"We've got, uh, missile launches - do you know what they're shooting at -"

Everyone is VERY BUSY but one of Leareth's people still on the ship picks this up and relays to Nayoki in the cargo bay.

:- The lab, I think, automatic safeguard in case of security breaches - we got the scientists out for questioning and can get our people out, not critical if the lab is destroyed but it would be better to take it intact for the ground facilities - we can: she thinks fast, this isn't at all feasible to address with magic the brute-force way but maybe if they're clever.... :- we can try to disrupt the electronics with magic and nudge the missiles off course - and can your ship shoot at them or something -?: 

- about eight seconds in, regardless of the state of the danger, the protomolecule is going to be force to take down its Gates or else find a different non-Leareth energy source, because Leareth's life-force is crumpling inward as his heart stops beating. 

Emril is yelling so many swearwords in three different Velgarth languages! 

:Julie does the machine have any ideas - we can't get a link to him now -: 

" - it says, uh, do CPR - do you know CPR -"

:I have no idea what that is!: Emril at this point expects the autodoc to have useful images to go with its instructions, and frantically consults the screen while the other Healers crowd around. 

(They're now completely ignoring the human test subject who Nayoki dropped off here less than a minute ago and who's been huddled on the floor in the corner.) 

"Uh, you don't need everyone on that, and someone should be putting him on the ventilator again - CPR is, like, chest compressions -" The autodoc is in fact doing an illustrative video, and also blasting music with the right beat.

Emril feels that the music is incredibly tonally jarring but she supposes the timing-part is sort of helpful. Ish. 

The Healers know how to do the whole ventilator process now, at least! They can be pretty fast about it now that they've had practice. They're really wishing Leareth would stop DOING THINGS that resulted in getting that practice! 

With the compressions, and the autodoc throwing a lot of drugs into his system and also trying to fix the fact that his blood sugar is now unmeasurably low, Leareth is - not quite back, his heart is showing flickers of electrical activity but not enough to count as spontaneous heartbeats, the fragments of his life-force are still very weak and disorganized - but there are some very local patterns starting to resume and that gives the Healers a tiny foothold at pushing lots of energy at him.

Probably his biggest remaining problem is that his body temperature is almost ten degrees too low and bodies are not really meant to operate under these conditions. 

None of the Healers have interrupted Nayoki to tell her about this development, since they're assuming she's quite occupied right now. She's coordinating all the other mages on using a combination of the ship's sensor-data and very quick-and-dirty scrying to locate missiles and murder their electronics with random electrical discharges and then thwack them hard with mage-force and hope this gets them to miss the lab. There's a lot of Io that seems totally fine to nuke. 

It's not very occupied, as a planet. The Roci can shoot down missiles; this isn't meant for in-atmosphere surface to surface missiles, which aren't really a thing anymore, but they can at least trim some off and give the mages less to work with. 

The lab does not self-destruct, so probably whatever the protomolecule did worked at least temporarily.

It's an extremely stressful five minutes but they get all the missiles downed. Some strike uncomfortably close to the lab, but - hopefully - not close enough to seriously damage it. 

Nayoki makes sure all the scientists are still immobilized, and spends a minute catching her breath, and then leaves a heap of mind-controlled scientists in the cargo bay and heads to check on Leareth. 

They've gone through several iterations now of getting his heart beating in an organized rhythm for a few seconds at a time before losing it again; his body is still really unhappy, mostly about the severe hypothermia, which the autodoc is trying to treat but it doesn't have methods that much more effective than external heat and dumping warmed IV fluids into him. 

- eventually, just before Nayoki actually makes it back to the medical bay and starts donning the biohazard gear, they get a pulse again and Emril manages to get a solid Healing-link to him fast enough and this time she can hold onto it. It sort of feels like she's trying to hang onto him by her fingernails while dangling off the side of a mountain, this is the hardest stupidest Healing-link she has ever tried to maintain, but she manages. 

She might as well shove her Sight at the Proto and ask if it sees any Healing it could do to help. 

Nayoki stops in the doorway, frozen. 

:What HAPPENED?: she asks, directed privately at Julie because the poor Healers look so busy. 

He almost died. I don't know if it was related or just bad timing. His heart's beating now I think? So that's good. It mostly wasn't.

There are about a dozen different things Nayoki should be doing, next. Leading the interrogation of the captured scientists, updating Holden and the crew, finding out the state of the lab and whether it was damaged - exploring whether they in fact have medical facilities - following up on whether the mage who was down there with the security people even got out alive - 

She's done multiple challenging Gates in rapid succession, not to mention pushing her Mindhealing Gift well past her sensible limits, and her head hurts, and Leareth keeps ALMOST DYING every time she leaves him unsupervised for five minutes... 

Instead of doing any of those things, apparently, she's going to park herself next to Leareth and, possibly, not leave until he's capable of answering a Mindspeech query to confirm he's all right. Which might take a while. She can tell he's alive but he's very deeply unconscious, barely showing up to Thoughtsensing. 

The mage in the security room with the security people has been poised on the edge of trying a frantic last-ditch Gate out for a while! It would have been a gamble, the ship was already well outside of his usual Gating range by the time Nayoki gave her last set of orders. 

...However, he seems to be....still alive...? 

He ignores the terrified compulsioned personnel and digs out a scrying-focus, before realizing he doesn't even have to bother with that, the lab has security camera footage. 

Does it seem to be intact? What's the status of the Proto? 

It seems like a couple of the explosives went off before they were deactivated; the left wing of the building has collapsed neatly inward on itself in a way that would probably contain an escaping protomolecule, if it couldn't Gate. 

The protomolecule in the room on the base is thoughtfully munching on bacteria. The protomolecule is also in a bunch of other places, soaking up radiation. 

The mage tries to reach Nayoki via Proto-relay for further instructions, and gets a distracted order to scope out the lab, learn if it has any medical facilities, and also try if possible to ask the Proto to go back to the original reactor room? She thinks giving it clear instructions works better than asking questions about what it can do. 

...Sure, he'll Mindspeak the Proto and try firmly asking it go back to the room it came from? 

Some of it goes back there.

(The Proto's attempt to Gate from Leareth's reserves works - briefly - for the first Gate - and then stops working very hard and also thousands of miles away the Healers are panicking again.) 

...Okay, whatever, fine. He'll start hunting through the schematics and the security guards' minds to see if the lab has any medical facilities on-site. 

Back on the Roci, one of Leareth's other staff gets a very brief report and order from Nayoki. 

She Mindspeaks Holden and the rest of his crew, trying to sound like she has WAY more of an idea what's going on and what she's doing than she actually feels right now.

:It...sounds like we captured the lab mostly intact, and we've got all the scientists, er, restrained with magic in the cargo hold. If you want to question them. Also someone else is on site with the security staff, if you wanted to access their computer records?: 

"Wow. Uh. Okay. Congratulations. Let's take the data cores, and - I guess someone should ask them if there's any more protomolecule and where it is -"

:- Can you, er, tell us what the data cores look like? Or if we get the ship closer again, maybe we can Gate one of your people over to help look: 

She delegates to one of the others to go ask the captive scientists about other protomolecule samples, and read their minds in case they're not forthcoming with their answers. 

"Yeah, it'll be, in the computer, most of the stuff in there's actually just coolant but there'll be a metal honeycomb thing -"