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[Damon Clau]

Throughout debriefing and Raven's rant followed by Cowboy's counter argument Damon continued to review his own memories of the battle.

He finally opted to speak up on something fairly important to him. "So anyone else get the impression we were being played with? What ever just happened to us. Luck had nothing to do with surviving. They were trying to capture us. The only luck we had was that we didn't get caught."

Yes, four deaths was a bitch and Stern did need to grow a brain capable of processing more then just Spacy protocols... but that wasn't Damon's concern right now. He couldn't bring people back from the dead but he could prepare for the next battle...

The enemy wanted something. Something, they were willing sacrifice lives for... after all everyone with half a mind realized it was harder to subdue another then it was to just kill them... at least it was if you know how to kill...

[Shadow Hunter]

DJ was just as stunned by the announcement as Raven was. Perhaps moreso as it wasn't until her outburst shocked him out of his reverie of denial that he really understood what was happening. His partner was gone. The only person on the ship he trusted other than Erika. The man who'd flown any number of missions with him for the Rangers.

He rose more slowly, though he was clearly no less enraged. His fists were clenched tight and actually shook. It seemed an effort for him to speak.

"You can take your debriefin' an' tactics an' data an' SOP and shove them straight up your ass sideways, Hombre," he growled at Kain, though that was clearly a misdirection of his anger.

"I got the impression that like pretty much every Spacy operation, this one was 'bout as well planned as a juggling school for one armed spastics. A good man died today and it's your damn fault 'cause you and your bosses can't pull your heads out of your asses long enough to plan a half way decent op." He jabbed his finger accusingly at Sterns.

"I shoulda picked the other damn side." DJ snatched up his helmet and stormed out, as usual not caring whether or not Sterns or any of the other Spacy drones thought he should or not.

[Chorizal]

Given how emotional everyone was acting, Chorizal was actually surprised they didn't lose more fighters. They simply didn't understand the necessities of war.

"Of course there is such a thing as acceptable losses," he replied. "We experienced them today. The loss of four such skillful pilots is a blow, I will admit. However, we achieved our objective and proved victorious over our enemies. Don't forget that we also eliminated two enemy valkyrie units as well as an untold number of Zentraedi pods and an enemy ship. Today was a victory.

"Trying to determine the enemy's motivations is a task for higher level officers," he responded to Clau's question. "As long as we continue to focus on our own duties and continue to perform at our highest capabilities, we will continue to enjoy victory."

[Cowboy]

Kaďn took a shower of manly heroic bullshit, but did not speak a word in return.

Most of the nuevos tejanos he previously met had an attitude problem, it was proudly wore like a cultural signature... Unfortunately, foul language was often part of the package.

In his previous life, Cowboy would have answered to such disrespect in a swift, proper, UNMC fashion.

As a private citizen, and an employee of a well-known security company, he would simply ignore this side effect of an upset human being blowing off steam.

The zentraedi shared his view of the situation, it was the other opposite of the spectrum, pragmatic but limited to behave like a purely functional weapon system.

Altogether, these opinions made for an interesting global analysis.

**Providing the media with evidence of UN military operations led in contested space, the SSF could turn the public opinion against the UN government. Most favorable issue for the UN: all sensible operations outside the borders would have been canceled and a few scapegoats down the chain of command fired ; worst case scenario would have ended with a major political crisis. Win-win situation for the Sigma Federation.**

But the D3S pilot was not supposed to get involved further in these matters, although he was pretty curious about the new variable fighter of the SSF.

[Shinjo]

Shinjo strode to the place that was becoming more or less customary for him in the briefing room. He wasn't terribly concerned about where those other four fighters had gotten off to, considering it was Winter, Valkyria and Archangel they were dealing with here. Oh, and Heartbreak. Good guy, Heartbreak. He didn't have any movies made about him or anything, but that really didn't matter all that much. Taking his seat, Shinjo placed his helmet under his chair, waiting for the briefing to begin.

He hadn't been concerned about the four missing pilots, as it were, until Sterns said they were dead. Well, he didn't say they were dead, per se, but he may as well have. He meant the same thing, either way. "The hell?" was all he muttered to himself, echoing his previous thought from out in the hangar. He didn't burst out the way that the Rangers did, nor did he try to calm anyone down the way the new guy did, and he definately didn't go on about acceptable loss like Chorizal. He just kind of sat there in stunned silence until he realized that Major Sterns was getting real live feedback.

