Chapter 18: Extraordinary Heroism

“One collapsed lung, a fractured tibia, and compression injuries to the spinal cord,” Doctor Evans said as she circled Jaeger’s bed with a tablet computer in her hand. “All things considered, you’re lucky that you didn’t sustain more severe injuries, ejecting at the speed that you did.”

“Thought we lost you there for a while, buddy,” Baker said as he leaned against a nearby bulkhead. “I saw your Beewolf go down, but I didn’t see your chute pop.”

“Am I ... on the Rorke?” Jaeger asked, blinking his eyes as they adjusted to the glare. He was in a whitewashed room, small and cramped, but by human standards rather than Valbaran.

“Yep,” his friend replied. “The Doc says you’re pretty much ready to be discharged, so stop being a little bitch and come celebrate with us.”

“That’s not what I said,” Evans complained as she shot Baker a stern glance. “It may take about a week for your lung to heal completely. We drained your chest cavity, and it appears to be inflating properly now, but you still need to take some precautions. No shouting or laughing, avoid exerting yourself, and absolutely no smoking. I’m also prescribing you a cough suppressant. Your fractures weren’t too severe, we’ve splinted your leg, and I’ll be giving you anti-inflammatory medication and pain killers for your back. You should make a full recovery in a month or so, and you should be able to leave the infirmary later today.”

“What happened?” Jaeger asked groggily, “how long have I been out?”

“Chill out, you haven’t been in a coma,” Baker laughed. “Couple of hours at the most. You missed a hell of a fight in orbit. Once we brought the hive ship down, the rest of their fleet went berserk, it was like they lost all ability to coordinate. It was like shooting giant, ugly fish in a barrel.”

“So the hive fleet is... ?”

“Wiped out to the last fighter. There are still some Bugs down on the surface, barricaded in the cities, but it’s nothin’ that a few Borealan shock troopers can’t sort out. Valbara should be Bug-free by the end of the day. They’re callin’ you a hero, you know.”

“A hero?” Jaeger asked, surprised. “Me? Why?”

“Well, besides bringin’ down the hive ship, which I played equal part in might I remind you,” he added sarcastically. “The surveillance video of you facin’ off against the Queen after the crash has gone viral, so to speak. It was all over the Valbaran broadcast network, and now it’s found its way onto the Rorke’s intranet.”

Baker pulled out his phone and tapped on it for a few moments, then turned the screen towards Jaeger. He leaned forward, wincing as a stab of pain shot up his spine, watching as the video began to play. It was just like the footage that they had seen in the lookout post when Maza’s flock had first taken them up onto the wall, taken from a distance, the telescope zoomed in on the scene. He saw himself, a small speck at the bottom of the shot as the Queen advanced on him, he was firing his XMR at her. There was no sound, but the screeching noise that she had made was still fresh in his mind. From off-camera came the Teth’rek, barreling into her and knocking her to the ground. He remembered that part well enough, turning his attention back to Baker as it began to tear her apart.

“Now that’s somethin’ you don’t see every day,” Baker laughed as he pulled back his phone and watched the scene play out gleefully. “The locals are pretty pleased with you, to say the least. If you want my opinion, they’re probably going to start putting your face on T-shirts and coffee mugs, so be prepared for that. Oh, by the way, the Captain should be visitin’ soon to give you one of these,” he said as he tapped at a medal on his chest.

“Is that...”

“A Navy Cross, yeah. For ‘extraordinary heroism in combat’, so I’m told.”

Jaeger had to suppress a laugh, he had rarely seen Baker so pleased with himself.

“How many did we lose?” he asked, his tone becoming more serious. “What are our casualties?”

“Less, thanks to you,” Baker replied. “Don’t think about that right now, just focus on getting back on your feet.”

“What about Maza and the others? Did they make it out in one piece?” he asked, almost afraid to hear the answer.

“You can ask them yourself, they docked a few minutes ago and they should be on their way up here.”

Jaeger breathed a sigh of relief as he lay back in his bed. On top of the war being over, everyone that he was close to was safe. He couldn’t have hoped for a better outcome. Well, perhaps an outcome where he didn’t collapse his lung, but you couldn’t have everything. As if on cue, the door opened, and several camouflaged blurs flooded into the room. Maza’s arms were around him before he even had a chance to sit up, her face buried in his chest. It seemed that they had left their helmets on the lander.

