internship had gone two-thirds of the way through without incident. But today, something had gone spectacularly wrong.

At 11:33am Saturnian Standard Hours, their habitat's thermal imaging sensors had detected what appeared to be a forming geyser not far from the Tsar. Methane geysers were quite common in Xanadu, but this was composed of steam and water vapour; an unprecedented find that suggested something very hot below the surface.

They had called Chronos Station in some excitement to report in, and to their surprise had been asked to call back at a better time; there was some sort of emergency situation going on at the moment.

That was enough of a concern in itself, but only minutes later they had a more immediate worry. A titanquake struck - the moon's surface rippled and shook violently, hard enough to cause their partly-submerged habitat to begin leaking air like a sieve. Almost simultaneously, they lost contact with Chronos as a large electromagnetic pulse - EMP - hit, scrambling their central computers irreparably, knocking most of their electronics offline, and fusing their main antenna.

The repairs had taken nearly an hour before they managed to patch their home up, and start cracking water to release breathable oxygen to replace the lost atmosphere.

The habitats had been built to last; manual operation of key systems, including life support, was entirely possible, albeit time-consuming. Most of their lower-tech gadgets still worked, with a little twiddling, even if their main computer wouldn't work without a total overhaul.

They were supposed to report in to Chronos Station every few hours; their silence would prompt a rescue. If it didn't, they had a functional emergency rocket that could carry the three of them back into a moderately stable orbit for easy pick-up; under manual control it would be a bumpy ride, but possible.

It was when Reginald - Reg to his friends - had donned his spacesuit and left the habitat to check the rocket was still usable that he had noticed something outside. Where the Tsar had been was now a large crater in the ice, with evidence of some quite violent excavations around it.

Whatever was going on, that must be related, and Reg was convinced it was worth investigating. David, more hesitant, had reluctantly agreed. Anna was dead set against it, deeming it too dangerous without any contact with Chronos Station. She was overruled, though, and so had opted to stay behind and keep in radio contact from a distance using their short-range radio headsets.

So that was how it was that David was walking slowly and stiffly a few paces behind Reg, going towards the mysterious crater that had appeared as if from nowhere.

"It looks like the material was vaporised and ejected by something below the surface. Whatever caused the geyser, I expect", crackled Reg's voice on the radio headset. "But I don't know what would cause heat like that out here."

"A meteor, maybe? Chronos did say there was an emergency", David pointed out.

"No, they'd have warned us if we had incoming ballistics", replied Reg.

"Meteors don't cause EMP, guys", interjected Anna's voice, less clearly.

David nodded - a futile gesture, with Reg looking ahead and Anna unable to see him. "Too right. Maybe..." he paused, as Reg reached the rim of the crater. "...what do you see, Reg?"

Reg was silent and still for a long moment, as David closed the distance between them. As David reached the crater rim and looked down inside it, he gasped; the image now was unmistakeable.

About sixty feet down, through a steep-sided hole that seemed to have been neatly bored through the solid ice, was something glinting. At first, David couldn't quite make it out - a hazy mist hung languidly in the bottom ten or so feet of the shaft, obscuring much of what lay beneath. He could see movement, a lot of it, like looking into a box filled with maggots writhing.

It took him a few seconds to realise that he was looking at a pool of boiling methane; the rain falling from the air was being boiled on contact with something warm, then re-condensing to mist. Below the roiling surface was something clearly made of metal.

He could make out what seemed to be a twenty-foot wide section of what could only be an artificial construct, the metal hull of a buried habitat perhaps, or maybe even a spacecraft. He could see no obvious signs of damage to the exterior - but he could make out the outline of a door, nearly fifteen feet wide, still half-buried in the ice. Rather less exciting, though, was the alien outline of some kind of weapon, turret-mounted, that was slowly swivelling around. It was just about possible that it was just moving under its own weight, now that it was freed from its icy prison; but he was afraid it was active, and searching for something to shoot.

Reg backed away slowly, as did David, until the crater rim was between them and the weapon.

"Guys? What do you see?" Anna's disembodied voice asked, making them both jump.

"My God... it's... it must be alien tech! I've never seen a weapon like that, and to be buried that deep in the ice, it must have been there for... what, five, six thousand years?!" David rushed out, words almost tripping over each other as they left his mouth.

"Weapon?!"

"Maybe not", Reg interrupted. "There was something rotating on a swivel-mount, probably automatic, but it could have been some sort of radar just as easily. Okay, thermal images show the... object is about 130 Kelvin, so it's a good forty degrees warmer than its surroundings. Something's active down there."

"Active?!" Anna exclaimed, still taking it all in. "This is incredible - but really, seriously dangerous! If that thing's got some sort of automated defence system, who knows what it will do?"

"I wonder..." mused David, aloud.

Reg turned to him. "Wonder what?"

"Maybe this is connected. Chronos said they had some sort of emergency; this thing starts to heat up - we saw steam coming from below ground so it could have just been heating to free itself from the ice - and when it's free, and if that is a weapon, maybe the crater is because..."

"..because it shot at something?" finished Anna.

"But what?" asked Reg.

"Who knows? Hopefully..."

"Oh my God - Chronos stopped responding after the quake. Maybe it's not our equipment that didn't work, maybe it was theirs! What if this thing shot at them!?" shouted Anna, suddenly panicked.

"Calm down, Anna!" shouted Reg. "We know our equipment failed because of some sort of EMP - which might be that weapon's effect, or something. A rail gun, maybe, something using electromagnetism?"

David shook his head. "We've got nothing to go on. We can't even be sure it's not something that was deliberately buried quite recently, something built by humans. An old Earth military ship, maybe?"

"This Tsar was flagged over a century ago, before Yellowstone, when Earth was in charge. They wouldn't have flagged one of their own installations, surely?" asked Reg.

"They might - mistakes happen. Different agencies would have handled placements and surveys."

Reg paused for a long moment, deep in thought. Then he shivered. "Damn, it's cold out here. Let's get back indoors; that thing doesn't look like it'll go anywhere without warning."

They trudged back to the habitat.

* * *

Their discussion was long and aimless, wandering in circles, before they overcame their mutual shock enough to get the necessary work done. Between them they managed to use nothing fancier than wires and a few spare fuel cells to make a powerful transmitter, with which they began broadcasting a simple repeating signal in Morse code: SOS, still the universal distress call. If that didn't bring a squad from Chronos running, it would soon have manned vehicles from their nearest neighbours coming to help - but in the rugged terrain, the hundreds of miles distance would take a day or two to cover, at least.

The argument quickly degenerated in expressions of personal opinion - all mutually exclusive - and thus devolved into an argument. David was curious, but scared of making a mistake and dying, or fluffing up on first contact with alien life. He wanted it to be taken out of their hands as soon as possible, and left to the experts.

Reg was all for going it solo - as the people who made first contact, they would be famous, immortalised. He saw any risk as acceptable, and was convinced he would regret it for the rest of his life if he didn't do more.

Anna was overtly scared; she didn't want to be in an unprecedented situation at all. She worried almost to excess about possible contamination, and fixated on the possibility that the alien object might be hostile.

The transmitter's construction was punctuated by terse and entirely professional comments, but none of their usual chit-chat or banter. They sat afterwards in silence, with inaction being preferable to doing anything that would restart the argument. From the practical experience of ten generations in their isolated position, they knew that they could not afford not to get along - that instinct, drummed into them through long hours of training, even overrode the fear of making a mess of first contact.

But Reg was nothing if not charismatic, and the slightly shy David had little to defend against the relentless barrage of arguments and counter-arguments that Reg threw at him. Overruling Anna again - much to her disgust - they agreed on a compromise: Reg could at least go to photograph the anomaly, immortalise himself a very little, but David and Anna would stay behind and wait.

He had been gone all of two minutes - barely enough time to get to the edge of the crater - before a radioed yell of surprise had both Anna and David jumping out of their skins.

"Shit, Reg! What the hell was that?!" asked David, heart hammering in shock. Anna looked on in concern.

"Jesus H. Christ, you guys are not gonna believe this!" Reg replied, his voice somewhat staccato and overlaid with unidentifiable thumps and bangs.

"Won't believe what?" asked David, suddenly dreading the answer.

"There's a fucking alien out here! A great big, millipede thing, covered in ice!"

"Shit, run! Get back inside!"

"No, you don't understand - it's lying in the bottom of the crater. It's not moving, I think it's hurt. I brought a rope, just in case; I'm going down to have a look."

Anna yelled into her own headset, "Reg, don't you dare! This is way over our heads! What if it's a trap?"

"Christ, Anna, we're an unarmed mining post! What the hell could it want or need to lay traps for? It's not like we could stop it", rebuked Reg.

Anna stared at David in open-mouthed astonishment for a moment before replying angrily. "Why the hell did you say that?! If it's listening, it knows now!"

"For heaven's sake, I'm not going to abandon it out here to freeze to death, no matter what it looks like. Besides, I'd rather take the risk of helping it, than finding we should have helped after it's too late."

David nodded, reluctantly. "Do it." He turned to Anna. "He's right, Anna. Our actions now might end up being a reflection of humanity as a whole. We owe it to..."

Anna made a lunge for him, snatching his headset off. David was too startled to respond for a moment, as Anna shouted, six inches from his face, "Good God, listen to yourself. Who the fuck appointed you overlord of the bloody human race?!"

David recovered his composure and rounded on her angrily. "Don't you tell me what I can and can't say, you stupid bitch! Right now, we're the only ones who *can* make any decisions, and if I'd rather go down in history as someone who tried for the best, not someone who ran and hid like a fucking coward!"

"Damn it to hell, you have no right to decide what risks *I* have the right to take!" Anna yelled back.

There was a long pause, and they both avoided eye contact, suddenly ashamed at themselves.

Anna was the first to offer the olive branch. "I'm sorry. That was uncalled for. I think we both have some valid points, even if the stress is talking instead of our heads."

David sighed, absurdly relieved that he didn't have to capitulate first. "I'm sorry, too. I didn't really mean it. But... I do agree with Reg. If the rescue team arrives and says the alien died, but we could have helped it... I mean, what do we do then? I'm not sure I could stand that."

Anna badly suppressed a sneer. "I'd survive." Then she thought for a long moment, and then sighed. "Yeah - I'd feel bad afterwards if the EMP turned out to have an innocent explanation. But for the record, I still think it's hostile, and this isn't going to end up with it and us all alive."

David nodded dismissively, carefully untangled his headset radio from the folds of the loose black jumper he wore, and put it back on his head.

"Sorry about that, Reg. What's the situation your end?"

There was a long pause, and David felt a moment of panic rising. "Reg?" he asked, louder. "Reg?"

"Damn, keep your hair on!" said Reg, sounding rather out of breath. "I'm a little busy out here!"

"What's the situation?" David repeated, taking a deep breath to calm himself.

"I was right; this thing's out cold. I'm just climbing back out of the crater with the alien. I'll be inside in a few minutes."

"Right, th... wait, *with* the alien?!" David did a double-take.

"Yes, for heaven's sake. I can't exactly do first aid on a fucking alien that's knee-deep in a puddle of boiling methane! Meet me in the medical bay; we'll see if we can work something out."

Anna almost exploded. "Holy shit, Reg, are you completely insane? What if it's got some disease? What if *we* give *it* some disease? We don't have a clue what we're doing, you could get us all killed!"

David was speaking over her before she finished. "Reg, stop! We have no idea if it can survive in an oxygen atmosphere! This could kill it completely! What if it's made of phosphorous or something? It might explode just by bringing it in here!"

"Jesus Christ, you two, one at a damned time!" said Reg, cutting them both off. "Forget the movies; for parasites or diseases to cross the species barrier, they have to be closely related. This is a fucking *alien* - the odds are zero. Near enough. And we don't know that Titan's atmosphere won't kill it, either, if we *don't* bring it in. It's either try this or we give up now."

"Give up, then! This is stupid! What the hell do you expect will change by bringing it in here?!" shouted Anna.

"Reg, we can't afford the risks! This is first contact - let's do what we can, but let's not make ourselves look like morons!" added David.

Reg didn't answer; the only sound was his heavy breathing.

Anna snatched her headset off. "My god, I've got to stop him before he brings that thing in here!"

David stood up. "Wait, Anna..."

She was already off at a run. "No time! I'll only just have time to suit up before he gets to the airlock! Did I leave my suit behind the living quarters? That's the wrong way... shit, shit, shit!"

"Anna, you won't have time! He'll be in before you've even got the pressure suit layers sealed!"

Anna ignored him. Reg didn't. "Look, disagreements aside, Dave, you know I'm right. We can always suit up so we don't have any cross-species contact, just in case. Besides... this thing's got some sort of personal force-field."

David was startled. "It's what?"

"It's got a space-suit on of some kind, covered in ice and grime, and about an inch away from that it's got some kind of invisible barrier. It's totally solid. I can't get through with my bare hands, certainly, and I don't see what sort of contamination would get past it either."

"Reg, not only is it plain dumb to second-guess what super-advanced tech that thing has, if we can't even touch it, it's even less likely we can help!"

"Got to try, though. Anyway, get the bay ready - I'm almost at the door."

David shook his head, but ran to the medical bay anyway.

* * *

"Which way are you coming in, Reg?"

"The garage is closest, and we can make sure it's sterile much easier than the living area."

"Good thinking, for once."

Reg didn't rise to the bait. "Is the bay ready?"

"Yes", replied David, "I've just checked it over. I'm not sure what will help any further, but..."

"Right, hang on."

The airlock leading from the medical bay into the small garage started to cycle.

"Shit, Reg, no! I'm still in here, I've not got my suit..." David began, making a sudden dash towards the other exit from the bay, leading to the living area. Too late.

The garage airlock cycled, and swung open. Reg stepped in, hunched forward, carrying the alien creature over his shoulder. "Right, here... oh, shit!" He exclaimed as he saw his comrade standing there, dressed only in a T-Shirt, jumper, jeans, and slip-on shoes. "Geez, Dave, sorry, I didn't realise... Why did you say you were ready?"

David looked at the control to cycle the living quarters' airlock, his hand hovering above it. If he ran now, he would *probably* be okay; any unknown parasites carried by the alien probably couldn't diffuse across the medical bay so quickly, two seconds or so after it entered.

Probably.

Not good enough. The stakes were too high.

He lowered his hand and sighed despondently. "I said the bay was ready, not me personally." He shrugged. "Shit happens, I guess. We're all strung tighter than piano wire."

He felt anger at Reg's impetuousness bubbling through him, but held it in check; he could get as mad as he wanted later - probably in a months-long stay in quarantine. Stupid, stubborn, fucking idiot.

