:Give us a moment to consider that, please: 

To Nayoki, :- please find out if the lab has a shuttle which we could use. The Roci is not going to want to lend theirs. Or I suppose you could suggest that they send a shuttle to collect us. - Also I suppose we need to tell them that I am dependent on medical equipment currently: 

Nayoki really doesn't like the idea of Leareth going up there alone. Then again, if she goes with him, she can get within Mindhealing range of Jules Pierre Mao... 

Do any of the scientists know whether there's a shuttle available on the lab base? 

There's not; the shuttles go with the ships, and those have been elsewhere for the last couple of months. If they needed to leave they would've driven over to the nearest city on Io, which is a three-hour drive and has a spaceport.

Somehow Nayoki had utterly failed to think about the fact that Io has other cities on it! They must be so concerned! 

Anyway they are definitely not going to drive Leareth three hours to anywhere. Taking him on a shuttle is bad enough. 

"We do not currently have a shuttle down here," she points out, coolly. "You may send yours - with a lightly armed guard, if you prefer - and pick up the two of us. Also, Leareth was...injured recently, and needs supportive medical care, so we will need a medic on board and will want to bring another of our own personnel." 

...It occurs to her belatedly that probably Mao has a way of detecting protomolecule contamination, but she can deal with that LATER. 

"All right. We can have a shuttle there in ten hours. Our ship has limited medical facilities."

"Stand by one moment while we discuss this, please." 

Nayoki relays to Leareth for approval, and also asks one of the others to contact Holden and explain. :The risk to us is not that high, since we have mind control and they do not, but I do want to know if they have any sensor data on Jules Pierre Mao's ship? And whether it would be smart to ask them to keep their distance from Io, even if it means a longer shuttle flight for Leareth: 

This is relayed. The convenient thing about Proto-Mindspeech is that it's not interceptible by other ships' radios. 

They can see the ship's drive plume; it's heading towards Io. It changed its angle slightly, recently - probably just reflecting that it's not going to stop. He has no guesses on whether to do a longer shuttle flight, seems like it might depend on how stable Leareth is.

:Leareth? What do you think?:

Mostly what Leareth thinks is that people should stop asking him to have useful strategic thoughts right now, he's tired and apparently keeps almost dying and his reasoning is CLEARLY very impaired. The medics and Healers presumably have a much better idea of how stable he is than he himself does. 

He can understand Nayoki's current overwhelm, though, and why she wants instructions from him. 

:- I think it is not in their interest to try to kill us. And if they do fire more missiles, somehow, then you can Gate our essential personnel out before they hit. I...think it is not worth asking them to keep their distance? The plan where they send a shuttle in ten hours sounds fine. That should give you and the others plenty of time to figure out medical equipment for transport. I would like to sleep now, please: 

GAH. 

:- All right. On it. You can rest: 

If they do have to urgently Gate out then she would rather have a backup location in addition to the ship. Nayoki asks one of the scientists if they can pull up visuals of the nearest city on their computer. 

They can do that! Satellite's useless, everything on Io's in domes, but here's high resolution Maps pictures.

Oh, excellent, she can Gate from that and so can all of the other mages selected for this mission. She gets a good look, and shares it with all of them via Thoughtsensing. 

"- We approve of this plan," she answers over the comms. "We will be ready in ten hours." 

And then she sits and waits and watches Leareth sleep. Probably she should grab a nap too, at some point? She can do this right here, though, she has more than enough practice at sleeping in arbitrary uncomfortable circumstances. 

They don't communicate for another eight hours. They then transmit the arrival time for the shuttle and a request for proof of life for the hostages.

Nayoki isn't sure exactly what they're looking for, there, but she can have all of them making short recordings of themselves talking? And transmit those back? 

"That's fakeable," says Julie groggily, but she sits up and says, "hi Dad! Fuck you!" for the camera.

Well, if it's fakeable then Jules Pierre Mao can tell her what he wants instead that isn't fakeable. Nayoki is not, currently, very interested in having opinions on Julie's relationship with her father. 

She delegates getting similar transmissions from the scientists - which she can make them give with set-commands if they refuse, although so far they've cooperated with everything that let them keep studying the Proto - and sends all of that back to the ship. 

They don't request further proof. They do ask for clarification about whether a few unaccounted-for people are dead or off-site or what.

(Two of them are dead, in the wing that exploded; two of them aren't known to the scientists at all.)

Nayoki reports what she knows truthfully. She doesn't see any point in lying, or in waking Leareth for more specific instructions. 

When the shuttle is approaching, she has the Healers start getting Leareth unhooked from all the monitoring machines, and ideally switched to transportable versions of those - do the scientists know if the lab has that? 

They mostly don't move the infested because of the risk of the protomolecule spreading, but they have a couple of mobile IVs and a wheelchair.

Leareth goes along with being transferred into a wheelchair and reconnected to mobile IVs. He's off oxygen again, at least, so that shouldn't cause any horrible problems, and he mainly needs the IVs because he's still not succeeding at all at eating or drinking. 

They're ready when the shuttle arrives. 

Nayoki hovers at Leareth's side, and stretches out her Thoughtsensing to read the shuttle crew's minds as soon as they're in range. 

They're so stressed out and confused! They can't figure out who these people are or how they got the resources to seize the base and they're entertaining lots of wild hypotheses about who they might be, though none are as wild as the truth.

They're not planning to murder the envoys unless Jules Pierre Mao tells them to but they totally would if he told them to.

Nayoki doesn’t consider this surprising at all, or particularly an indication of bad faith. It’s pretty reasonable from their point of view.

She is, however, going to plop down some sneaky set-commands as soon as they’re within Mindhealing range. If she's on her game - which she hopes she is - then they won't notice, but they're going to have a very hard time doing any murder. 

Leareth sits in the wheelchair with his eyes closed and lets her handle it.