“You’re alive!” she warbled, her feathers flashing in excited yellow. “There was so much chaos during the battle, nobody was able to tell us if you had survived or not, even Baker hadn’t seen your chute open. We saw the hive ship go down, we saw your Beewolf explode, none of us knew what to think. It was only when we saw the video of the Queen being killed by the Teth’rak that we knew you had ejected safely, and then Cuetz’xauh’qui sent us a message telling us that you had been handed over to the Earth’nay in Yilgarn.”

“Relatively safely,” he chuckled, wincing as her tight grip on him hurt his back.

She pulled away, looking apologetic.

“I knew that you would prevail,” Coza announced confidently.

“You cried,” Ayau teased, Coza’s feathers flashing in embarrassed purple.

“We waited twenty rotations for this day,” Xico mused. “And when it finally came, the war was over in a matter of hours. If it was not for the Earth’nay, the Bugs would have broken through our defenses and attacked the cities directly, the assessment that Campbell made was accurate. If it had not been for your actions, Jaeger, Baker, then that hive ship would have turned the tide of the battle in their favor.”

“Think nothing of it,” Baker replied, polishing his medal conspicuously with his sleeve. “It was just a little extraordinary heroism is all.”

“You were very brave,” Tacka said quietly, it was one of the rare times that Jaeger had ever heard her speak. Somehow, it made her compliment feel all the more sincere. He didn’t feel like a hero, however. He just felt tired, relieved. Before they could continue their reunion, Baker got a message on his phone, thumbing through it for a moment as Jaeger looked on.

“They want us in the briefing room,” he said, “the Valbarans too.”

Evans rolled her eyes, clearly annoyed by the Captain’s meddling in medical matters.

“Very well,” she conceded, “you can go. Just remember what I said, no laughing or coughing. Here, take these,” she added as she retrieved a baggy full of medication from a nearby table and thrust it into his hands. “No, I don’t mean take them with you, I mean take them now.” She handed him a glass of water and watched as he downed a handful of pills. “And come straight back here when you’re done, I want you under observation for a few more hours at least.”

“The damage to the Rorke could have been a lot worse,” Campbell said as he paced before a hologram of the vessel, the flickering display lighting up the briefing room in a ghostly glow. “The hive ship’s plasma cannons melted through all of the armor layers and several decks here ... here ... and most notably here. That’s not including all of the damage from the Bug torpedoes. One of our frigates is in need of some serious repairs, the same goes for several CWIS ships and many of our support craft. Losses were below my projections, thankfully, but the fleet isn’t in any position to continue along our patrol route. Nor can we head back to UNN territory.”

Captain Fielding examined the three-dimensional model, the rest of his staff looking on. Baker was stood nearby, and one of the attendants had relinquished his chair to Jaeger.

“And what about the Valbaran situation?” he asked, directing his question towards the flock.

“Better than we ever imagined, Captain,” Xico replied. “Civilian casualties were almost nonexistent, the underground shelters did their job admirably. We lost one defense station, along with all hands aboard, and there was significant damage to three more. Two of our carriers are dead in space, with four more taking enough structural damage to warrant urgent repairs. If you can provide any assistance on that front, we would be grateful. We lost a few fighters, and there were some casualties during the ground battles, but overall, we came out relatively unscathed.”

“You must understand, Captain,” Maza added. “We had been preparing for an apocalypse. The fact that our cities are not razed, and that our entire fleet isn’t burning in orbit is a miracle from our perspective.”

“We lost a lot of good men on that station too,” Fielding replied solemnly, “they were fighting on the hull when it was brought down.” He turned back to Campbell, his hands clasped behind his back. “As the chief engineer, what is your recommendation, Mister Campbell?”

“We’re in no state to make any long journeys,” he replied with a scowl as he leaned on the table and stared at the rotating display. “It will take weeks of repairs to get the fleet back into ship shape, and in the meantime, the Valbarans will be dealing with reduced defensive capabilities. We need repairs and resupply, they need help with relief efforts and something to plug the holes in their defense grid. I would recommend that we stay in Valbaran orbit for the time being. The Baskeyfield could make the trip back to UNN space on her own and make a report, maybe bring back reinforcements.”