"Look, Dave, the odds of any contamination that can affect you are just about nil. You should be completely..."

"We'll settle this later", David interrupted. "In the meantime..."

David had some first aid training, but the medical treatment here was only intended as a stopgap; if there was a serious emergency, anyone injured could be kept alive until a dropship from Chronos could deliver them to the state-of-the-art facilities there. That usually meant cryogenically freezing the victim until transport arrived, rather than administering treatment. Reg, a biochemist, might know more theory, but couldn't stand the sight of blood, and knew very little about how to fix a body.

David couldn't have named the location and function of the major organs in a human being, let alone an alien millipede - and that was what it looked like, if you didn't look too closely.

The creature's shape was hard to determine under the coating of hydrocarbon-streaked ice, slowly starting to melt. It was very thin, with a torso only about as round as a human thigh, and circular. Like a millipede, or perhaps a centipede, it had fifteen segmented joints spaced evenly along its length, each one with a pair of legs protruding. Each 'leg' was identical, about eighteen inches long, tipped with something approximating a hand with two opposed 'fingers', pincer-like, but each one with seven joints along it. The creature's head held a rigid circular mouth that turned into a cone as it narrowed into a throat, with six rows of teeth arranged in concentric circles starting at the 'lip'. The mouth faced straight ahead from the body, but the creature's narrow segmentation probably meant it was quite flexible.

As Reg dumped the creature heavily on the padded stretcher, David could see clearly that it must be about ten feet long; it overhung the stretcher by a good three feet or more. But he was more startled to see that it didn't have fifteen pairs of legs; it had fifteen triads of legs. Three to each segment.

Reg followed his gaze, still carefully keeping his spacesuit sealed, and talked through the radio headset. "Definitely not life as we know it, eh? Trilateral symmetry. Complex life on earth is bilateral."

David looked at him, uncomprehendingly, and Reg sighed. "Look in a mirror sometime - the left side of your body is a mirror image of your right side, right? That's bilateral symmetry. It's where nature gets lazy and builds complexity by just doubling up on things. Pretty much every complex life form known to man has a left-right mirror symmetry, because by sheer coincidence the common ancestor of complex life was bilaterally symmetric. This creature is trilaterally symmetric; we don't have the knowledge of genetics to produce something like this artificially. It must have evolved on a planet where its common ancestor had trilateral..." He trailed off; David was looking at him with an expression that clearly said, 'You're babbling'.

"Um, anyway, this is the force-field I mentioned." Reg prodded at the creature. About an inch from it, as he said, his finger hit something solid; it was solid enough that he was able to push and move the creature as he increased his pressure.

The airlock from the living quarters started to cycle, heralding Anna's late arrival. She strode in, clearly angry, and fully suited - then stopped in shock as she saw David, unsuited.

"Oh, my god! David, what the fuck have you done? What were you thinking?!"

David bristled. "I was thinking, 'Why don't I go and put my suit on', when this idiot barges in without warning." He stuck out his thumb to indicate Reg, who had the decency to look sheepish. "But that doesn't matter much right now. Have a look at this thing, and let's see if we can help."

Anna strode over. She was trained as a paramedic, but was a long way short of a qualified doctor. They'd need a xenobiologist for this; Reg was closest as a biochemist, but his expression said that he was clearly out of his depth too.

There was a long pause. "Um, maybe we should scrape some of this ice off? Or thaw it out a bit?" David suggested.

"It's already melting off. There can't be much to get through", Reg pointed out. "It can't have been out there long."

Water was indeed beginning to pool on the water-resistant padding on the stretcher.

"I don't know, I still don't see anything underneath yet..." pondered Anna.

David suddenly had a horrible thought. "Oh, bugger it all! We're all idiots!"

He ran to the wall, and rapidly adjusted the manual thermostat down several full turns of the dial.

"Whoa, Dave, what are you doing? You've killed all the heating in here!" exclaimed Reg in surprise.

"Don't you see? That's not covered in ice - it's *made* of ice. That's its skin melting! Or carapace, or whatever! Geez, this room'll take a while to get below freezing... quick, run outside and grab some rocks; surround it with ice, at least, keep it cool!"

The pair of astronauts stood there in shock for a moment before they dashed to do exactly that.

Within two minutes, the alien was surrounded by foul-smelling, dirt-streaked rocks of water ice, with trails of methane vapour streaming off them as it boiled. The air filters would quickly suck it away, so there was little danger of it catching fire.

They could do little more except debate how clever the creature's force-field must be to let things out - like the water that was dripping off it not long before - but not to let anything in. They skirted briefly with the topic of whether it was alive, and whether it would be possible to tell. They couldn't listen for a heartbeat through the force-field, and if there wasn't one it would tell them exactly nothing about the creature's health.

As the room cooled, they did at least decide to move it across to the ultrasound scanner on the walls; if there was something inside it moving, they reasoned, they would at lest have some clue, and sound might not be blocked by the force-field; light certainly wasn't.

It was Anna who noticed the traces of grit on the wet patch of floor as they were moving the creature. She bent down and examined it.

"What's that, Anna?" asked David, curiously. "Dust?"

"Maybe. Feels like rock..." she pondered, not really listening.

"Where would rock come from?" David asked, a little confused. Titan's water-ice and methane surface was devoid of earth-like rocks.

Reg started to warm the ultrasound machine up to see if it, too, had been damaged by the EMP. "Well, obviously it's from this thing, then."

Anna suddenly jumped as if stung, and tried to snap her fingers - a futile effort through the thick padding of the suit gloves.

"That's it!"

David, who had been leaning forward to look more closely, recoiled as Anna moved rapidly. "Whoa! What's 'it'?"

"Sand!"

Reg looked across at her. "Of course, I should have thought of that!"

David frowned, mystified at the pair. "Sand was worth a 'eureka' moment?"

Anna looked at him with a little disdain. "Oh, come on, you're supposed to be the bloody chemistry expert. We breathe in oxygen, right?"

David rolled his eyes. "Yeah, I think maybe we do."

Anna ignored the sarcasm. "We breathe in oxygen, we use it to burn up hydrocarbons, and release carbon dioxide gas as waste, right?"

"Yeah... oh", said David, as the penny dropped.

"Silicon chemistry is very like carbon chemistry, so there's no reason a lifeform couldn't exist based on silicon, not carbon. It if breathed oxygen, it would burn hydrosilicates..."

"...to form silicon dioxide", finished Reg.

"Silicon dioxide, also known as..." Anna brushed the residue off her gloves. "...sand."

"This is big, David", added Reg. "This is life that can't possibly be related to Earth life; the Panspermia origin theory is either false, or can has purely local implications..."

He jumped slightly as the ultrasound device crackled into life. "Hey, this thing works!" he said. "Let's see what we can see..."

He held the ultrasound scanner up to the creature's force-field, and started twiddling a dial on the scanner unit to focus the picture he was getting.

Suddenly, the alien creature stirred, and they all jumped with fright. It rolled, gently at first, then more violently; then, finally, a leg three down from its head suddenly started making a complex gesture of some sort.

They all moved over towards it. "What's it doing?" asked David.

Anna turned to him crossly. "How in the name of bloody hell should I know?"

Reg turned to her. "You sure you don't want to retreat to a safe distance, you two? I mean, you were worried about it being hostile..."

"Alea iacta est", murmured Anna.

"Huh?"

"Latin. It means 'the die is cast'. Too late to go back", answered David.

Suddenly, a voice sounded loudly in their headsets, over their radios - almost a monotone, it sounded like an artificial composite of a human voice, and they realised that for the first time in human history, they were communicating with an alien being.

"FUCK", it said simply.

They all looked at each other, and there was a long pause. Then Reg said, pleadingly, "Please tell me that our attempt at first contact isn't just to stand here while an alien bug swears at us?"

David simply said, aloud, "Shit", in surprise.

The alien made some more gestures, before the voice sounded again; the emphasis seemed strange, slightly off, inhuman.

"FUCK this SHIT", it said.

Anna turned to David, and hissed in irritation, "For Gods sake, that's even worse!" She jabbed at his chest with her gloved finger. "Our first two-way dialog with aliens is *not* going to be you teaching it swear words!"

David looked abashed. "Sorry, it just slipped out..." Then he paused. "Wait, did it hear me speak, or did it pick up the radio? Or did it, um, know that one already?"

Reg interjected with a smile, addressing the creature. "Gnorts, Mr Alien. Heh, never thought I'd be the one to say it."

Both Anna and David gave him a surprised stare. "What was that?" asked David.

Reg shrugged. "Old joke."

David rolled his eyes as he remembered Reg telling that one. "Oh, the first moon landing."

Reg nodded, and spoke before Anna had a chance to voice her confused question. "Never mind. We'll see if it heard."

More gestures from the alien preceded the radioed words this time. "FUCK this SHIT. Eighth through tenth vertical segments paralysed in fall, survivable. Sonic vibration PAINFUL, must CEASE. Oxygen pressure high, acceptable boundary for short duration. But temperature can MELT WATER. Far too HOT. OVERHEATING. FUCK that SHIT."

Reg cleared his throat, hastily cut the power to the ultrasound machine, and spoke slowly but loudly, as if addressing someone hard of hearing. "Apologies, sir. We have lowered the temperature here, but do you have any advice about what you would prefer?"

More gestures. "FUCK that SHIT. Cool this place DOWN. Do you UNDERSTAND?"

Reg repeated his question, but got no answer. "Guess it doesn't hear me. David, you try."

David tried. "Ahem. Could you inform us what temperature you require, and..." he paused, unsure how to put it politely. "Um, do you have to swear so much?"

"BETTER. Cooperation TOLERABLE. Carbon Dioxide boiling point is PREFERRED. Extends APOLOGIES. I have learned language from PUBLIC BROADCASTS. Statistical analysis indicates EXPLETIVES are VITAL method of communicating URGENCY during hours when YOUNG HUMANS are not present. HYPOTHESIS to this NOT YET MADE. No INSULT intended if this is in ERROR. Will CEASE. THANK you."

Reg chuckled. "Great, it's watched too many movies and thinks we all start swearing after the watershed. That's TV for you." Then he did a double-take. "Wait, carbon dioxide's boiling point? That's, what, minus fifty? Shit, Dave, you can't stay in here if we're lowering the temperature that much."

David shrugged. "If one of you brings me my suit, I can wear it for the heaters. No rush, though; we can't lower the temperature any faster."

"David, your suit's batteries will only work for a day at most, and they take longer than a day to recharge", fretted Anna.

"We can swap over. One in the recharger at all times, one in a spare suit, one in my suit. We'll have spares in the stores, too, just in case."

"What about Oxygen? Your tanks need topping up regularly, and it takes hours to charge a few minutes' worth. We can't carry that on indefinitely."

"Only until the dropships arrive. It probably won't even be that long."

The alien interjected. "PARTIAL detection of SPEECH indicates PROBLEM. COOPERATION mutual. Did not realise would INCOVNENIENCE you by placing temperature BELOW species thermal MINIMUM. Will COMPROMISE at TWO-THIRDS difference of boiling point of AMMONIA and melting point of WATER."

David did some quick mental arithmetic. "That's about -20 centigrade. I can live with that, if I get the suit insulation, without much help from the heaters."

"Not long term, Dave", pointed out Reg.

"Just a few hours. It'll be fine."

"Well, the alien can't hear our radios, and I'm not risking cracking the suit seals in here. Can we go to another room and talk through you, Dave?"

Anna nodded her agreement. David sighed. "I guess. Just make sure you keep in regular touch, okay? I'm not sure I want to be left alone too long with... um..."

"Am no DANGER. Not to YOU. Am HURT. Do not WISH to STAY LONG."

Reg and Anna were already beating a retreat, perhaps a little faster than decorum would normally permit. David dragged a chair across to the alien's bedside.

David turned to the alien. "Um, do you have a name?"

"NAME, no, SERIAL CLASSIFICATION, yes."

"Okay, well, I'm David. What's your... serial classification?"

"TRANSLATION NOT FOUND, number 7882764."

"That's a bit of a mouthful. Can I call you, say, Seven, for simplicity?"

"NO. Use of IMPROPER numerical classification is an INSULT. It DISHONOURS those who have GONE BEFORE."

David held up his hands in supplication. "Okay, how about... Mil?"

"MIL. UNFAMILIAR with classification system for your SPECIES. Please EXPLAIN to ensure no MISUNDERSTANDING is perpetuated."

"It's short for... um, millipede."

"MILLIPEDE. Please EXPLAIN."

"It's a species on our world that is... in some ways, not dissimilar to you."

The creature paused, probably thinking it over. Then, "MIL is therefore ACCEPTABLE for SHORT-TERM contact, DAVID."

"So, Mil, how is it you're speaking to us?"

"Gestures, pheromone signatures, ultrasonic frequencies TRANSLATED by SOFTWARE and relayed according to PARAMETERS defined by exposure to PUBLIC BROADCASTING."

"Yeah, you've mentioned that last part."

"Statistical analysis suggests swearing is useful PROMPT for ACTION and display of human IRRITATION. Action does not APPEAR to have been TAKEN. It is still too FUCKING HOT."

David wasn't sure he could get used to being sworn at by an alien millipede. "Um, there's not much else I can do. We have disengaged our heating systems so the temperature will drop."

"APPRECIATED. Thank YOU. UNDERSTAND that facility is not EQUIPPED for NON-NATIVE LIFE. Still IRRITATED. Life support functions under GREAT STRESS. SURVIVABLE. But barely TOLERABLE."

"Um..." David wasn't sure how to respond to that. Remembering that he was sort-of acting Ambassador of Saturn, he asked, "If you don't mind me asking, why are you here? Did you come to meet... us? You know, humans?"

"NEGATIVE. PURPOSE to seek to apprehend CRIMINAL."

David sat bolt upright. "Um, what?"

"CRIMINAL. FUGITIVE. Has committed many crimes including THEFT, resisting ARREST, and MURDER. Performs UNETHICAL RESEARCH. Has BLASPHEMED..."

"Blasphemed?"

"Has spoken out AGAINST the GOD-EMPEROR. Denied the manifest DIVINITY. Attempted to replicate and SURPASS. This is BLASPHEMEY, HERESY, APOSTACY."

David was mystified as the alien lectured angrily at him. "The who?"

"The GOD-EMPEROR of the EMPIRE OF THE INFINITE SUNS. The ONE TRUE GOD who SHALL BE PRAISED by ALL SPECIES in ALL PLACES for ALL TIME, AS IT WAS WRITTEN."

