I did. Less than a minute later, Skippy found it, in the pile of junk way in the back. Chang had Darzi and Putri climb over the pile in between and toss useless crap out of the way, until they had uncovered the top third of the pile, then they proceeded more carefully. Darzi found the stupid thing, it looked exactly as Skippy said. On the display, I saw that Giraud's team was close to Chang's location, close enough that I judged it best for them to link up and support each other on the retreat, even though that meant having all our eggs in one basket.

That's when things went to shit in a hurry.

The first sign of trouble was not a warning from Skippy, it was not the combots encountering Kristang fighters in front of them. It was a hail of bullets hitting Giraud and Putri from behind, knocking them both down. Putri took several hits dead center and was killed instantly, the explosive-tipped rounds fortunately missed the wormhole controller module that was in a sling on his back. Giraud went down with a glancing hit to the side of his helmet, a hard blow to his lower back, and a round that hit his left arm and severed his forearm halfway between wrist and elbow. Darzi reacted exactly as he should have, as he was trained to do, he dropped to the deck, clearing the way for the combots to engage. Darzi crawled forward keeping low, and tore the straps off Putri's sling, Darzi saw Putri was beyond help and he correctly focused on keeping to the mission objective.

Our combots swiveled to engage the six enemy soldiers who were wearing heavy armor, it was a vicious firefight and Darzi couldn't do anything to help, he had to keep his head down and shelter the vital module behind Giraud's unmoving form. On the display I could see Giraud was alive, unconscious and not bleeding seriously.

"Skippy," I shouted frantically, "is there another way back to the docking bay?" Four of the Kristang were still alive and taking cover in doorways and side corridors, they had the combots fully engaged. Darzi, with the module, couldn't move without exposing the precious module. Chang's team was running to assist, they couldn't arrive for another two minutes, maybe less. Too long.

"Yes, plenty of alternate routes exist."

"Great. Combot operators, don't worry about damaging the corridor, we'll be taking another route back! Take out those Kristang, maximum force!"

That was all the combot operators needed to hear, Three of them dialed their rockets up to maximum yield, shape charge, and blew the hell out of the corridor beyond Darzi and Giraud. Rockets penetrated two or three compartments deep, destroying the four Kristang, blasting walls, floors and collapsing the ceiling.

"Darzi!" I shouted when my voice should have remained calm, "get up, Lieutenant Giraud is alive. Can you carry Giraud?"