The counterattack had begun at dawn, not long after we took the tracking station, and it had been more than heavy; it had been ferocious. The Rraey, realizing their protection had been ripped away, had struck back hard to reclaim the tracking station. Their attack was haphazard, belying the lack of time and planning, but it was relentless. Troopship after troopship floated over the horizon, bringing more Rraey into combat.
The Special Forces soldiers used their special blend of tactics and insanity to greet the first of these troopships with teams racing to meet the ships as they landed, firing rockets and grenades into the troop bays the moment the landing doors opened. The Rraey finally added air support and troops began landing without being blown up the moment they touched down. While the bulk of our forces were defending the command center and the Consu technological prize it hid, our platoon had been roaming the periphery, harassing the Rraey and making their forward progress that much more difficult. It's why Jane and I were on the outcropping of rock, several hundred meters from the command center.
Directly below our position, another team of Rraey were beginning to pick their way toward us. It was time to move. I launched two rockets at the Rraey to stall them, then bent down and grabbed Jane in a fireman's carry. Jane moaned, but I couldn't worry about that. I spotted a boulder Jane and I had used on our way out and launched myself toward it. Behind me, the Rraey took aim. Shots whipped by; shattered rock cut at my face. I made it behind the boulder, set Jane down, pumped a grenade in the Rraey's direction. As it went off, I ran out from behind the boulder and leaped at their position, covering much of the distance in two long strides. The Rraey squawked; they didn't quite know what to do with the human launching itself directly at them. I switched my Empee to automatic fire and got them at close range before they could get themselves organized. I hurried back to Jane and accessed her BrainPal. Still there. Still alive.
The next leg of our journey was going to be difficult; about a hundred meters of open ground lay between me and where I wanted to be, a small maintenance garage. Rraey infantry lines bordered the field; a Rraey aircraft was heading in the general direction I wanted to go, looking for humans to shoot. I accessed Asshole to locate the positions of Jane's people and found three near me: two on my side of the field, thirty meters away, and another on the other side. I gave them the order to cover me, grabbed Jane again and sprinted toward the shed.
The air erupted in gunfire. Turf jumped up at me as shots buried themselves into the ground where my feet had been or would be. I was hit with a glancing blow to my left hip; my lower half torqued as pain flashed through my side. That was going to leave a bruise. I managed to keep my footing and kept running. Behind me I could hear the crumpled thump of rockets impacting on Rraey positions. The cavalry had arrived.
The Rraey airship turned to get a shot at me, then swerved to avoid the rocket launched at it from one of our soldiers. It accomplished this, but wasn't so lucky at avoiding the other two rockets bearing down on it from the other direction. The first crashed into its engine; the second into the windshield. The aircraft dipped and listed, but remained aloft long enough to get kissed by a final rocket that lodged itself in the shattered windshield and erupted into the cockpit. The aircraft collapsed into the ground with a shuddering rumble as I made it to the shed. Behind me, the Rraey who had been targeting me turned their attention to Jane's people, who were causing them far more damage than I was. I tore open the door to the shed and slid myself and Jane into the recessed repair bay inside.
In the relative calm I reassessed Jane's vitals. The wound in her head was completely caked over with SmartBlood; it was impossible to see how much damage there was or how deep the rock fragments went into her brain. Her pulse was strong but her breathing was shallow and erratic. This is where the extra oxygen-carrying capacity of SmartBlood was going to come in handy. I was no longer certain she was going to die, but I didn't know what I could do to keep her alive on my own.
I accessed Asshole for options, and one was produced: the command center had housed a small infirmary. Its accommodations were modest but featured a portable stasis chamber. It would keep Jane stable until she could make it onto one of the ships and back to Phoenix for medical attention. I recalled how Jane and the crew of the Sparrowhawk stuffed me into a stasis chamber after my first trip to Coral. It was time to return the favor.
A series of bullets whined through a window above me; someone had remembered I was there. Time to move again. I plotted my next sprint, to a Rraey-built trench fifty meters in front of me, now occupied by Special Forces. I let them know I was coming; they obligingly laid down suppressing fire as I ran brokenly toward them. With that I was behind Special Forces lines again. The remainder of the trip to the command center proceeded with minimal drama.
I arrived just in time for the Rraey to begin lobbing shells at the command center. They were no longer interested in taking back their tracking station; now they were intent on destroying it. I looked up at the sky. Even through the brightness of the morning sky, sparkling flashes of light glistened through the blue. The Colonial fleet had arrived.
The Rraey weren't going to take very long to demolish the command center, taking the Consu technology with it. I didn't have very much time. I ducked into the building and ran for the infirmary as everyone else was streaming out.
There was something big and complicated in the command center infirmary. It was the Consu tracking system. God only knows why the Rraey decided to house it there. But they did. As a result, the infirmary was the one room in the entire command center that wasn't all shot up; Special Forces were under orders to take the tracking system in one piece. Our boys and girls attacked the Rraey in this room with flash grenades and knives. The Rraey were still there, stab wounds and all, splayed out on the floor.
The tracking system hummed, almost contentedly, flat and featureless, against the infirmary wall. The only sign of input/output capability was a small monitor and an access spindle for a Rraey memory module lying haphazardly on a hospital bedside table next to the tracking system. The tracking system had no idea that in just a couple of minutes it was going to be nothing more than a bundle of broken wiring, thanks to an upcoming Rraey shell. All our work in securing the damn thing was going to go to waste.
The command center rattled. I stopped thinking about the tracking system and placed Jane gently on an infirmary bed, then looked around for the stasis chamber. I found it in an adjoining storeroom; it looked like a wheelchair encased in a half cylinder of plastic. I found two portable power sources on the shelf next to the stasis chamber; I plugged one into the chamber and read the diagnostic panel. Good for two hours. I grabbed another one. Better safe than sorry.
I wheeled the stasis chamber over to Jane as another shell hit, this one shaking the entire command center and knocking out the power. I was pushed sideways by the hit, slipped on a Rraey body and cracked my head on the wall on the way down. A flash of light pulsed behind my eyes and then an intense pain. I cursed as I righted myself, and felt a small ooze of SmartBlood from a scrape on my forehead.
The lights flicked on and off for a few seconds, and in between those few flickers Jane sent a rush of emotional information so intense I had to grab the wall to steady myself. Jane was awake; aware and in those few seconds I saw what she thought she saw. Someone else was in the room with her, looking just like her, her hands touching the sides of Jane's face as she smiled at her. Flicker, flicker, and she looked like she looked the last time I saw her. The light flickered again, came on for good, and the hallucination went away.