"What, are we going to be conquered? I only ask because..."

"YES."

David was silent.

"IN TIME all will KNOW OF HIS GLORY. But no IMMEDIATE plans. Your star is strategically WORTHLESS. Too REMOTE. Does not possess relevant TECHNOLOGY. Galactic arm poor in TRANSLATION NOT FOUND. EARTH not deemed relevant on last survey."

"Um, what was that untranslatable part?"

"TRANSLATION NOT FOUND. It is energy that some races may manipulate. It is energy that is inherent to the universe and can be accessed at times and places. It is not found in DEEP SPACE and only accumulates around PLANETS and STARS. Its manipulation might seem to you to be a form of MAGIC. I will use this WORD, which we can TRANSLATE."

"Magic?"

"It is simpler than SUFFICIENTLY ADVANCED TECHNOLOGY. Neither is accurate. But your race KNOWS that the distinction is IRRELEVANT. This has been DETECTED."

"Right... that seems a little much to take in, but we should get back to this criminal roaming around. Is there any danger? Plus, I really hope you're getting all this, guys", said David into his microphone. He paused, waiting for an answer. "Guys?" he repeated.

He stood, feeling a panic rising. "Shit... Mil, if this criminal knows you're here, and that we've got you in here and may be helping you... what would he... she... it... do?"

"UNKNOWN. Signal from damaged police craft WAS NOT PRESENT on AWAKENING. Possible that communications JAMMING is in place. Also possible that CRIMINAL has salvaged wreckage for FRESH POWER SOURCE. Or BOTH."

"Say something useful!" David shouted. "If this criminal knows you're here, would it come here to kill you? *Are we in danger*?!"

The alien was still for a long moment before the gestures began again. "POSSIBLE. UNKNOWN. Did not CONSIDER. INJURED. Makes APOLOGIES. Should have STATED."

"Anna was right! Shit! What do we do?!" David started pacing in agitation. "We've got nothing here, we're civilians! We do mining, not fighting!"

"CALMNESS. Am INJURED. Lower EFFECTIVENESS. But have adequate WEAPON."

"Weapons! Right, that's a good start."

"Have a BOMB device that can be USED. Once ONLY. Is OVERKILL but is EFFECTIVE."

David stared in incredulity. "A bomb?! You could blow the whole fucking habitat back to orbit! This place is delicate!"

"Can extend FORCE SCREENS to CONTAIN blast. Effect limited to this ROOM. Cannot WALK. Too DAMAGED. If ARALHYSS present, must lure to ME."

David was nonplussed. "What's an...? No, wait, before that, do you mean you'll blow yourself up too?"

"Have FAILED to overcome by OTHER MEANS. If HONOURABLE DEATH is necessary then it WILL BE DONE with PRAGMATIC GLADNESS."

He shook his head, but didn't argue. "Right, so what do we - we humans - do? Who or what is Aralhyss? What does he want?"

"Aralhyss is NAME of CRIMINAL. He is of species KNOWN to HUMANS as DRAGON."

"Sorry?"

"DRAGON. References found in Earth LEGEND. Myths formed around PLANETARY SURVEY performed three point six THOUSAND YEARS AGO. Brief CONTACT over GLOBAL AREA. Legends SURVIVED and WIDESPREAD."

David was dying to know more, but this probably wasn't the time for a debate on mythological confluence theories. "Okay, right. Breathes fire, teeth, claws. What does he want?"

"Fire-breathing is MISAPPREHENSION. Can SUMMON fire by MAGIC. May SEEM similar. This world is MAGICALLY DEAD. MAGIC and associated technology will not function without a significant POWER SOURCE."

"You said you think he stole one from your ship? What about the rest of your crew?"

"MISSIONwas given to me ALONE. NO OTHERS. AND YES."

"So, teeth, claws, and still with the fire", David said with irritation. "What does he want?"

"ESCAPE. End PURSUIT. Location here COMPROMISED. May ELIMINATE evidence of presence. May KIDNAP previously unstudied NATIVE SPECIES for EXPERIMENTATION or BREEDING STOCK."

David snapped his fingers suddenly, only half-listening. "The loudspeakers! They should still be working... I should have thought of that!"

He rushed over to the wall, opened an access panel, and started fiddling with the wiring inside. "Bloody manual access panels..." he said, then turned and shouted back over his shoulder. "Our systems were fried by an EMP - was that you or Aralhyss?"

"UNINTENDED consequence of CRASH. Human defences detected MY APPROACH."

"That explains the emergency on Chronos. Um, sorry we shot you down?" David asked, feeling rather inadequately diplomatic right now.

"HUMAN WEAPONS were INADEQUATE but DISTRACTING. Made MISTAKES and failed to EVADE ARALHYSS' WEAPONS. Shockwave from CRASH reached UNSHIELDED HABITAT as EMP. Wide-spectrum radiation levels may have PEAKED."

"Radiation?! You mean we could all be irradiated?!"

"Unsure of DOSAGE or THRESHOLD for SYMPTOMS in your species. Likelihood of permanent damage LOW. But, YES, you COULD."

"Fan-fucking-tastic, that's something else to worry about ..." David muttered, as he patched his radio microphone into the habitat's loudspeakers.

"Reg! Anna! We've got a major emergency! Our millipede's from some sort of alien police; there's a dangerous alien criminal aboard who'll probably kill us all!"

He paused, waiting for a reply, before he remembered this was a loudspeaker. "Um, and he's a dragon, or something like it, including the whole fire breathing thing, and he may want to kidnap us and do illegal experiments. Watch yourselves!"

"ALSO may use MAGIC in OTHER WAYS. Statements only of FIRE BREATH misleading."

"Like what?" David asked.

"ANYTHING may be THEORETICALLY possible with the right TECHNOLOGY and KNOWLEDGE. Assume NOTHING to be BEYOND CONSIDERATION."

"Great," said David, returning to the loudspeaker. "Scratch the fire breath, apparently the damn thing can work miracles however it wants. We need to..."

He stopped, realising that he probably shouldn't announce to the whole habitat, and the possible enemy, that their only hope was to trick him into the medical bay.

"...um, get to the medical bay, *now*!" he finished, instead, and then quickly disconnected the radio from the wall. "God above, I hope they heard that."

"BIMORPHIC species. Will want to CAPTURE."

"Sorry, what? What's bimorphic?"

"Two GENDERS. Most COMMON evolutionary solution to GENE REASSORTMENT and ANALOGUES THEREOF."

David frowned, getting irritated at the alien's habit of not telling him what he needed to know right away. "Which means?"

"Dragons ALSO BIMORPHIC. ARALHYSS is MALE, will want FEMALE."

"Run that by me again?"

"SEXUAL DIMORPHISM of humans is CLEAR. Have identified one FEMALE in this room prior. Aralhyss will WANT FEMALE for BREEDING and RE-PHENOTYPING."

"Run that by me again? A fucking space dragon wants to kidnap Anna for sex?! They're not even the same fucking species!"

"IRRELEVANT. CORRECTIBLE. I was sent because my species requires FOUR genders for REPRODUCTION, or ASEXUAL. My disparity NOT CORRECTIBLE by KNOWN METHODS. Am IMMUNE to RE-PHENOTYPING."

"...what's this re-phenotyping?" said David in confusion, unsure if he was quite understanding.

"RE-PHENOTYPING alters BODY of HOST SPECIES. This TRANSFORMATION is one possible method of DRACONIC reproduction. EXPERIMENTATION may be necessary to determine species compatibility. ARALHYSS does this ILLEGALLY without proper OVERSIGHT. CRIMINAL METHODS in MANY WAYS. Must be STOPPED."

"Dragons reproduce... by assimilating women? Aralhyss is a fucking rapist?!"

"Partial CORRECTION to your statement. FEMALES assimilate MALES as well, precise methods DIFFER but results are the SAME. Hasten to add that SEXUAL REPRODUCTION is preferred between DRAGONS to induce PREGNANCY as normal for most species. That produces PHENOTYPIC STABILITY. TRANSFORMATION introduces PHENOTYPE DEVIATIONS and PHENOTYPE DRIFT and is therefore LONG-TERM INVIABALE in terms of SPECIES SURVIVAL."

"I don't need to know that. What the hell kind of experiments was this guy doing?"

"Information was provided as it is RELEVANT. Research focus was RE-PHENOTYPING for introduction of DESIRABLE TRAITS ONLY from HOST SPECIES. Normally RANDOM and therefore LONG-TERM INVIABLE."

"Right, okay... wait, assuming that's his ship outside that shot at you... that Tsar's been there for what, a hundred years or more? Why haven't we heard anything, or seen anything? Has he been abducting people all the time?"

"PROBABLE that LACK of MAGIC inhibited ability to SURVIVE WHILE CONSCIOUS. HIBERNATION necessary."

"How..."

"DRAGONS eat MAGIC, breathe MAGIC. Absence of MAGIC causes STARVATION and SUFFOCATION."

"But now he's got your power source, he can be active again?"

"Will ESCAPE and make up for LOST TIME."

David's headset suddenly crackled into feeble life.

"-ve? I- arage, bu- -is about a-...-with you now?"

"Reg? Is that you? I can hardly hear you! Come closer, we're being jammed!"

Reg's voice paused a moment, then continued, clearer and stronger. "Dave? Did you say, we're being jammed? I'm coming through the garage now! Where's Anna? Is she with you?"

"No, not yet - she should be by now if she was only in the living quarters! Reg, you have to do something, grab any weapon you can, and make sure Anna gets in here! Our alien says this dragon wants to abduct her!"

"Fucking hell, why?"

"It needs a human female to... experiment on."

Reg didn't waste time being shocked. "I'm on it. Stay right there!"

* * *

Anna heard the announcement over the loudspeakers as she was just fetching David's suit from the storage area.

"What?! David, come in!" She spoke into her radio, speeding her pace up.

No response. "Reg? Do you copy?"

She stepped into the airlock through the living quarters, which was the quickest way back towards David, and cycled it - the door behind her sealed shut, and the door ahead unlocked.

"David? Reg? Please, resp..." she began, as she slid the airlock door open, and then stopped; on the far side stood a creature straight out of mythology.

The dragon - it was unmistakeably a dragon - walked on all four legs, stood about six feet to the shoulder, and was about ten feet long before including half as much again of sinuous tail. Its snout, nearly a foot long, protruded from a head that also bore two fearsome horns and a row of spines forming a crest that ran back along the spinal cord, ending halfway along the tail. A pair of wings hung from its back, folded awkwardly in the relatively confined corridor into the living quarters; they would have been almost bat-like, if not for their eerie translucence that made them almost seem fake as if made of cheap plastic. Muscles, some almost familiar, some quintessentially alien, were defined surprisingly clearly under its dull red scales. The scales on its underbelly were much wider and thicker than the more delicate scales on the rest of the creature's body, and bore a much contrasting creamy-yellow colour to them.

The creature licked its reptilian lips with a long, pointed tongue, and to her astonishment, spoke in clear but slightly accented English, in a tone that she just barely recognised as sardonic.

"Lucky me. You've had a bad day already, and I'm afraid it's all downhill from here". Its slitted, yellowish-green eyes flickered, perhaps with amusement.

A droplet of fluid fell from its jaw, and for a moment she thought it was drooling; but as the droplet bounced and fizzled on the warm floor, she realised that it was a droplet of Titan's rain, liquid methane at -200 centigrade. She noticed that around its feet, more rivulets of Titan's rain were fizzling and hissing away. The creature seemed to be radiating cold, intense and lethal.

With a scream, she dropped David's spacesuit to the floor, and slammed her fist on the 'Emergency Seal' button next to the airlock. A series of compressed air cylinders and coiled springs were instantaneously released, slamming the door shut and sealing it with a resounding bang that knocked her off her feet.

Scrambling back upright, she cycled the airlock rapidly, slid back the other door, and screamed for Reg to help - before, impossibly, she saw the dragon in front of her, again, looking irritated.

"It's no use, you know..." With that, the creature lunged forward, one of its foreclaws outstretched, making a grab for her.

Time seemed to slow down as she launched herself backward, stumbling heavily in the padding of the spacesuit. The creature's head and shoulders, momentarily, were inside the airlock door as it reached for her.

She had what seemed like a terrified eternity to notice the creature was off-balance, where it was standing, and how she might - just possibly - be able to exploit it.

She aimed a kick at its eyes, forcing it to blink and move its head instinctively, and using the momentary delay, she kicked desperately at the other door's Emergency Seal button.

The compressed air charges in the mechanism went off, and slammed the door into the dragon's head and outstretched forelimb with a force of nearly six thousand Newtons.

The door alarm started to sound, warning of an obstruction and possible loss of atmospheric pressure. The dragon, with a loud growl and a sickening snap of bone, crumpled to the ground, barely conscious. Its forelimb had gained a new angle between the shoulder and elbow, clearly broken. Blood started to flow from a wicked tear in the flesh on the side of its head.

She wasted several precious seconds paralysed, unable to think or move, until she belatedly realised that she had a way out. Combined with the sheer force of danger, she was compelled into action again. She wasted another second or so deciding what to do with David's suit - and decided that it would only slow her down, and she couldn't afford that.

Then, she stepped as quickly as she could manage over the prone form of the dragon, and started an ungainly run towards the only other airlock out of the room, through the small set of labs and maintenance workshops. All the while, she was sobbing uncontrollably with fear, and screaming for somebody - anybody - who could help.

She was just arriving at the garage door, wondering absurdly what was keeping everyone else from coming to help, when the airlock cycled moments before she could press the control on her side. She stepped back, suddenly scared that the dragon would somehow, impossibly, have beaten her here and be coming through - but to her instant relief, it was Reg on the other side, clad in his pressure suit with sleeves rolled up. He held a large, heavy monkey wrench in his hand, and had it raised as if ready to strike. His expression was absolutely petrified; he, too, relaxed when he saw Anna.

"Anna! Thank God, we need to get out of here, there's a dragon loose here and it wants to kidnap you..." he trailed off as Anna, sobbing uncontrollably at the sight of a friendly face, threw her arms around him, babbling incomprehensibly about how she was attacked by a dragon, and how it was just there one second, and then somehow beat her to the other side of the airlock she was in, and she knocked it out, and how she just wanted it all to be over.

Reg, out of his depth suddenly trying to comfort the poor woman half-mad with fright, patted her inadequately on the back. "Um, there, there. All safe now. Um, actually, no, sorry, we're not exactly safe, but you're sort of safer, and... um..."

