"Yes, sir." Darzi could easily carry Giraud in the low gravity, especially in his powered armor. He got the module slung over his back, tied the straps quickly, and picked up Giraud's unconscious body. The combots led the way, I warned them as Chang's team approached so the two groups didn't shoot at each other. They linked up and Skippy guided them on an alternate, roundabout route back to the docking bay, this time Chang had a pair of combots covering the rear to avoid nasty surprises. The convoluted route had me concerned about the additional time it took, Skippy assured me the path the raiding party was taking had the enemy confused and guessing where to go. Skippy still was mostly blind in there. This was the most dangerous point of the mission, before the enemy had to guess the raiding party's objectives, now the enemy knew where the raiding party was going; back to the docking bay. The party was two thirds of the way back, by Skippy's reckoning, when trouble struck. This time the enemy appeared not in armor, but with combots of their own, they blew a wall open and leapt into the corridor. The Kristang combots were heavy and clunky and slow compared to our Thuranin models, they made good targets. They were also controlled by much more experienced operators, and they had every advantage. Except one. As the firefight raged and the raiding party was pinned down momentarily, Skippy shouted excitedly that the clumsy movements of our combots was actually helping us, the Kristang had trained to fight the super-fast movements of Thuranin-controlled combots, and the slow awkward actions of our combots threw the Kristang's aim off.

We lost three combots in the initial firefight, another was damaged and unable to use its primary weapons. Chang saw Darzi was hampered by carrying Giraud, he ordered Darzi to set Giraud down in the arms of the damaged combot. Private Marsden came forward to help Darzi get Giraud strapped in, they were almost done when Marsden took a hit to the head that shattered his faceplate, then a second round almost separated the helmet from his neck. He went down in a spray of flash-frozen blood, and on my display his life signs went flat-line. I notified Chang not to waste time assisting Marsden, he didn't bother to acknowledge, I heard and saw him urging people forward. There may have been other paths to the docking bay, and we have lose people moving forward into the firefight, Chang knew we'd likely lose even more people is they got pinned down and remained on the asteroid for a second longer than necessary. Speed and maneuver were all important, Chang saw that, even through the painful fog of broken ribs, the guy was an ironman, even without his powered armor suit.