"Um, sir," he said rather tentatively... he'd never actually talked directly to Sterns, and had only ever really seen him yelling or looking angry or both, so who could blame him for being a little nervous? "I do kind of agree with, uh," what the hell was that guy's last name again? He had like twelve names, and it was difficult to sort out. "Uh, Shadow Hunter. Not that anything's your fault, sir, just that intelligence seems to have sort of gone sour on us. I mean, we had one ship that seemed like it was waiting for us and two others fold in on us in the middle of the fight. One of them was friendly, sure, but still... we got sort of caught with our pants down on this one, if you don't mind me saying so, sir." He considered asking about the weird Sigma fighters, but he hadn't really been engaged with them, so as far as he knew, they could have just been 19's and he could have been seeing things.

[Joker]

Once Sterns had finished talking, he took a fairly deep breath. Shooting the messenger was something that people were really, really good at, and he was used to being shot at... both literally and figuratively. So, he wasn't neccessarily surprised when people started lashing out at him. He was especially not surprised when the people that started lashing out at him were the Rangers at the back of the room. Shockingly enough, however, he didn't even try to stop DJ from storming out. He wasn't about to start giving people hell for negative reactions to the deaths of comrades, however. That said, he did level his gaze on Raven after she said her piece. "Sit down, Sasaki," he said fairly mildly. "I'm not about to start giving sermons, and if I did, they wouldn't be any good. I'm trying to get this over with quick so we can all go off to do our own thing."

The fact was, in Sterns' mind, what they were saying was more or less true, especially what DJ had said. He was at least partially to blame for the four of them getting stuck on that ship. He had, after all, told Kanzaki not to "do anything stupid", which coming from him was pretty much the exact same thing as a go ahead. And it had also been in contravention of orders from the bridge. Of course, without taking that risk, they'd probably still be out there, pecking at the thing's surface in an attempt to insure a safe fold-out. But he'd worry about all of that later, when he was back in his room with a plate of crepes and a bottle of whiskey. Aside from all that, he mentally catalogued what everyone was saying that was in regards to the mission itself for presentation at the command staff briefing.

"Alright, if there's nothing else, you're dismissed," he said. "Chorizal, command staff briefing in an hour and forty-five. The rest of you, if I've told you to do something, go do it, and if not, get some rest." Really, he was actually going fairly easy on Damon, incapable as his brain may have seemed of processing things other than Spacy protocol. After all, the technicians out there would only stand for having to clamber up a Battroid just to transform it and land it in it's proper place so many times before they started hitting people. And considering a fair number of the technicians out there could bench press Chorizal, the sooner things in their space were done right, the better.

[Thumper]

Pascal had surprised himself after he had landed. From the time that he left his fighter to the end of the debriefing he had said fewer than 10 words which consisted of either yes, no and maybe. He was too tired to interact much and had just sat there as others vented. As they were dismissed Pascal had to sigh since he did agree with that ox Chorizal for once that given the situation, they should be ecstatic any of them had survived. However he had enough common sense not to add fuel to the fire by restating this. To further add to his exasperation was the voice of one of his former instructors playing back in his head that “...in all military operations nothing goes exactly as planed... ever”. Despite this he couldn’t help but agree with the kid that military intelligence had bungled this pretty badly and though he admitted that that did happen from time to time, which was unavoidable in the real world, something seemed off. The timing was too good on the unexpected arrivals for Pascal’s liking which made him feel there were two ugly possibilities. The first is that Intel failed miserably with regards to nearby enemy unit positions and the second was that the enemy knew they would be making a strike.

Pascal shook off the feeling of dread that they were as good as dead once the enemy got a tip off or that there next mission puts them right in the firing solution of a Sigma fleet. As he stood up and gave a half-assed salute he put the unexpected friendly reinforcements out of his mind as “a major and above concern” before he strolled out of the briefing room. As he walked out into the hanger he reflected on how much he blended into background just by shutting the hell up. I really need to talk to some of these people or I'll develop some sort of metal disorder he thought as he watched the damage control personnel and hanger crews at work for a few moments during the walked towards his quarters. As he approached the door to his quarters he suddenly stopped and changed direction to head towards the mess deck upon the realization that sitting in around alone will just result in more pondering over subjects he couldn’t do a damn thing about. The subjects of onboard assassins, rotten intel, dead pilots that he barely knew or really cared about and that his apathy may be the precursor to metal problems were frankly too much to consider without a large amount of alcohol, which Pascal was determined to find.