She pushed away from him, startled, as David's voice rang out over the loudspeakers again. "What the hell is taking you two so long?! You have to get in here, now! We have to make a stand here, all together, or we're finished!"

"Quaint. Touching. But three of your kind are no match."

They both turned, jumping inches into the air, as without any fanfare, deafening noises or strange flashes of light, the dragon simply faded into existence - directly between them and the medical bay airlock.

Anna yelled out, pointing, "How?! Its leg! I broke its leg!"

The dragon flexed the powerful forelimb, bearing its sharp teeth in a reptilian grin. "Got better."

Reg, mustering some inner source of bravery he didn't know he had, whispered to Anna. "Put your helmet on, and run to the emergency rocket. Get help. It wants you, I'll delay it."

Anna hesitated, a mixed expression on her face, and stood in momentary indecision. Abandon a friend, or risk...

Reg raised the monkey wrench in both hands above his head, ready to swing. "Run!" he yelled at her, before he himself charged forward. The dragon's gaze was fixed on her, she realised, still ignoring Reg's attack. That made her mind up.

She started scrambling to put the fishbowl helmet over her head, and slide home the catches to seal it shut, as she made another dash towards the personnel airlock that exited the garage. About fifty feet away outside was the emergency rocket; Chronos, if the station was still intact, would detect the launch easily, and a spacecraft could pick her up from orbit. Take her to safety.

She knew, even as she started to run, that this was a decision that would always haunt her for the rest of her life; she could not bring herself to look back to see what had become of Reg - and she realised, with a pang of guilt and desolation, that she had probably seen him alive for the last time.

* * *

David continued to pace in agitation, biting his nails down to the quick. "What's taking them so damned long? What's happening out there?"

"A DRAGON is a PREDATOR. They STALK and TOY with their PREY."

"Let's do a deal", David snapped, "you only speak if you have something useful to say."

"Makes APOLOGIES. Understand CONCERN for FRIENDS, but wish to make to understand that they are likely DEAD or WORSE."

"Worse?!" David exclaimed, not really wanting to know despite himself.

"Powerful MAGIC. Warps and subverts MINDS."

"If it's powerful magic, how can he be doing it out here? I thought you said..."

"DRAGON MAGIC. NATURAL MAGIC. Have already SAID that TRANSFORMATION is a short-term viable REPRODUCTIVE METHOD."

"I don't follow."

"DRAGONS may REPRODUCE with other DRAGONS through intercourse. DRAGONS may REPRODUCE in other ways with other sentient carbon-based bimorphic species. METHOD is the SAME. MAGIC is FOCUSED by EVOLUTION and is HONED to be EFFECTIVE EVEN IN THESE CIRCUMSTANCES. Its POTENCY may be FURTHER focused with CONSCIOUS MAGICAL EFFORT to be SUPERIORto EITHER ALONE."

"You've said this already - that... thing, wants to *rape* Anna. Now, I don't much want to..."

"MENTAL EFFECT first. Makes it WANTED. NECESSARY."

"Huh?"

"Powerful MAGIC. DRAGON secretions contain magically active fractions derived from their OWN LIFE FORCE. EXPOSURE drains the DRAGON of its LIFE in part. PUREST MAGIC in a form EVOLVED to cause DESIRE FOR THE CHANGE, a form of MADNESS. The DRAGON'S SELF is DIMINISHED, but the DRAGON species is made GREATER by ADDITION of NEW BLOOD. CAPACITY for this normally LIMITED by NATURE and by LAW. One of ARALHYSS' crimes is attempting and succeeding to SUBVERT this IMMUTABLE-UNIVERSAL-LAW-AS-WAS-WRITTEN-BY-THE-GOD-EMPEROR-HALLOWED-BE-HIS-NAME."

"I really, really don't want to know this", David said, truthfully, but morbid curiosity got the better of him. "So, he casts some sort of spell, and makes women... um, fall in love with him?"

"LOVE is a HIGHER ORDER EMOTION. NATURE uses only LOWER ORDER EMOTIONAL STATES, more PRIMAL, FEAR, JOY, DESIRE... LUST. USE without CONSENT is a CRIME AGAINST SENTIENCE for which DEATH WILL BE INCURRED."

David was practically hopping up and down in frustration now. "They're still not here! What's going on out there?"

For a moment he was torn between trying to leave and search the place himself, quarantine be damned, and staying here in case he ran into the Dragon alone.

Then he heard the sudden ground-thumping roar of a rocket engine.

He stood stock still as the shaking subsided. Then he shouted out in sudden panic, "Shit! They've gone, and left me behind!"

* * *

Aralhyss's day had started out rather badly. In one of those strange paradoxes that the universe throws up from time to time, he had actually started the day over a hundred and fifty years ago. Earth had been the next stop on his list of previously uncatalogued species that he was carefully collecting and... testing to their limits.

Humans seemed to have more potential than most, although their inherent traits were hardly world-shattering - their value lay in their largely non-magical nature, which reduced the 'noise' in the data; and active sexuality, so they would be easier to work with on a larger scale than most species, more susceptible. They were a dream of a control group.

But he had miscalculated, and to a degree it was understandable; there was no data about magical field strength out here on the far fringes of the galaxy, other than 'low'. His lowest estimate's margin of error was nearly double the actual field strength, and before he had even entered the inner solar system, his ship was running out of power. He knew that if he did not put the ship into a power-conserving state, and put himself into Hibernation so his bodily needs dropped to nil, he would starve long before he could complete his experiments here.

His usual modus operandi was to abduct a number of individuals, either en masse or one at a time, place them in Hibernation, and conduct his experiments out of reach of easy retaliation from the rest of the species. With this miscalculation, he would be lucky if he could manage to retrieve even one safely.

He made a forced landing on this large, quasi-habitable moon, reasoning that humans, in the early days of their space age, would soon come to this world to plunder its resources. Their innate curiosity would drive them to probe his vessel. That, in turn, would awaken him, allow him to take what he needed with little fuss, and make a quick retreat while conserving as much magic as possible. He buried his ship under the ice, and went into Hibernation to wait. He had plenty of time.

He was awakened a matter of hours ago, not by a human exploration team, although one was tantalisingly close by, but by one of his many pursuers. How the thing had managed to locate him, he didn't know; it was something to investigate later.

The hunter was of the crypto-insectoid Xeranthen Hydrophore species, the ice-boned and exoskeleton-bound silicoids that were so popular with the Empire for hunting renegade dragons. Their complex biology and sexual reproduction were too far removed from the galactic average; they were incompatible with much of dragon magic, even though they were in some ways more physically vulnerable than most species.

His ship's automatic defences had rapidly freed the main gun, and shot the craft down. The pilot had managed to bail out, but in one of those little touches of irony that life provides occasionally, had almost killed itself when trying to enter the ship, by falling into the deep pit caused by the gun's projectile leaving the barrel.

So much magic that little craft had held; he consumed it eagerly, conserving some within his ship for the return journey. There was enough that he could afford to throw his metaphorical weight around down here, and still have a little to spare. One re-phenotyped human would do for the initial stages of the experiment; he could leave, and come back later with better preparations. Not ideal, but workable.

He used his magic to displace himself through space, and entered their crude little shelter. His powerful sense of smell analysed the surroundings. Average temperature... three individual humans... two males...

One female. Excellent.

While he was still examining his surroundings, he heard one of the humans - possibly a male, but with their strange, squeaky voices it was hard to tell - give a warning over a non-localised sonic dispersal medium; a loudspeaker.

That had caught him off-guard. The hunter was still alive, and was apparently working with the humans now. That would make a peaceful resolution more... awkward. Some of those he'd ensnared, crushed the minds of, and transformed into his experimental subjects, had been entirely willing. The promise of personal power proved too irresistible for some species' females... and some species' males, too. They were less than ideal; a male dragon, even re-phenotyped, had primal urges - establish dominance, territorial aggression - which made them far harder to maintain control over. Quite apart from which, males were not Aralhyss' type. Contact was purely professional, and even then, bearable only because it was necessary sometimes to... craft a female from substandard raw materials. It was not easy, but within his ability.

Even if males had been more to his taste, it would not have prompted him to behave differently; he needed females for great swathes of his work. In the great game of life, males played only a tangential role to fertilisation and childbirth; there was little to study to solve fertility issues.

It was almost exclusively re-phenotyped females that caused long-term fertility problems, with errors introduced subtly at embryogenesis, enhanced by mismatches in the oestrus cycle and defects in the egg, building up over generations - and those, merely the obvious problems. This was a serious issue, and if some had to be sacrificed for the greater good, so be it; that view was neither unorthodox, nor even illegal to hold, even practice in some places. But Aralhyss had decided long ago that he, and he alone, could further these goals, and so he had turned against his own nature to further his ends.

A dragon's transformative magic drew power directly from the dragon's living essence; its every use drew the ageless being closer to the nearest thing a dragon had to a natural death. Natural fertilisation and childbirth required sacrifice in this way - life for life.

Aralhyss, though, had transformed hundreds of victims - and after each one, recharged his essence by cannibalising the life energy of the dragons he had created, once the experiment he used them for had run its course. Life for life; survival, too, required sacrifice. This did trouble his conscience on occasion; the lesser races were unworthy of consideration, but a dragon was a dragon, however it came into being. But as Aralhyss gave, he also took away, and had long ago numbed his conscience on that as well.

With this probably having been explained to the humans by the Xeranthen, he doubted that soliciting volunteers would work here. In many ways, a pity; Aralhyss did so enjoy a challenge, and if he had time to spare, then he might want to try. But time was not on his side; the Xeranthen would have communicated his location to his superiors.

He would take what he needed by force, and leave before reinforcements arrived. Which was to the good; professionalism aside, it was often more fun that way.

He could hardly believe his luck when the human female walked right through the door in front of him. She was still talking on her radio, oblivious to the powerful jammers his ship had deployed.

She tried to run; he displaced himself again to cut her off, when... he had been too overconfident, and made a mistake. That made him angry, very angry.

When he'd regained consciousness, he had spent precious time and magic on re-sealing the open wound in his head, and re-setting his bones. The healing was painful, which did nothing to calm him.

He had scanned the place thoroughly with his ship's sensors before, and had a rough idea of the layout. They had openly stated that they would congregate in the medical bay. Knowing this, he could take the more tactically sound option: divide and conquer. Cut them off. They left themselves open to this; the female could only access the medical bay from one place in the direction she had fled.

He displaced himself again, sighing at how much magic he'd had to use up on the failures so far, and determined to take a more conservative approach from this point forward.

The female was there again, and with her was one of the males. He, evidently the braver of the two, told her to run for their rocket and escape, honestly thinking that merely lowering his voice would prevent Aralhyss hearing it perfectly. It was like a child, covering its eyes in an attempt to hide itself - humans severely underestimated draconic hearing, and this man was arrogant to think he had the capacity to delay an angry dragon.

The fight was over almost before the female had left the garage. The male swung the heavy wrench at him with impressive violence, connecting with the top of the dragon's skull; but the force he imparted was an order of magnitude less than the augmented airlock door, and bounced from the thick scales. With a deft flick of his right forelimb, Aralhyss sent the wrench flying.

It bounced off the humans' crude surface rover with a loud clatter, and the man was stupid enough to stand there a moment, frozen, watching it as if it might act of its own volition and return to him. With a quick motion from Aralhyss' other claw, he had the man flat on his back on the ground, and with both forelimbs bore his weight down on the abruptly defeated human.

"You have fought impressively, and I respect that. But you do *not* get to survive coming between a dragon and his prey, nor is the end quick!" He revelled momentarily in the thick scent of fear in the air, indulging his predatory side. Then, he picked the man up and flung him violently against the nearest metal wall, intending to cripple but not kill him, not yet.

The panelling on it dented and bent inwards with the force of the impact, revealing thick foam insulation underneath. Damnation, Aralhyss thought; the creature hadn't even broken any bones, thanks to that extra bit of shock absorption. It was unconscious, though; he could finish it later, after taking care of other matters.

The female, first; she had just stepped through the double-door of the airlock, and was now trudging across the open expanse of land to their escape vehicle. Using the superhuman intellect at his disposal, he did some rapid calculations; and decided that yes, he could afford to conserve his magic and pursue on foot. The airlock would be a squeeze, but manageable.

The inner door opened smoothly. The outer door was more stubborn; she had evidently spent a crucial few seconds breaking the emergency door seal on the outside. It took only a small touch of magic to break the lock and allow it to move, and a few more seconds to drag the door open against the hydraulic mechanism trying to keep it shut. The airlock was useless now with the door broken, but that was no matter; it would not be needed again.

The female was running impressively fast, and Aralhyss set off at a run after her, ignoring the abrupt temperature change, and trying to shake the sinking feeling that, again, he had miscalculated.

He had covered only half the distance as the female leapt into the crude rocket's open doorway, and started to shut the door.

Aralhyss continued, then a thought struck him, and he once again computed the options before him - and reacting almost on instinct, he turned mid-stride, dug his claws into the ice to halt his charge, and leapt back towards the human base. He would arrive at the rocket slightly too late, he calculated; once the engines were firing, the g-forces would either tear him free of the rocket, crumple the rocket's superstructure from the excess weight, or cause it to go off-course and crash. Either of the latter two would certainly kill the female, and there was a small but not insignificant chance that he would be fatally wounded too.

There was a deep subsonic rumble and a tremor as the rocket's engines lit up a second or so later, and the rocket started to rise rapidly. From the ground-level door, thirty feet of ugly, functional pipes and tubes and fuel tanks rushed upward from a deep pit dug into the ice before the great exhaust plume blasted the surface clean around the pit, throwing sprays of superheated steam and burning methane in all directions. Aralhyss summoned his magic again, deflecting the worst of that potentially dangerous explosive plume away from him, and cursed loudly in his own native tongue as he watched his quarry escape for the third and final time. What was wrong with him today?! It must be the lingering after-effects of the Hibernation; he rebuked himself for being too complacent, even with these hapless beings.

All was not lost; he still had enough magic left to crush the will of one of the males. Their gender was less than ideal... but it could be corrected, with the right application of yet more magic. What a waste.

He made his way back towards the airlock, then paused again; the man's transformation would take time, during which the changing human would still require a temperature of more than 270 Kelvin, one standard Earth atmosphere of pressure, with 1/5th oxygen as a fraction of the air.

With the airlock door broken, he would have to break the inner door seal to re-enter without magic. The carefully crafted atmosphere inside would escape within a minute, and the human would die far too quickly after that.

Curses, more waste would be necessary.

