The forward airlock of the blood-soaked freighter at Berth #4 groaned, then popped open with a hiss of freezing white vapor that frosted the titanium deck plates for twenty yards around.
Lin Mo, Dr. Gu Qinghe (Goodness: 96/100), Tie Niu (Goodness: 93/100), and Xing Yao (Goodness: 96/100) vaulted down from the observation terrace and reached the smoking cockpit in three seconds flat.
Inside the shattered, ice-coated cabin, a frostbitten freighter pilot (Captain Bran, Goodness: 91/100) slumped over the manual steering yoke. His torn thermal flight suit was stiff with frozen blood from shrapnel wounds across his shoulder. Thick icicles clung to his eyelashes, and his frost-blackened fingers were frozen solid around a blinking crimson Black-Box Distress Beacon!
“Tie Niu, lift the seat frame gently—don’t snap his frostbitten fingers,” Dr. Gu instructed crisply, his silver medical case snapping open in mid-air as he stepped into the cockpit.
Tie Niu braced his massive shoulders and wrenched the buckled steel console aside with one hand. Together, Dr. Gu and Lin Mo lifted the unconscious pilot onto a heated medical stretcher on the pier.
“Core body temperature is down to twenty-eight degrees Celsius,” Dr. Gu diagnosed rapidly, adjusting his silver-rimmed spectacles. “His lung meridians are clogged with minus-one-hundred-and-eighty-degree ice crystals. Stand back—I’m warming his heart meridian!”
