“TB!” Burke returned, doing the same thing.

They both turned and sprinted away from the tunnel, grabbing Savoy from where he had fallen, and lunged for the rent in the ship that had given them entrance.

The rumble behind them was enough to inform them when the thermobaric grenades detonated, shaking the entire lander as the overpressure waves erupted in the contained space, each reflected shock wave reinforcing the next as they had been designed to.

A blast of flame and gas erupted out of the tunnel, curving around the bulkheads like a living thing, seeking a way out, just as the soldiers did. It caught up with them as they passed the tear in the hull, slapping them with over ten pounds per square inch of pressure and tossing them from the lander like toys in a hurricane.

“Savoy! Burke! Mehn!” Major Brinks growled, eyeing the scrambled signals that were once three of his best men. “Damn!”

He was still standing outside the hospital facility, and his angry body language was apparent to the guards. It took the major a few moments to recognize how nervous they were getting and to move off. He didn’t really care about their nerves, but he’d rather not test the discipline of troops he didn’t know.

“Goddammit, Lieutenant Savoy, report!” he roared again, keying and rekeying the network-reconnect command.

Dust and debris rained down around them, covering the three soldiers in a fine coat of powder and several hundred pounds of what used to be an alien landing craft as the rumbling thunder slowly died out.

“Ohhh…fuck,” Burke groaned, pushing himself up to his hands and knees, shunting a half ton of debris off his back. “You guys…dead?”

“Just wishing,” Mehn replied as he shifted some more material and they both pulled a chunk of something off Savoy. “Hey, L.T., you okay?”

Savoy didn’t move, but his suit sent them a steady stream of medical data when they queried it that showed him to be alive.

“Come on, Sav.” Burke hooked him under his arms and dragged him back. “Snap out of it. We might have company any time now…”

Savoy groaned but moved his arm in a flapping motion that really didn’t help much.

“Well, he’s alive and probably awake,” Mehn muttered. “I’ll contact the major and get a pickup…”

Burke nodded, dragging Savoy along the ground as they both shot glances at the somewhat more dilapidated-looking landing craft.

“Oh fuck,” Mehn muttered.

“What’s wrong?”

“Our network link is scrambled,” he told Burke. “Long-range frequencies are junked…”

“It’ll settle down,” Savoy groaned more than spoke.

Burke looked down at him in surprise but chuckled. “Welcome back, boss.”

“Yeah, yeah…” Savoy croaked, pulling himself free of Burke and climbing unsteadily to his feet. “Reboot the com-suite, both of you.”

“You got it,” they told him, following his instructions.

The software reboot took a few seconds. The network connection wizard activated and sent out a query signal. A few nanoseconds later, after two handshakes, three passwords, and a gigabit encryption code, the network connected again.