He summoned his magic and displaced himself back into the garage.

The male still seemed to be unconscious. Aralhyss quickly checked that the creature was still breathing, and confirmed that it was. That was to the good; one thing, at least, had gone right.

He summoned a little bit more magic, and placed a complex formula in the man's body that would enhance the natural dragon-magic he would soon be exposed to. That would ensure that his will would be broken completely, and ensure that his gender would be more useful when this was done. It was, he had found, possible without this step for some of his more strong-minded male victims to keep a hold on their gender through the transformation; more fool them. They did not survive his wrath after.

He placed a spark of magic within himself too; a loose twin of the man's formula, a lens to focus the transformative energies to be more potent, and to ensure that the new dragon would be subservient to him and him alone. The female would have needed so much less magic, though - such a waste.

These spells had been centuries in the making, research forbidden by the allegedly immortal God-Emperor eons ago. Aralhyss smiled wickedly at the thought; the greedy old false-deity probably had this power, too, or better, and just wanted the secret all to himself.

But, he almost forgot; he used a little more magic to warm his body up again, boiling away the frigid rain of Titan. It would not do for the human to get frostbite from their imminent contact.

Then he prepared for the more pleasurable part of the enterprise. Laying on his back, folding his wings carefully below him, he flexed the powerful muscles of his back, and bent almost double, bringing his snout just shy of his hindlimbs, and between them. While his fingers on his forelimbs were quite dextrous, his fully prehensile tongue was significantly more so, and he much preferred its delicate, almost sensuous flicker than the harsher abrasion of his scaled and sharply clawed fingers.

His tongue licked forward, out of his muzzle, and teased at the sensitive spot in his scales, just forward of his hind legs, finding his forward cloaca and pushing lightly in to the hidden slit. The familiar taste of his body rushed to greet him, and he felt the familiar lust stir as his tongue swirled around the head of his concealed penis. He felt the blood begin to rush, and the first hints of rigidity and expansion from his organ. He continued his ministrations as his penis pushed forward and out, the slit bulging open and releasing a small flood of slightly oily, pheromone-rich fluid.

His penis was 19 inches long, tapering from a point only a quarter-inch in diameter, back to nearly five inches diameter where it met his cloaca - a little thicker than this human's upper arm. His body was ill-prepared, unfortunately, and Aralhyss would have to be very careful not to damage his prize.

But he brushed those thoughts aside and focused on himself. The tip of his tongue wrapped around the emerging length, and he pulled it forward, past his teeth, and into his mouth, rubbing it lovingly around his palate, focusing on the sensation.

But there was little time to spare; he needed to be professional about this. He began to rub more insistently at the head, encouraging the hardness to completion; then, he flexed his penis, curling it around his tongue for a change rather than the other way around - his tongue was not the only prehensile organ he had.

When he tasted the first small dribble of his preclimactic fluid leak from the tip, he let his penis flop free from his mouth, uncurled himself, and sat on his haunches alongside the human, who was just beginning to stir. The pheromones in the air would be starting their work, although even with the lensing effect of his magic, it would not be nearly enough. Something stronger was generally needed to turn the heads of lesser species, and make them malleable.

He reached down, collected a single drop of his pre from the tip of his penis, and then, turning the human over so he was on his back, rubbed it gently into the human's mouth. The human coughed slightly, still not truly conscious of his surroundings. Dragons were made of magic, and it flowed to varying degrees through every part of their body, lingered in everything that left them; this precum was honed by millennia of evolution to arouse and ensnare most any lesser being, even in small doses, to prepare them for their transfiguration.

Aralhyss rubbed insistently at his length for a few seconds until a second droplet emerged; this, too, he placed on the human's tongue. He did not react at all to the slowly swelling fabric at the human's crotch, or the way the moans of pain from the creature changed tone, became somewhat more pleasured than anguished; everything went exactly as it had many times before, across dozens of species.

The human licked his lips as if savouring something, before his eyes started to flicker open. Then his eyes opened wide suddenly as full consciousness returned, and he gazed in abject terror at Aralhyss, towering over him. He there was a moment of ambivalence; fear, the man felt, but something else as well, but that something was only enough to confuse him, not strong enough to dominate. Aralhyss saw that more was necessary.

The man's survival instinct won out in the first instants of consciousness, and he started to scramble violently away, gibbering in incoherent fright. Aralhyss scowled as his piercing gaze detected the man's erection shrivelling again; this rebellion was yet another irritation, a delay he could not afford.

He moved almost lazily, letting his weight fall forward, pinning the human's arms beneath his foreclaws before the man could stand and run.

"Submit", he commanded. "It will be more pleasant for you." Aralhyss bent forward, placing his hind legs on either side of the human's head, and leaning his groin back to straddle the man's crotch, so that the man had only to sit up to have good access to the draconic penis jutting from the scaly flesh pinning him down.

The human looked up at him uncomprehendingly as the dragon straddled his waist, looking perplexed at the awkwardly twisted position the dragon adopted, before his eyes tracked down and, with dawning realisation, saw the dragon's exposed organ, over a foot and a half in length, hovering insistently under his chin.

His gaze tracked back up to meet the dragon's eyes, a flurry of competing emotions, with fear still being the strongest. More encouragement was needed.

"Let me make this clear - refuse me, and I will tear your friend limb from limb in front of you. Suck on me, and he will live," Aralhyss lied. He had no intention of leaving witnesses - but he also knew that in a few minutes, this hapless human would happily kill his friend himself if told to, once the magic had taken effect.

The human looked back down at the massive phallus in confusion, before Aralhyss gaze his shaft a flex and gave the human a soft smack across the lips, smearing more precum there.

The human spat with surprise and disgust, made a grimace, stuck out his tongue as if gagging, then tasted lightly at his lips as he realised it was not as unpleasant as he perhaps wished it were. There were a few more moments of indecision, and then he stuck out his tongue again to lick with trepidation and curiosity at the head of the dragon's shaft.

Aralhyss gave a soft, encouraging hiss as he felt the human's tongue make contact of its own volition. The rest would follow a predictable pattern.

The human withdrew the tongue quickly, tested the precum again, evaluating it; then he took another cautious lick, then another, longer, as some of the precum dripped down his chin onto his pressure suit. The scent of fear abated rapidly as the dragon-magic took effect, scrambling the man's desires.

Aralhyss released his grip on the human's arms; there was no further danger of escape. The human almost recoiled again as the great creature moved, but then looked down almost in confusion at his now-free arms. He cautiously and gingerly moved them upward, hovering over the draconic length, not quite daring to touch it right away.

The touch, when it finally came, was so light as to be almost undetectable; then he pressed harder, and the touch became an exploration, a careful, tentative caress over the sensitive skin. The man seemed fascinated at the sliminess of the organ; all to the good, as curiosity would weaken his mental defences.

Aralhyss gave another satisfied hiss as he felt a growing pressure from the fabric under his hind legs, against his equally sensitive rear cloaca, as the man's arousal manifested itself physically. This, hopefully, would not take too much longer.

The man's tongue lapped at the head of the gargantuan penis before him again, his expression now looking more hungry than merely curious, savouring every iota of the taste rather than let any go to waste. The motions of the hands became more insistent and the tongue's careful licks harder and rougher. Aralhyss became momentarily concerned when the hands stopped moving and the tongue withdrew; but that soon faded soon faded as the human grasped the penis firmly, steadied it in his hands, and puckered his lips.

He kissed the drooling penis on the head gently, sliding the head inside his mouth, and surprised Aralhyss by sucking the tip like a straw. Aralhyss hadn't expected the sensation, and it was a more intense one than he was used to; the man earned a small flood of precum as his reward, and he pulled his head away, coughing in a little surprise.

When he recovered, he did the same thing again, a contented smile on his face; but this time, expecting the flood, he was more prepared. Perhaps unfortunately for him, Aralhyss was prepared too, and exercised his easy control over his body; the flood was closer to a trickle.

Almost seeming disappointed, the human's lips pushed forward, taking the head of the penis into his mouth, suckling on it like a teat, tongue starting to work more frantically than before. The hands stopped grasping the penis, and started rubbing along it again; the man's right hand rubbing it faster, masturbating it; his left, feeling carefully around the slit it was emerging from, and trying to see if there was a way inside to rub further.

There was not; the flesh was taut, and Aralhyss gave a warning hiss as the man's fingers probed almost painfully in that sensitive spot. Whether the man heard or not, his left hand ceased its pushing, and joined his right on the body of the shaft.

Aralhyss felt the first familiar hint of a climax approaching; almost as if a floodgate somewhere deep inside was being forced open allowing his magic to flow freely. If he were having sex merely for pleasure, he could suppress the magic that was coming with only a little conscious effort, but for this occasion, he needed that magic.

The man's hands were masturbating Aralhyss' penis hard now, and he was sucking on it with utter desperation, trying - albeit ineffectually - to thrust upward, rubbing his erect cock against the dragon's entrance through his thin pressure suit. Aralhyss found that rather a turn-off, but it did at least show that the human, too, was ready.

Normally, the safest thing to do at this stage would be to allow the human to receive some of his semen orally; dragons had two orgasms in quick succession when the magic was allowed to flow fully, one otherwise.

The first, smaller wave would serve as an additional lubricant in a female's body, and as a cleansing wash to purge her womb of the seed of any other male who had mounted her recently, ready for the second and more intense flood later. That second, larger orgasm was the more potent, normally contained the full force of the dragon-magic, and helped release the female's life-changing magic as well, in the act of conception.

This was no female, yet, though. There was a reason Aralhyss had made the man use his mouth first; the skin of most creatures was an impermeable barrier that could, and did, block the magic from taking effect. On the mucus membranes of the mouth and throat, the lining of the stomach, or the fleshy walls of a female's cervix and womb, or a male's rectum, the magic would rapidly sink into the body and begin its work, as Aralhyss knew from long experience.

Normally, the first rush of seed would induce a transformation, changing the body to a more draconic and hence aesthetically pleasing form for an amorous dragon.

But, the magic took time to have full effect, and in the acidic lining of a human stomach, the planted seed would be altered and rendered inert too fast for the transformation to become permanent, or more than partial. It would last no more than a few minutes, perhaps an hour - although that was usually enough for the dominant dragon to use its second and more potent ejaculation, into a less hostile bodily environment where the magic could be allowed to take full effect.

Aralhyss had upped the efficiency of the process considerably, though. He rarely had time to wait through a male victim's partial transformation before starting the sexual act over again to make it full and permanent, although he indulged occasionally for a female. With his spells in effect, the second orgasm would be... redundant. Better to keep the life-magic stored safely; use as little of his life-force as he could - it was safer for him.

The human was clearly very eager for the dragon's seed; the magical spells both placed consciously by Aralhyss and subconsciously from his fluids had grown into a desperate compulsion in the uncomprehending human. Aralhyss was going to let him have it, but not like this.

He moved back from the human, whose hands reached forward to keep grasping his object of desire, and whose newly-free mouth let out a wordless groan of disappointment. The man would be far beyond speech until the transformation was finished.

Therefore, Aralhyss did not waste time speaking. He simply reached down with his claws, grabbed the human's orange pressure suit, and tore through it.

The fabric was tough, but not tough enough, although the man did give several grunts of pain as his bruised flesh was put under excruciating pressure by the stubborn cloth.

Underneath, the man had only a wifebeater vest and boxer shorts; the latter almost soaked through with the man's own precum. Aralhyss tore these garments free, too. The man must be close to spilling his own seed; that was to the good. The transformation would not complete successfully if he did not also achieve orgasm; a very rare event, as the transformation itself masked the rearrangement of the body in potent erotic fire. Rare, but not unprecedented; Aralhyss had contingencies for such situations, too. The necessity of them was simply one of those things, and could be irritating in the laboratory; magic was, on occasion, strange that way.

The lust-crazed human sat there, gasping for breath, face soaked in Aralhyss' precum, and surrounded by the shredded remains of his pressure suit. Aralhyss picked him up easily, and placed him face down on the floor heavily, with little regard for the man's health. The man gave an eager moan, probably realising what was about to happen - and wanting it so very badly.

Aralhyss gave his length a few careful strokes, bringing himself close to the brink, before forcing his dripping appendage between the human's cheeks, prodding heavily to find the anus. He found it, and carefully, with extremely professional restraint, he slid the thinner first few inches of his cock inside; this much, the human should be able to withstand easily, but he watched carefully for any sign of distress from the man.

There was none, and Aralhyss in fact had to restrain the man from pushing back further; the perils of mind-altering magic overcoming basic sense. Holding him still, the great dragon rocked his hips carefully a few times, with one foreclaw on the man's back, keeping him from moving, and the other rubbing hard and with practiced ease at the exposed two-thirds of the length that the human did not have in his body. He felt the peak approaching rapidly.

The orgasm, although small for a dragon, was titanic by human proportions. Aralhyss' length pulsed and inflated noticeably, before expelling a good quarter-pint of slightly watery off-white fluid into the squirming human's bowels, hard and deep. They moaned in unison at the sensation. The second shot was smaller, but only slightly; the fluid was too much this time, and some started to spill out around the man's clenched sphincter.

Aralhyss pulled out entirely at that point; he had done enough for the magic to take full effect. His orgasm wasn't over yet, though, and he pawed at his length furiously, releasing the human so he could use both foreclaws. He revelled for a moment in the glorious sensation of success; his reward, the intense sensation that rewarded all creatures for furthering their genetic destiny.

The man spluttered and groaned happily as the dragon gave three more powerful shots, the first two going over the man's head to land on the floor ahead of him with a loud splatter, the third landing squarely down his back, and afterwards the remainder of the liquid merely poured from the dragon's shaft onto the small of the human's back for a few seconds, landing where his tail would soon grow. A good pint was deposited there, flowing like a viscous, translucent waterfall down the man's thighs and between his stretched, slightly leaking buttocks.

Aralhyss stopped then, and sighed heavily - an affectation, since he did not truly need to breathe, but the act was relaxing as he came down from his high. The need did not feel entirely slaked yet, and rarely did on the first; but he had no intention of continuing to his second orgasm. The deed was done, and now... he had a bug to squash.

He willed his arousal down, a reasonably easy feat since sex with a human man was not exactly the stuff of his dreams. His penis softened rapidly, retreating into his cloaca once again, a faint lingering bulge there and a slightly reddish tint to the scales, the only evidence that anything had happened - except the state of the room and its other occupant, of course.

He sniffed at the air. He could smell himself, his fading arousal, the heavy musk of his seed; the human, whose scent was starting to develop a little, a vaguely draconic hint to it already; the not-quite-man's still-potent arousal; but no sign of its fulfilment. The human had yet to achieve orgasm.

