Como Rico sobreviveu ao ataque inicial em Tropas Estelares?

O tenente Rasczak o salvou, de acordo com outros Roughnecks.

Do roteiro do filme, logo após Johnny Rico ser liberado da câmara de cura e ele e Ace e Dizzy se juntam a Roughnecks. Aqui está a cena do roteiro:

Ace: So, I hear your lieutenant is a real nut-buster
Birdie belts him, and Ace goes down.
Birdie: No one talks about the Lieutenant that way. He saved my life!
Sugar: Mine, too.
Other Roughnecks: Same for me. Me, too.
Ace: Well, sounds like he is quite a guy.
Birdie (to Johnny): Who do you think saved your ass?
("Starship Troopers" screenplay by Edward Neumeier, Production Draft 4/17/1996)

A adaptação em quadrinhos não era tão específica, simplesmente dizia "alguém o encontrou e o costurou" e omitiu aquela cena "salvou sua bunda".

I'm glad I did it that way, because if I hadn't, I wouldn't have been along when the Lieutenant bought it . . . and that would have been just too much to be borne. It happened very fast and just before retrieval. A man in the third squad was wounded, not badly but he was down; the assistant section leader moved in to pick up — and bought a small piece of it himself. The Lieutenant, as usual, was watching everything at once — no doubt he had checked physicals on each of them by remote, but we'll never know. What he did was to make sure that the assistant section leader was still alive; then made pickup on both of them himself, one in each arm of his suit.
He threw them the last twenty feet and they were passed into the retrieval boat — and with everybody else in, the shield gone and no interdiction, was hit and died instantly.
I haven't mentioned the names of the private and of the assistant section leader on purpose. The Lieutenant was making pickup on all of us, with his last breath. Maybe I was the private. It doesn't matter who he was. What did matter was that our family had had its head chopped off. The head of the family from which we took our name, the father who made us what we were.
("Starship Troopers" by Robert Heinlein, Chapter 10)

Isso foi abordado no script original do filme. Em suma, Johnny foi flagrado pelos soldados da 2ª Brigada que haviam sido enviados para aliviá-los depois que a posição deles foi superada. O tenente pessoalmente salvou-o, embora não seja particularmente claro se ele foi reconhecido.

JOHNNY: Medic... MEDIC...!

Now two more Arachnid warriors close in on him through the enveloping smoke. He fires his pulse rifle empty, and dropping it, crawls desperately, dragging his useless leg.

JOHNNY: Oh, God... Oh, God, help me... please help me...!

A third Arachnid warrior rears up in front of him, deadly jaws slashing down toward him, when suddenly it is blown to pieces in the blinding blast of a point-blank pulse cannon.

VOICE (O.S.): Take my hand!

Johnny reaches out. A STEEL HAND takes his, dragging him back as bugs attack. His rescuers's pulse cannon thunders overhead. Bug parts fly as insects swarm in for the kill.