Not that it mattered too much; Aralhyss could always induce it if it became necessary, as long as it was in the next few minutes. But the man might as well do it himself; he evidently wanted to, but was still somewhat stunned at the experience, and really needed commanding to continue.

Aralhyss whispered softly, "Go on, my new mate, seek your pleasure as you see fit. I have something to take care of; I will be back before you are finished."

The man gave no audible acknowledgement; but he sat up on his knees, rubbed a hand over his back and licked at it, tasting the draconic semen. Good, Aralhyss though; that would speed things up. Then, the still-human reached down to his own trembling erection and starting to trace his fingers slowly across it unhurriedly.

Aralhyss moved with determination over to the airlock, with its stencilled lettering saying "Emergency Medical Treatment", not bothering to waste his magic on displacing past it this time - he needed to save enough magic for two.

* * *

David had broken. Standing around and listening to Mil giving more details about dragon reproduction - more than David wanted to know - he had come to the decision that inaction was intolerable. He had then broken quarantine - after all, he reasoned, Reg and Anna must have left on the rocket, so who was he protecting? Besides, without the promised suit Anna had been delivering, he would have frozen to death in short order if he stayed - assuming that he didn't die when the crazy bug blew part of the habitat up.

He left through the living quarters - the crashes and dull thuds he heard from the direction of the garage did little to convince him that it was safe, that way.

He went around almost at a run; he had to stop to manually disengage the emergency seals on the door between the living area and the storage area where they had earlier left to visit the crater, and to put his discarded space-suit over to one side out of the way.

Still no signs of that dragon, nor anything or anyone else. He began to wonder if this was such a wise idea; the dragon might want to kill him first, and be hunting him rather than taking the hints and heading to the medical bay to confront Mil.

He found some strange, purplish blood spilled on the other side of that airlock; the door itself was bent out of shape, and there were warning signs flashing everywhere in the room. What the hell had happened in here?

He proceeded on more cautiously; other than the blood and the door, still no sign of the dragon. God, what if it had managed to grab Anna? Had Reg escaped in the rocket, or might the quake have been the dragon taking off, leaving Reg dead somewhere?

But no, surely, Mil wouldn't have been lying; the dragon would want to ensure that there were no witnesses that might give clues to his next destination, wherever that was. It was probably in the medical bay right now.

Slightly buoyed that death did not lie around the next corner, he headed carefully to the airlock to the garage, cycled it, and stepped inside. When he broke the seal on the other door, though, the smell that poured into the airlock hit him like a physical blow, and he reeled back. He was momentarily aware of a flash of light on the far side of the room, and realised two things simultaneously; the first was the origin of the peculiar, familiar, musky smell; he felt slightly sick thinking what it might - no, must - mean. The second was that the warning light on the airlock door to the medical bay was just lighting up as he entered. The door on the garage side was closed; the corresponding door in the medical bay had just been opened, a moment before. He paused, scared - was it someone going in, or coming out?

But after several seconds the airlock had not opened; someone going in, then - a brief reprieve. Then he heard someone make a groan, as if... in pleasure?

But it wasn't Anna's voice he heard, as he dreaded; it was Reg's.

"Reg?" he called, cautiously stepping into the garage itself. He almost slipped on some sort of liquid spill on the floor, and his eyes followed the long slimy trail to its source, with growing dread.

The wall about half-way along the garage on the opposite side to the medical bay was damaged, the thin sheet metal bent out of shape, and the thick insulation underneath compressed and torn. The room felt a tad cold.

Alongside that damaged section of wall was something that shocked him, more deeply than he knew he could be shocked, even though he was all but expecting it.

Reg had been stripped naked; the remains of shoes, the bright orange pressure suit he'd worn under his space suit, and his undergarments were strewn in pieces around him. Reg himself looked like he'd had a shower in milk, and then had his hair cut by a very poor barber; white fluid coated him thoroughly, still dripping down from his back. Several large clumps of his hair were missing, fallen to the floor around him in sticky clumps; and he was on his knees, face bent down to the floor, lapping up the slightly stringy, pungent fluid with sickening eagerness. From the angle, David could also see that Reg's right hand was wrapped firmly around his erect cock, pumping at it determinedly.

He paused a frozen moment as he watched Reg let go of his penis, gather a small handful of the fluid - he could only presume, dragon semen - from the floor, coat his penis liberally in it for lubrication, and start masturbating himself with renewed vigour. In doing so, Reg sat up, and David saw several more tufts of Reg's matted hair come loose and fall from his head. Eyes drawn where he did not wish them to be, David also noticed that Reg's crotch was completely hairless, too, and the skin around his hanging scrotum to have hardened, changing to a pale purplish colour...

He remembered Mil's lecture earlier. You said he was after a woman, damn it, thought David; the stupid bug! He'd warned the wrong person!

"Reg!" he shouted, "What are you thinking?! Stop!" There was no sign of Reg having heard.

It took David only another second to decide on his next course of action; he had to get Reg out of this room, where the dragon's magic still lingered, and take him somewhere safer. Could he knock Reg out with something until the effect wore off, perhaps, or would it be safer to restrain him some other way?

David strode forward, grabbed Reg by both wrists, yanked Reg's hand from his manhood, and hauled him to his feet. A look of uncomprehending surprise passed over his face as David grabbed hold of him, which melted back into an expression of blissful serenity.

"Come on, snap out of it! We need to..."

David was unprepared for Reg to lean quickly forward and kiss him deeply, the other man's tongue sliding searchingly against David's clamped lips. David tried to step back and push him away, but with both hands full, there was no leverage; he could only lean backwards to try to put distance between them. That was unwise; off-balance, David's shoe slipped on the wet surface, and the pair of them went sprawling to the ground. Reg rolled off him to one side, the rest of his hair falling from his head in the shock of the fall, even his eyebrows. He rubbed the remaining hairs from his face with a dripping hand, laughing a little drunkenly.

David saw stars for an instant after the impact before he could move again; he felt the dragon's semen soaking into the back of his jumper and into his jeans, and felt sick as he realised what the weird taste that lingered in his mouth was, that strange, almost alluring taste...

He rolled onto his front, tried to shake his head clear, and stood up, suddenly feeling groggy. "Reg... we have to..." he started.

This time, Reg out and out pounced him, pushing him to the floor more gently than before, but still hard enough to knock the breath out of him. Before he could recover, Reg kissed him again.

David's tongue suddenly found clamped down under Reg's as the invader seemed almost to leap down his throat, making him gag again, but all the while tasting that strangely wonderful taste...

David had his hands free this time, and pushed Reg back. He wiped his mouth on the back of his sleeve, but only managed to smear some of the mess from the floor over his chin. "No... we have to... get out..." he said weakly between spitting in disgust. He realised belatedly, that there was very little he could do to move Reg against his will; the other man was the stronger, and did not plan to go anywhere. Almost inhumanly strong, a stray thought added.

David rolled over onto his hands and knees, and started to get up. But before he could, Reg was on him again, this time pouncing from behind and knocking him flat on his face. Reg's arms were suddenly trapped between David's waist and the floor, his stomach pressing tightly to the back of David's dampened jumper. David collapsed onto his stomach, the wind knocked out of him again, and banged his face onto the cold floor, and the still-warm fluid pooled there.

His eyes opened wide in shock as he felt Reg grind his erection lewdly against David's backside, through the fabric of the jeans; David felt the dragon-cum-slicked length slide up under his top and over the bare skin of his back with a panic. He started to struggle again; good god, he had never looked that way at a man in his life, and as far as he knew, neither had Reg! This was no time for experimentation!

Reg's weight was enough, though, to keep David pinned firmly to the floor. David felt Reg's strong arms tighten around his chest, holding him tightly and perhaps caringly, as if to calm him down. Reg's head leaned down alongside David's; David had enough time to think that Reg's neck would have to be pretty long to reach there from his position on David's back, before a much longer than human tongue left Reg's mouth, and lapped up a tongueful of the spilled seed from the floor.

Watching, David suddenly found himself almost longing to try some again, get a better taste this time, indulge...

Reg's hands suddenly slipped lower, over David's navel, and with a deft motion, released David's belt buckle. David came out of his momentary trance, and he tried to get some leverage to throw Reg off. He couldn't quite manage it, but to keep himself in place, Reg had to leave go of David's now-loose jeans; that, at least, was something.

The smell was starting to make David feel light-headed now; the thick, rich aroma drifting up from the dragon's seed only inches from his nose went straight to his head. He suddenly couldn't seem to think straight; a slowly growing desire to taste more was all tangled up with his desire to escape, fear for Reg, fear for himself, hope that everything would work out alright somehow.

There was a sudden popping sensation from Reg's shoulder, which David felt through the flesh. Reg grunted, and his arm slid out from under David's chest awkwardly. Did the shoulder joint just change? David felt the same sensation, from Reg's other shoulder, and suddenly Reg's arms were no longer around him, holding him down.

I can do this, thought David. He can't stay like this his whole transformation; I'll be able to escape if he tries to stand up, shift his legs, or anything!

He could taste some of the cum on his lips, and felt a thin strand dribble down his face...

Reg's head abruptly turned to him, and with that long tongue, licked a tongueful of the stuff off David's face. David squirmed as much as he could, whimpering his unwillingness; he swore Reg felt heavier now than just a few seconds ago.

He watched as Reg swilled the stuff around his open mouth, over sharper teeth, savouring it, and David startled himself by suddenly making a softer whimper that sounded oddly disappointed. Reg smiled, suddenly looking very predatory, and leaned forward to kiss David again, tongue still half-covered in Aralhyss' seed.

David fully intended to turn his head away, close his mouth, clench it shut, and try to escape again. It wasn't until he was gasping, almost happy, at the sudden burst of stronger flavour over his taste buds that he realised he had opened his mouth eagerly, and was sucking hard on Reg's long tongue to get at every last little remnant.

He still wanted to stop, but he couldn't quite seem to bring himself to; it was Reg who slowly withdrew from the kiss, tongue still lolling out, eyes half-lidded - and slitted, reptilian, David saw. To his surprise, rather than finding it horrifying as he had only moments before, he found it... vaguely thrilling.

Before he could take conscious stock of his actions, his face was pressed to the floor again, of its own volition, tongue eagerly sampling the ample cum still present. He gave a slight moan, and suddenly found an unbidden thought in his head; he, for a brief instant, honestly wished that Aralhyss would manage to evade Mil, and come back in here. The images flashed through his mind; the dragon would see him, doing this, see how much he wanted the dragon's seed, and become aroused. Reg would watch in envy as David ran to the creature, savour his flesh, hear the dragon shout his name in ecstasy, then drink more of the potent fluid, gallons, straight from the dragon itself...

The image vanished as fast as it arrived, but it shocked him from his reverie again; he felt fright rather than arousal as he felt his penis start to stir from torpor at the thought.

Magic... it wasn't something he believed in, and Mil hadn't gone into detail about what it really was, but David realised how right Mil had been about the potential uses for it. It had just, for an instant, made David genuinely want to submit himself to a powerful male dragon, to surrender himself completely. No such thought had ever entered David's head before.

Reg shifted slightly, and David was surprised as he felt bare skin against the small of his back, rough skin, almost scaly. He remembered the patch of scales he had seen earlier, when he entered the room, near Reg's crotch.

Reg had been submitting himself while David watched, drinking down the dragon's gift and accepting it for what it was, unashamed...

David felt his penis stiffen further, and was getting increasingly confused about whether that was a bad thing, when Reg kissed him again. David felt no hesitation this time, and suckled happily on that long tongue, that draconic tongue. He felt a little excitement as he found sharp teeth filling a mouth that seemed more pointed, deeper than a human's should. He looked into Reg's new eyes, and could read only longing in the inhuman pupils. This time, he savoured the potent taste of Aralhyss, and closed his eyes, letting the almost electric sensations flow through him. Was it so bad?

David and Reg between them had cleared the area of floor within easy reach of their heads, and David opened his eyes to check there was nothing left he could reach; to his surprise, he saw something else; a clump of hair. Reg's was gone, though - and the hair looked like his...

Oh my god, thought David in horror, I'm changing! Then his completely erect penis gave a buck as the thought in changed tone. He would be strong, and powerful, and abandon his petty humanity for something better, something greater. As a human, he suddenly wanted to submit himself to Aralhyss, and become a worthy match for the great dragon; it was the place of any of lesser race, if the dragon wished it. Aralhyss was like a master gardener; in this unpromising patch of humanity he would grow something wonderful, something beautiful, from a human form.

David didn't notice what was happening at the opposite end of this very room.

* * *

Aralhyss squeezed through the narrow doorway into the medical bay, scenting the air carefully. He smelled the cold air; traces of the hydrocarbon slush from outside; the remaining human's smell, male, afraid, alone; a trace of an injured Xeranthen Hydrophore, meltwater-blood leaking from its injuries.

There was the hunter, lying right there - now his prey.

He chuckled, and spoke in his native language. "My fears were groundless. You do not appear to be in a condition for a fight, Xeranthen."

"My SERIAL CLASSIFICATION is KA'NACH of the ZADAN BLOODLINE 7882764!" exclaimed the creature, in its own language. Aralhyss knew it fluently, albeit he was a little rusty at it.

"Time for a new number. This one's dead", he said, and gave a hard swipe at the crippled creature with a foreclaw.

The blow smashed the stretcher to smithereens, sent torn fragments of foam padding flying in all directions, but to his surprise, the insectoid body seemed to bounce, rebound off the floor, and roll, coming to rest several feet away. It cursed floridly in its own language, struggling, evidently hurt by the attack - but not badly.

"A force-screen?" he mused, aloud. "A highly advanced one, too... I hadn't expected technology had advanced so in the millennium I've been away. Or have they just given you the best of the best? Am I that famous already?"

"A GIFT from the GOD-EMPEROR HIMSELF to bring JUSTICE to you in HIS GLORIOUS NAME WHICH SHALL NOT BE SPOKEN. Your attacks will be denied, EVEN YOUR MAGIC."

"Still, I see that you have had some issues with the temperature in this place... I take it they still haven't solved the radiation-transparency problem?" He looked at a row of canisters of medical anaesthetic and cylinders of compressed oxygen. "I think we can arrange something, oh, yes..."

He knocked several of the oxygen cylinders to the ground, and with a quick downwards kick, smashed open the values.

The temperature in the room started to drop almost immediately as the gas expanded, very fast. Some sort of temperature warning system the humans had installed started to sound; he ignored it, smashing the values on the anaesthetic cylinders too, and using the barest flicker of magic to put a spark to them.

Sure enough, they ignited; in the high-pressure oxygen atmosphere rapidly filling the room, the reaction was not far short of explosive. Flames burst forth from the air itself and within seconds everything flammable in the room was ablaze. Extreme cold suddenly changed to ferocious heat.

More human alarms sounded, and some sort of fire-suppressing foam tried to damp down the blaze; but the flames did not faze Aralhyss in the slightest. He watched as the Hydrophore's carapace started to glisten as it melted to liquid water, and took glee in the creature's pain. The fires died down as quickly as they had started, but not through the efficiency of the human systems; everything that could burn, simply had. The temperature was high enough that it would boil the creature's body away entirely within a minute; it had only seconds left to live.

"TRICKED", it said, startling him. It didn't seem to be as badly affected as he'd expected. He frowned, growing uneasy. Maybe he should displace himself out of here, there was no need to watch the...

Abruptly he felt something rush past him, and felt the connection to the magical power from his ship suddenly cease, cutting him off from many of his abilities.

He could still kill the creature with his bare hands, magic or no, force-screen or no. He strode across, grabbed the dying creature, and held it up to his face. He hissed angrily, menacingly, "*What* did you just *do*?!"

"Radiation-transparency SOLVED. Allowing temperature to cause SOME harm was a CALCULATED HIGH-STAKES GAMBLE THAT ALL FELL FOR. High-energy source was NEEDED to EMPOWER CONTAINMENT FIELD. Now we are as ONE."

"One wh..?"

"We are BOTH DEAD."

A small, concealed Penning Trap under the creature's carapace deactivated on a mental command, releasing a miniscule 4 micrograms of positrons and antiprotons. Released, the two combined instantly to form anti-hydrogen, and began to spread outwards by diffusion. As the first particles of antimatter met the hydrogen in the water-ice carapace of the Xeranthen, they annihilated, releasing a small burst of energy. This pushed more anti-hydrogen into contact with more matter, and the reaction continued for fully a nanosecond before all the antimatter had been annihilated, releasing energy equivalent to over a thousand tons of high explosive.

In an instant, Aralhyss, the alien, the medical bay, the ground beneath, and every other solid object within fifty metres was bombarded with intense radiation, breaking down every molecular bond, and tearing the atoms themselves apart. Where a large swathe of the human shelter had stood moments before was a ball of superheated plasma constrained within a jet black, energy-absorbent force-screen that saved the lives of the two increasingly inhuman survivors in the very next room.

The field continued, drawing its power gradually from the dissipating heat of the plasma cloud within it, even though the device that had generated it had disintegrated entirely. It would remain for some minutes; long enough for any danger to pass.

* * *

Reg shifted his weight more, moving his arms - or forelimbs, David mentally corrected, excitedly - so that his elbows were tucked below David's armpits, with Reg's mostly-human hands flat to the floor, facing forward sphinx-like. The pose was like a cat might adopt, when contented, at rest. He made a happy sound, a human moan, but it ended in a draconic hiss.

David looked at those limbs, which were, he felt sure, larger now than they had been. Purplish scales dotted the shortening fingers and ran along the arms as far up as he could see; sharp, pure white talons had erupted for the nailless fingers. Dragon talons.

The position allowed David a bit more freedom to move, and he pulled his soaking and uncomfortable jumper up, over his head, and with Reg also pulling, removed it entirely. Reg tossed it casually aside, before pushing his lengthening snout down by David's ear, nuzzling softly. David in return pressed upwards into Reg's chest, feeling the slight stickiness of the semen plastered over both of them, and rubbed their skins slightly together, feeling the rough abrasion of the developing scutes.

The metal-plated wall was not polished, but it was reflective enough that David, turning his head, could make out some of the more obvious details of the scene; a half-naked human, rapidly balding, looking rather squashed underneath a purplish-patched but mostly flesh-coloured creature, about a third as large again as a human should be. A short length of tail protruded from it and waved lazily back and forth; its face was clearly a muzzle about four to six inches long.

It was clearly a dragon, in part, and David felt a sudden desire, an itch deep in his mind. David pressed his bare back up hard against the dragon's belly, and with strength he didn't know he had, managed to push Reg upwards. The Reg-dragon gave a startled snort sound, and lowered its forelegs to support its weight. David, on hands and knees, could have run if he wished, but he felt a different, more powerful urge.

It was his place, his greatest need, to submit to the dragon Aralhyss, whose seed was starting to change him already. But Aralhyss wasn't here. The need to submit, to change further, was overwhelming; David suddenly craved Reg's half-formed body, dragon enough for him. David fumbled with his fly button, snapped it away entirely in his haste, and practically tore his sopping jeans down to his knees at the floor. A small rational part of his mind asked him then, what he was doing.

He paused again, jeans around his knees, underpants all that kept him from the dragon above. He was kneeling on his hands and knees, with the skin of his back pressed into the soft draconic underbelly, damp with sweat and a true dragon's semen - and his mind was screaming at him that he shouldn't find that arousing, at all.

At one point, maybe only a minute or so ago, it might have prompted him to come out of whatever trance gripped him, and make another try to escape. But this time, he was more concerned at the way the doubt was inhibiting him, softening his rock-hard penis, and sullying the unique moment of being so close, so intimate with the manifesting dragon. He tried to refocus on that, focus on the joy he wanted to feel, on that nascent dragon's phallus that was...

He realised, suddenly, that he couldn't feel Reg's penis against his back any more; but looking towards his feet, between his legs, he caught sight of it again; almost hidden behind the shrinking tent in his own underpants, in between his legs. He saw that Reg's feet looked strange; longer than usual, and three-toed, each tipped with a sharp talon. But he still supported himself with knees to the ground; still humanoid.

Almost morbidly, he reached back with one hand, and touched the tip of the dragon-Reg's penis gingerly. He wanted it, but the doubt still held him back. It didn't look like a human penis any more; too cone-shaped, too vibrantly red. It didn't seem very large, either; probably only about the same size as his own; he almost felt disappointed. As he touched it, he noted how slimy it was, oily and well-lubricated, dripping precum like a leaking tap, and he felt a shudder go through the powerful, growing body above him as his fingers danced over the head.

Feeling a dragon take pleasure at his touch broke the impasse. He was giving it pleasure, and his need to submit reasserted itself; he knew exactly how to let the dragon display its rightful dominance. A dragon's penis was erect and between his legs, not quite where it should be, but close.

He grabbed his underpants, and pulled them down too, exposing his nether regions, then squeezed his eyes shut in anticipation, steadying himself. He waited for several seconds, but nothing happened; wondering, he opened his eyes again, to see Reg's half-draconic muzzle bent down on the end of the lengthening neck, looking upside-down at him, with an expression that David couldn't read - a deeper comprehension, perhaps?

Without a second thought, David bent himself down, slid back until he felt the narrow head of the penis catch between his buttocks. He squeezed it between them, hoping the dragon would not refuse him this. He felt the transforming dragon-man shudder again at the friction, and saw his expression change back to the blissful one he'd had when he'd first walked in on him.

He didn't get a chance to think about that as Reg's hips thrust forward, almost knocking him off-balance; the penis slid out of his crevice and over the small of his back again. Groaning in frustrated anticipation, David adjusted his position, pushing his back firmly to the scaled underbelly so that the cock could not slip upwards again, loving the warmth of the scales and...

This time, the thrust hit its mark, and David felt half of Reg's still human-sized length enter his virgin anus, and then stop still as he screamed in pain, suddenly not wanting this much at all. But, he was stuck again; Reg's draconic forelimbs, still only part-changed, pressed hard onto his shoulders as his former friend arched his back upwards. There was no way forward, nor to the sides; going backwards would only work the pointed cock deeper into him, and hurt more. Tears of pain started to leak from his eyes.

His rectum clenched involuntarily; and he heard a sound like a contented hiss from the creature above him. That soothed him, made him relax a little; it was not in vain. Reminding himself of his purpose, he stroked the forearm beside him gently, feeling the scales forming slowly across it.

Reg, sensing his distress, leaned his head back down, and from his longer muzzle came that long tongue again. It licked delicately at his face, gently, soothingly, tasting his tears. Reg made a sound that was almost a sorrowful moan, almost sounded human.

David felt the pain begin to subside, and his rapid, stressed breathing started to return to normal. He placed his human hands over the draconic paws, now almost fully formed, beside him, and interlaced the fingers. It was awkward as Reg had lost one, leaving three stubby fingers and a small thumb. He felt the scales, and the sleekness of the unblemished talons, almost frictionless. He pressed back up into Reg's belly, rubbing his shoulders against the hardening flight muscle, feeling the last traces of human skin on that powerful draconic chest close up and disappear, consumed by wonderful, bright dragon scales. Reg was Dragon, he reminded himself; dragon-pleasure was worth dragon-pain in his rear, a dragon cock buried in his arse, the culmination of everything...

His own penis, shrunken and shrivelled with the shock and hurt, started to inflate again. The pain was all but gone now; the hot, steady pulse of the dragon's heartbeat through the shaft within him was starting to drive him crazy with lust. He pushed himself backwards, onto the shaft, wanting to feel more in him, to be connected completely. Reg hissed in pleasure again, the tongue still licking at his face - appreciatively, he thought. He pushed back again, harder, and felt his buttocks bump against the scaly crotch, Reg's penis buried as deep as it could go. He felt the shaft buck at the quick motion; he felt the penis strike something inside him, too, something wonderful. A sudden pang of intense pleasure radiated through him, his penis jumping almost instantly to full hardness again.

They both paused there a moment, both digesting the feelings flowing through them; it felt so perfect suddenly. He felt a sudden, soft squirt of something warm deep inside him, followed by an intense, almost electric sensation that had him suddenly shuddering with pleasure. As the tongue dragged over his face, David's own tongue - longer, somehow, all of a sudden - tried to chase it, and pulled it into his mouth, french-kissing the creature that had been Reg. He felt his lips meet the dragon's scaled ones, and clenched his rectum around the buried cock, deliberately this time, wanting desperately to feel that electric tingle again. He heard another pleased hiss, the breath going right into his lungs, and there was another squirt of warmth inside him, another spine-tingling pinprick of pure sensation.

He leaned forward slightly, feeling a little of the slick length slip out of his hole again; breaking the kiss, he put his head down further, resting his weight on his elbows, and pushed back again. Stretching his legs out, he struggled to free himself of the tangled jeans, boxer shorts, and shoes, to give himself more freedom to move, more skin exposed to his new lover. He felt Reg thrust back before he was ready, off-balance, and stab at that pleasure-centre again as he squirmed. As he moaned at the sensation, he suddenly realised that he could smell the droplet of precum that was now hanging on his own penis; he could smell everything in the room, everything that had happened, clearly. Some instinct told him that the electrical sensation he felt was the magic sinking into him, preparing him, speeding the changes that Aralhyss' seed had started.

Reg shifted position suddenly as David felt the judders of popping bones and reknitting flesh transmitted through the rigid phallus. Reg's stance shifted into a more natural quadrupedal one, legs too short to support him at the right height for David's anus by just kneeling. Having done so, he moved himself forward a little, pushing itself slightly deeper inside than before, thrusting more powerfully with the new leverage. David moaned in joy, almost weeping.

Then Reg pulled himself back again; almost all of that slick length leaving the abused human's rear, leaving only the tip poised back at the entrance, just barely parting it, drooling magic into David still. David, desperate at being so teased, started to push back, at the same time as Reg pushed forward; scale met flesh with a thwack, and David almost saw stars as the phallus struck that pleasure-spot again. They both gave a happily disharmonious shout in unison, and Reg pulled back again. David looked back at the reflective wall, and took in the new sight; a dragon, almost fully formed. Reg had nearly doubled in size, arching hiss more flexible spine upwards to keep the human head between those powerful forelimbs. A long tail thrashed wildly; stubs of wings were blossoming like incredible flowers from the back of the shoulders; and horns were visibly growing from the back of the bulging cranium. He could clearly see a human shape beneath the magnificent creature, and knew it was himself. He could see the reddish length of the phallus that was starting to piston back and forth, in and out of him at a regular rhythm, and he could every delicious millimetre of it.

David looked down to see if the dragon's forelimbs were finished, and saw, to his delight, that his own fingers had shed their nails, and fine pinpricks of bronze were appearing there, as the flesh hardened into scales. He realised as he watched that he was watching this over a short length of a developing muzzle of his own.

He closed his eyes and relished the sensation of the powerful beast ravishing his bowels, the pool of the dragon's precum he could feel collecting inside him, lubricating him, and altering him; he wanted to feel the wave of its semen injected deep inside him, soaking through him, changing him completely.

There was a moment then, as he closed his eyes, when he pictured the image in the wall, and saw merely two dragons in the throes of passion, one slowly emerging from a human chrysalis. It was another, greater being's scales pressing through his skin, a more glorious being emerging from him - another being, not him, a being that no part of a mere human could be worthy of. The intense pleasure he welcomed then, as his reward for birthing so transcendent a being from his very flesh; his consolation for his end.

But only a moment it lasted; some remnant instinct in the back of his mind knew that down that path lay danger, great danger. This, that remnant instinct told him, is what *you* are; *your* reward for suffering as a human even for this short time. This is good fortune; great opportunity. This is merely what it is.

Certainty crystallised then in him. There was no worthy, nor unworthy, no fear, no pain, no end, no loss; there was only himself, and his ascension was his reward, no-one else's.

Barely even processing that momentary survival instinct, he felt a strange sensation from his rear; sliding, scales on scutes. It took him a moment to realise it was a tail, his tail, growing up along the almost completely transformed belly, starting to sway back and forth as the forming dragons took their pleasure in their new bodies. He felt Reg penetrate into him even deeper as his buttocks faded into the flesh of his hairless crotch, their new cloacae meeting completely flush, almost a perfect fit. The electrical tingle surged, ever faster as he felt the magic pour into him as Reg huffed and hissed, writhing above him.

Unable to contain himself any longer, he pushed upwards hard with his hips, almost standing up with his legs rigid - his hindlegs, his mind corrected - pushing his rear powerfully into the dragon's crotch. With one of his freshly-taloned hands, he reached back, and began to grasp for his own, neglected cock, and startled himself momentarily as he felt his cock start to wrap itself around his talons. His cock could move itself?!

Testing his new appendage, he held his growing talons steady and still, and started to rub his penis over and between the fingers, pleasuring himself in a completely new way, loving every instant.

But the dragon-cock in his anus seemed suddenly to be shrinking, and the electrical force behind it was diminishing, before he was complete. Or maybe, some lust-crazed part of his mind rationalised, he was growing further, and his transformation was almost finished?

Something told him that wasn't right, and he gave a hiss of frustration, pushing back harder, putting his new digitigrade feet to the floor and using the powerful muscles of his hindlimbs. The draconic form above him left the ground with the force of his backwards thrust, and collapsed onto his back. He bore the weight of his lover easily with his new, vastly stronger muscles, still forming under the spreading scaly hide.

He was almost there, almost a dragon; but some part of him knew instinctively that this current form was just temporary; to finish it, he would have to cum, and feel the other's cum enter him. He was far beyond even considering another course of action.

His forelimbs realigned with a pop, almost sending the pair of them crashing to the ground, David on his still-human-skinned belly, tail bent up and crushed painfully between their two interlaced forms. Reg managed to catch himself low to the ground on all four limbs, his shortening penis slipping from David's eager hole.

The Reg-dragon gave a sort of desperate bellow, still leaning low on the smaller but growing dragon's back, realigned their cloacae, and started to thrust back into him with wild, frantic abandon. David hissed in frustration; Reg's cock was too short all of a sudden, and was no longer hitting that pleasure-point in his depths. It must still exist, of course; it would be cruel for fate to grant that pleasure only to a human body.

Feeling increasingly dissatisfied with the humping at his rear, his frustration increased as he discovered that he couldn't reach his frantically flapping cock with his new forelimbs from this constricted position. Reaching the limbs back that far would mean he had to flex and arch his back; his inflexible human spine inhibited him, and with the added complication of the weight of the amorous dragon above pressing his new body almost flat to the floor, with little room to move.

In growing desperation, he placed his forelimbs flush to the ground, and leaned his head down under himself, feeling his changing spine flex and curl, letting him reach a little further with each passing second. Using the strength only of his forelimbs, he raised himself a little, pushing Reg up further from the ground, allowing himself enough room under his body to reach back.

Got it! He thought, extending his lengthening neck, scenting the rising, strongly human musk of his erect and frantically oscillating penis, only inches away. Tongue lolling out as far as he could reach, he entwined the two prehensile organs around each other, feeling his precum drip down his tongue into his open mouth, savouring the taste of his still-human secretions and, from the other end of his body, the feeling of his own tongue on his sensitive flesh. He knew that his taste would not remain so disgustingly human for long, and he bared his new, sharpening teeth in a dragon's grin as he felt growing horns scrape at the hard floor, and his muzzle and penis both grow longer, until they met, and he started to slurp eagerly at his nethers.

He wanted this to be finished. He clenched his rear around the profoundly unsatisfying cock buried within, hard, in time with each short, rapid thrust from behind.

With a roar, his partner's cock bucked and inflated for a moment, and then violently spewed the hot contents deep into David's draconic bowels. David smiled as he felt the first squirt, smaller than he wanted; then the second, and a third.

Suddenly, the sensations from deep in his bowels were no longer slight, and unsatisfying; it felt like a bolt of lightning had surged into him, a rush of pure power that lit up every nerve in his body on overdrive as the thin cum spewed into him; it was very little, not as much as he wanted or craved, but it was enough for what was needed. He roared himself, feeling the vibration of his powerful new vocal cords rumble through his cock as he felt his own transformation surge on suddenly to completion, his size increasing, wings bursting from his back, long, sinuous tail lashing across those delicate underscales. He felt his penis grow another two inches as his muzzle shot forward around it, sharp teeth scraping over the overstimulated flesh, and he almost choked on himself, in the best way possible. An instant later the most intense orgasm he could ever remember washed over him and through him like a tidal wave, as his tongue mercilessly milked his squirming shaft, spraying its contents forth down his throat, over his teeth, and for two large squirts, out of the side of his muzzle entirely, as he changed his wish; fun though the new flexibility was, he really wanted to keep the damned thing still right now!

He felt the sickly-sweet, bitter taste of human cum shoot across his tongue, and with increasing contentment, felt each fresh sample grow more familiar, more draconic; finally, his cock was merely leaking a few dribbles of seed into his mouth, and he knew he was almost done, in all ways he could be.

He licked his lips, and straightened back to a more normal standing position, savouring the sharp pricks of his new predatory teeth. He was Dragon.

It felt incredible.

The cock buried inside him was still hard, and where he had only moments before felt overwhelming lust, he now felt irritation that the dragon on him was still feebly thrusting into him; it injured a developing new, familiar but vaguely alien sense of pride in his masculinity and potency.

To his relief - and a little surprise - the hard cock was definitely shrinking. In no small confusion, he kept still, feeling as it retreated of its own accord like a deflating balloon, and then popped out of him, vanishing into the other dragon's body. His partner kept up a few more thrusts, and gave a long hiss of irritation and frustration, before collapsing heavily onto his back. His own penis, deflating slowly, was not withdrawing like that at all.

As they lay there in a tangled heap and basked in the afterglow of their transcendence, his thoughts seemed suddenly to speed up somehow; he felt his mind, his senses, everything about his mind grow somehow, develop, and he felt abruptly complete. His new instincts told him that this was the last step; his one-time lover's body had surrendered part of its draconic nature and transformed him fully, too. The grip of magically-induced sexuality on his mind dissipated with a shock like plunging into cold water, and David Reynolds the dragon shivered suddenly as he realised that he had, almost, let his mind dissolve so a new draconic identity could take its place. Aralhyss' criminal magic had almost, but not quite, taken hold.

He started to push Reg away so he could stand, and did a double-take at the opposite wall of the garage. That wall, its insulation, the right-rear tyre and axel of the two-seat Titan Rover vehicle parked near it, and fully a third of the garage bay past that, was simply gone. The garage under his feet was scratched and coated liberally in his own sexual emissions; it continued undamaged up to a translucent, smoky hemisphere, and beyond that - utter devastation. There was no trace of the structure of the medical bay beyond it, and a large part of the living quarters seemed to be missing as well. He could see a deep crater dug into Titan's ice, layered shallowly with red-hot molten slag, everything burned away to nothing. So, he reasoned, were Aralhyss and the alien he had called Mil.

Hell of a way to go, Mil, he thought. His first impression had been that Mil had something like a grenade, or explosive device of the order of a million joules; the amount of energy required to vaporise that much solid matter would take energy of at least the order of ten to the ninth power, maybe even the tenth...

Whoa, he thought, since when could I casually just work out the amount of energy there based on a quick glance? His mind felt turbocharged; he could get used to being a dragon.

Even as he watched, he detected that the field was wavering, and deduced that it would collapse within a matter of seconds. He was worried at the prospect for a moment; but, something at the back of his mind told him, Titan's icy, unbreathable atmosphere wouldn't matter to him any more.

He watched with only a little trepidation as the bubble collapsed, and the material within expanded outwards rapidly, washing over the two dragons. A large, dusty cloud rose from within as the water vapours turned to flakes of ice and rose in the heated air above the pit of molten steel; Titan's equivalent of a mushroom cloud. It was already growing cold, the metal crusting over and solidifying as the cold air rushed over it; it would be small, and short-lived.

He scented the air carefully, feeling the extreme cold rapidly overwhelming the smells he sensed; an array of pungent aromas that smelled 'burnt'; himself, his recently-ended pleasures, his seed, rapidly freezing to solidity as liquid methane started to flow over the floor; Aralhyss' lingering odour, now repulsive to him; his semi-willing mate... a female?

He nudged the limp creature that had been Reg with his snout, but only provoked some irritated wriggling. He examined Reg's new body more closely; the narrower snout, shorter dorsal spines, slightly broader hips, and thicker tail - all these things spoke to his new body, and said, 'female'; he was disturbed to find it slightly arousing, in the less overwhelming way he was more used to.

Aralhyss had turned Reg into a dragoness; evidently, though, the transforming man had kept enough masculinity, spewed enough seed to complete David's transformation, too. Damned magic.

"You could have mentioned this was a possibility, Mil", he said, chastisingly, to nobody in particular.

The dragon-Reg stirred, and looked up at him, perplexed. "You are not my master."

"Master?" asked the dragon-David, growing despondent. Reg didn't seem to be there any more.

"My Master said he would return soon before I was complete."

Dragon-David stared at dragon-Reg more closely, something else flickering peculiarly in his sight. It took a few moments before his new, expanded mind processed what he was sensing; magic, a spell, still active. It was complex, and he could not quite understand it - but something about it repelled him, offended him deeply.

Almost without realising what he was doing, he mentally reached out, and tore at it. He felt something flow deep inside him, an electric tingle like the one he had felt at the culmination of his change; he realised it was magic, flowing through him. The way it looked, his newfound understanding in his dragon-mind, gave him a little hope; the spell had been designed to encapsulate the mind and block it off, and for that very reason, it was *just* possible that the blocking effect went both ways, making it almost like a shield...

The magic, damaged, started to unravel like a ball of wool; he mentally tugged at the strands, pulling them free; they had a sensation almost like a taste, he felt, and on instinct he consumed them, feeling some new hunger suddenly piqued as if he'd eaten a starter at a really good restaurant.

He recalled clearly how Mil had described dragons as eating and breathing magic. Well, he certainly didn't seem to need oxygen to breathe any more, and that was apparently how magic tasted.

The dragon blinked, looked pained, shook its head several times rapidly, and then looked up at him with shock. Before he knew what was happening, the other dragon had leapt away, catlike, with a yell of fright, and a string of curses in English.

"Holy... another one! Oh, fuck! *Shit* The wall's gone! We're losing air! *Help*! I'm gonna die!"

Dragon-David sat back on his haunches, holding his foreclaws up in an approximation of a human gesture of submission.

"No, Reg, you're safe. It's me - David. Don't you remember? Reg? You were put under a spell... look, ignore the wall, you're completely fine..."

Dragon-Reg continued to stammer and blabber for several more seconds before the meaning of that sunk in, and he - well, she - realised she wasn't suffocating, freezing, and dying.

"Dave?! What the hell?! No way... alright, prove it; tell me something only Dave would know."

Dragon-David thought. "Okay, your mother died just after you were born, your dad's still alive and running a repair shop on Iapetus. Your full name's Reginald Gondor Brook because your dad made a bet after playing a 'Lord of the Rings' drinking game all day. You always tell people the G stands for Greg. Your parents came from Iapetus, after your grandparents emigrated from Earth... um, Dublin, it was."

Dragon-Reg shook her head. "My grandparents came from Belfast, but Dave never could tell the difference. Okay, right, so, you're you, and a dragon now? Tell me, that a new thing for you, or were you just undercover and playing us poor humans for chumps all this time?"

"Um, you say, 'us' humans... maybe you should take a deep breath and look at your hands..."

"My..?" Reg did exactly that, and was suddenly frantic again. "Jesus fucking Christ, man! What the hell happened to me?!"

"Ah, you don't remember? What's the last thing you do remember?"

"Um, Anna had just run off to the rocket, and that... thing, threw me at the wall. I must have banged my head..."

"Oh. Okay. Um, there were some bits after that, but..." Dragon-David pondered what to say next, human prudishness winning out over openness. Well, he reasoned, best not to give her too many shocks all at once.

"...um, the dragon cast a spell at us both, and changed us into this; apparently we were... suitable for the experiments he was running, or something. You only woke up just now."

Dragon-Reg looked confused. "I thought you said he needed a female?"

Dragon-David just stared at her meaningfully, involuntarily glancing down at her bare groin. Dragon-Reg's eyes widened, but failed to draw the conclusion; she stared instead at David's equally featureless crotch. "No way! He turned you into a woman?"

"Um, male dragons don't have..."

"Shit..." She looked between her own legs. "Me, too!? Fuck!"

"No, no, listen to me for a minute! I'm sorry - just you. I'm still... you know... a man."

She looked at herself for several more seconds, without moving. Then she stood up, took a pace towards him, stumbled on her new legs, and fell heavily to the ground. She looked up, looking suddenly tired. "You know what? I'm about done with today. I think... sorry, I'm just going to pass out for a bit..."

She did just that, eyes rolling back, and collapsing limply. Dragon-David didn't feel much better; there was something wrong here. It felt like - only a little like - trying to breathe after running a marathon. He felt like he wasn't getting enough of... something. Something vital. Something that, said the warning signs his new body was transmitting to him, might be dangerous if he could not find more.

This was a magical dead zone, Mil had said, and dragons 'breathed' magic. He hung his head as he pondered the implications; neither of them could survive for long here, without external aid. Nor anywhere in the solar system.

But Aralhyss' ship was nearby, and he had stored enough magic to sustain two dragons for a trip to somewhere safe.

He hated the idea of leaving; family, friends, who he might never see again. But then, how would he relate to them? He was no longer human; this was no longer his world, nor his solar system, nor Reg's. Once they had got to safety, then perhaps, they could plan to come back... one day. Maybe they could make contact with that Empire that sent Mil out here. If it had anything like human laws, there might be some sort of compensation package for the damage done here...

He carefully, and with great difficulty, manoeuvred Reg into a position that she could be carried across David's shoulders.

As he walked towards the pit in the ground, he saw the faint lights moving across the sky, far above, that heralded a dropship entering the atmosphere. It would take a good thirty minutes to find a safe landing spot and for anyone aboard to get here. The two dragons probably didn't have the time to wait.

He shook his head despondently; they might never know what had happened here. "Great fucking rescue, guys. Perfect timing."

The generators on the crippled habitat finally gave out then, and the surface of Titan all around him was plunged back into its inky, primordial darkness.

* * *

"TITAN, [tahyt-n], -noun

1 Astronomy; refers to the moon of Saturn

2 Politics; abbrev. of Titan Imperial Administration Centre, the first Human-dominated outpost of the Empire of the Infinite Suns

3 Greek mythology; refers to any of the sons of Uranus and Gaea; daughters are TITANESS.

4 Greek mythology; in reference to the sun god Helios, also known as the TITAN

5 Lowercase; refers to a person, being, or entity of significant size or power, e.g. a titan of politics

6 - Rocket; codename of a US Military ICBM launch system designed in the 1950s, adapted as a space launch vehicle, and retired in the mid 2000s

7 - Event; in history, reference either to the failed first contact event of 2263 (see First Contact), or to the successful first contact event of 2299 (see Empire of the Infinite Suns)

8 - Method; refers to a terraforming process introduced by the Empire of the Infinite Suns to raise the background magical field strength of a world (see Magical Energy Field Potential)..."

_ -Imperial English Dictionary, circa 2350_